The Marble Bridge—The Tartar City—Objects of Art—Japanese lacquering—Interments—The Observatory—The Imperial Palace—The Temples—The four harvests—Kinds of tea—Departure from Pekin—Tien-tsin—The sea at last.

The following day we went first to pay our respects to Monseigneur de Laplace, the bishop of Pekin, who was then residing at the Mission of the PÈres Lazaristes.

To get there we had to go over the marble bridge, which is one of the local wonders. This bridge rises in a saddle-back over a pond, I might say a little lake, and this is surrounded by the gardens of the Imperial palace. Unfortunately, the profusion of aquatic flowers with which this pond is so gay during summer were not yet in bloom, still we could, at least, admire the picturesque view from the marble bridge.

Mounds undoubtedly artificial, but called here by the grand name of mountains, rise in waving outline around this piece of water. They are covered with rare trees, surmounted with kiosks, and those little constructions which we call pagodas. Pavilions are raised on piles above the water. The soil is covered with grass and creeping plants, that stretch along the ground and fall into the lake. The whole is delightfully cool, shady, and attractive, and laid out with unusual refinement of taste.

The Mission of the Lazaristes is built in the middle of this charming spot. All the fathers wear the Chinese costume, and I found it odd to call RÉvÉrends PÈres these men in papooches, and adorned with pigtails as long as those of the Chinese: it is true their tresses are false, or nearly all false, but they would scarcely be supposed to be factitious unless seen very near.

The finest part of Pekin is that surrounding the palace: it is known by the name of the Tartar city. The great merchants and the most famous dealers in curiosities live here, and carry on their business as well.

The houses have simply a ground floor and no other storey; but their faÇades in the streets are of wood sculptured and gilt. The thickness of the ornamentation is considerable, and the carvings are sunk into it with a delicacy quite Chinese in its way. I do not know what one of these house fronts would be worth in France. Let the reader fancy a whole street lined with such shops glittering with gilding under a brilliant sky, and revealing, tastefully disposed in their interiors, embellished with these rich frames, all the wonders of Asiatic fairy-land.

I am sorry to be obliged here to undeceive, perhaps, my readers with regard to the fine Chinese collections which they imagine they possess at home. I am far from saying there are not in Europe admirable specimens of Chinese art. But, generally, all the articles offered for sale in England and France come from the southern cities, from Canton, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, and consequently are the productions of second-rate makers. Pekin art is almost everywhere still unknown, and it will easily be understood why it should be so, when it is remembered that Europeans are not allowed to carry on business in the capital of the Celestial Empire. Our last expeditions have not procured us any more liberty in this respect. The specimens of the art of Pekin are, therefore, almost exclusively bought by tourists on their visits, who do not dispose of them by way of trade. There may be seen in France, it is true, enamels in cloisonnÉ work, but they give no idea of the marvels of the kind of work tourists may admire in the temple of Pekin. But there are entire panels much less known, representing landscapes, produced by the application of lacquer to porcelain; screens, wherein dyed ivory is applied to open-carved woodwork; or lacquered folding screens with ornamentation produced by the coloured transparent stones of Mongolia. The latter kind of work presents objects of incomparable beauty, and one is never tired of admiring them. There are also vases in uniform enamel, generally blue with designs in white, level with the surface, having a most graceful effect. This kind of vase is not rare at Pekin, and yet very little known in Europe.

Whilst I am describing the art of the extreme East, I should like to enlighten the reader a little on Japanese lacquers, though I intend drawing my notes of travel to a close at Tien-tsin, and to say nothing of those Japan islands—a sojourn dear as a souvenir of pleasure and joy. All the productions to which we in France give this pompous title of laque au Japon, consist merely of surfaces of varnished wood. In the true lacquer, on the contrary, the drawings in bold relief are composed of pure gold, and the ground-work is covered with adventurine reduced to a powder before application. Objects in true lacquer command therefore, in Japan, exorbitant prices.

I one day asked at Yeddo the price of a cabinet resembling pretty much those that are become now so common in France, and are generally sold with us for two or three hundred francs. The dealer demanded twenty-five thousand francs for it. A little square box of about four inches each way, of genuine lacquer, is worth, in Japan, from eight hundred to one thousand francs. I shall not enter into the subject of Chinese porcelain, because this alone would form matter for a volume: besides, I did not remain long enough at Pekin to become well acquainted with this delicate department of Chinese art, more difficult to master. I will simply mention two kinds of vases in porcelain which appeared to me much esteemed. The one sort is ornamented with large Chinese figures, having in the middle a medallion representing some scene in character with the surroundings. The other is covered with designs in bold relief, also of porcelain, and coloured. These two kinds of vases, it seems, originated three or four hundred years ago, and are worth generally from four to seven hundred francs. What are known also as pretty little thin cloisonnÉ enamels, date also from about the same epoch, and fetch considerable prices in China. These cloisonnÉ enamels are rather rare in Europe. They may be recognised by their designs being more sunk and less regular than in those relatively modern, and especially by certain parts of them, where the transparency of the enamel permits the copper on which it is laid to be seen beneath.

