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

them as individuals. Their wildest dreams at that time could not have pictured themselves dukes and princesses, with their daughters as empresses, duchesses, or ladies-in-waiting in the palace. But such it proved to be. II

The Empress Dowager—Her Years of Training

The kindness of the Empress is as boundless as the sea. Her person too is holy, she is like a deity. With boldness, from seclusion, she ascends the Dragon Throne, And saves her suffering country from a fate we dare not own.

—“Yuan Fan,” Translated by I. T. C.

II

THE EMPRESS DOWAGER—HER YEARS OF TRAINING

The year our little Miss Chao entered the palace was a memorable one in the history of China. The Tai-ping rebellion, which had begun in the south some three years earlier (1850), had established its capital at Nanking, on the Yangtse River, and had sent its “long-haired” rebels north on an expedition of conquest, the ultimate aim of which was Peking. By the end of the year 1853 they had arrived within one hundred miles of the capital, conquering everything before them, and leaving devastation and destruction in their wake.

Their success had been extraordinary. Starting in the southwest with an army of ten thousand men they had eighty thousand when they arrived before the walls of Nanking. They were an undisciplined horde, without commissariat, without drilled military leaders, but with such reckless daring and bravery that the imperial troops were paralyzed with fear and never dared to meet them in the open field. Thousands of common thieves and robbers flocked to their standards with every new conquest, impelled by no higher motive than that of pillage and gain. Rumours became rife in every village and hamlet, and as they neared the capital the wildest tales were told in every nook and corner of the city, from the palace of the young Emperor in the Forbidden City to the mat shed of the meanest beggar beneath the city wall.

My wife says: “I remember just after going to China, sitting one evening on a kang, or brick bed, with Yin-ma, an old nurse, our only light being a wick floating in a dish of oil. Yin-ma was about the age of the Empress Dowager, but, unlike Her Majesty, her locks were snow-white. When I entered the dimly lighted room she was sitting in the midst of a group of women and girls—patients in the hospital—who listened with bated breath as she told them of the horrors of the Tai-ping rebellion.

” ‘Why!’ said the old nurse, ‘all that the rebels had to do on their way to Peking, was to cut out as many paper soldiers as they wanted, put them in boxes, and breathe upon them when they met the imperial troops, and they were transformed into such fierce warriors that no one was able to withstand them. Then when the battle was over and they had come off victors they only needed to breathe upon them again, when they were changed into paper images and packed in their boxes, requiring neither food nor clothing. Indeed the spirits of the rebels were everywhere, and no matter who cut out paper troops they could change them into real soldiers.’

” ‘But, Yin-ma, you do not believe those superstitions, do you?’

” ‘These are not superstitions, doctor, these are facts, which everybody believed in those days, and it was not safe for a woman to be seen with scissors and paper, lest her neighbours report that she was cutting out troops for the rebels. The country was filled with all kinds of rumours, and every one had to be very careful of all their conduct, and of everything they said, lest they be arrested for sympathizing with the enemy.’

” ‘But, Yin-ma, did you ever see any of these paper images transformed into soldiers?’

” ‘No, I never did myself, but there was an old woman lived near our place, who was said to be in sympathy with the rebels. One night my father saw soldiers going into her house and when he had followed them he could find nothing but paper images. You may not have anything of this kind happen in America, but very many people saw them in those terrible days of pillage and bloodshed here.’ “

Such stories are common in all parts of China during every period of rebellion, war, riot or disturbance of any kind. The people go about with fear on their faces, and horror in their voices, telling each other in undertones of what some one, somewhere, is said to have seen or heard. Nor are these superstitions confined to the common people. Many of the better classes believe them and are filled with fear.

As the Tai-ping rebellion broke out when Miss Chao was about fifteen or sixteen years of age, she would hear these stories for two or three years before she entered the palace. After she had been taken into the Forbidden City she would continue to hear them, brought in by the eunuchs and circulated not only among all the women of the palace, but among their own associates as well, and here they would take on a more mysterious and alarming aspect to these people shut away from the world, as ghost stories become more terrifying when told in the dim twilight. May this not account in some measure for the attitude assumed by the Empress Dowager towards the Boxer superstitions of 1900, and their pretentions to be able at will to call to their aid legions of spirit-soldiers, while at the same time they were themselves invulnerable to the bullets of their enemies?

