"The men dressed for dinner,” said a Chinese once, describing an evening he had spent among foreigners; “then the order was given and the women stripped,” that is took off their wraps when the music began, only everything is “ordered” in China, “and each man seized a woman in his arms. He pushed her forward, he pulled her back,” graphic illustrations were given, “he whirled round and round and she had no will of her own. And it was all done to horrible music.”
Everything is in the point of view, and that is how, at least one Chinese gentleman saw a waltz. I used to wonder what he said of the musical comedy that from time to time is presented by a wandering company in the dining-room of the Wagons Lits Hotel. They displayed upon a tiny crowded stage, for the edification of Chinese and foreigners alike, for the room was crowded with Chinese both of the old and of the new order, such a picture of morals as Europeans take as a matter of course. We know well enough that such scenes as are depicted in “The Girl in the Taxi” are merely the figments of an exuberant imagination, and are not the daily habits of any class either in London or Paris. But what do the Chinese think? All things are necessary and good, I suppose, but some are difficult to explain. Thirteen years ago the Boxer tragedy, now the musical comedy full of indecencies scarcely veiled.
Truth to tell, it was a very interesting thing for a new-comer like me to sit in that hotel watching the people, and listening to the various opinions so freely given by all and sundry. From all parts of the world people come there, tourists, soldiers, sailors, business men, philanthropists'—men who were working for the good of China, and men who were ready to exploit her. And then the opinions as to the safety of the Europeans in China that were expressed! Here, in the security of the Legation Quarter, I collected those opinions as I wanted to go into the interior, and I was by no means anxious to risk my life.
To arrive at any decision was very difficult. In the Treaty Ports there may be some unanimity, but once outside it seemed that every man had his own particular opinion of China and the Chinese, and all these opinions differed widely.
“Safe,” said a man who had fought through the Boxer trouble; “safer far than London. They had to pay then, and they won't forget, you can take your oath of that.”
“Like living on a volcano,” said another. “No, I shall never forget the Boxer trouble. That's the kind of thing that is graved on your mind with hot irons. Do it again? Of course they'll do it again. A docile people, I grant you, but they're very fiends when they're aroused. They're emotional, you know, the French of the Far East, and when they let themselves go———” He paused, and I realised that he had seen them let themselves go, and no words could describe the horror of it. “Would I let my wife and children live in one of the hu t'ungs of Peking? Would I? How would they get away when the trouble commenced?”
The chances are they couldn't get away. The hu t'ungs of Peking are narrow alley-ways running out from the main thoroughfares, and the houses there are built, Chinese fashion, round courtyards and behind blank walls, hidden away in a nest of other buildings, and the difficulty of getting out and back to the armed Legation Quarter, when a mob were out bent on killing, would be enormous.
“A Debt Commission spells another anti-foreign outbreak, and we're within an ace of a Debt Commission,” said another man thoughtfully; “and if there is a row and things look like going against us, I keep one cartridge in my revolver for myself.” It does not seem much when I write it down, such things have I heard carelessly said many a time before, but when I, a foreigner and a solitary woman, was contemplating a trip up-country, they had a somewhat sinister sound.
On the other hand again and again have I heard men scout all idea of danger, men who have been up and down the country for years. And yet but yesterday, the day before I write these words, a man looked at his pretty young wife, she was sweetly pretty, and vowed vehemently, “I would not leave my wife and child alone for a night in our house just outside the Quarter for anything on earth. If anything did happen—and it might———” and he dropped his voice. There are some things that will not bear thinking about, and he had seen the looting of Nanking and the unfortunates who had died when they took the Woosung Forts. “We went to look after the wounded,” said he, “and there weren't any wounded. The savage Northern soldiery had seen to that.” And those whom they mutilated were their own people! What would they do to a foreigner in the event of an anti-foreign outbreak?
“Are you afraid?” I asked a man who certainly lived far enough away in the city. He looked at me curiously, as if he were going to say there was nothing to be afraid of, and then he changed his mind.
“Perhaps I am when I think of it,” said he; “but then you see, I don't think of it.”
And that is the average attitude, the necessary attitude, because no man can perpetually brood over the dangers that might assail him. Certain precautions he takes to safeguard himself, here are the nations armed to the teeth in the heart of a friendly country, and for the rest Quien sabe?
And I talked with all men, and while I was making preparations to go into the interior, had the good-fortune to see a quaint and curious pageant that took me back to Biblical days and made me remember how Vashti the Queen was cast down, and the beautiful Esther found favour in the sight of her lord, and how another tragic Hebrew Queen, going down to posterity with a name unjustly smirched and soiled, had once painted her face and tired her head, and looking out of the window had defied to the death her unfaithful servant. “Had Zimri peace who slew his master?”
CHAPTER V—THE FUNERAL OF AN EMPRESS
A good republican—The restricted Empire of the Manchus—Condign punishment—Babylon—An Adventurous Chinaman—The entrance to the Forbidden City—The courtyards of Babylon—A discordant and jarring note—Choirs of priests—A living Buddha—“The Swanee River”—The last note in bathos—Palace eunuchs—Out of hand—Afternoon tea—The funeral procession—The imperial bier—Quaint and strange and Eastern.
The Dowager-Empress of China, the unloved wife and widow of the late Emperor, died, so they gave out to the world, on the 22nd February, 1913, the day I arrived in China. As Empress, just one of the women of the Court chosen to please the ruler and to bear him children, his consort in China never seems to have had any particular standing. This Empress was overshadowed by her aunt, the great Dowager-Empress whom all the world knew, but once the Emperor was dead, as one of the guardians of the baby Emperor she came into a certain amount of power, for the position of Dowager-Empress seems to be an official one as, since her death, another woman who has never been wife to an Emperor has been appointed to the post.
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