Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland (miss read books txt) 📕

As one entered the door of the sacrificial hall, towering above everything else, was the great catafalque, draped in cloth of gold, and in front of it were stacks of these sacrificial cakes. Near them there was a table on which there were great white, square candles, five inches or more in diameter, the four sides of which were stamped with figures of fairies and immortals. On this table there were also various savoury dishes, together with cakes and fruit, prepared to feed the spirit of the dead. In front of this table again there was another about a foot high on which were placed the sacrificial wine vessels, and before which the guests knelt. As we entered I saw the gentlemen kneeling to the left, while the ladies, separated from them by white curtains, were kneeling to the right.

After we had seen the various customs without, I was taken into the dining-room, where I sat down with the young Princess and her two aunts, daughters of the Dowager. They were very kind and polite, and did all in their power to make me feel at home. We were attended by white-robed eunuchs, who knelt when they spoke to the Princess. There was such a lot of them.

“How many servants do you use ordinarily?” I asked the eldest daughter.

“About four hundred,” she replied.

I thought of the task of robing four hundred servants in new white sackcloth, and attending to all the other things that I had seen, in the forty-eight hours since the death of the Dowager Princess. Even the bread, instead of being dotted with red as it is ordinarily, was dotted with black!

As we were finishing our supper we heard the horns of the priests and went to see them arrive. Prince Su, and the other male members of the family, went out to the door to receive them, but we remained within. They first went to the gallery, then the head priest came down into the sacrificial hall and made nine prostrations before the catafalque, without, however, pouring or offering wine. After each third prostration he stood up and raised his clasped hands to a level with his eyes. They then began their weird music, standing on the two sides of the raised platform between the gate and the house, thus allowing a passageway between them for the guests.

The Princess told me that they were about to form a procession to go to the great street. I therefore took my leave in order that I might precede them and see the procession arrive, and witness the burning of the presents for the spirit.

When I arrived on the great street I there beheld a paper cart and horses which were intended to transport the spirit to the eastern heaven. There was a sedan chair for her use after her arrival, numerous servants, money, silk, and a beautiful, big house for her to dwell in, all made of paper. I had not long to wait for the procession, which was headed by the priests playing mournful, wailing music on large and small horns and drums. The priests were followed by the mourners and their friends. When they arrived at the place of the burning, the mourners prostrated themselves upon white cushions before the paper furnishings amid the shrieks of the instruments, the wailing of the hired mourners, and the petitions of the priests for the spirits to assist the departed on her way.

While this was going on, fire was applied to various parts of the paper pile, and in a moment a great flame sprang up into the air—a flame that could be seen from miles around, and in less time than it takes to tell it the whole was a heap of glowing ashes, the mourners had departed, and the little street children were stirring it up with long sticks.

The first three days after death, the spirit is supposed to visit the different temples, going, as it were, from official court to official court receiving judgment, and cards of merit or demerit to take with it, for the deeds done in the body. On the third day it returns to say farewell to the home, and then leaves for its long journey, and all this paper furniture is sent on ahead.

They continue forty-nine days of prayers by the priests, alternating three days by the Buddhists, three by the Lamas, and three by the Taoists, after which the Buddhists take their turn again. Everything else remains much as I have described it. The family, servants, everybody in mourning, and all business put aside to make way for this ceremony of mourning, mourning, mourning, when they ought to be rejoicing, for the poor old Princess had been a paralytic for years and was far better out of her misery.

The Princess frequently sent her cart for me during these days. Once when I was going through the court where there were vast quantities of things to be burned for the spirit, all made of paper, I noticed some that were so natural that I was unable to distinguish between them and the real things. Especially was this true of the furniture and flowers like that which had been in her apartments. There were great ebony chairs with fantastically marked marble seats, cabinets, and all the furniture necessary for her use. Among these things I noticed on the table a pack of cards and a set of dice, of which she had been very fond, and a chair like the one in which the eunuchs had carried the crippled old Princess about the court, and I said to the young Princess who accompanied me:

“You do not think your grandmother will require these things in the spirit world, do you?”

