Court Life in China Part 1

Court Life in China.

by Isaac Taylor Headland.

PREFACE

Until within the past ten years a study of Chinese court life would have been an impossibility. The Emperor, the Empress Dowager, and the court ladies were shut up within the Forbidden City, away from a world they were anxious to see, and which was equally anxious to see them.

Then the Emperor inst.i.tuted reform, the Empress Dowager came out from behind the screen, and the court entered into social relations with Europeans.

For twenty years and more Mrs. Headland has been physician to the family of the Empress Dowager's mother, the Empress' sister, and many of the princesses and high official ladies in Peking. She has visited them in a social as well as a professional way, has taken with her her friends, to whom the princesses have shown many favours, and they have themselves been constant callers at our home. It is to my wife, therefore, that I am indebted for much of the information contained in this book.

There are many who have thought that the Empress Dowager has been misrepresented. The world has based its judgment of her character upon her greatest mistake, her partic.i.p.ation in the Boxer movement, which seems unjust, and has closed its eyes to the tremendous reforms which only her mind could conceive and her hand carry out. The great Chinese officials to a man recognized in her a mistress of every situation; the foreigners who have come into most intimate contact with her, voice her praise; while her hostile critics are confined for the most part to those who have never known her. It was for this reason that a more thorough study of her life was undertaken.

It has also been thought that the Emperor has been misunderstood, being overestimated by some, and underestimated by others, and this because of his peculiar type of mind and character. That he was unusual, no one will deny; that he was the originator of many of China's greatest reform measures, is equally true; but that he lacked the power to execute what he conceived, and the ability to select great statesmen to a.s.sist him, seems to have been his chief shortcoming.

To my wife for her help in the preparation of this volume, and to my father-in-law, Mr. William Sinclair, M. A., for his suggestions, I am under many obligations.

I. T. H.

I

The Empress Dowager--Her Early Life

All the period since 1861 should be rightly recorded as the reign of Tze Hsi An, a more eventful period than all the two hundred and forty-four reigns that had preceded her three usurpations. It began after a conquering army had made terms of peace in her capital, and with the Tai-ping rebellion in full swing of success....

Those few who have looked upon the countenance of the Dowager describe her as a tall, erect, fine-looking woman of distinguished and imperious bearing, with p.r.o.nounced Tartar features, the eye of an eagle, and the voice of determined authority and absolute command.--Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore in "China, The Long-Lived Empire."

I

THE EMPRESS DOWAGER--HER EARLY LIFE

One day when one of the princesses was calling at our home in Peking, I inquired of her where the Empress Dowager was born. She gazed at me for a moment with a queer expression wreathing her features, as she finally said with just the faintest shadow of a smile: "We never talk about the early history of Her Majesty." I smiled in return and continued: "I have been told that she was born in a small house, in a narrow street inside of the east gate of the Tartar city--the gate blown up by the j.a.panese when they entered Peking in 1900." The princess nodded. "I have also heard that her father's name was Chao, and that he was a small military official (she nodded again) who was afterwards beheaded for some neglect of duty." To this the visitor also nodded a.s.sent.

A few days later several well-educated young Chinese ladies, daughters of one of the most distinguished scholars in Peking, were calling on my wife, and again I pursued my inquiries. "Do you know anything about the early life of the Empress Dowager?" I asked of the eldest. She hesitated a moment, with that same blank expression I had seen on the face of the princess, and then answered very deliberately,--"Yes, everybody knows, but n.o.body talks about it." And this is, no doubt, the reason why the early life of the greatest woman of the Mongol race, and, as some who knew her best think, the most remarkable woman of the nineteenth century, has ever been shrouded in mystery. Whether the Empress desired thus to efface all knowledge of her childhood by refusing to allow it to be talked about, I do not know, but I said to myself: "What everybody knows, I can know," and I proceeded to find out.

I discovered that she was one of a family of several brothers and sisters and born about 1834; that the financial condition of her parents was such that when a child she had to help in caring for the younger children, carrying them on her back, as girls do in China, and amusing them with such simple toys as are hawked about the streets or sold in the shops for a cash or two apiece; that she and her brothers and little sisters amused themselves with such games as blind man's buff, prisoner's base, kicking marbles and flying kites in company with the other children of their neighbourhood. During these early years she was as fond of the puppet plays, trained mice shows, bear shows, and "Punch and Judy" as she was in later years of the theatrical performances with which she entertained her visitors at the palace. She was compelled to run errands for her mother, going to the shops, as occasion required, for the daily supply of oils, onions, garlic, and other vegetables that const.i.tuted the larger portion of their food. I found out also that there is not the slightest foundation for the story that in her childhood she was sold as a slave and taken to the south of China.

