The “Altar to Heaven,” with its adjunct, the “Altar of Prayer for Grain,” and the “Altar of Agriculture,” are both near the southern wall. The “Altar to Heaven” stands on a splendid triple circular terrace of white marble, richly carved, in a grove of fine trees. The “Altar of Prayer for Grain,” was burned down in 1889.
The principal streets of the Chinese City are more than one hundred feet wide, but the side streets are mere lanes. The streets are seldom paved and are deep either in mud or in dust. In the smaller streets the houses are miserable shanties; in the main streets both private houses and shops are one-story brick edifices, the shops gay with paint and gilding.
There are three Catholic cemeteries (Portuguese, French, and native) and a Russian one; and there are mission buildings, Russian and others, and hospitals.
History.—Chinese historical documents begin with the reigns of Yâo and Shun. In 403 B. C. we find only seven great states, all sooner or later claiming to be “the kingdom,” and contending for the supremacy, till Ts’in (Ch’in) put down all the others, and in 221 B. C. its king assumed the title of Hwang Tî, or emperor. From that year dates the imperial form of the Chinese government, which thus existed for more than two thousand one hundred years.
The changes of dynasty were many, two or more sometimes ruling together, each having but a nominal supremacy over the whole nation. The greater dynasties have been those of Han (206 B. C.-220 A. D.), T’ang (618-906), Sung (960-1279), Yüan (the Mongol, 1280-1367), the Ming (1368-1643), and the Ch’ing (Manchû-Tartar, from the Manchû conquest of China in 1643 to the 1912 revolution).
It was not till after the Cape of Good Hope had been doubled, and the passage to India discovered by Vasco da Gama in 1497, that intercourse between any of the European nations and China was possible by sea. It was in 1516 that the Portuguese first made their appearance at Canton; and they were followed at intervals of time by the Spaniards, the Dutch, and the English in 1635. The Chinese received none of them cordially; and Chinese dislike of them was increased by their mutual jealousies and collisions with one another. In the meantime trade gradually increased, and there grew up the importation of opium from India. From the measures of the Chinese to prevent the import of opium came the first English war with China in 1840; the result of which was the opening of Canton, Amoy, Fûchâu, Ningpo, and Shanghâi to commerce, and the cession of Hongkong to Great Britain. A second war, in 1857, France being allied with Great Britain, ended in the opening of five more treaty ports. A third war (1860) and the march on Peking did even more to open China to the world.
After a war in 1884-1885 France secured permanent control of Tongking and Annam.
In 1894 Japan, reviving old claims on Korea, drove the Chinese out of Korea, and after victories on land and at sea, captured Port Arthur and Wei-hai-wei. By the treaty of 1894 Japan secured as indemnity Formosa and the Liao-tung peninsula; but the protests of Russia, Germany, and France made Japan resign Liao-tung. Russia obtained a lease of Port Arthur and Talienwan, with railway and other privileges in Manchuria; Germany obtained Kiao-chau and concessions in Shantung; and Great Britain, as an offset, obtained a lease of Wei-hai-wei and sought to secure trading freedom in the Yang-tze-kiang valley.
Russia’s refusal to evacuate Manchuria and her movements in Korea led to war with Japan in 1903, the defeat of the Russian armies in Manchuria, the destruction of the Russian fleet, and the fall of Port Arthur (1905), China being nominally neutral. By the peace (1905) Japan secured dominance in Korea, the Russian leases in Liao-tung, and great influence in southern Manchuria and on China generally.
A series of far-reaching reforms, promoted by a nationalist reform party in 1898, were summarily cancelled by the dowager empress, who assumed supreme authority. The reactionary and anti-foreign “Boxer” association (“The Fist of Righteous Harmony”), encouraged by the court, made extermination of foreigners its war cry in that year, and besieged the legislations in Peking. After a two months’ siege by an army of Japanese, Russians, British, Americans, French, and Germans this condition was relieved. The constitutional movement began in 1911, followed by a revolution. The leader of the revolt at Han-kau was the able general, Li Yuan-hung, but the inspirer of the revolution was Dr. Sun Yat-sen, at that moment in America.