Standing on the walls of Peking, a city of the plain, you look down upon twelve square miles of grey-tiled roofs, the roofs of one-storied houses hidden in the summertime by a forest of trees, but in the heart of the city are high buildings that stand out not only by reason of their height but because the roofs of golden-brown tiles, imperial yellow, gleam and glow in the sunlight. This is the Forbidden City where has dwelt for hundreds of years the Emperor of China, often he must have been the only man in it, and always it was closed to all save the immediate following of the Son of Heaven.
I never realised till I came to Peking that this forbidden ground was just as much an object of curiosity to the Chinese as it would have been to any European nation.
“I went in once,” said a Chinese gentleman to me, “when I was a young man.” He was only forty then.
“Were you invited?”
“No, no. I went secretly. I wanted to see what it was like.”
“But how?”
“I got the dress of a eunuch and I slipped in early one morning, and then, when I got in, I hardly dared move or breathe for fear someone should find me out. Then when no one took any notice of me I walked about and saw everything I could, but the last hour was the worst, I was terrified at the thought that I might not be able to get out.”