It is risky now even to use the word Guspadin, a kind of Russian “Mr.,” before any name, in any language; one is expected to say Tavarish, meaning comrade. When they first came, the “Reds” showed every intention of introducing the same communism in Mongolia as in Russia. They demanded all title-deeds of real property, announcing that they would rent everything of the kind for thirty years to the highest bidder, no matter who the owner might be. The agents of foreign firms replied that the titles to their company buildings were on file with their legations at Peking, or at the home offices in America or Europe, or gave some other plausible answer, and, though copies of them were demanded, these were returned later with the information that they were of no use. Mongols and Russians, however, have in many cases been made communists willy-nilly, and some have already been stripped even of personal property. Those who have been in both places say that interference with peaceful pursuits is worse in Urga than it ever was in Soviet Russia. Merchants are particularly bitter, because while business is growing steadily better in Russia since the decree legalizing it, here it is being taxed to death. It is difficult to get a frank statement from the mistrusting Chinese merchants, who make up a majority of the trading class; but it is hard to believe that they are any more satisfied with the often confiscatory as well as burdensome methods of the “Red” authorities than are the disheartened foreigners. Every import or export, for instance, must pay a very high duty based on the retail selling price. Fines for technicalities and the often unavoidable breaking of some silly rule are the order of the day, while on top of the cost comes the wasted time and effort caused by the inexperience of the Mongols in matters of government. A caravan of sixty camels bringing in or taking out bales of marmot skins must halt for two or three days while every skin is counted and the bales made up again. When an Anglo-American branch got in a shipment of cigarettes, every one of the ninety-eight packages in each of the seventy-two cases had to be counted. Why they did not count each cigarette remains a mystery. The same rule applies to bricks of tea, cakes of chocolate, and the most minute of articles.
Not long after their arrival the “Reds” passed a law making the Russian silver ruble legal tender on a par with the “Mex” dollar and requiring every one to accept it as such. When an American firm protested that this meant a loss of 40 per cent on prices, and refused to comply, it was heavily fined. Moreover, the fine was paid, legal rights of extraterritoriality notwithstanding. It is small wonder that foreign stock is scarce in Urga and that important firms are closing their branches there. So far as I was able to find, the “Reds” had introduced only one reform worth while: they had decreed that Mongol women must give up their extravagant head-dress, saying that the silver with which it is heavy could be used to better purpose. Some twoscore head-dresses were seized, but even Bolsheviks learn in time that feminine fashions cannot be decreed by lawmakers; they returned the confiscated contrivances later, and the custom remains. In fact, all the “Reds” in Urga have not done as much for the handful of the human race there as have three brave Swedish girls who are fighting alone the most wide-spread of Mongolia’s physical diseases with missionary zeal and without making any noise about it.
Whatever other forms of violence the Soviet has used in its efforts to make neighboring Mongolia a first convert and a nation after its own heart, it has not dared openly attack the “Living Buddha.” The fanatical Mongols would almost certainly kill all foreigners in the country, irrespective of nationality, if their blind god were molested; though the rumor is rife that the “Reds” have threatened to deal with him as with the former prime minister if he uses his influence against them. Outwardly they try as hard to keep up the fiction that he is the head of the Mongol Government as they do to convince the world that they have no real hand in the latter. The official bulletin, only newspaper in Urga, in announcing the execution of the fifteen alleged conspirators, called attention to the law which decrees that those who try to change the form of government shall be cut up in small pieces, their immediate family banished two thousand versts from the capital, all their property confiscated, and all their relatives sent as slaves to distant princes. There are many such slaves in Mongolia, by the way; Bogda-Han has thousands of them, just as he has of cattle. But, added the official organ, the family and the property of these fifteen were not molested, by order of the “Living Buddha!” It is true that the title Bogda-Han means emperor, but he was long since shorn of any temporal power, not to mention the fact that he is said to have no sympathy whatever for the “Reds” or any of their works.
It is common belief that the Chinese will never return to power in Urga. A recent despatch from a Japanese source asserting that Moscow has declared Mongolia a federated state of Russia has not been confirmed, but it might as well be that in name as well as in fact. As I write, a story comes through that the “Living Buddha” is asking China to take charge of the country once more, but that again is from a Chinese source. The hard, cold facts in political matters are difficult to find in such a double-faced realm as the Orient. But the future of Mongolia will be worth watching, as will the apparent tendency of the Soviet to continue the imperialistic thrust toward the south and east which it inherited from the czarist régime.
