Travels in China by Sir John Barrow (top e book reader .txt) 📕

The police of the capital, as we afterwards found, is so well regulated, that the safety and tranquillity of the inhabitants are seldom disturbed. At the end of every cross street, and at certain distances in it, are a kind of cross bars, with sentry boxes at each of which is placed a soldier, and few of these streets are without a guard-house. Besides, the proprietor or inhabitant of every tenth house, like the ancient tythingmen of England, takes it in turn to keep the peace, and be responsible for the good conduct of his nine neighbours. If any riotous company should assemble, or any disturbances happen within his district, he is to give immediate information thereof to the nearest guard-house. The soldiers also go their rounds and instead of crying the hour like our watchmen, strike upon a short tube of bamboo, which gives a dull hollow sound, that for several nights prevented us from sleeping until we were accustomed to it.

It took us full two hours, as I before observed, in passing from the eastern to the western gate of Pekin. The clouds of dust raised by the populace were here much denser than on the road, and the smothering heat of the day, the thermometer in our little carts standing at 96°, was almost insupportable. Except the great crowd on every side, we saw little to engage the attention after the first five minutes. Indeed, a single walk through one of the broad streets is quite sufficient to give a stranger a competent idea of the whole city. He will immediately perceive that every street is laid out in the same manner, and every house built upon the same plan; and that their architecture is void of taste, grandeur, beauty, solidity, or convenience; that the houses are merely tents, and that there is nothing magnificent, even in the palace of the Emperor;—but we shall have occasion to speak on this subject hereafter. Ask a Chinese, however, what is to be seen that is curious or great in the capital, and he will immediately enter upon a long history of the beauties of the palace belonging to Ta-whang-tee, the mighty Emperor. According to his notions, every thing within the palace walls is gold and silver. He will tell you of gold and silver pillars, gold and silver roofs, gold and silver vases, in which are swimming gold and silver fishes. All, however, is not gold that glitters in China, more than elsewhere. The Emperor, as I shall hereafter have occasion to notice, has very little surplus revenue at his disposal, and is frequently distressed for money to pay his army and other exigences of the state. And, though China has of late years drawn from Europe a considerable quantity of specie, yet when this is scattered over so vast an extent of country, and divided among so many millions of people, it becomes almost as a drop thrown into the sea. Most of the money, besides, that enters China is melted down, and converted into articles of luxury or convenience. Few nations are better acquainted with the value of these precious metals than the Chinese; and few, if any, can surpass their ingenuity in drawing out the one into thin leaves, and the other into the finest wire.

We were not a little overjoyed in finding ourselves once more upon the flagged causeway, and in an open country, after passing a small suburb beyond the western gate of the city. They brought us to a villa which was a kind of appendage to one of the Emperor's palaces, about eight miles beyond Pekin. The buildings, consisting of a number of small detached apartments, straggling over a surface of ground, about fifteen acres in extent, were neither sufficiently numerous to lodge the suite, nor to contain the presents and our baggage; and were moreover so miserably out of repair and in so ruinous a condition, that the greater part was wholly uninhabitable. The officers were accordingly told that these were not accommodations suitable to the dignity of a British Embassador, and that he would not on any consideration put up with them; that it was a matter of indifference whether he was lodged in the city or the country, but that the lodgings should be convenient and proper. The superintending officers, upon this, caused a large temporary building to be erected with poles and mats, which, as by magic, was finished in the course of the night, hoping, by this exertion, to have removed all objections to the place. His Lordship, however, being determined not to remain where there was neither a decent room, nor any kind of comfort or convenience, every building being entirely unfurnished, and, as I said before, the greater number untenantable, insisted upon being removed to Pekin, where accordingly it was very soon announced there was a suitable house ready for his reception.

On returning to the capital we passed through the great street of a town called Hai-tien in which most of the houses were of two stories, and before the upper of which was a kind of Véranda full of dwarf trees and flower-pots. A great proportion of the houses were either butchers' shops or coffin-makers. From the end of this street was a most extensive view of Pekin and the surrounding country. The eye from hence took in the whole length of the high straight wall with its two lofty gates and numerous square towers. At each angle of the wall is a large square building rising above the parapet to four heights or stories of port-holes, and covered with two roofs. In each row of the four fronts are fourteen windows or port-holes. These I understood to be the rice magazines or public granaries. Near the north-west angle is a tall pagoda, another high tower not unlike a glass-house, and towards the higher western gate appeared the upper part of a pyramidal building that terminated in a gilded flame, very like the summit of our Monument under which, instead of a gallery, was a most magnificent canopy or umbrella, painted and gilt with such brilliant colours, that from certain points of view, when the rays of the sun played upon it, the glittering appearance had a very good effect. It was said to be a temple, and seemed to be of the same kind of architecture as the Shoo-ma-doo described by Col. Symes in his embassy to Ava.