The outdoor life she led, the games she played, and the work she was forced to do in the absence of household servants, gave to the little girl a well-developed body, a strong const.i.tution and a fund of experience and information which can be obtained in no other way. She was one of the great middle cla.s.s. She knew the troubles and trials of the poor. She had felt the pangs of hunger. She could sympathize with the millions of ambitious girls struggling to be freed from the trammels of ignorance and the age-old customs of the past--a combat which was the more real because it must be carried on in silence. And who can say that it was not the struggles and privations of her own childhood which led to the wish in her last years that "the girls of my empire may be educated"?

When little Miss Chao had reached the age of fourteen or fifteen she was taken by her parents to an office in the northern part of the imperial city of Peking where her name, age, personal appearance, and estimated degree of intelligence and potential ability were registered, as is done in the case of all the daughters of the Manchu people. The reason for this singular proceeding is that when the time comes for the selection of a wife or a concubine for the Emperor, or the choosing of serving girls for the palace, those in charge of these matters will know where they can be obtained.

This custom is not considered an unalloyed blessing by the Manchu people, and many of them would gladly avoid registering their daughters if only they dared. But the rule is compulsory, and every one belonging to the eight Banners or companies into which the Manchus are divided must have their daughters registered. Their aversion to this custom is well ill.u.s.trated in the following incident:

In one of the girls' schools in Peking there was a beautiful child, the daughter of a Manchu woman whose husband was dead. One day this widow came to the princ.i.p.al of the school and said: "A summons has come from the court for the girls of our clan to appear before the officials that a certain number may be chosen and sent into the palace as serving girls." "When is she to appear?" inquired the teacher. "On the sixteenth," answered the mother. "I suppose you are anxious that she should be one of the fortunate ones," said the teacher, "though I should be sorry to lose her from the school." "On the contrary," said the mother, "I should be distressed if she were chosen, and have come to consult with you as to whether we might not hire a subst.i.tute." The teacher expressed surprise and asked her why. "When our daughters are taken into the palace," answered the mother, "they are dead to us until they are twenty-five, when they are allowed to return home. If they are incompetent or dull they are often severely punished. They may contract disease and die, and their death is not even announced to us; while if they prove themselves efficient and win the approval of the authorities they are retained in the palace and we may never see them or hear from them again."

At first the teacher was inclined to favour the hiring of a subst.i.tute, but on further consideration concluded that it would be contrary to the law, and advised that the girl be allowed to go. The mother, however, was so anxious to prevent her being chosen that she sent her with uncombed hair, soiled clothes and a dirty face, that she might appear as unattractive as possible.

The prospects for a concubine are even less promising than for a serving maid, as when she once enters the palace she has little if any hope of ever leaving it. She is neither mistress nor servant, wife nor slave, she is but one of a hundred buds in a garden of roses which have little if any prospect of ever blooming or being plucked for the court bouquet. When, therefore, the gates of the Forbidden City close behind the young girls who are taken in as concubines of an emperor they shut out an attractive, busy, beautiful world, filled with men and women, boys and girls, homes and children, green fields and rich harvests, and confine them within the narrow limits of one square mile of brick-paved earth, surrounded by a wall twenty-five feet high and thirty feet thick, in which there is but one solitary man who is neither father, brother, husband nor friend to them, and whom they may never even see.

When therefore the time came for the selection of concubines for the Emperor Hsien Feng, and our little Miss Chao was taken into the palace, her parents, like many others, had every reason to consider it a piece of ill-fortune which had visited their home. The future was veiled from them. The Forbidden City, surrounded by its great crenelated wall, may have seemed more like a prison than like a palace. True, they had other children, and she was "only a girl, but even girls are a small blessing," as they tell us in their proverbs. She had grown old enough to be useful in the home, and they no doubt had cherished plans of betrothing her to the son of some merchant or official who would add wealth or honour to their family. Neither father nor mother, brother nor sister, could have conceived of the potential power, honour and even glory, that were wrapped up in that girl, and that were finally to come to them as a family, as well as to many of them as individuals.

Their wildest dreams at that time could not have pictured themselves dukes and princesses, with their daughters as empresses, d.u.c.h.esses, 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 superst.i.tions, do you?'

"'These are not superst.i.tions, 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 superst.i.tions confined to the common people.

Many of the better cla.s.ses 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 a.s.sociates 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 att.i.tude a.s.sumed by the Empress Dowager towards the Boxer superst.i.tions 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."