Court Life in China

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ISAAC TAYLOR HEADLAND'S THREE BOOKS THAT "LINK EAST AND WEST"

Court Life in China: The Capital Its Officials and People.

The Chinese Boy and Girl

Chinese Mother Goose Rhymes

COURT LIFE IN CHINA
THE CAPITAL
ITS OFFICIALS AND PEOPLE

By ISAAC TAYLOR HEADLAND Professor in the Peking University

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 instituted 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 participation 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 assist 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.

CONTENTS

I. THE EMPRESS DOWAGER--HER EARLY LIFE
II. THE EMPRESS DOWAGER--HER YEARS OF TRAINING
III. THE EMPRESS DOWAGER--AS A RULER
IV. THE EMPRESS DOWAGER--AS A REACTIONIST
V. THE EMPRESS DOWAGER--AS A REFORMER
VI. THE EMPRESS DOWAGER--AS AN ARTIST
VII. THE EMPRESS DOWAGER--AS A WOMAN
VIII. KUANG HSU--HIS SELF DEVELOPMENT
IX. KUANG HSU--AS EMPEROR AND REFORMER
X. KUANG HSU--AS A PRISONER
XI. PRINCE CHUN--THE REGENT
XII. THE HOME OF THE COURT--THE FORBIDDEN CITY
XIII. THE LADIES OF THE COURT
XIV. THE PRINCESSES--THEIR SCHOOLS
XV. THE CHINESE LADIES OF RANK
XVI. THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE CHINESE WOMAN
XVII. THE CHINESE LADIES--THEIR ILLS
XVIII. THE FUNERAL CEREMONIES OF A DOWAGER PRINCESS
XIX. CHINESE PRINCES AND OFFICIALS
XX. PEKING--THE CITY OF THE COURT
XXI. THE DEATH OF KUANG HSU AND THE EMPRESS DOWAGER
XXII. THE COURT AND THE NEW EDUCATION

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 pronounced 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 Japanese 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 assent.

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 nobody
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 constituted 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 constitution and
a fund of experience and information which can be obtained in no
other way. She was one of the great middle class. 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 illustrated 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 principal 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 substitute." 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
substitute, 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, 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 so when she had the good fortune,--or shall we say
misfortune,-- for as we have seen it is variously regarded by
Chinese parents to be taken into the palace, she found there
educated eunuchs who were set aside as teachers of the imperial
harem. She was bright, attractive, and I think I may add without
fear of contradiction, very ambitious, and this in no bad sense.
She devoted herself to her studies with such energy and diligence
as not only to attract the attention of the teacher, but to make
herself a fair scholar, a good penman, and an exceptional
painter, and it was not long until, from among all the
concubines, she had gained the attention and won the
admiration--and shall we say affection--not only of the Empress,
but of the Emperor himself, and she was selected as the first
concubine or kuei fei, and from that time until the death of the
Empress the two women were the staunchest of friends.

The new favourite had been a healthy and vigorous girl, with
plenty of outdoor life in childhood, and it was not long before
she became the happy mother of Hsien Feng's only son. She was
thenceforward known as the Empress-mother. In a short time she
was raised to the position of wife, and given the title of
Western Empress, as the other was known as the Eastern, from
which time the two women were equal in rank, and, in the eyes of
the world, equal in power.

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