China is the land of shams and middle-men, and the official from the country sees all this, and, sore with the undue lightening of his own purse, goes home, having learnt his lesson to exact bribes himself, and himself rest satisfied with shams, and report all in order, when he knows that it is not so. Far from feeling ashamed of the state the roads in his own province have got into, he remembers those of Peking, that are so much worse. Indeed, through all the country, since the incoming of the Manchu Dynasty, it has been the deliberate official intention to neglect the roads, thus making it the more difficult for the people to assemble together and revolt against their alien rulers. Probably, too, he sees the Tsung-li Yamen, the office created of late years in order to transact business with European nations. Tsung-li Yamen sounds well, but the building is a dirty, dilapidated shed, that might pass muster for a cowhouse on an English gentleman's estate, if it were cleaned and fresh painted. To the Chinese mind this building being set apart to hold interviews with the representatives of Foreign Powers sufficiently indicates in what esteem they are held by his Government, and what amount of courtesy he is intended to mete out to them.
The foreigner, on the other hand, travels away, having learnt his lesson too, if he be of a reflective mind, and that is, very briefly, that there is no hope for China under the present dynasty. The Manchus may have been a very fine people when they first entered China; but since then they have lived like gentlemen, according to the common saying, not earning their living, but as pensioners of the State, nominally ready to be called out to fight, if wanted, in time of war. They do not enter into business, they do not study, and they have lost their martial qualities and become as effeminate as Chinamen. The Chinese Empire has been decaying ever since it came into their hands; and ever since I have known China the Chinese have been saying the Manchu Dynasty has ruled its appointed number of years, and that it is now high time for what they call a Saviour of Society to appear, as so often in the past.
This Saviour of Society would probably have appeared long ago, but for the help the nations of Europe, and especially England, have given towards the centralisation of China. In the old days it is true the Viceroys were appointed from Peking; but each Viceroy ruled pretty well as he pleased in his own province, with his own exchequer, his own army, and his own navy. We found it inconvenient to deal with so heterogeneous a mass without any definite head, and threw our weight into the scale of the Chinese Empire. First we helped to crush the Taiping rebellion, which but for our intervention would probably have succeeded, and by force have made the Chinese people at least nominal Christians. Then through Sir Robert Hart the different Viceroys have been impoverished; the money that in former times would have gone to their private purses or to the administration of their provinces has been diverted to Peking. The theory was that it would be used for the good of the nation. But probably we shall some day know how much the Empress has used for her private pleasures, according to the recent indictment of her by the one great incorruptible Viceroy, Chang-chih-tung, and how much has been absorbed by Li Hung-chang, and all the army of Palace eunuchs and hangers-on.
The Chinese are a people of traders, and patient; they look on, and say mentally, "No belong my pigeon," that is, "Politics are not my business." But they dislike the Empress; they know the young Emperor has been used merely as a puppet; and as to the idea of a Chinese Empire, it is one that has never made its way into their heads. And thus it is a grave question, when in the last Chino-Japanese war all the great Yangtse was a moving procession of junks piled high with human braves, their pigtails coiled about their heads, and their black head kerchiefs giving them somewhat a piratical air, whether these men of Hunan ever meant to fight the Japanese. They would have been ready enough to fight the men of Anhui; and when the European settlement of Shanghai found itself between a regiment of either force, the position was so evidently critical, that very urgent remonstrances had to be addressed to the Chinese authorities to move away either one force or the other. But the Hunan men never fought the Japanese, and it remains a question whether they ever intended doing so.
Even the passing foreigner must feel at Peking that it is not the throbbing heart of a great country, as London is, as Paris is; but the remains of the magnificent camp of a nomad race, that has settled down, and built in stone after the fashion in which in its wanderings it used to build in wood.
CHAPTER I.
THE CHINESE EMPEROR'S MAGNIFICENCE.
The Emperor at the Temple of Heaven.—Mongol Princes wrestling.—Imperial Porcelain Manufactory.—Imperial Silk Manufactory.—Maids of Honour.—Spring Sacrifices.—Court of Feasting.—Hunting Preserves.—Strikes.—Rowdies.—Young Men to be prayed for.
Almost all we can know of the Emperor of China is by hearsay. He lives in his Palace inside the Forbidden City, which again is inside the Manchu City, separated from the Chinese City, where are the lovely, gilded curio shops. When he goes abroad, which he never does, except to worship at the temples, all the people are ordered to keep within-doors, and the most any outsider can do is to peep at him through the crack of a door or from behind a curtain. But as I think some details of his State may be interesting to the general reader, and indeed would well repay thinking over, I have extracted an abridged translation from a Chinese newspaper's account of the present Emperor Kwang-shü's visit to the Temple of Heaven in 1888, when, it must be remembered, he was only a boy between sixteen and seventeen. Those who do not care for the accounts of pageants can easily skip it. Those who read it will, however, learn much of Chinese usage therefrom, and will perhaps better realise how remarkable must be the character of the lad who, brought up from the age of four as the central figure in such ceremonies, yet dared to place himself at the head of the party of progress, and to introduce innovations. People in England, angry with him for being overcome, think he must be a young man of weak character. But contrast him with one of our European princes, read what he has attempted, which I hope to describe in a following chapter, and then decide which is the stronger character. Kwang-shü has always been of weak physique—not unnaturally, considering that he has never known what it is to go out into the country, and take free, healthy exercise. But probably this has been his salvation. Had he been a young man of strong physique, he could never, probably, have withstood the promptings of his own nature, together with those temptations of wine and women, by which he has been surrounded from his earliest years. That he should not have taken proper precautions for his own protection and that of his supporters is hardly wonderful, considering that from babyhood he has been treated as too august a personage even to be seen. Probably he had learnt to believe his will was law, and must be executed. It is little wonder if he now looks ill and his wife sorrowful, even if the suspicions of poison be unfounded.
