To learn what the Chinaman really thinks about the foreigner you must come to Peking: no other city in China will serve. And the discovery will be far from flattering to your national pride. Peking is the first place I have ever visited where the mere fact of being a foreigner, a stranger in speech, dress, and manners, did not of itself secure one a certain amount of consideration or at any rate make one the object of useful interest. Here the precise "opposite is the case. The " foreign devil" is despised at sight—not merely hated, but regarded with sincere and profound contempt. "If the Tsung-li Yamen were abolished," said a Peking diplomat to me, "our lives would not be sate here for twenty-four hours. The people just refrain from actually molesting us because they have learned that they will be very severely punished if the; do." At home we cherish the belief that we are welcome in China, that the Chinese are pleased to learn of our Western civilisation, hat they are gradually and gladly assiini ing our habits and views, and that the wall of prejudice is gradually breaking down. It would hardly be possible to be more grossly and painfully mistaken. The people to aman detest and despise us (I am speaking, of course, of the real Chinese, not of the Anglicised Chinese of Hongkong and elsewhere, who are but a drop in the ocean of Celestial humanity) and as for the rulers, it will not be far from the truth to say that the better they know us, the less they like Let us say that you start out in the morning for & prowl in Peking. What are your relations with the people you meet First of all, of course, they crowd round you whenever you stop, and in a minute you are the centre of a mass of solid humanity which is eating horrible stuff, which is covered with vermin, which smells worse than words, and which is quite likely to have small-pox about it. As for taking a photograph in the streets, it is out of the question, "he only way I could manage this was to place my camera on the edge of a bridge, where they could nut get in front of the lens, and then 1 was in imminent danger of being pushed into the canal, as the bridges have no rail or parapet. The crowd jostles you, feels of your clothes with its dirty hands, pokes its nose in your face, keeping up all the time (I was generally with a friend who understood Chinese) a string of insulting and obscene remarks, with accompanying roars of laughter, By and by the novelty and fun of this wears off and you get first impatient and then savage, "But beware above all things of striking or even laying a finger on one of these dirty wretches. That would be probably a fatal mistake. They will do nothing but talk and push, but if you should hit one of them you would be more than likely not to get away alive or at least without bad injuries. But suppose that you walk steadily and imperturbably on? The Pedestrian you meet treats you with much jess consideration than ne vf his own countrymen; the children run to the door tory Kueidzu /"—" devil at you; they have other indescribable and worse ways of insulting you; and a few weeks ago when a member of the British Legation was riding underneath the wall a brick was dropped upon him from the top. It just missed his head and struck the horse behind the saddle, fatally injuring it, I believe. The Chinese children, again, have an original way of amur sing themiselvesat the expense of the foreign devils. A child will provide itself with a big fire-cracker and then sit patiently at the door till he sees you in the distance coming along on your pony. Then he will run out, drop the cracker in the road, light the slow match with a fire-stick and retire to a safe place to watch events. With devilish precocity he generally manages to cause it to explode just under your pony's nose, and if you are lucky enough to keep your seat and pull.up a mile or so in the direction you don't want to go he doubtless considers that his experiment has only been a moderate success. If you should break your neck and be left there dead in the road, that would confer imperishable lustre upon his family and neighbourhood. When this has happened to you once or twice you learn to jog about the Celestial city with short re itis and your knees stuck well into your saddle, ready for developments at any moment. 'I am told, too, that Lady Walsham's chair was actually stopped in the open street short time ago and she herself grossly insulted, that a member of our Consular service was nearly killed outside the Llama temple, and there are few foreigners who have not had some unpleasant experience or other. No doubt it is sometimes the foreigners' own fault, but our dear old friend Chesson himself would have failed to get on smoothly at all times, This is certainly a most extraordinary people, and next to nothing of them is known'at home. Here for instance are few stories that I have picked up, A foreign resident of Peking who speaks Chinese well was riding along the other day and came to an excited crowd, Drawing near he discovered a circle of people quietly watching a man desperately attempting to commit suicide by dashing his head against a wall. He dismounted, restrained the man, harangued the bystanders, and learned that this was a coolie who claimed that his payment for a certain porter's job was short by ten cash—less than a penny—aud as the employer refused to pay more he was proceeding to take revenge Ly killing himself on the spot, knowing by so doing he would get the other into considerable trouble. On another occasion a man threw himself into the canal, but was dragged out. So he simply sat down on the edge and starved himself to death, to be revenged against somebody who had cheated him, Again, one day man was found murdered on a bridge near the British Legation. The law of China pre-cribes that a murdered body must not be removed till the murderer is caught, The fore it was covered with a mat and left. 8
ly lay there, till at last the Minister, who anda month and still the rotting had to pass it every day, vigorously' protested and it was taken off the bridge and placed a little further away. And a Chinese newspaper is responsible for this sto which indeed has nothing whatever mered ble about it. One day a sow belonging toa alightly injure the front door of a Mrs. Wang, Mrs. Feng happening to knock down and the latter at once proceeded to claim damages, which was refused. Whereupon 4 fierce altercation ensued, which terminate ed in Mrs, Wang's threatening to take her own life, Mrs. Feng, upon hearing of this direful threat, resolved at once to take time by the forelock, and steal a march upon her enemy by taking her own life, and thus turn the tables upon her. She accordingly threw herself in the canal, And a friend with whom I rode a good deal in Peking told me that the other day, hearing screams of laughter from his stable, he went to vestigate, There he discovered that his groom and "boy" had caught a big rat, nailed its front paws to a board, soaked it in kerosine, set fire to it, and were enjoying the spectacle, But this is not so one of the tricks of the professional kidnapper, who will catch a child in the street, carry it off to another town, blind it and then sell it for a professional beggar. But. I shall have something much worse in the way of Chinese horrors to tell on another occasion, I said in my last letter that the sights of Peking are not nearly so accessible to foreigners to-day as they were five years ago, And it is the testimony of most of the
the Chinese grows wétse each year, The foreign residents that, their treatment by closing of the top of the wall to pedestrians is the last act of petty unpleasantness, There seems to be no reason whatever for this except to deprive the foreigners of their only decent walk. Another example is that the Marchioness Tseng, when first she returned from Europe, used to have an afternoon tat home" once a week, like European ladies. This gave, however, such deep offence in all Chinese quarters that she was compelled to cease. A Chinese lady, again, who had been in Europe, called upon two European ladies who were visiting—I forget whether Peking or Tientsin, Next day, desiring to be polite, they returned her call, Immediately afterwards
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.