“She was the best republican of us all,” said a Chinese gentleman, learned in the lore and civilisation of the West, “for she freely gave up her position that China might be free.”
It was a pretty way of putting it, but to me it seems doubtful whether anyone in over-civilised China trammelled with many conventions, is free, and it is hardly likely that a woman bred to think she had attained the most important position in the world that can fall to a woman's lot, would give it up freely for the good of a people she knew absolutely nothing about. All the Manchus rule over now are the courtyards and palaces of the Forbidden City, and there they are supreme. It is whispered that only a week before the day of which I write, a man was there beaten to death for having stolen something belonging to the dead Empress. So much for the love of the Manchus for freedom and enlightenment. It carries one back to the Middle Ages—further, to Babylon.
“They slew there mercilessly, and they also feasted—so did the representatives of the dead Empress hold high festival in her honour.
“The King made a feast unto all the people that were present in Shushan the palace, both unto great and small, seven days, in the Court in the garden of the King's palace.
“Where were white, green, and blue hangings fastened with cords of fine linen and purple to silver rings and pillars of marble, the beds were of gold and silver, upon a pavement of red, and blue, and white, and black marble.
"And they gave them drink in vessels of gold... and royal wine in abundance, according to the state of the King.”
So Ahasuerus the King entertained his people of Babylon, when Vashti the Queen fell, and of Babylon only could I think when, first I entered the Forbidden City.
Standing on the walls of Peking, a city of the plain, you look down upon twelve square miles of grey-tiled roofs, the roofs of one-storied houses hidden in the summertime by a forest of trees, but in the heart of the city are high buildings that stand out not only by reason of their height but because the roofs of golden-brown tiles, imperial yellow, gleam and glow in the sunlight. This is the Forbidden City where has dwelt for hundreds of years the Emperor of China, often he must have been the only man in it, and always it was closed to all save the immediate following of the Son of Heaven.
I never realised till I came to Peking that this forbidden ground was just as much an object of curiosity to the Chinese as it would have been to any European nation.
“I went in once,” said a Chinese gentleman to me, “when I was a young man.” He was only forty then.
“Were you invited?”
“No, no. I went secretly. I wanted to see what it was like.”
“But how?”
“I got the dress of a eunuch and I slipped in early one morning, and then, when I got in, I hardly dared move or breathe for fear someone should find me out. Then when no one took any notice of me I walked about and saw everything I could, but the last hour was the worst, I was terrified at the thought that I might not be able to get out.”
“And if you had been caught?”
He looked grave even then at the remembrance of that bygone desperate adventure.
“Oh death, certainly.”
“Death?”
“Yes, a long and lingering death,” and the thought of what he had escaped twenty years ago, was on his face.
I looked at him with interest, a tall stout Chinaman with his hair cut short in the modern fashion, a long grey robe of silk reaching to his feet, and a little short black sleeveless jacket over it. He did not look, pleasant as he was, as if he would ever have dared anything, but then I have never thought of any Chinaman as likely to risk his life without hope of gain, and to risk it for mere curiosity as a man of my own people might have done! It was throwing a new light on the Chinese. I rather admired him and then I found he was Eastern after all.
We talked of Yuan Shih K'ai, and he, being of the opposition party, expressed his opinion freely, and, considering all things, very boldly about him.
“He has eighteen wives,” said he shaking his head as if this was the unpardonable sin in a man who desired to imitate the manners and customs of the West.
I repeated this to a friend, and he burst out laughing. “Why the old sinner,” said he, “what's he throwing stones for? He's got seventeen and a half himself!” So it seems it will be some time before forbidden cities on a small scale will be out of fashion in China.
And still, in these days of the Republic, the Forbidden City of the Manchus dominates Peking.
It was thrown open for three days to all who could produce a black paper chrysanthemum with five leaves, red, yellow, blue, black, and white, fastened to a tab of white paper with a mourning edge and an inscription in Chinese characters. The foreigners had theirs from their Legations, and the Chinese from their guilds. And those Chinese—there are many of them—who are so unlucky as to belong to no guild, Chinese of the humbler sort, were shut out, and for them there was erected on the great marble bridge in front of the southern entrance, a pavilion of gorgeous orange silk enclosing an altar with offerings that stood before a picture of the dead Empress, so that all might pay their respects.
I pinned my badge to the front of my fur coat, for it was keen and cold in spite of the brilliant sunshine, and went off to the wrong entrance, the eastern gate, where only princes and notables were admitted. I thought it strange there should be no sign of a foreigner, but foreigners in Peking can be but as one in a hundred or less, so undismayed, I walked straight up to the gate, and immediately a row of palace servants clad in their white robes of mourning, clustered before the sacred place. They talked and explained vehemently, and with perfect courtesy, but they were very agitated, and though I could not understand one word they said, one thing was certain, admitted I could not be there. So I turned to the southern gate and there it seemed all Peking was streaming. It was like China that we might not go in the direct way.
There is a great paved way through the Imperial City alongside a canal that runs between marble-lined banks, but on the principal bridge that crosses it was erected the orange silk pavilion for the poorer classes, and we, the wearers of the black chrysanthemum, hundreds and thousands and ten thousands of us, had to turn off to the right and go along by the tall, pinkish red walls till we came to the great archways in the walls, five great archways filled in with doors studded with great brazen knobs. Usually they were fast shut, but they were open to-day, guarded by soldiers in full-marching order, soldiers of the New Republic in modern khaki looking out of the picture, and there streamed into the tunnellike entrance as curious a crowd as ever I set eyes upon. All must walk, old and young, great and lowly, representatives of the mighty nations of the world and tottering Chinese ladies swaying like “lilies in the wind” upon their maimed feet, only one man, a Mongol Prince, an Incarnation of a Buddha, a living Buddha, was borne in in a sedan chair. But every other mortal had to walk. The tunnels must always be gloomy, and, even on that cold day, they struck chill after the brilliant sunlight, and they are long, for the walls, just here, are about ninety feet through, so might the entrances have been in the palace of Ahasuerus the King. The courtyard we first entered had a causeway running right across it of great hewn stones, hewn and laid by slave labour, when all men bowed before the Son of Heaven, hundreds of years ago. They are worn in many places now, worn by the passing of many feet, and still more worn are the grey Chinese bricks that pave the courtyard on either side. It is a great courtyard of splendid proportions. In front of us frowned more high walls of pinkish red, topped by the buildings that can be seen all over Peking, temples or halls of audience