influence in China is quite a thing of yesterday, that Baron von Kettler was the first man of note who perished in the inevitable conflict, and yet, when I looked at the eastern wall of the city, I was reminded, with a start, that European influence dates long before the Boxer time, long before the days of the Honourable East India Company, and many must have been the martyrs. There on the eastern wall stands the observatory, and clear-cut against the bright blue sky are astronomical instruments with dragons and strange beasts upon them. They were placed there by the Jesuits in the middle of the seventeenth century, and I know that those priests could not have attained so much influence without a bitter baptism of blood. They stand out as landmarks, those orbs and astrolabes, up and down the wall, even as they have come down through the centuries; monuments, as enduring as any Chinese p'ia lou, of faith and suffering; but the Jesuits were not the first to place astronomical instruments there. The Chinese were not barbarians by any means, though by some curious freak we Westerners have passed them in the race for civilisation, and, as long ago as the days of Kublai Khan, they had an observatory here by the wall. On the ground below, in a tree-shaded courtyard, there is an astrolabe with a beautiful bronze dragon for a stand, the dust-laden air of Peking has polished and preserved it, so that I can see but little difference between it and the newer instruments on the platform above—newer and yet two hundred and fifty years old.
And beyond the observatory in the north-east corner of the city is the Lama Temple, a temple with picturesque, yellowish-brown tiled roofs and spacious courtyards, in which are quaint old gnarled trees, and building after building in that curious state that is part beautiful, part slovenly decay, ruled over by hundreds of shaven, yellow-robed monks among whom, they say, it is not safe for a woman to go by herself. There is the Temple of Confucius, with surely the most peaceful courtyard in the world, and there are other temples, temples with courtyards and weird, twisted coniferous trees in them that are hundreds of years old, pagodas, and bells, and towers, and to each and all is attached many a story.
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