As I have just mentioned, the streets of the Tartar quarter are lined with shops, exposing in their fronts the beautiful articles just described. In the roadway the throng of people is even greater than in the villages I had passed through.

The crowds of people on foot are obliged to stand aside constantly to make way for the palanquins of the grandees, borne by men; the two-wheeled carriages of the mandarins, who may be seen through the black or green persiennes, wrapped in their long robes of embroidered silk; the horses, the camels, the travelling palanquins with mules, then the marriage and funeral processions. The latter occupy a considerable space, and stretch over five hundred or a thousand yards, according to the dignity of the deceased. The poor carry in the line of procession parasols, poles surmounted with hands in gilt wood, and all kinds of amulets. Then follow the objects that belonged to the defunct; his horse, his carriage, in which is generally set up an effigy in wax representing his features, and if a mandarin, wearing his court costume. At last is seen the coffin, made of oak about two and a half inches thick, and placed on a catafalque. The great bier is borne by at least forty or sixty men. The relatives dressed in white, the mark of mourning, precede the coffin, throwing flowers in the way, burning incense, and going through a ceremony of respect to the dead every eighty or hundred steps. For this demonstration the procession comes to a halt. They spread on the ground a white cloth, and the mourners, prostrating themselves entirely face downwards, strike their foreheads, on the ground. This part of the ceremony finished, they get up and the procession proceeds, with these interludes, to some land belonging to the deceased, where the coffin is deposited on the ground in the open air and left there without burial. When the coffin decays they form a tumulus of earth around it, but it is never put into a grave. The spot remains ever afterwards sacred, and can be used no more for cultivation.

It may be imagined what an immense extent of valuable land the Chinese lose through this custom. It is known what many quarrels it also leads to in the towns along the coast inhabited by Europeans: the subject has been too often discussed to make it worth while to say anything about it here.

Among the great concourse of people in the Tartar city may be seen a multitude of conjurers exercising their wonderful feats in the open air.

Their dexterity is surprising; for they execute their tricks among the spectators without the convenient aid of tables and boxes with false bottoms, which are such valuable adjuncts in theatres. Some of them perform even dangerous feats: they leap head-foremost through a cylinder placed horizontally, bristling with nails and pointed blades. I should never come to an end if I were to describe everything that obtrudes itself on the sight in these wide streets of the Tartar city. Nowhere else can be seen such a varied and picturesque kaleidoscope as here meets the astonished eye.

Unfortunately, side by side with these marvels, one turns with disgust from other sights repulsive to European civilization. All along the streets vast holes are sunk for a purpose it would be embarrassing to explain. There is no city in the world so noisome, and I can easily understand why the personnel of the legations prefer remaining shut up four and five months at a time in their fine residences and grounds, to seeking any recreation in such a polluted atmosphere.

We visited the observatory, constructed by the Chinese under the direction of the Jesuits. The scientific instruments to be seen there are admirable. They are made of bronze, supported on feet of the same metal, in which all the fancies of Chinese art have been lavished. The contortions of these mountings, composed of dragons and grotesque monsters, produce a striking contrast to the regular forms of the spheres, the parallel lines and astronomical figures which they sustain at a great height in the air.

I have seen at Pekin, in the temples of the Mongolian lamas, or of the priests of Buddha, splendid enamels and objects of great value; but I have never found in China, nor even in Japan, where bronze is, certainly, turned to better account than in the Celestial Empire, anything so artistic, in the strict meaning of the term, as the apparatus of this observatory. The taste of the Chinese it must be admitted is very questionable. One may admire, especially, the colours of their porcelain, the soft hues of their ancient enamels, and the harmony of the tints in their embroidered stuffs; but in their designs, in the forms of their objects and personages, many faults and even repulsive monstrosities may be noticed. But the instruments of the Pekin Observatory are, in my opinion, above all criticism. Fancifulness certainly abounds therein, but it is only within just bounds: the supports I have just mentioned are so slender, so delicately worked, that they seem quite foreign and distinct from the spheres they sustain, and these indeed produce the illusion of being maintained by their proper force like real celestial worlds.

