Although the approach to Pekin afforded little that was interesting, we had no sooner passed the gate and opened out the broad street, than a very singular and novel appearance was exhibited. We saw before us a line of buildings on each side of a wide street, consisting entirely of shops and warehouses, the particular goods of which were brought out and displayed in groupes in front of the houses. Before these were generally erected large wooden pillars, whose tops were much higher than the eves of the houses, bearing inscriptions in gilt characters, setting forth the nature of the wares to be sold, and the honest reputation of the seller; and, to attract the more notice, they were generally hung with various coloured flags and streamers and ribbands from top to bottom, exhibiting the appearance of a line of shipping dressed, as we sometimes see them, in the colours of all the different nations in Europe. The sides of the houses were not less brilliant in the several colours with which they were painted, consisting generally of sky blue or green mixed with gold: and what appeared to us singular enough, the articles for sale that made the greatest show were coffins for the dead. The most splendid of our coffin furniture would make but a poor figure if placed beside that intended for a wealthy Chinese. These machines are seldom less than three inches thick, and twice the bulk of ours. Next to those our notice was attracted by the brilliant appearance of the funeral biers and the marriage cars, both covered with ornamental canopies.
At the four points where the great streets intersect one another were erected those singular buildings, sometimes of stone, but generally of wood, which have been called triumphal arches, but which, in fact, are monuments to the memory of those who had deserved well of the community, or who had attained an unusual longevity. They consist invariably of a large central gateway, with a smaller one on each side, all covered with narrow roofs; and, like the houses, they are painted, varnished, and gilt in the most splendid manner.
The multitude of moveable workshops of tinkers and barbers, coblers and blacksmiths; the tents and booths where tea and fruit, rice and other eatables were exposed for sale, with the wares and merchandize arrayed before the doors, had contracted this spacious street to a narrow road in the middle, just wide enough for two of our little vehicles to pass each other. The cavalcade of officers and soldiers that preceded the embassy, the processions of men in office attended by their numerous retinues, bearing umbrellas and flags, painted lanterns, and a variety of strange insignia of their rank and station, different trains that were accompanying, with lamentable cries, corpses to their graves, and, with squalling music, brides to their husbands, the troops of dromedaries laden with coals from Tartary, the wheelbarrows and hand-carts stuffed with vegetables, occupied nearly the whole of this middle space in one continued line, leaving very little room for the cavalcade of the embassy to pass. All was in motion. The sides of the street were filled with an immense concourse of people, buying and selling and bartering their different commodities. The buzz and confused noises of this mixed multitude, proceeding from the loud bawling of those who were crying their wares, the wrangling of others, with every now and then a strange twanging noise like the jarring of a cracked Jew's harp, the barber's signal made by his tweezers, the mirth and the laughter that prevailed in every groupe, could scarcely be exceeded by the brokers in the Bank rotunda, or by the Jews and old women in Rosemary-Lane. Pedlars with their packs, and jugglers, and conjurers, and fortune-tellers, mountebanks and quack-doctors, comedians and musicians, left no space unoccupied. The Tartar soldiers, with their whips, kept with difficulty a clear passage for the embassy to move slowly forwards; so slow, indeed, that although we entered the eastern gate at half-past nine, it was near twelve before we arrived at the western.
Although an extraordinary crowd might be expected to assemble on such a particular occasion, on the same principle of curiosity as could not fail to attract a crowd of spectators in London, yet there was a most remarkable and a striking difference observable between a London and a Pekin populace. In the former the whole attention and soul of the multitude would have been wrapt up in the novel spectacle; all would have been idlers. In Pekin, the shew was but an accessary; every one pursued his business, at the same time that he gratified his curiosity. In fact, it appeared that, on every day throughout the whole year, there was the same noise and bustle and crowd in the capital of China. I scarcely ever passed the western gate, which happened twice, or oftener, in the week, that I had not to wait a considerable time before the passage was free, particularly in the morning, notwithstanding the exertions of two or three soldiers with their whips to clear the way. The crowd, however, was entirely confined to the great streets, which are the only outlets of the city. In the cross lanes all was still and quiet.
Women in Pekin were commonly seen among the crowd, or walking in the narrow streets, or riding on horseback, which they crossed in the same manner as the men, but they were all Tartars. They wore long silken robes, reaching down to their feet; their shoes appeared to be as much above the common size, as those of the Chinese are under it; the upper part was generally of embroidered satin, the sole consisted of folds of cloth or paper, about an inch thick; they were square in front, and a little turned up. The hair smoothed up on all sides, not very different from that of the Chinese; and though their faces were painted with white lead and vermillion, it was evident their skins were much fairer than those of the former. The Chinese women are more scrupulously confined to the house in the capital than elsewhere. Young girls were sometimes seen smoking their pipes in the doors of their houses, but they always retired on the approach of men.