As if they wished to make up for their earlier harshness, the “Reds” made my departure from Urga extremely easy. Perhaps I should see a less flattering motive in their leniency. In any case my baggage was barely opened and shut again, though most travelers find departing a more trying ordeal than arrival, and ordinarily every line of writing leaving the country is rigidly censored. The only unpleasantness that befell us was the failure of the greasy Mongol holding the official seal to reach the Okhrana before noon, though we had been there ready to start since eight. Booted soldiers again rode with us to the far outskirts of the city, halting us at various yamens, so that the sun was well started on its decline before our papers were examined at the last yourt, and we were free to reach if possible the first distant stopping-place before nightfall. Not until the next afternoon, however, when the frontier outpost of Ude passed us without comment, did that sense of apprehension which seems just now to hang like a cloud over Outer Mongolia give way to one of relief and confidence of the future.
Long caravans that we had passed a fortnight before were still laboriously making their way toward Urga. Men all but unrecognizable as such under their many sheepskin garments still squatted at trenches dug in the desert, coaxing wind-shielded fires to blaze, or bowed their fur-clad heads to the bitterly cold wind sweeping at express speed down out of the north; and we drove for nearly a hundred miles through fields of snow and ice, though September was not yet gone when we stumbled down the pass into Kalgan.
CHAPTER XI
AT HOME UNDER THE TARTAR WALL
It is obvious that this chapter should be written by the head of the house. But any husband, at least of the United States of America, will understand perfectly what I mean when I say that persuasion is often useless and coercion out of date. The housekeeping sex will have to bear with me, therefore, while I do my masculine best with a subject that is manifestly far beyond my humble qualifications. Whatever the other faults I display in the process, I shall try not to be reticent in such matters as the wages of servants and the price of eggs, which I conceive to be those near the housekeeper’s heart the world over.
Neither of Peking’s modern hotels, not so much as to mention the dozen others which are now and then astonished by the arrival of a foreign client, was the place for a boy just reaching the running, shouting, and breaking age to spend eight or nine months, even if his parents had not grown to abhor the very advantages of hotel life. So we turned our attention to the renting of a house. In Peking one does not simply buy a morning paper, check off a hundred possibilities, and make the rounds of them. There is an English-speaking, more or less daily newspaper, two or three of them, in fact; but very few families could live in the available houses which they call to the reader’s attention. Nor are there renting agents, or many invitations to the houseless, at least recognizable to Westerners, to be seen along the streets. One must depend rather on chance hints, above all on asking one’s friends to ask their friends, which is not wholly satisfactory for new arrivals with at most a few letters of introduction and a foolish, perhaps, but ineradicable tendency to cause the rest of mankind as little annoyance as possible. We soon learned, however, that some things are quite proper in Peking which are deeply frowned upon elsewhere, and vice versa.
But at least house-hunting in the Chinese capital is not at all the physical labor that apartment-hunting is, for instance, in New York. One steps into the nearest of the rickshaws which swoop down like hungry sparrows upon every possible fare and is borne silently away to the very doors of possible dwelling-places. It is almost always a disappointment to prospective residents, this first rapid survey of Peking outside the Legation Quarter, yet at the same time fascinating to all but the most querulous. The narrow, unpaved hutungs are so uneven, if not actually muddy or swirling with dust; they offer so many offenses to the eye, and to the nose; unwashed beggars, runny-nosed children, the first close view of one’s future neighbors, are seldom pleasing even to those most avid of local color. Almost any one with American training will be appalled by the lowness and the apparent crowding together of the houses. The thought of living not merely on the ground floor but literally on the ground itself, since Peking houses have no cellars and rarely even a single step to be mounted, may seem unthinkable. The total absence of front yards, of grass, of even the suggestion of a sidewalk, nothing but blank walls of bluish-gray mud bricks, here and there half tumbled in, patched perhaps for the time being with old straw mats or mere rubbish, close on either hand as far as the eye can see, is likely to bring a sinking to the new-comer’s heart.