A return call—Ceremonies—A dog-robbing suit—Difficulties of conversation—A treat for the amah—The British Ambassador at Jehol in the eighteenth century—The last stages of decrepitude—Glories of the park—The bronze temple—A flippant young Chinese gentleman—“Ladies\' Temple”—Desolation and dirt and ruin—“Happiness Hall”—Examining a barbarian.

The next day the secretary returned my call, bringing with him the General\'s card, and an apology for not coming himself. He was so very busy. I never expected him to come, and don\'t suppose he ever really intended to, but it was true Chinese politeness to put it that way.

Mr Wu had sent to say he was coming to call upon me, and it surprised me to see the commotion such a little thing occasioned in the mission house. I felt they were really being awfully good to my guest, but, without taking away one jot from their kindliness, I think, too, they were very glad to be brought into friendly relations with the yamen, and I was very glad indeed to think that I, who was in outer darkness from their point of view, was able to do this little thing for them. Cakes were made, the best tea got out, the table set, and the boy, who generally waited upon us humbler folk in a little short jacket and trousers caught in at the ankles, was put into the long coat, 284or petticoat, whichever you are pleased to call it, that a well-dressed Chinese servant always wears. It seems it is not the correct thing for him to wait upon one in a little short jacket. And then when all was ready, and the small great man was announced, to my surprise the other two women were hustled out of sight, and I and the missionary received him alone. Why, I do not know even now. I sat on a high chair, and so did Mr Wu, and the missionary gave us both tea and cakes, handing everything with both hands; that I believe is the correct Chinese way of doing honour to your guest. I received it as a matter of course, said “Thank you,” or “Please don\'t bother,” whichever occurred to me, but Mr Wu was loud in his protestations, in both Chinese and English, and I fancy the whole interview—unless I spoiled it—was conducted in a manner which reflected infinite credit upon the missionary\'s knowledge of Chinese customs and the secretary\'s best manners. They certainly were very elaborate. This day he had on what one of my naval brothers was wont to designate a dog-robbing suit, though I don\'t know that he ever went out dog-robbing, and I am quite sure the young Chinese gentleman never did, also his hair was neatly parted in the middle and plastered down on each side, and with a high collar and tie on, he looked really as uncomfortable and outr?? as it was possible to look. He had brought me the tickets, and implored me if I wanted anything else to ask for it. The interview was a trial to me. It is all very well to be prepared to smile, but smiles don\'t really fill up more than a minute or two, and what on earth to say during the rest of the time, troubled me. In all the wide world, and I felt it acutely, we had absolutely nothing in common save those tickets, and my heart sank when he told me he would do himself the honour of showing me over the palace himself. If I felt half an hour with him, for all my gratitude for his kindliness, an intolerable burden, what on earth should I feel the livelong day. One piece of news he did tell us, there had been fighting in Mongolia, severe fighting, and many men had been killed, but when we came to ask which side had won he said he did not know, and then of course we guessed the Chinese had suffered a reverse, for if the telegraph could tell any details at all, it was sure to have told the all-important one which side was the conqueror. At last, when it seemed that hour had been interminable, the young man rose, and the farewells began.



0399

Those Chinese farewells! Chinese etiquette is enough to cure the most enthusiastic believer in form and ceremony, to reduce him to the belief that a simple statement of fact, a “Yea, yea,” and “Nay, nay,” are amply sufficient. I suppose all this form and ceremony, this useless form and ceremony, comes from the over-civilisation of China. If ever in the future I am inclined to cavil at abrupt modern manners, I shall think of that young man protesting that the missionary must not come to the gate with him, when all the while he knew he would have been deeply offended if he had not. I fear lest I may now swing over to the other side and say that a rude abruptness is a sign of life, so much better does it seem to me than the long elaborate and meaningless politeness that hampers one so much.

When he had gone we discussed the question of a visit to the Imperial Park, and then I found that 286there were many things in the way of my entertaining my hosts, prayer meetings, dispensary afternoons, visits, and that in any case, only the women would accompany me, whether that was really because the men were busy, or because it was not Chinese etiquette for men and women to amuse themselves together I do not know, but I strongly suspect the latter had something to do with it. For of course what the foreigners did, more especially the new foreign woman, who was not a missionary, was a matter of common talk in all the district round. Then my hostess put it to me, as I had plenty of tickets and to spare, would I take their amah. She was most anxious to go. She had been in service with a Manchu family, and once when they were going she had been ill, and once it had rained so that she had never gone, and she was getting an old woman and feared her chances were dwindling sadly.

It was such a little thing to want, and yet I don\'t know. When I looked at the hideous town, for Cheng Teh Fu remains in my mind as the ugliest Chinese town I have ever seen it had not the charm and fascination that walls give, when I thought of the delights that lay hidden behind the fifteen miles of high wall that surround the Park, the delights that are for so very, very few, I did not wonder that the Manchu woman, who already counted herself old, she was forty-five, should have been very anxious to go inside. And when I told her I would take her, she immediately begged leave to go away and put on her best clothes. I couldn\'t see any difference between her best clothes and her everyday clothes, but I could see she had a small shaven grandchild in attendance, who was immediately put on to carry my umbrella. I suppose she hoped to smuggle him in to see the delights, and I said nothing, for I had plenty of tickets.

