Wandering in Northern China

by Unknown

The devil-dancers are usually Chinese street-urchins hired for the occasion by the languid Mongol lamas of Peking

The street-sprinklers of Peking work in pairs, with a bucket and a wooden dipper. This is the principal street of the Chinese City “outside Ch’ien-men”

The Forbidden City is for the most part no longer that, but open in more than half its extent to the ticket-buying public

The palace eunuch system has always been pernicious and one of the main causes of the fall of the many imperial houses that have ruled China. These have been served by eunuchs ever since the Chou dynasty, more than three thousand years ago. The dynasty might change, but the eunuchs, who were the palace servants and often the confidants of the other inmates, mainly women, stayed on and carried all the vices of the old court over into the new. Each new dynasty began with a hardy, outdoor ruler, but as his successors, thanks to the silly “Son of Heaven” idea, were practically imprisoned for life within the palace among women and eunuchs, they were bound to become weeds in the enervating atmosphere. Thus almost all dynasties petered out within two or three centuries, and in the closing years the eunuchs often became masters; it is well known that Tzu Hsi, the notorious old “Empress” Dowager, who governed China for forty years, was herself ruled by a favorite eunuch, who started life as a shoemaker’s apprentice—though some doubt has always been expressed about his real eunuchhood. He is believed to be more responsible than any other single person for the Boxer uprising, but the only punishment meted out to him was that his wealth, in gold bars said to be worth several millions, was discovered by the French troops upon the occupation of Peking and—no one has ever heard of it since.

Avarice is the chief weakness of the eunuch tribe; and the official who could afford to get a powerful palace servant on his side was sure of preferment, and in time this system made China officially rotten to the core. Masters of intrigue and selfishness, they had to be “greased” from the outer gate to the throne-room even by those who wished to give the emperor himself a “present.” Each palace occupant was allowed the number of eunuchs which suited his rank, the total number being three thousand. They came mainly from Hokienfu, a small city about two hundred miles due south of Peking, where it was the custom for parents to make eunuchs of many of their boys, just as they bound the feet of their girls, for they could place them to still better advantage than a mere girl and thereby improve their own incomes. When “Henry” made this new break with antiquity, however, it was found that there were but 1430 palace eunuchs left, all, it is said, over thirty years old. Orders were also issued to all Mongol and Manchu nobles and princes forbidding the employment of eunuchs, and it is hoped that hereafter no native of Hokienfu will get himself mutilated for the sake of a palace job. Unlike bound feet, the system was, of course, by no means confined to China. The papal choir was made up of eunuchs, long since driven by public opinion from the Italian stage, at least as late as the beginning of the present century, and they are still employed as the keepers of harems in Mohammedan countries, being part and parcel of polygamy. Transportation to their homes, temporary lodgings, and a bit of money was allowed those whom this lad of sixteen at last cleared out of the Forbidden City, and it was a picturesque sight to see them leaving the palace with their tawdry belongings, quarreling to the last with the men sent to pay them off. Perhaps that is the end of them in China; but it is the land of compromise, and already the old and crippled eunuchs have been taken back into the palace until they die.

There are people who believe that “Henry” may again be a real emperor of China, that he has proved himself so strong by some of his recent actions as to suggest that had he been born twenty years earlier China would not now be trying to pose as a republic. Even as modern a young man as our Chinese teacher thinks that a constitutional monarchy is the only feasible relief from the present anarchistic chaos of theoretical republicanism. He puts at ten years, others at from a generation to a century, the time required under such a restraining form of government to prepare for a real republic. Who knows? Perhaps even if the monarchy returns it will not be “Henry” who will head it; soothsayers have been making strange prophecies recently about an entirely new emperor to come out of the provinces. Besides, “Henry” is a Manchu, and China has reverted after nearly three centuries to the misrule of her own people. But he is already on the spot, sitting on the vacant throne as it were, and that is seldom a disadvantage.

One of the first obligations of the foreigner coming to China for any length of time is to get a Chinese name. In other countries the people do the best they can, vocally and stelographically, to reproduce the names we already possess; even Japan, by using one of her modern scripts, can write all the but the more L-ish Western patronymics so that they read noticeably like the original. But the Chinese have always insisted that the outside barbarian adapt himself to Chinese ways, rather than the topsyturvy reverse. Besides, Chinese is a monosyllabic language, and naturally any stranger who comes to the country must be translated into words of one syllable. Unfortunately, even syllables are limited among the ideographs available to the Celestial brush-wielder, and names which to our notion are obviously of one become polysyllabic, to say the least, before the Chinese translator gets through with them. The result is that they seldom bear even a family resemblance to the original, and the foreigner who can recognize his own Chinese name, whether written or spoken, is already in a fair way to become an accomplished Oriental philologist.

Let me take my own name as an example. Except that it may be racially misleading, I have always considered it quite a tolerable name, not particularly difficult to pronounce, or to remember, by those who choose to do so, and unquestionably monosyllabic. Yet the Chinese scholar to whom it was submitted divided it at once into three syllables, like an expert taking apart an instrument one had always believed to be of one piece and returned it as “Feh Lan-kuh.” The first character stands for “extravagance,” but all the sting is taken out of that false and unjust start by the other two, which mean “orchid” and “self-control” respectively. Only three names are allowed in Chinese; therefore my given names in my own language were crowded into the discard. To the Chinese I am “Feh Hsien-sheng”—Mr. Extravagance; if they wish to go further and find out what particular form my wastefulness takes they respectfully inquire my honorable ming-tze, and are informed that my unworthy personal names are “Lan-kuh,” the Orchid with Self-control. The trouble is that almost any foreigner whose name begins with an F, or even with a Ph, is also Mr. Feh. There are a dozen of them within gunshot of us, surely a thousand in China, most of whose English names are not in the least like our own.