I find no mention of the use of firearms in these imperial hunts, nor do I believe that it has ever been considered, by the Tartars and Mongols, sportsmanlike to use them.
Coursing and hawking were probably introduced into China and Mongolia after the Mongol conquest of Western Asia, where those royal sports had then been in vogue for a long time. At present the Manchus keep great numbers of hawks, caught for the most part in the northern portion of the province of Shan-hsi, and with them they take hares and cranes. Greyhounds are no longer numerous in Mongolia and China, though they are much prized, and I have seen some among the Ordos Mongols and in Manchu garrisons. They were short-haired, of a clear tan color with black points, and showed good blood in their small tails and depth of chest.
Besides the great annual hunts on the steppes—which, leaving aside the sport and incidental invigorating influence on the courtiers, helped, by the vast numbers of troops which took part in them, to keep quiet the then turbulent Mongol tribes—the emperors of China have had, at different times, great hunting parks, inclosed by high walls, at convenient distances from their capital, or even in close proximity to it, where they could indulge their fondness for the chase. Several of these parks (called wei chang) are still preserved for imperial hunts, and one I visited in 1886, to the north of Jehol and about six days' travel from Peking, is some ninety miles long from north to south, and over thirty miles from east to west. It is well stocked with pheasants, roebucks, stags, and, it is said, there are also tigers and leopards in it. The park is guarded by troops, and any person caught poaching in it, besides receiving corporal punishment, is exiled for a period of a year and a half to two years to a distant town of the empire. During my visit to this park, I and my three companions camped just outside one of the gates, and, by paying the keepers a small sum, we were able to get daily a few hours' shooting in a little valley inside the wall and near our camp. Though we had no dogs, and lost all the winged birds and wounded hares, we bagged in nine or ten days over 500 pheasants, 150 hares, 100 partridges and a few ducks.
A mile or so south of Peking is another famous hunting park, called the Nan-hai-tzu, in which is found that remarkable deer, not known to exist in a wild state in any other spot, called Cervus davidi. Of late years a number of these deer have been raised in the imperial park of Uwino at Tokio, and also in the Zoölogical Garden of Berlin, where a pair were sent by the German Minister to China, Mr. Von Brandt. This deer is known to the Chinese as the ssu-pu-hsiang-tzu, "the four dissimilarities," because, while its body shows points of resemblance to those of the deer, horse, cow and ass, it belongs to neither of those four species—so say the Chinese.
The Chinese proper show but rarely any great love for sport. They are fond of fishing, and I have seen some very good shots among them, especially at snipe shooting, when, with their match-locks fired from the hip, they will frequently do snap shooting of which any of our crack shots might be proud. But the Chinese are essentially pot hunters, and have no sportsmanlike instincts as have the Manchus and Mongols, with whom sport is one of the pleasures of life, though it is also a source of profit to many Mongol tribes. In winter they supply with game—deer, boars, antelope, hares, pheasants and partridges—the Peking market, bringing them there frozen from remote corners of their country.
Among the big game in the northern part of the Chinese Empire the first place properly belongs to tigers and leopards. In Korea tigers are quite common, and a special corps of tiger hunters was kept up until recently by the Government. The usual method of killing tigers is to make a pitfall in a narrow path along which one has been found to travel, and on either side of it a strong fence is erected. When the tiger has fallen into the pit, he is shot to death or speared. The skin belongs to the king, and the hunters are rewarded by him for each beast killed. The skins are used to cover the seats of high dignitaries, to whom they are given by the king, as are also the skins of leopards; and tigers' whiskers go to ornament the hats of certain petty officials.
Leopards are so numerous in Korea that I have known of two being killed within a few weeks inside of the walls of Seoul.
Tigers are also found in Manchuria, and, as before mentioned, in parts of northern and southeastern China. I have seen the skin of a small one hanging as an ex voto offering in a lama temple near the Koko-Nor, and was told that it had been killed not far from that spot. Colonel Prjevalsky, however, says that the tiger is not found in northwestern China; so the question remains an open one.
Leopards, at all events, are common in northeastern and northwestern China, in the hunting parks north of Peking, in the mountains of northwest Kan-su and to the south of Koko-Nor. Bears are common from northern Korea to the Pamirs. The Chinese distinguish two varieties, which they call "dog bear" or "hog bear," and "man bear." The first is a brown bear, and the latter, which is found on the high barren plateaus to the north of Tibet, where it makes its food principally of the little lagomys or marmots, which live there in great numbers, has for this reason been called by Colonel Prjevalsky Ursus lagomyarius. I killed one weighing over 600 pounds, whose claws were larger and thicker than those of any grizzly I have seen. Its color is a rusty black, with a patch of white on the breast.
Besides these two varieties of bears, there is another animal, which, though it is not properly a bear, resembles one so closely that it is classed by the Chinese and Tibetans in that family. It is known to the Chinese as hua hsiung, or "mottled bear," and Milne Edwards, who studied and described it, has called it Ailuropus melanoleucus. This animal was, I believe, discovered by that enterprising missionary and naturalist, Father Armand David (who called it "white bear"), in the little eastern Tibetan principality of Dringpa or Mupin, in western Ssu-ch'uan.[13] Five specimens have so far been secured of this very rare animal: three are in the Jardin des Plantes of Paris, the other two in the Museum at the Jesuits' establishment, at Zikawei, near Shanghai.