We found our new lodging sufficiently large, but the apartments were shamefully dirty, having been uninhabited for some time; very much out of repair, and totally unfurnished. This house, being considered be one of the best in the whole city, I shall have occasion to take notice of hereafter, in speaking of the state of their architecture. It was built by the late Ho-poo, or Collector of the customs at Canton, from which situation he was preferred to the collectorship of salt duties at Tien-sing, where, it seems, he was detected in embezzling the public revenues, thrown into jail, and his immense property confiscated to the crown. The officers appointed to attend the embassy told us, that when it was proposed to the Emperor for the English Embassador to occupy this house, he immediately replied, "Most certainly, you cannot refuse the temporary occupation of a house to the Embassador of that nation which contributed so very amply towards the expense of building it." The inference to be drawn from such a remark, is, that the court of Pekin is well aware of the extortions committed against foreigners at Canton.

The Emperor being at this time in Tartary, where he meant to celebrate the festival of the anniversary of his birth-day, had given orders that the public introduction of the British Embassador should be fixed for that day, and should take place at Gehol, a small town 136 miles from Pekin, where he had a large palace, park, gardens, and a magnificent Poo-ta-la or temple of Budha. Accordingly a selection was made of such presents as were the most portable, to be sent forwards into Tartary; and the Embassador, with part of his suite, several officers of the court, and their retinue, set out from Pekin on the second of September. Some of the gentlemen, with part of the guard and of the servants, remained in Pekin, and Dr. Dinwiddie and myself, with two mechanics, had apartments allotted to us in the palace of Yuen-min-yuen, where the largest and most valuable of the presents were to be fitted up for the inspection of the old Emperor on his return from Tartary.

Having already acquired some little knowledge of the language on the passage from England, by the assistance of two Chinese priests who had been sent by their superiors to Naples, for the purpose of being instructed in the Christian religion, I hoped to find this temporary banishment less irksome, particularly as I had previously stipulated with the officers belonging to that palace for an unconditional leave to visit the capital whenever I should find it necessary or proper, during the absence of the Embassador; and, it is but fair to say, they kept faith to their engagement in the strictest sense. A horse and one of the little covered carts were always at my disposal.

The gentlemen left in the city were less agreeably situated. At the outer gate of their lodgings a guard was stationed with orders to allow none of them to pass, and all their proceedings and movements were closely watched. Sometimes they were a little relieved by occasional visits from the European missionaries; but so suspicious were the officers of government of any communication with these gentlemen that they were invariably accompanied by some of them to act as spies, notwithstanding they could not comprehend one single word that was exchanged in the conversations they held together. A Chinese has no knowledge whatsoever of any of the European languages. But he watches the actions, and even the motions of the eye, and makes his report accordingly. The courts of the house were constantly filled with the inferior officers of government and their servants, all of whom had some post or other assigned to them connected with the British Embassy. One was the superintendant of the kitchen, another furnished tea, one was appointed to supply us with fruit, another with vegetables, and another with milk.

During the time I should be required to reside in Yuen-min-yuen, I particularly wished to have none other than Chinese servants, that I might be under the necessity of extending the little knowledge I had already acquired of the spoken language. This is by no means difficult to learn except in the nice intonations or inflexions of voice, but the written character is, perhaps of all others, the most abstruse and most perplexing both to the eye and to the memory. The length of time that is usually required by the Chinese, together with the intense study and stretch of the memory which they find necessary in order to obtain a very small proportion of the characters that form the language, are serious obstructions to the progress of the arts and sciences, but favourable to the stability of the government of which indeed the language may be considered as one of the great bulwarks. But the observations I have to make on this subject will more properly be reserved for a separate chapter.

On arriving at Yuen-min-yuen I found a number of Chinese workmen busily employed in breaking open the packages, some in one place and some in another, to the no little danger of the globes, clocks, glass lustres, and such like frangible articles, many of which must inevitably have suffered under less careful and dexterous hands than those of the Chinese. As it