These Eight Banners are all Manchus or Mongol Tartars, or at any rate are descended from such, Chinese troops being ranged under the green standard. These Eight Banners which, as I have said, are multiplied, are plain white, red, blue, and yellow, and the same colors repeated, and distinguished by a white edge and white spot. These companies are supposed to defend different sides of the city, the colors having some mystic relation to the points of the compass; except that yellow is in the middle, where it guards the Imperial Palace. Red guards the south, blue the north, and white the west, whilst the east is nominally given up to the green standard, which, however, being composed of Chinamen, is not admitted to the honor of guarding the forbidden city. I am told that the Banner Army numbers upwards of a hundred thousand men, who supply Tartar garrisons for the principal cities of the Empire.
We got out of the cart and secured a good position on a small hillock, whence we had a capital view. A number of Tartar soldiers who were off duty gathered round, and were quite captivated by the loan of my opera-glasses. Then they showed us their wretched firearms (which certainly did not look as if any European could have superintended the arsenal where they were manufactured), and also their peculiar belts, containing charges of powder only, and yet we are told that in addition to first-class firearms, which are being ceaselessly manufactured at the Government arsenals at Tientsin, Shanghai, Canton, Foochow, Nankin, and other less important places, the Chinese Government spares no expense in buying both ammunition and firearms of European manufacture. I suppose they are kept in reserve for real war!
A picturesque company of archers rode by on stout ponies, holding their bridles in the right hand, and in the left their bows, the arrows being cased in a leathern quiver, slung across the shoulders. As to their swords, instead of hanging from the waist, they are stuck under the saddle-flap; each man's cap is adorned with the tails of two squirrels, which is the correct military decoration. Now though we Scots are quite ready to believe that blackcocks were created for the express purpose of bequeathing their tails to adorn the caps of the London Scottish (the said tails having very much the jovial, independent character of the bird itself), it really is impossible to see the fitness of things in selecting poor little squgs as military emblems, unless to suggest the wisdom of he who fights and runs away! Anyhow, it now seems as if we might find a profitable market for all the thousands of squirrel's tails which are annually wasted in our north-country woods. I quite forgot to take note of the fan and the pipe, which I am told are invariable items in the accoutrements of the Chinese soldiers.[26]
Returning to our cart we next drove to the Ta-tsoon-tsu, or Temple of the Great Bell. It is a large Buddhist monastery. The priests, who occupy separate houses, are a civil, kindly lot, very different from the Lamas of the Yung-ho-Kung! There are curious paintings of Buddhist saints in the halls; but the great object of interest is the huge bell, which is said to be the largest hanging bell in the world. Anyhow, it is a wonderful piece of casting, being nearly eighteen feet high and forty-five feet in circumference, and is of solid bronze four inches thick. It is one of eight great bells which were cast by command of the Emperor Yung-lo about A.D. 1400, and this giant is said to have cost the lives of eight men, who were killed during the process of casting. The whole bell, both inside and out, is covered with an inscription in embossed Chinese characters about half an inch long, covering even the handle, the total number being 84,000! I am told that this is a whole classic.
This gigantic bell hangs in a two-storied pagoda, and underneath the beam from which it is suspended hangs a little bell, and a favorite amusement of Chinese visitors to the temple is to ascend to a gallery, whence they throw small coins at the little bell, in hopes of hitting it, on the same principle, I suppose, that they spit chewed prayer-papers at certain gods in the hope of hitting them! The throwing of cash is certainly more profitable to the priests, as the coins fall into a rim round the great bell and become temple property. This great bell, which is struck on the outside by a suspended ram of wood, is only sounded when—in times of drought—the Emperor in person or the Imperial Princes as his deputies come to this temple to pray for rain. Theoretically, they are supposed not to rise from their knees till the rain falls in answer to their prayer, and responsive to the vibrations of the mighty bell.
There is sore need of rain now, so I suppose the bell will be struck ere long. Apparently it is reserved as a last resource, for already the little Emperor and the Empresses Regent have been pleading for rain in the gorgeous yellow tiled temple at the entrance to the Forbidden City, and Prince Yeh, as the Emperor's deputy, has been repeatedly sent to pray for rain in a most strange open-air temporary sanctuary close to the Bell Temple. We discovered this quite by chance, having observed a large circular inclosure in the middle of a field of standing corn.
We halted and went to see what it was, and we found that it consisted of eight screens of coarse yellow mats, with great yellow dragons designed on them. Four of the screens form a circle having four gaps. The other four are straight, and are placed outside, so as to guard and conceal the entrances. In the centre a square raised platform of earth forms a rude altar, at the four corners of which are four vases of the coarsest pottery, containing plants; straggling and much trampled corn grows between and around them, as in the field outside. In a small tent close by we found a sleepy watchman, who told us about the Prince's devotional visits to this very primitive oratory.
After four hours of intolerably weary jolting in our dreadful cart, we arrived at Wan-Shu-Shan, which is the only portion of the grounds of the Summer Palace (the Yuen-Ming-Yuen) to which foreigners are still admitted, as they have there wrought such hopeless ruin that I suppose it is not thought worth while to shut them out; and truly it is sickening even now to look on such a scene of devastation. The park, which is now once more closed to the barbarians, contains fine palatial buildings, faced with colonnades and altogether of a very Italian type, having been built under the direction of the Jesuits, but the beautiful pleasure grounds, where we wandered over wooded hills all strewn with beautiful ruins, is purely Chinese, and as such is to me far more interesting.
Our first halt was beside a well whose waters are so deliciously crystalline and cold that they seemed to our parched and dusty throats as a true elixir. So famous is this pure spring that the daily supply for the Imperial Palace is brought thence in barrels, in a cart flying a yellow flag, with an inscription in black characters stating that it travels on the Emperor's business—a warning to all men to make way for it. The water near the city is all bad and brackish, so such a spring as this is a priceless boon.
This wonderland has been so often described since its destruction, that in its present aspect the whole seems familiar ground; but it is new to me to learn anything concerning it in its palmy days, from the pen of an eyewitness, and so I have been much interested in reading a curious account of these Imperial pleasure-grounds written in 1743 by Mons. Attiret, a French missionary, whose talent for painting led to his receiving an order to make drawings for the Emperor at the Summer Palace.