All the streets were covered with sand and dust: none had the least pavement. The cross lanes were generally watered, which did not appear to be the case in the main streets. A large sheet of water, several acres in extent, within the northern wall, affords to that part of the city, and to the palace an abundant supply of that element, as does also a small stream which runs along the western wall to that neighbourhood. There are besides abundance of wells; but the water of some of these is so dreadfully nauseous, that we, who were unaccustomed to it, were under the necessity of sending to a distance to obtain such as was free from mineral or earthy impregnations. When mixed with tea, the well water was particularly disgusting.
Although Pekin cannot boast, like ancient Rome, or modern London, of the conveniences of common sewers to carry off the dirt and dregs that must necessarily accumulate in large cities, yet it enjoys one important advantage, which is rarely found in capitals out of England: no kind of filth or nastiness, creating offensive smells is thrown out into the streets, a piece of cleanliness that perhaps may be attributed rather to the scarcity and value of manure, than to the exertions of the police officers. Each family has a large earthen jar, into which is carefully collected every thing that may be used as manure; when the jar is full, there is no difficulty of converting its contents into money, or of exchanging them for vegetables. The same small boxed carts with one wheel, which supply the city with vegetables, invariably return to the gardens with a load of this liquid manure. Between the palace of Yuen-min-yuen and Pekin, I have met many hundreds of these carts. They are generally dragged by one person, and pushed on by another; and they leave upon the road an odour that continues without intermission for many miles. Thus, though the city is cleared of its filth, it seldom loses its fragrance. In fact, a constant disgusting odour remains in and about all the houses the whole day long, from the fermentation of the heterogeneous mixtures kept above ground, which in our great cities are carried off in drains.
The medical gentlemen of China are not quite so ingenious, as we are told the faculty in Madrid were about the middle of the last century, when the inhabitants were directed, by royal proclamation, to build proper places of retirement to their houses, instead of emptying their nocturnal machines out of the windows into the streets. The inhabitants took it into their heads to consider this order as a great affront, and a direct violation of the rights of man; but the doctors were the most strenuous opposers of the measure, having no doubt very cogent reasons for wishing the continuance of the practice. They assured the inhabitants, that if human excrement was no longer to be accumulated in the streets, to attract the putrescent particles floating in the air, they would find their way into the human body, and a pestilential sickness would be the inevitable consequence.
The police of the capital, as we afterwards found, is so well regulated, that the safety and tranquillity of the inhabitants are seldom disturbed. At the end of every cross street, and at certain distances in it, are a kind of cross bars, with sentry boxes at each of which is placed a soldier, and few of these streets are without a guard-house. Besides, the proprietor or inhabitant of every tenth house, like the ancient tythingmen of England, takes it in turn to keep the peace, and be responsible for the good conduct of his nine neighbours. If any riotous company should assemble, or any disturbances happen within his district, he is to give immediate information thereof to the nearest guard-house. The soldiers also go their rounds and instead of crying the hour like our watchmen, strike upon a short tube of bamboo, which gives a dull hollow sound, that for several nights prevented us from sleeping until we were accustomed to it.
It took us full two hours, as I before observed, in passing from the eastern to the western gate of Pekin. The clouds of dust raised by the populace were here much denser than on the road, and the smothering heat of the day, the thermometer in our little carts standing at 96°, was almost insupportable. Except the great crowd on every side, we saw little to engage the attention after the first five minutes. Indeed, a single walk through one of the broad streets is quite sufficient to give a stranger a competent idea of the whole city. He will immediately perceive that every street is laid out in the same manner, and every house built upon the same plan; and that their architecture is void of taste, grandeur, beauty, solidity, or convenience; that the houses are merely tents, and that there is nothing magnificent, even in the palace of the Emperor;—but we shall have occasion to speak on this subject hereafter. Ask a Chinese, however, what is to be seen that is curious or great in the capital, and he will immediately enter upon a long history of the beauties of the palace belonging to Ta-whang-tee, the mighty Emperor. According to his notions, every thing within the palace walls is gold and silver. He will tell you of gold and silver pillars, gold and silver roofs, gold and silver vases, in which are swimming gold and silver fishes. All, however, is not gold that glitters in China, more than elsewhere. The Emperor, as I shall hereafter have occasion to notice, has very little surplus revenue at his disposal, and is frequently distressed for money to pay his army and other exigences of the state. And, though China has of late years drawn from Europe a considerable quantity of specie, yet when this is scattered over so vast an extent of country, and divided among so many millions of people, it becomes almost as a drop thrown into the sea. Most of the money, besides, that enters China is melted down, and converted into articles of luxury or convenience. Few nations are better acquainted with the value of these precious metals than the Chinese; and few, if any, can surpass their ingenuity in drawing out the one into thin leaves, and the other into the finest wire.