A Peking cart is a red-and-blue dog house, balanced, without springs, on an axle between two heavy wheels. The sides, back, and rounding roof are covered with blue cloth. A curtain hangs in front. In the middle of each side is a tiny window, and it is at such windows that you occasionally get the only glimpses you are ever likely to get of Chinese ladies. There is no seat in a Peking cart; you sit on the padded floor. When you get in, the servant holds up the front curtain, you vault to the front platform, and, placing your hands on the floor, propel yourself backward, with as much dignity as possible, taking care not to knock your hat against the roof, until you have disappeared inside. If you are long of leg, your feet will stick out in front of the curtain, leaving scant room for the two servants, who sit, one on each side, with their feet hanging down in front of the wheels. The two carts, two drivers, and two extra servants, set out from the Baptist Mission compound, to convey Mr. Sowerby and me to the Yâmen, or official residence, of His Excellency.
Every Yâmen has three great gates barring the way to the inner compound. If the resident official wishes to humiliate you, he has his man stop your cart at the first gate and compels you to enter on foot. Fortunately for us, since it was raining hard, His Excellency had chosen to treat us with marked courtesy. The carts halted at the second gate while Mr. Sowerby’s servant ran in with our red Chinese cards. There was a brief wait, and then we drove on through a long courtyard to the inner or screen gate, where massive timbered doors were closed against us. Soon these swung open; the carts crossed a paved yard and pulled up under the projecting roof of the Yâmen porch; and we scrambled down from the carts, while two tall mandarins, in official caps and buttons, dressed in flowing robes of silk and embroidery, came rapidly forward to meet us. One of these, the younger and shorter, I recognized as Mr. Wen, the interpreter for the Shansi foreign bureau.
The other mandarin was a man of ability and charm. Some of us, perhaps, have formed our notion of the Chinaman from the Cantonese laundryman type which we may have seen at his bench or on the Third Avenue elevated railway in New York. This would be about as accurate as to call the coster at his barrow the typical Englishman; just about as accurate as to call the Bowery loafer the typical American. His Excellency appeared to be close to six feet in height; he was erect and lithe of figure, with marked physical grace. He greeted Mr. Sowerby by clasping his hands before his breast and bowing, then turned, and with a genial smile extended his right hand to grip mine. He used no English, but the Chinese language, as he spoke it, was both dignified and musical, and not at all like the singsong jabbering I had heard on the streets and about the hotels.
Ting led the way into a reception-room which was furnished in red cloth and dark woods. There was a seat and a table against each side, and two red cushions on the edge of a platform across the end of the room, with a low table between them. An attendant appeared with tea. Ting took a covered tea bowl in his two hands, extended it towards me, bowed, then placed it on the low stand—thus indicating the seat which I was to take, on the platform. Mr. Wen said, in my ear, “Sit down.” Mr. Sowerby was placed at the other side of the stand; the two Chinese gentlemen seated themselves at the two side-tables, facing each other. One thing I remembered from Mr. Sowerby’s coaching—I must not touch my bowl of tea. I must not even look at it. The tea is not to drink; it is brought in order that the caller may be enabled to take his leave gracefully. The Chinese gentlefolk are so wedded to life’s little ceremonies that guest and host cannot bring themselves to talk right out about terminating a visit. The guest would shiver at the notion of saying, “Well, I must go, now.” Instead, he fingers his tea bowl, or perhaps merely glances at it; and then he and his host both rise.
His Excellency fixed his eyes on me and uttered a deliberate, musical sentence. “He says,” translated Mr. Sowerby, “that you have come to help China.” I am afraid I blushed at this. It had not occurred to me to state my mission in just those words. I replied that I had come, as a journalist, to learn the truth about the opium question. We talked for an hour about the wonderful warfare which China is waging against her besetting vice. “China is sincere in this struggle,” he said. “Public opinion was never more determined.” He asked me if I had investigated the new Malay drug which had lately been heralded as a specific for opium-poisoning. “If,” he said, “you should learn of any real cure, while you are investigating this subject, I wish you would advise me about it.” I promised him I would do so. I had already heard from a number of sources that Ting was personally giving two to three thousand taels a month (a tael is about seventy-five cents) to the support of opium refuges and for the purchase of drugs for distribution among the poor. “China is sick,” he said; “she must be cured so that she may hold up her head among the nations.”
Shortly after we had driven back through the rain and had mounted the stairs to Mr. Sowerby’s library, a Yâmen runner was shown into the room, bearing presents from the provincial judge. The runner bowed to me and presented his tray. On it, beside the large red “card” of Ting Pao Chuen, were four bottles of native wine, or “shumshoo,” two cans of beef tongue, and two cans of sauerkraut!