The Last Days of Pekin

by Pierre Loti

The Chinese Yamen is always of tremendous extent. In the cool night air, picking my way by the light of lanterns, amongst huge stones and between rows of servants, I pass through a series of courts two hundred metres long, with I don't know how many ruined porticoes and peristyles with shaky steps, before reaching the crumbling and dusty lodging which the mandarin intends for me,—a separate building in the midst of a sort of yard, and surrounded by old trees with shapeless trunks. There, under the smoky rafters, I have a great room, with whitewashed walls, containing in the centre a platform with seats like a throne, also some heavy ebony arm-chairs; and as wall decorations some rolls of silk spread out, on which poetry, in Manchou characters, is written. In the wing on the left is a small bedroom for my two servants, and on the right one for me with window-panes of rice paper. On a platform is a very hard bed with covers of red silk, and, lastly, an incense burner, in which little sticks of incense are burning. All this is rural, naïve, and superannuated, antiquated even for China.

My timid host, in ceremonial costume, awaits me at the entrance, and makes me take a seat with him on the central throne, where he offers me the obligatory tea in porcelain a hundred years old. Then he had the discretion to bring the audience to a close and to bid me good-night. As he withdrew he told me not to be disturbed if I heard a good deal of coming and going over my head, as the space above was frequented by rats. Neither was I to be disturbed if I heard on the other side of my paper window-panes people walking up and down in the yard playing castanets; they would be the night watchmen, thus informing me that they were not asleep, and were doing their duty.

"There are many brigands in this country," he added; "the city with its high walls closes its gates at sunset, but the workmen going to the fields before daybreak have made a hole in the ramparts,—this the brigands have discovered, and do not hesitate to enter by it."

When this deep-bowing mandarin was gone, and I was alone in the darkness of my dwelling, in the heart of an isolated city whose gates were guarded by human heads in cages, I felt myself at an infinite distance away, separated from my own world by immense space as well as by time, by ages; it seemed to me that I was going to sleep amongst a people at least a thousand years behind our era.

Saturday, April 27.

The crowing of cocks, the singing of little birds on my roof, awoke me in my strange old room; and by the light that came in through my paper panes I guessed that the warm sun was shining out of doors.

Osman and Renaud, who were up before me, came to tell me that they were hurriedly making great preparations in the courtyard of the Yamen in order to give me a fête, a morning fête, because we had to continue our route to the imperial tombs soon after the mid-day meal.

It began about nine o'clock. I was given a seat in an arm-chair beside the mandarin, who seemed weighed down beneath his silken gowns. In front of me, in the dazzling sunshine, was the series of courts with porticoes of irregular outline and old monsters on pedestals. A crowd of Chinese—always the men alone, it is understood—have assembled in their eternal blue rags. The yellow wind which had died down at night, as usual, begins to blow again, and to whiten the heavens with dust. The acacias and the monotonous willows, which are almost the only trees scattered over this northern China, show here and there on their slender old branches little pale-green leaves just barely out.

First comes the slow, the very slow, passing of a band with many gongs, cymbals, and bells all muffled; the melody seems to be carried by a sweet, melancholy, and persistent unison of flutes,—large flutes, with a deep tone, some of which have several tubes, and resemble sheaves of wheat. It is sweet and lulling, exquisite to hear.

Now the musicians seat themselves near us, in a circle, to open the fête. All at once the rhythm changes, grows more rapid, and becomes a dance. Then from afar, from the retirement of the courts and the old porticoes, one sees above the heads of the crowd, through the dust that grows thicker and thicker, a troop of dancing creatures two or three times taller than men, swinging along, swinging in regular time and playing citherns, fanning themselves, and comporting themselves generally in an exaggerated, nervous epileptic manner.—Giants? Jumping Jacks? What can they be? They are approaching rapidly with long, leaping steps, and here they are in front of us. Ah, they are on stilts, enormously high stilts. They are taller on their wooden legs than the shepherds of the Landes, and they hop like big grasshoppers. They are in costume and made up,—painted, rouged. They have wigs, false beards; they represent gods, genii such as one sees on old pagodas; they represent princesses also, with beautiful robes of embroidered silk, with cheeks too pink and white, and with artificial flowers in their chignons,—princesses all very tall, fanning themselves in an exaggerated way, and swinging along like the rest of the company, with the same regular, continuous movement, as persistent as the pendulum of a clock.