to exercise and promenade in the cool of the evening in summer, or to enjoy the sunshine at midday in winter, and here all the soldiers and sailors of the various nationalities foregather. There is no other place in all Peking where one can walk with comfort, for the Chinese as a nation, have no idea of the joy of exercise. They have put it out of the power of their women to move save with difficulty, and that a man should take any pleasure in violent exercise seems to them absurd. To walk when he can ride in a rickshaw, or mount a donkey, would argue something wrong in his mental outlook, so it happens that, in all the great city, there are only the streets of the Legation Quarter and the wall where walking exercise can be indulged in. The streets of the Quarter are the streets of an uninteresting, commonplace town, but the wall overlooking the two cities is quite another matter. Here the part of the foreign community that does not ride takes its exercise, and foregathers with its kind.
The foreign quarter is not always thinking of the dangers it is guarding against. That it thinks also a great deal of its amusement, goes without saying. I have observed that this is a special characteristic of the Briton abroad. At home the middle-class man—or woman—is chary of pleasure, taking it as if it were something he had hardly a right to; but abroad he seizes eagerly the smallest opportunity for amusing himself, demanding amusement as something that hardly compensates him for his exile from his native land. So it has come that I, a looker-on, with less strong bonds than those from the Old Country binding me to my father's land, fancy that these exiles have in the end a far better time than the men of the same class who stay at home. I am apt to have no pity for them whatever.
One thing is certain, people keep horses here in Peking who could not dream of such a luxury in England. True, they are only ponies fourteen hands high, but a great deal of fun can be got out of pony racing. And racing-stables are a feature of the Quarter. Not that they are in the Quarter. On the plain, about five miles to the west of the city, lies the little race-course, and dotted about within easy distance of this excellent training-ground are the various training-stables for the ponies. The China pony comes from Mongolia, where close watch and ward is kept over him, and neither mares nor stallions are exported.
“If I could only get hold of a mare,” sighs the young racing man, but he sighs in vain. Meanwhile he can indulge in the sport of kings cheaply.
“I've joined another fellow in a racing-stable,” said a man to me, soon after my arrival in Peking, and I looked upon him with something of the awe and respect one gives to great wealth. I had not thought he was so well off. He saw my mistake and laughed.
“The preliminary expenses are only thirty pounds,” he went on, “and I don't intend they shall be very heavy. We can have good sport at a moderate cost.” Of course moderate cost is an elastic term, depending on the purse of the speaker, but in this case I think it meant that men of very ordinary means, poor exiles who would live in a six-roomed flat with a couple of maidservants in England, might have a good time without straining those means unduly.
A race-meeting in Peking has peculiarities all its own. Of course it is only the men from the West who would think of a race-meeting. The Chinese, except at the theatre, do not amuse themselves in crowds.
The Spring Meeting took place early in May, and the description of it should come a little later in my book, but it seems to fall naturally into the story of the doings of the Legation Quarter. Arrangements were made with the French railway running to Hankow to stop close to the course, and put the race-going crowd down there. There was no other means of getting there, except by riding; for driving in a country where every inch of ground, save a narrow and rough track, is given over to the needs of agriculture, is out of the question. That spring race-meeting the day was ideal. There was the blue sky overhead, the brilliant sunshine, a gentle breeze to temper it, the young kaoliang was springing, lush and green, in the fields, and the ash-trees that shelter the race-course were one delicate tender green. A delicious day. Could the heart of man desire more? Apparently the foreign residents of Peking did not desire more, for they turned out, men, women, and children. And then I saw what a handful of people are these foreigners who live in the capital of China and endeavour to direct her destinies, for save and except the missionary element, most of the other foreigners were there, from his Britannic Majesty's representative to the last little boy who had joined a hong as junior clerk at a hundred dollars a month, and felt that the cares of Empire were on his shoulders. They were mostly British, of course, the foreign trade of China—long may it be so—is mostly in British hands; and there were representatives of every other great nation, the Ministers of France, Germany, Russia, of Italy, Austria, Spain, Belgium, Holland, and Japan, everyone but America, for America was busy recognising the Chinese Republic, and the other nations were smiling, and wondering why the nation that prides itself on being the champion of freedom for the people, was being the first to recognise what is, virtually, a despotic rule.
The little course, a mile round, is marked out with leafy ash-trees, the grand-stand was charming with lilac bloom purple and white, and banksia roses, fragrant as tender memories. It was shaded by p'engs—mats—raised high on scaffolding, so that pleasant shade might not interfere with the cool breeze, and here were the women of the community, the women of well-to-do people, gay in dainty toilets from London and Paris; the men were in light summer suits, helmets and straw hats, for summer was almost upon us. Tiffin, the luncheon of the East, was set in the rooms behind, decorated with miniature flags of all nations, made in Japan, and wreathed with artificial flowers, though there was a wealth of natural blossom around the stand outside. There is a steward's room and the weighing-room in one tiny building with a curved roof of artistic Chinese design, and all the ponies are walked about and saddled and mounted where every interested spectator can see them. And every spectator on that sunny May day was interested, for the horses, the sturdy Chinese ponies, were, and always are, owned and ridden by the men of the company, men whom everybody knows intimately. For these Peking race-meetings are only amateur, and though, occasionally, a special pony may change hands at two thousand dollars—two hundred pounds—the majority are bought and sold under two hundred dollars—twenty pounds—and yet their owners have much joy and pride in them.
Surely it is unique, a race-meeting where all the civilised nations of the earth meet and fraternise in simple, friendly fashion, taking a common pleasure in small things.
“They're off!” Mostly the exclamation was in English, but a Russian-owned horse, ridden by a Cossack rider, won one race, and was led proudly up to the weighing-room by a fair lady of his own people, and was cordially applauded, for the winner was always applauded, no matter what his nationality.
The horses, coming out to parade, were each led by their own mafoo, who managed to look horsey in spite of a shaven head, long queue, and pronounced Chinese features. Up and down they led the ponies, up and down, and when at last the precious charges must be resigned, a score of them squatted down just where they could get the best view of the race, and doubtless each man put up a little prayer to the god he most affected, that the pony that carried his money might come in first.
When we were not watching the saddling, or the parade, or the race, or the weighing-in, we were listening to a Chinese band, Sir Robert Bredon's band, with a Chinese conductor, playing selections from all the modern Western music. It might have been—where in the world might it not have been? Nowhere but in Peking in the heart of China surely, for there,
