Hsiung Hsi Ling, Premier of China—Preparations for a call—A cart of State—An elderly mule—Waiting in the gate—The yam en—Mr Wu, the secretary—“Hallo, Missus!”—The power of a Chinese General—“Plenty robber, too much war”—Ceremonial farewell—A cultivated gentleman—Back to past ages for the night.

Up in Jehol they called the General commanding the three thousand odd troops the Tartar General, why I do not know, but it seems it is the title by which he is commonly known among the country people. He was Hsiung Hsi Ling, the man who is now Premier of China, and to him I brought letters of introduction so that I might be admitted to the Imperial Palace and Park and be treated as a person of consequence, otherwise I imagine a foreigner and a woman at that would have but small chance of respect in China. The Chinese letters lifted me to the rank of the literati, which must have been rather surprising to the Chinese, and these in English were such that I felt I must bear myself so as to live up to them.

The yamen was about five minutes\' walk from the mission station, and in my ignorance I had thought I would stroll up some morning when I had recovered from the fatigues of the journey, but the missionaries, 274steeped in the lore of Chinese etiquette, declared such a proceeding was not suitable. A person of consequence, such as my letters proclaimed me, must bear herself more becomingly.

“Write and ask if ten o\'clock on Tuesday morning will be a suitable time for you to call on the General, and send your letters by your servant. I dare say there will be somebody who can read them, though I am sure there will be nobody who can write an answer,” said the missionary. “The General\'s English-speaking secretary is away.”

Accordingly I sent off Tuan, who was more than sure that he was equal to the task, and he returned without a letter, as the missionary had prophesied, but saying: “She say all right.”

“And now you must have a cart,” said that missionary who was more worldly wise than I expected an enthusiast to be, “and don\'t get down till the yamen gates are opened. It would never do to wait with the servants in the gate.”

How Eastern it sounded! And then his wife came and superintended my toilet. The weather was warm, not to say hot, and I had thought a black and white muslin a most fitting and suitable array. But she was horrified at the effect. It was made in the mode of 1913, and did not suggest, as the long Manchu robes do, that I was built like a pyramid, broadest at the base.

“Haven\'t you got a coat to put over you,” said she looking round, and she seized my burberry which was the only thing in the shape of a wrap I had with me. Chinese ideas of propriety evidently influenced her very strongly.

I declined to wear a burberry on a hot day late in 275May, though all the Chinese Empire were shocked and horrified at my impropriety, but I sought round and found a lace veil which, draped over me, was a little suggestive of a bridal festivity, but apparently satisfied all conditions, and then I went out to mount into that abomination—a Peking cart. The Peking cart that is used for visiting has a little trestle carried over the back end of the shafts, which is taken down when the occupant wishes to mount and dismount, so I got into the seat of honour, the most uncomfortable seat well under the tilt, and Tuan, glorious in a long black silk brocade robe, his queue newly oiled and plaited, and a big straw hat upon his head, climbed on to the tail of the shaft, and the carter, dressed in the ordinary blue of his class, with the ordinary rag over his head to keep off the dust, walked beside the most venerable white mule I have ever come across. I don\'t know whether aged animals are held in respect in China, I\'m afraid not. The poor old thing had great deep hollows over his eyes. I suspect Tuan had got him cheap, because the cart was respectable, and he had been good once—of course he would never have let me lose face—and then he made me pay full price, a whole fivepence I think it came to.

“That\'s a very old mule, Tuan,” I said.

“Yes,” he assented, “very old, she forty,” which was certainly more than I had reckoned him. I afterwards came to the conclusion he meant fourteen.

What Tuan was there for, I certainly don\'t know, except to carry my card-case, which I was perfectly capable of carrying myself.

We went out into the dusty, mud-coloured street, and along between mud-coloured walls of the dullest, most uninteresting description, and presently we arrived at the yamen gates, and here it was evident that Tuan, who had been so important all across the mountains, was now quite out of his depth.

“Cart no can go,” said he. “Missie get out.”

I was prepared for that. “No,” I said very important for once in my life, “I wait till someone comes.”

The yamen entrance was divided into three, as all Chinese entrances seem to be, and over it were curved tiled roofs with a little colouring, faded and shabby, about them; all of it was badly in need of repair, and on the fast-closed gates in the middle were representations of some demon apparently in a fit, but his aspect was a little spoiled by the want of a fresh coat of paint. The two little gates at either side were open, and here clustered Chinese soldiers in khaki, and men in civilian dress of blue cotton, and all stared at the foreign woman who was not a missionary, in the cart; that is the rude ones stared, and the polite ones looked uncomfortably out of the corners of their eyes. A Chinaman\'s politeness in this respect always ends by making me uncomfortable. A good, downright stare that says openly: “I am taking you in with all my eyes,” I can stand, but the man who looks away and down and out of the corners of his eyes gets on my nerves in no time.

However, this time I had not long to wait. After a minute or two out came a messenger, a Chinese of the better class, for he was dressed in a bright blue silk coat and petticoats, with a black sleeveless jacket over it, and the gates at his command, to my boy\'s immense astonishment, opened, and my cart rumbled into the first courtyard. We went on into a second—bare, ugly courtyards they were, without a flower or a tree or any green thing to rest the eye upon—and then I got down as there came to meet me a small bare-headed man without a queue, and his thick black hair apparently cut with a saw and done with a fork. He wore an ill-fitting suit of foreign clothes, and about his neck, instead of a collar, one of those knitted wraps an Englishwoman puts inside her coat when the weather is cold. On his feet were the white socks and heelless slippers of the Chinese. Instead of the dignified greeting the first man had given me he remarked genially, and offhandedly: “Hallo, Missus!” and he did it with a certain confidence, as if he really would show the numerous bystanders that he knew how to receive a lady.



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Through one shabby courtyard after another, all guarded by soldiers in khaki, he led me to the presence of the Tartar General, Hsiung Hsi Ling, the great man who had been Minister of Finance and who now held military command over the whole of that part of China, independent even of the Viceroy of the Province of Chihli. Those who told me made a great point of that independence; but in China it seems that a General with troops at his command always is independent, not only of the............