The Last Days of Pekin

by Pierre Loti

The frail willows, through which the sunlight sifts upon the houses and tiny pagodas of these primitive lives, scatter over us their blossoms, like tiny feathers or little tufts of cotton-wool, which fall in a shower, and mingle with the never-ending dust.

On the plain, which now begins again, level and always the same, I keep two or three hundred metres in advance of my little armed troop, to avoid the excessive dust raised by the trot of the horses' feet; a gray cloud behind me when I turn around shows me that they are following. The "yellow wind" continues to blow; we are powdered with it to such an extent that our horses, our moustaches, our uniforms have become of the color of ashes.

Toward five o'clock the old walled town where we are to pass the night appears before us. From afar it is almost imposing in the midst of the plain, with its high crenellated ramparts so sombre in color. Near by, no doubt, it would show but ruin and decrepitude, like the rest of China.

A horseman, bringing along with him the inevitable cloud of dust, comes out to meet me. It is the officer commanding the fifty men of the marine infantry who have occupied Laï-Chou-Chien since October. He informs me that the general has had the kindly thought of having me announced as one of the great mandarins of Occidental letters, so the mandarin of the town is coming out to meet me with an escort, and he has called together the neighboring villages for a fête which he is preparing for me.

In fact, here the procession comes, from out the crumbling old gates, advancing through the wasted fields, with red emblems and music.

Now it stops to await me, ranged in two lines on each side of the road. And following the usual ceremonial, some one, a servant of the mandarin, comes forward, fifty feet in advance of the others, with a large red paper, which is the visiting-card of his master. He himself, the timid mandarin, awaits, standing, with the people of his house, having come down from his palanquin out of deference. I extend my hand without dismounting, as I have been told to do, after which, in a cloud of gray dust, we make our way toward the great walls, followed by my cavaliers, and preceded by the procession of honor with music and emblems.

At the head are two big red parasols, surrounded with a fall of silk like the canopies in a procession; than a fantastic black butterfly, as large as an owl with extended wings, which is carried at the end of a stick by a child; then two rows of banners; then shields of red lacquered wood inscribed with letters of gold. As soon as we begin to march gongs commence to sound lugubriously at regular intervals as for a military salute, whilst heralds with prolonged cries announce my arrival to the inhabitants of the village.

Here we are at the gate, which seems like the entrance to a cavern; on each side are hung five or six little wooden cages, each one containing a kind of black beast, motionless in the midst of a swarm of flies; their tails may be seen hanging outside the bars like dead things. What can it be that keeps itself rolled up like a ball, and has such a long tail? Monkeys? Ah, horrors, they are heads that have been severed from their bodies! Each one of these pretty cages contains a human head, beginning to grow black in the sunshine, with long, braided hair which has been intentionally uncoiled.

We are swallowed up by the big gate, and are received by the inevitable grinning old granite monsters which at right and at left raise their great heads with the squinting eyes. Motionless, against the inner wall of the tunnel, the people press to see me pass, huddled together, climbing one upon the other,—yellow nakedness, blue cotton rags, ugly faces. The dust fills and obscures this vaulted passage where men and horses press, enveloped in the same gloom.

We have entered old provincial China, belonging to another era entirely unknown to us.