It was when Miss Chao was ten years old that the conflict known as the Opium War was brought to an end. It has been said that when the Emperor was asked to sanction the importation of opium, he answered, “I will never legalize a traffic that will be an injury to my people,” but whether this be true or not, it is admitted by all that the central government was strongly opposed to the sale and use of the drug within its domains. It is unfortunate, to say the least, that the first time the Chinese came into collision with European governments was over a matter of this kind, and it is to the credit of the Chinese commissioner when the twenty thousand chests of opium, over which the dispute arose, were handed over to him, he mixed it with quicklime in huge vats that it might be utterly destroyed rather than be an injury to his people. They may have exhibited an ignorance of international law, they may have manifested an unwise contempt for the foreigner, but it remains a fact of history that they were ready to suffer great financial loss rather than get revenue from the ruin of their subjects, and that England went to war for the purpose of securing indemnity for the opium destroyed.

The common name for opium among the Chinese is yang yen—foreign tobacco, and my wife says: “When calling at the Chinese homes, I have frequently been offered the opium-pipe, and when I refused it the ladies expressed surprise, saying that they were under the impression that all foreigners used it.”

What now were the results of the Opium War as viewed from the standpoint of the Chinese people, and what impression would it make upon them as a whole? Great Britain demanded an indemnity of $21,000,000, the cession to them of Hongkong, an island on the southern coast, and the opening of five ports to British trade. China lost her standing as suzerain among the peoples of the Orient and got her first glimpse of the White Peril from the West.

Although the Empress Dowager was but a child of ten at this time she would receive her first impression of the foreigner, which was that he was a pirate who had come to carry away their wealth, to filch from them their land, and to overrun their country. He became a veritable bugaboo to men, women and children alike, and this impression was crystallized in the expression yang huei, “foreign devil,” which is the only term among a large proportion of the Chinese by which the foreigner is known. One day when walking on the street in Peking I met a woman with a child of two years in her arms, and as I passed them, the child patted its mother on the cheek and said in an undertone,—“The foreign devil’s coming,” which led the frightened mother to cover its eyes with her hand that it might not be injured by the sight.

On one occasion a friend was travelling through the country when a Chinese gentleman, dressed in silk and wearing an official hat, called on him at the inn where he was stopping and with a profound bow addressed him as “Old Mr. Foreign Devil.”

My wife says that: “Not infrequently when I have been called for the first time to the homes of the better classes I have seen the children run into the house from the outer court exclaiming, —‘The devil doctor’s coming.’ Indeed, I have heard the women use this term in speaking of me to my assistant until I objected, when they asked with surprise,—‘Doesn’t she like to be called foreign devil?’ ” And so the Empress Dowager’s first impression of the foreigner would be that of a devil.

Colonel Denby tells us that “A Frenchman and his wife were carried off from Tonquin by bandits who took refuge in China. The Chinese government was asked to rescue these prisoners and restore them to liberty. China sent a brigade of troops, who pursued the bandits to their den and recovered the prisoners. The French government thanked the Chinese government for its assistance, and bestowed the decoration of the Legion of Honour on the brigade commander, and then shortly afterwards demanded the payment of an enormous indemnity for the outrage on the ground that China had delayed to effect the rescue. The Chinese were aghast, but they paid the money.”

This incident does not stand alone, but is one of a number of similar experiences which the Chinese government had in her relation with the powers of Europe, and which have been reported by such writers as Holcomb, Beresford, Gorst Colquhoun and others in trying to account for the feelings the Chinese have towards us, all of which was embodied in the years of training of our little concubine.

It should be remembered that many concubines are selected whom the Emperor never takes the trouble to see. After being taken in, their temper and disposition are carefully noted, their faithfulness in the duties assigned them, their diligence in the performance of their tasks, their kindness to their inferiors, their treatment of their equals, and their politeness and obedience to their superiors, and upon all these things, with many others, as we shall see, their promotion will finally depend.

When Miss Chao entered the palace, like most girls of her class or station in life, she was uneducated. She may have studied the small “Classic for Girls” in which she learned:

“You should rise from bed as early in the morning as the sun, Nor retire at evening’s closing till your work is wholly done.”

Or, further, she may have been told,

When the wheel of life’s at fifteen, Or when twenty years have passed, As a girl with home and kindred these will surely be your last; While expert in all employments that compose a woman’s life, You should study as a daughter all the duties of a wife.”

Or she may have read the “Filial Piety Classic for Girls” in which she learned the importance of the attitude she assumed towards those who were in authority over her, but certain it is she was not educated.

She had, however, what was better than education—a disposition to learn. And