Curiously enough, while most of China has been a sealed book, the Hunting Palace—it is really better described as a Lodge—of the Manchus has been known to the English for one hundred and twenty years, for it was here that, on the 9th September, 1793, the Emperor Ch\'ien Lung received Lord Macartney, the first British Ambassador to China. I did not come straight from Peking, but I know that the road, by valley and mountain pass, is reckoned very bad indeed, and very few people as yet take the trouble to go to Jehol. It is four and a half days\' hard travelling now, but Lord Macartney took seven, and it is a curious commentary upon the state of the roads in the British Isles in those days that though his chronicler, Sir George Staunton, writing of the journey, complains a little of the roads, and mentions that Lord Macartney\'s carriage, which he had brought out from England with him, had generally to be dragged along empty, while the “Embassador” himself rode in a palankeen, he does not make much moan about them; no one reading his account would think they were so appalling as they must have been, for I cannot think they have deteriorated much since those days. When I looked at the streets of Cheng Teh Fu, banks, dust heaps, great holes, stones, I tried to imagine the British “Embassador\'s” coach being dragged across them, twisting round corners, balancing on sidings, up to the axles in dust, or perhaps mud, for it was September and the crowd looking on at the lord from the far islands of the sea, who was bringing tribute to the Emperor of China, 288for I am afraid it is hardly likely they believed he was doing anything else.

Another thing Sir George Staunton notes is the scarcity of timber. “The circumjacent hills,” he writes, “appeared to have been once well planted with trees; but those few which remained were stunted, and timber has become very scarce. No young plantations had been made to supply the old ones cut down.” Now the hills round are absolutely bare, there is not a sign that ever a tree has grown upon them, and I should not have believed they had, had it not been for Sir George Staunton\'s account.

And on the other side of this ugly town, among these desolate hills, is set a wall, a wall about twenty feet high, with a broad pathway on the top, along which the guards might walk. And the wall has been built with discretion. Not only was it to keep out all but the elect, but it was to block effectually all view of what went on inside. Not even from the neighbouring hills is it possible to look into that Park. Its delights were only for the Son of Heaven and those who ministered to his well-being.

We went along a sordid, dusty street to the principal gate, a shabby and forlorn-looking gate, and the watch-tower over it was crumbling to decay, and we entered the courtyard, a forlorn and desolate courtyard, where the paving-stones were broken, and the grass and weeds were coming up between the cracks. Then there was a long pathway with a broken pavement in the middle, a pavement so characteristic of China that wherever I chance to see such I shall think of her golden sunshine and bright skies. On either side of that pathway were high walls over which were peeping the tiled roofs of 289buildings, until at last after fully five minutes\' walk, after passing through many gates, all in various stages of decay, we came to a place where the path ended with two doors to the right and left. This, the palace of an Emperor; it seemed impossible to believe it. I wondered if the woman who had wanted for so many years to see it was disappointed. She was supporting my elbow, true Chinese fashion, and Tuan, having succeeded in passing on my camera to the usual ragged follower, was on the other side, as if I were in the last stages of decrepitude. At first this exceeding attention used to irritate me, but by this time I had resigned myself to my fate. I was more concerned at the shabbiness and sordidness of everything. Of course no one save the servants, who keep the place, live in the grounds now, no one has lived there for over fifty years, not since 1860, when the reigning Emperor fled there from the Allies who sacked Peking, and died there. Perhaps it was for that reason that his secondary wife, the great Dowager-Empress whom all the world knew, disliked the place, and went there no more. I remembered that, as I stood between those two doors and wondered which I should go through first. The one to the left led to some courtyards surrounded by low, one-storied buildings—Emperor\'s first bedroom—said Tuan, and possibly he was right. I turned to the door on the right and as it opened I knew that these Manchu pleasure-grounds had been planned, as so many things Chinese are planned, nobly. I stepped out on to a plateau and there, there in this treeless China, was a grove of firs and pines. The blue sky peeped through the branches, the sunshine dappled the ground with shadow and light, and the wind 290murmured softly among the evergreen foliage. Here was coolness and delight. Beyond the plateau lay a long grassy valley surrounded by softly rounded, tree-clad hills, and right at the bottom of the valley was a lake with winding shores, a lake covered with lotus lilies, with islands on it, with bridges and buildings, picturesque as only the ideal Chinese buildings can be picturesque. It may have been created by art, and at least art must have entered to some great extent into the making of the beauty, but there is no trace of it. My followers looked at the scene and looked at me, as much as to say this was something belonging to them they were showing me, and they hoped I was appreciating it properly. It might have been the Manchu woman\'s very own. In truth I could only look and wonder, lost in admiration. What could the heart of man want more for the glorious summertime, the brief, hot summer of Northern China?



0405

The first glance was a surprise, and the farther I went in the more my wonder grew. There were paved pathways, but they were not aggressively paved, the rough grey stones had just been sunk in the grass. They were broken a little now, and they toned naturally with the rural surroundings. There were lovely bridges bridging ravines, and here, too, was not one stone too many, nothing to suggest the artificial, that so often spoils the rural scene made to conform to the wants of the luxurious. Of course, besides the pavement, other things had fallen into disrepair, there were steps down hill-sides that were well-nigh hopeless for purposes of ascent and descent, and there were temples where indeed the gods were forlorn and forgotten. Gigantic gods they were 291with fearsome faces and painted in gorgeous colours, but they were all dusty and dirty. There was one temple all of bronze, but it was rusted and shabby. There were shrines in it set with agate and jasper, mother-of-pearl and jade, and what looked like great rubies, but, very likely, were only garnets. Shabby, forlorn, forgotten was the temple, the steps that led up to it were broken and almost unusable, the courtyards were neglected, the tiles of t............