Court Life in China, Isaac Taylor Headland [an ebook reader .txt] 📗

Emperor then heard that the foreigners had invented a “fire-wheel cart,” but whether he had ever been informed that they had built a small railroad at Wu-Sung near Shanghai, and that the Chinese had bought it, and then torn it up and thrown it into the river we cannot say. There are many things the officials and people do which never reach the imperial ears. However that may be, when Kuang Hsu heard of the railroad and the carts that were run by fire, he wanted one, and he would not be satisfied until they had built a narrow gauge railroad along the west shore of the lotus lake in the Forbidden City, and the factories of Europe had made two small cars and an engine on which he could take the court ladies for a ride on this unusual merry-go-round. The road and the cars and the engine were still there when I visited the Forbidden City in 1901, but they were carried away to Europe by some of the allies as precious bits of loot, before the court returned.

Not long after he had heard of the railroads, he was told that the foreigners also had “fire-wheel boats.” Of course he wanted some, and as I crossed the beautiful marble bridge that spans the lotus lake, I saw anchored near by three small steam launches which had evidently been used a good deal. I saw similar launches in the lake at the Summer Palace, and was told that in the play days of his boyhood, Kuang Hsu would have these launches hitched to the imperial barges and take the ladies of the court for pleasure trips about the lake in the cool of the summer evenings, as the Empress Dowager did her foreign visitors in later times.

The Emperor in those days was on the lookout for everything foreign that was of a mechanical nature. Indeed every invention interested him. In this respect he was diametrically opposite to the genius of the whole Chinese people. Their faces had ever been turned backward, and their highest hopes were that they might approximate the golden ages of the past, and be equal in virtue to their ancestors. This feeling was so strong that a hundred years before he mounted the throne, his forefather, Chien Lung, when he had completed his cycle of sixty years as a ruler, vacated in favour of his son lest he should reign longer than his grandfather. Kuang Hsu was therefore the first occupant of the dragon throne whose face was turned to the future, and whose chief aim was to possess and to master every method that had enabled the peoples of the West to humiliate his people.

When he heard that the foreigners had a method of talking to a distance of ten, twenty, fifty or five hundred miles, he did not say like the old farmer is reported to have said,—“It caint be trew, because my son John kin holler as loud as any man in all this country, an’ he caint be heerd mor’n two miles.” Kuang Hsu believed it, and at once ordered that a telephone be secured for him.

In 1894 the Christian women of China decided to present a New Testament to the Empress Dowager on her sixtieth birthday which occurred the following year. New type was prepared, the finest foreign paper secured, and the book was made after the best style of the printer’s art, with gilt borders, gilt edges, and bound in silver of an embossed bamboo pattern and encased in a silver box. It was then enclosed in a red plush box,—red being the colour indicating happiness, —which was in turn encased in a beautifully carved teak-wood box, and this was enclosed in an ordinary box and taken by the English and American ministers to the Foreign Office to be sent in to Her Majesty

The next day the Emperor sent to the American Bible Society for copies of the Old and New Testaments, such as were being sold to his people. A few days thereafter a Chinese friend—a horticulturist and gardener who went daily to the palace with flowers and vegetables—came to me in confidence as though bearing an important secret, and said:

“Something of unusual importance is taking place in the palace.”

“Indeed?” said I; “what makes you think so?”

“Heretofore when I have gone into the palace,” said he, “the eunuchs have treated me with indifference. Yesterday they sat down and talked in a most familiar and friendly way, asking me all about Christianity. I told them what I could and they continued their conversation until long after noon. I finally became so hungry that I arose to come home. They urged me to stay, bringing in a feast, and inviting me to dine with them, and they kept me there till evening. One of them told me that the Emperor is studying the Gospel of Luke.”

“How does he know that?” I inquired.

“That is what I asked him,” he answered, “and he told me that he is one of the Emperor’s private servants, and that His Majesty has a part of the Gospel copied in large characters on a sheet of paper each day, which he spreads out on the table before him, and this eunuch, standing behind his chair, can read what he is studying.”

On further inquiry I discovered that there was no other way that the eunuch could have learned about the Gospel, except in the way indicated. This man was invited to dine with the eunuchs day after day until he had told them all he knew about Christianity, after which they requested him to bring in the pastor of the church of which he was a member, and who was one of my former pupils, to dine with them and tell them more about the Gospel. The pastor hesitated to accept the invitation, but as it was repeated day after day, he finally accompanied the horticulturist.