“Perhaps not,” she replied, “but she enjoyed her cards and dice, and the chair was such a necessity, that, whether she needs them or not, it is a comfort to us to get and send her everything she liked while she lived, and it helps us bear our sorrows.”

Chinese Princes and Officials

In any estimate of the forces which lead and control public opinion in China, everywhere from the knot of peasants in the hamlet to the highest officers of state and the Emperor himself, the literati, or educated class, must be given a prominent position. They form an immense body, increased each year by the government examinations. They are at the head of the social order. Every civil officer in the empire must be chosen from their number. They constitute the basis of an elaborate system of civil service, well equipped with checks and balances which, if corrected and brought into touch with modern life and thought, would easily command the admiration of the world. —Chester Holcomb in “The Real Chinese Question.”

One day while the head eunuch from the palace of one of the leading princes in Peking was sitting in my study he said:

“It is drawing near to the New Year. Do you celebrate the New Year in your honourable country?”

“Yes,” I replied, “though not quite the same as you do here.”

“Do you fire off crackers?”

“Yes, in the matter of firecrackers, we celebrate very much the same as you do.”

“And do you settle up all your debts as we do here?”

“I am afraid we do not. That is not a part of our New Year celebration.”

“Our Prince is going to take on two more concubines this New Year,” he volunteered.

“Ah, indeed, I thought he had three concubines already.”

“So he does, but he is entitled to five.”

“I should think it would make trouble in a family for one man to have so many women,” I ventured.

He waved his hand in that peculiar way the Chinese have of saying, don’t mention it, as he answered:

“That is a difficult matter to discuss. Naturally if this woman sees the Prince talking to that one, this one is going to eat vinegar,” which gives us a glimpse of some of the domestic difficulties in Chinese high life. However it is a fact worth remembering that the Manchu prince does not receive his full stipend from the government until he has five concubines, each of whom is the mother of a son.

The leading princes of the new regime are Ching, Su, and Pu-lun. Prince Ching has been the leader of the Manchus ever since the downfall of Prince Kung. He has held almost every office it was in the power of the Empress Dowager to give, “though disliked by the Emperor.” He was made president of the Tsungli Yamen in 1884, and from that time until the present has never been degraded, or in any way lost the imperial favour. He is small in stature, has none of the elements of the great man that characterized Li Hung-chang and Chang Chih-tung, or Prince Kung, but he has always been characterized by that diplomacy which has kept him one of the most useful officials in close connection with the Empress Dowager. It is to his credit moreover that the legations were preserved from the Boxers in the siege of 1900.

Prince Su is the only one of the eight hereditary princes who holds any office that brings him into intimate contact with the foreigners. During the Boxer siege he gave his palace for the use of the native Christians, and at the close was made collector of the customs duties (octoroi) at the city gates. Never had there been any one in charge of this post who turned in as large proportion of the total collections as he. This excited the jealousy of the other officials, and they said to each other: “If Prince Su is allowed to hold this position for any length of time there will never be anything in it for any one else.” They therefore sought for a ground of accusation, and they found it, in the eyes of the conservatives, in the fact that he rode in a foreign carriage, built himself a house after the foreign style of architecture, furnished it with foreign furniture, employed an Englishman to teach his boys, and as we have seen opened a school for the women and girls of his family. He therefore lost his position, but it is to the credit of Prince Chun, the new Regent, and his progressive policy, that Prince Su has been made chief of the naval department, of which Prince Ching is only an adviser.

The most important person among either princes or officials that has been connected with the new regime is Yuan Shih-kai. He was born in the province of Honan, that province south of the Yellow River which is almost annually flooded by that great muddy stream which is called “China’s Sorrow.” As a boy he was a diligent student of the Chinese classics and of such foreign books as had been translated into the Chinese language, but he has never studied a foreign tongue nor visited a foreign country. Here then rests the first element of his greatness—that without any knowledge of foreign language, foreign law, foreign literature, science of government, or the history of progress and of civilization, he has occupied the highest and most responsible positions in the gift of the