A Woman In China. Mary Gaunt

police of the New Republic, in dusty black bound with yellow in the winter, and in khaki in the summer, with swords strapped to their waists, direct a traffic that is perfectly capable of directing itself; and at night, armed with rifles, mounted bands of them patrol the streets, the most law-abiding streets apparently in the world. In spite of the swarms of tourists, who are more and more pouring into Peking, a foreigner is still a thing to be wondered at, to be followed and stared at; but there is no rudeness, no jostling. He has only to put out his hand to intimate to the following crowd that he wishes a little more space, that their company is a little too odoriferous, and they fall back at once, only to press forward again the next moment. Was ever there such a kindly, friendly nation? And yet—and yet—What is it I find wrong? They are a highly civilised people, from the President who reigns like a dictator, to the humble rickshaw coolie, who guards my dress from the filth of the street. He will hawk, and spit, but he is as courtly a gentleman as one of the bucks of the Prince Regent's Court, who probably did much the same thing. It dawned upon me slowly. These people have achieved that refinement we of the West have been striving for and have not attained as yet. It is well surely to make perfection an aim in life, and yet I feel something has gone from these people in the process of refining. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred they can be trusted to keep order, and the hundredth probably not all the police in the capital could hold them. The very rickshaw coolies, when they fall out, trust to the sweet reasonableness of argument, even though that argument Waste interminable hours. A European, an Englishman or an American probably, comes hectoring down the street—no other word describes his attitude, when it is contrasted with that of the courteous Orientals round him. On the smallest provocation, far too small a provocation, he threatens to kick this coolie, he swings that one out of the way and, instead of being shocked, I am distinctly relieved. Here is an exhibition of force, restrained force, that is welcome as a rude breeze, fresh from the sea or the mountains, is welcome in a heated, scented room. These people, even the poorer people of the streets, are suffering from over-civilisation, from over-refinement. They need a touch of the primitive savage to make the red blood run in their veins. Not but that they can be savage, so savage on occasion, the hundredth occasion when no police could hold them, that their cruelty is such that there is not a man who knows them who would not keep the last cartridge in his revolver to save himself from the refinement of their tender mercies. But I did not make this reflection the first, or even the tenth time, I walked in the streets. It was a thing that grew upon me gradually. By the time I found I was making comparisons, the comparisons were already made and my opinions were formed. I looked at these strange men and women, especially at the small-footed women, and wondered what effect the condemning of fifty per cent of the population to years of torture had had upon the mental growth of this nation, and I raised my eyes to the mighty walls that surrounded the city, and knew that the nation had done wonderful things.

CHAPTER III—THE WALLS AND GATES OF BABYLON

       Table of Contents

      The mud walls of Kublai Khan—Only place for a comfortable promenade—The gardens on the walls—Guarding the city from devils—The dirt of the Chinese—The gates—The camels—In the Chien Men—The patient Chinese women—The joys of living in a walled city—A change in Chinese feeling.

      Are they like the walls and gates of Babylon, I wonder, these walls and gates of the capital city of China. I thought so when first I saw them, and the thought remains with me still. Behind such walls as these surely sat Ahasuerus, King of Babylon; behind such walls as these dwelt the thousands of serfs who toiled, and suffered, and died, that he might be a mighty king. They are magnificent, a wonder of the world, and it seemed to me that the men of the nation who built them must glory in them. But all do not. I sat one day at tiffin at a friend's house, and opposite me sat a Chinese doctor, a graduate of Cambridge, who spoke English with the leisurely accent of the cultivated Englishman, and he spoke of these mighty walls.

      “If I had my way,” said he, “they should be levelled with the ground. I would not leave one stone upon another.” And I wondered why. They shut out the fresh air, he said, but I wondered, in my own mind, whether he did not feel that they hemmed the people in, caged and held them as it were, in an archaic state of civilisation, that it is best should pass away. They can shut out so little air, and they can only cage and hold those who desire to be so held.

      Kublai Khan outlined the greater part of them in mud in the thirteenth century, and then, two hundred years after, came the Ming conquerors who faced the great Tartar's walls with grey Chinese brick, curtailing them a little to the north, and as the Mings left them, so are they to-day when the foreign nations from the West, and that other Asiatic nation from the East, have built their Legations—pledges of peace—beneath them and, armed to the teeth, hold, against the Chinese, the Legation Quarter and a mile of their own wall.

      Over fifty feet high are these Tartar walls, at their base they are sixty feet through, at their top they are between forty and fifty feet across, more than a hundred if you measure their breadth at the great buttresses, and they are paved with the grey Chinese bricks that face their sides. As in most Chinese cities, the top of the wall is the only place where a comfortable promenade can be had, and the mile-long strip between the Chien Men, the main gate, and the Ha Ta Men, the south-eastern gate—the strip held by the Legations—is well kept; that is to say, a broad pathway, along which people can walk, is kept smooth and neat and free from the vegetation that flourishes on most of the wall top. This vegetation adds greatly to its charm. The mud of the walls is the rich alluvial deposit of the great plain on which Peking stands, and when it has been well watered by the summer rains, a luxuriant green growth, a regular jungle, forces its way up through the brick pavement. The top of the wall upon a cool autumn day, before the finger of decay has touched this growth, is a truly delightful garden.

      

      It was my great pleasure to walk there, for there were all manner of flowering green shrubs and tall grasses, bound together by blooming morning glory, its cup-shaped flowers blue, and pink, and white, and white streaked with pink; there were even small trees, white poplar and the ailanthus, or tree of heaven, throwing out shady branches that afforded shelter from the rays of the brilliant sun. They are not adequate shelter, though, in a rainstorm. Indeed it is very awkward to be caught in a rainstorm upon the walls out of the range of the rickshaws, as I was more than once, for in the hot weather I could never resist the walls, the only place in Peking where a breath of fresh air is to be found, and, since it is generally hottest before the rain, on several occasions I was caught, returning drenched and dripping. It did not matter as a rule, but once when I was there with a companion a more than ordinary storm caught us. We sheltered under an ailanthus tree, and as the wind was strong, umbrellas were useless. My companion began to get agitated.

      “If this goes on,” said he, “I shan't be able to go out to-morrow. I have only one coat.” He had come up from Tientsin for a couple of days. But for me the case was much more serious. I had on a thin white muslin that began to cling round my figure, and I thought anxiously that if it went on much longer I should not be able to go into the hotel that day! However, the rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun, the sun came out in all his fierceness, and before we reached the hotel I was most unbecomingly rough dried.

      Things are ordered on the Legation wall, the pathway between the greenery runs straight as a die, but beyond, on the thirteen miles of wall under Chinese care, the greenery runs riot, and only a narrow pathway meanders between the shrubs and grass, just as a man may walk carelessly from station to station; and sometimes hidden among the greenery, sometimes standing out against it, are here and there great upright slabs of stone, always in pairs, relics of the old fortifications, for surely these are all that remain of the catapults with which of old the Chinese and Tartars defended their mighty city.

      The walls