Overlooking the great causeway that runs along in front of the Forbidden City, west past the south main gate, are two towers, one to the north in the Forbidden City, and one to the south without its walls; and of these two towers they tell a story of tenderness and longing. Hundreds of years ago, when the Tartars were first subject to the Ming Emperors, part of their tribute had to be one of their fairest princesses, who became a member of the Emperor's harem.
The poor little girl's inclinations were not considered, not even now is the desire of a woman considered in China, and the little Tartar girl was bound to suffer for her people. She might or might not please the Emperor, but whether she did or not the position of one who might share the Emperor's bed was so high that she might never again hold communion with her own kin. And then there came one little Tartar princess, who, finding favour with her lord, summoned courage to tell him of her love and longing. But there are some rules that not even the mighty Emperor of China may abrogate, and he could not permit her ever again to mingle with the common herd. One thing only could he do, and that he did. He built the northern tower looking over the causeway, and the southern tower on the other side. On the one tower the poor “lest we forget.” little secondary wife, lonely and weighted by her high estate, might stand so that she could see her people on the other, and, though they were too far apart for caress or spoken word, at least they could see each other and know that all was well.
I do not know whether many of the people who throng the streets from morning to night, and long after night has fallen, ever give a thought to the little Tartar princess. The shops, most of them open to the streets, are full, and on two sides of the main roadways are set up little stalls for the sale of trifles. Curiously enough, and I suppose it denotes poverty and lack of home life, about half these stalls are given up to the cooking and selling of eatables. In Ha Ta Men Street, in Morrison Street, in the street of Eternal Repose, that is as if we should say in Piccadilly, in Regent Street, and the Hay-market, and just outside the gates in the Chinese City, on the path that runs between the canal and the Tartar wall, you may see these same little stalls.
Here is a man who sells tea, keeping his samovar boiling with shovelfuls of little round hard nodules, coal dust made up with damp clay into balls; here is another with a small frying-pan in which he is baking great slabs of wheaten flour cakes, and selling them hot out of the pan; here is another with an earthenware dish full of an appetising-looking stew of meat and vegetables, with a hard-boiled egg or two floating on top; another man has big yellow slabs of cake with great plums in them, another has sticks of apples and all manner of fruits and vegetables done into sweetmeats. And here as it is cooked, alfresco, do the people, the men, for women are seldom seen at the stalls, come and buy, and eat, without other equipment than a basin, a pair of chop sticks or a bone spoon like a ladle supplied by the vendor.
They sell, and make, and mend Chinese footgear at these stalls too; there is a fortune-teller, one who will read your future with a chart covered with hieroglyphics spread out on the bare ground; there is the letter-writer for the unlearned; there are primitive little gaming-tables; and there are cheap, very cheap cigarettes and tobacco of brands unknown in America or Egypt.
I have said there is a lack of home life, and thought, like the arrogant Westerner I am, that the Chinese do not appreciate it, but only the other day I heard a little story that made me think that the son of Han, like everyone else, longs for a home and someone in it he can call his very own.
One day a missionary teacher heard an outcry behind her, and turning, saw a blind woman, unkempt and filthy and whining pitifully. “Oh who will help me? Who will help me?” she cried, shrinking away from the dog that was making dashes at the basket she carried for doles.
The missionary called off her dog, and reassured the woman. The dog would not hurt her. He was only interested in the food in her basket. “Then,” said she, “I went on, because I was in a hurry, but as I went I thought how horrible the woman looked, and that I ought to go back and tell her, 'God is Love.'”
So the missionary stopped and talked religion to that blind beggar, and told her to come up to the Mission Station. She looked after her soul, but also, out of the kindness of her heart, she looked after her body, and when the beggar was established, a woman of means with a whole dollar—two shillings—a week, she realised that God was indeed Love, and became a fervent Christian.
“Clean,” I asked, being of an inquiring turn of mind, and her saviour laughed.
“Perhaps you wouldn't call her clean, but it is a vast improvement on what she was.”
The woman wasn't young, as Chinese count youth in a woman, she wasn't good-looking, she wasn't in any way attractive, but she was a woman of means, and presently her guardian was embarrassed by an offer from a man of dim sight, for the hand and heart of her protégée. The missionary was horrified. The woman was married already. The would-be bridegroom, the prospective bride, and all their friends smiled, and seemed to think that since her last alliance wasn't a real marriage it should be no bar. Still the lady was firm, the woman had lived with the man for some years and it was a marriage in her humble opinion. So the disappointed candidates for matrimony went their way. However, a few weeks later the woman came to her guardian with a face wreathed in smiles, “that thing,” she said, she didn't even call him a man, that thing was dead, had died the day before, and there was now no reason why she should not marry again! There was no reason, and within ten days the nuptials were celebrated, and the blind woman went to live with her new husband.
I asked was it a success and the missionary smiled.
“Yes, it is certainly a success, only her husband complains she eats too much.” I said there were always drawbacks when a man married for money!
But as a matter of fact the marriage was a great success. I saw the happy couple afterwards, and the woman looked well-cared for and neat, and her husband helped her up some steps quite as carefully as any man of the West might have done. Truly the Fates were kind to the blind beggar when they put her in the way of that missionary. She is far, far happier probably than the bride of a higher class who goes to a new home, and, henceforward, as long as the older woman lives, is but a servant to her mother-in-law. True the husband had complained his new wife ate too much. But Chinese etiquette does not seem to think it at all the correct thing to praise anything that belongs to one. And for a husband to show affection for his wife, whatever he may feel, is a most extraordinary thing. The other day a woman was working in the courtyard of a house when there came in her husband who had been away for close on six months. Did they rush at one another as Westerners would have done? Not at all. He crossed the courtyard to announce himself to his master, and she went on with her work. Each carefully refrained from looking at the other, because had they looked people might have thought they cared for each other. And it is in the highest degree indelicate for a husband or wife to express affection for each other.
In truth, once my eyes were opened, I soon grew to think that, from the point of view of the sightseer, there are few places in the world to compare with Peking, and the greatest interest lies in the people—the crowded humanity of the streets. Of course I have seen crowded humanity—after London how can any busy city present any novelty—and yet, here in Peking, a new note is struck. Not all at once did I realise it; my mind went groping round asking, what is the difference between these people and those one sees in the streets of London or Paris? They are a different type, but that is nothing, it is only skin deep. What is it then? One thing cannot but strike the new-comer, and that is that they are a peaceable and orderly crowd, more amenable to discipline, or rather they discipline themselves better, than any crowd in the world. Not