When offered wine at dinner the pastor refused it, at which the eunuch remarked: “Oh, yes, I have heard that you Christians do not drink wine,” and like a polite host, the wine was put aside and none was drunk at the dinner. During the afternoon they took their guests to visit some of the imperial buildings, advanced the sum of three hundred dollars to the horticulturist to enlarge his plant, and gave various presents to the pastor.

It must not be inferred from this that the Emperor was becoming a Christian. Very far from it, though the interest he took in the Christian doctrine set the people to studying about it, not only in Peking but throughout many of the provinces, as was indicated at the time by the number of Christian books sold. As early as 1891 he issued a strong edict ordering the protection of the missionaries in which he made the following statement: “The religions of the West have for their object the inculcation of virtue, and, though our people become converted, they continue to be Chinese subjects. There is no reason why there should not be harmony between the people and the adherents of foreign religions.” The Chinese reported that he sometimes examined the eunuchs, lining them up in classes and catechising them from the books read.

One day three of the eunuchs called on me with this same horticulturist, for the purpose no doubt of seeing a foreigner, and to get a glimpse of the home in which he lived. One of them was younger than the other two and above the average intelligence of his class. A few days later the horticulturist told me a story which illustrates a phase of the Emperor’s character which we have already hinted at—his impulsive nature and ungovernable temper. He had ordered a number of the eunuchs to appear before him, all of whom except this young man were unable to come, because engaged in other duties. When the eunuch got down on his hands and knees to kotow or knock his head to His Majesty, the latter kicked him in the mouth, cutting his lip and otherwise injuring him, and my informant added:

“What kind of a man is that to govern a country, a man who punishes those who obey his orders?” Indeed there was a good deal of feeling among the Chinese at that time that the Empress Dowager ought to punish the Emperor as a good mother does a bad child, though in the light of all the other things he did, he was to be pitied more than blamed for a disposition thus inherited and developed.

It was about this time he began the study of English. He ordered that two teachers be appointed, and contrary to all former customs he allowed them to sit rather than kneel while they taught him. At the time they were selected I was exchanging lessons in English for Chinese with the grandson of one of these teachers, and learned a good deal about the progress the young man was making. He was in such a hurry to begin that he could not wait to send to England or America for books, and so the officials visited the various schools and missions in search of proper primers for a beginner. When they visited us we made a thorough search and finally Dr. Marcus L. Taft discovered an attractively illustrated primer which he had taken to China with him for his little daughter Frances, and this was sent to Kuang Hsu.

One day a eunuch called on me saying that the Emperor had learned that the various institutions of learning, educational associations, tract and other societies had published a number of books in Chinese which they had translated from the European languages. I was at that time the custodian of two or three of these societies and had a great variety of Chinese books in my possession. I therefore sent him copies of our astronomy, geology, zoology, physiology and various other scientific books which I was at that time teaching in the university.

The next day he called again, accompanied by a coolie who brought me a present of a ham cooked at the imperial kitchen, together with boxes of fruit and cakes, which, not being a man of large appetite, I thanked him for, tipped the coolie, and after he had gone, turned them over to our servants, who assured me that imperial meat was very palatable. Day after day for six weeks this eunuch visited me, and would never leave until I had found some new book for His Majesty. They might be literary, scientific or religious works, and he made no distinction between the books of any sect or society, institution or body, but with an equal zeal he sought them all. I was sometimes reduced to a sheet tract, and finally I was forced to take my wife’s Chinese medical books out of her private library and send them in to the Emperor. I learned that other eunuchs were visiting other persons in charge of other books, and that at this time Kuang Hsu bought every book that had been translated from any European language and published in the Chinese.

One day the eunuch saw my wife’s bicycle standing on the veranda and said:

“What kind of a cart is that?”

“That is a self-moving cart,” I answered.

“How do you ride it?” he inquired.

I took the bicycle off the veranda, rode about the court a time or two, while he gazed at me with open mouth, and when I stopped he ejaculated:

“That’s queer; why doesn’t it fall down?”

“When a thing’s moving,” I answered, “it can’t fall down,” which might apply to other things than bicycles.

The next day when he called he said:

“The Emperor would like that bicycle,” and my wife allowed him to take it in to Kuang Hsu, and it was not long thereafter until it