The Last Days of Pekin

by Pierre Loti

It seems like a phantasmagoric city with no real foundations, resting upon a cloud, a heavy cloud, whereon gigantic sheep, with necks enlarged by a thick brown fleece, move inoffensively.

Above the dust the sun shines clear and white, making resplendent the cold, penetrating light in which things stand out incisively. Objects that are high up above the ground stand out with absolute clearness. The smallest of small monsters on the top of the triumphal arches may be clearly seen, as well as the most delicate carving on the summits of the stele; one can even count the teeth, the forked tongues, the squinting eyes of the hundreds of gold chimæras which jut from the roofs.

Pekin, the city of carvings and gildings, the city of claws and horns, is still capable of creating illusions; on dry, sunny, windy days it recovers something of its splendor under the dust of the steppes, under the veil which then masks the shabbiness of its streets and the squalor of its crowds.

Yet all is old and worn in spite of the gilding which still remains bright. In this quarter there was continual fighting during the siege of the legations, the Boxers destroying the homes of those whom they suspected of sympathy for the barbarians.

The long avenue which we have been following for half an hour ends now at an arched bridge of white marble, still a superb object; here the houses come to an end, and on the opposite bank the gloomy steppes begin.

This was the Bridge of the Beggars,—dangerous inhabitants, who, before the capture of Pekin, ranged themselves on both sides of its long railing and extorted money from the passers-by; they formed a bold corporation with a king at its head, who often went armed. Their place is unoccupied to-day; the vagrants departed after the battles and massacres began.

Beyond this bridge a gray plain, empty and desolate, extends for two kilometres, as far as the Great Wall, far beyond where Pekin ends. The road, with its tide of caravans, goes straight on through this solitude to the outside gate. Why should this desert be enclosed by the city's walls? There is not a trace of previous constructions; it must always have been as it is. No one is in sight on it; a few stray dogs, a few rags, a few bones, and that is all.

For a long distance into this steppe there are sombre red walls at both right and left which seem to enclose great cedar woods. The enclosure at the right is that of the Temple of Agriculture; at the left is the Temple of Heaven, for which we are bound. We plunge into this gloomy region, leaving the dust and the crowds behind.

The enclosure around the Temple of Heaven has a circumference of more than six kilometres; it is one of the most extensive in the whole city, where everything is on an old-time scale of grandeur which overpowers us to-day. The gate which was formerly impassable will not close now, and we enter the wood of venerable trees—cedars, arbor-vitæ, and willows—through which long avenues have been cut. This spot, accustomed to silence and respect, is now profaned by barbarian cavalry. Several thousand Indians sent out to China by England are encamped there; their horses have trampled the grass; the turf and the moss are filled with rubbish and manure. From a marble terrace where incense to the gods was formerly burned, clouds of infected smoke were rising, the English having chosen this place for the burning of cattle that die of the plague, and for the manufacture of bone-black.

There are, as in all sacred woods, two enclosures. The secondary temples, scattered amongst the cedars, precede the great central temple.