Before quitting this spot I took from the top a panoramic view of this immense capital, and the prospect extended over a considerable distance. The golden roofs of the merchants’ houses of the Tartar city were glittering with splendour in the sun; then I remarked the not less brilliant green porcelain roofs of the fortresses rising above the chief gates, the blue porcelain roofs of the pagodas, of the Temple of Heaven, and of the Temple of Agriculture, and then, particularly, the Imperial palace, covered with yellow porcelain. The Imperial palace of China is the abode of mystery; a mystery no one can boast of having penetrated. It is a little spot, unknown and deserted, amid these teeming millions of human beings—a recess into which no European has ever entered, and wherein only a very limited number of Chinese can penetrate once in the twenty-four hours, and then only in the darkest hours of the night.

The audience which the Emperor gave a few years ago to the European ministers, and which made a considerable sensation, did not take place even in the palace. The Son of Heaven did not deign to show himself here to the ministers but in a pavilion so far removed from the mysterious palace that it is plainly visible from the marble bridge.

Many reports have circulated in Europe regarding the private life of the Emperors of China, and the internal regulations of the palace. M. BerthÉmy, the French minister in Japan, whom I had the honour to meet at Yokohama, and who had previously been in China for many years, said: “All that has been retailed about the interior of the Imperial palace of Pekin can only be a mere fable, for it is impossible for anyone to know anything about it. The only thing that seems to me likely, because it has been declared to me by all the mandarins, is that the Emperor is subjected to a severe etiquette, and that he would be immediately assassinated by his own guards if he attempted to set it aside.”

The sight of the yellow roofs of this palace produced on me a deep impression, and on reposing at my ease at the Embassy I compared in my mind the existence of this poor Emperor, a slave to etiquette, to our good king Saint Louis showing himself to his people and administering justice under an oak in the Bois de Vincennes. How many unhappy there are in this world in all the scales of the social hierarchy!

I shall say little of the Temple of Heaven, and of the Temple of Agriculture, because they are not interesting. The first especially is unworthy of the exalted name it bears. It is in an immense park surrounded with walls, in which chapels and pretty pavilions, covered with blue porcelain, are distributed, and where a subdued light penetrates through blinds composed of little tubes of blue glass placed parallel. A platform of white marble is raised in the middle of the park, and it is here the Emperor occasionally comes to offer with his own hand sacrifices to the Divinity.

The curious portion of the Temple of Agriculture and its precincts is a field where, every year, on a certain day, the Emperor, holding in his hand a plough, makes a furrow along the ground, as if to give an example to his subjects. The remainder of the field is afterwards ploughed by the mandarins. This ceremony shows how much agriculture, the principal source of the wealth of the country, is honoured in China. With their two annual harvests of corn, the Chinese succeed in providing bread at a moderate price, and by exporting their tea and their rice they draw gold into their country from all parts of the world. Their method of cultivation very much resembles the Egyptian system. They divide their fields into little squares, around which water is conducted for irrigation to all parts. This water flows from numerous canals winding through the country, and is supplied by contrivances worked by Chinese labourers like the Egyptian shadoufs. For the cultivation of rice the little squares are surrounded with an embankment high enough to maintain over the field a sheet of water several inches deep. The land thus disappears completely. When I visited the rice fields in the month of May, the seed, lately sown, hardly sprouted above the surface of the water.

The tea is a little shrub, a foot and a half to two feet high. The leaves are gathered from May to August, according to the species, and also according to the quality required. There are in China growths of tea as there are in France growths of wine. The nature of the soil and the different kinds of plants produce the varieties known to the trade. The most esteemed kind is known by the name of yellow tea. It is the ordinary drink of the Emperor of China and the Emperor of Russia.

This tea is so valuable, that in Siberia, in certain even rich families, I have sometimes seen one cup of it only made in my honour, whilst my hosts deprived themselves of it by reason of economy. It would not be interesting here to enumerate the different growths, because they are not known by their original names. The various kinds are named in France according to the mode of gathering: thus pearl tea is from small leaves gathered at the beginning of spring, soon after their formation. The thÉ À pointes blanches is made of a mixture of leaves and flowers. The white points are merely the dried flowers of the shrub; this is the reason this kind is the strongest. One of the commonest kinds is the brick tea, which I have already mentioned as serving for money in Mongolia; and finally the commonest tea, which through some preparation I am ignorant of presents an odd appearance. It has also the form of a brick, but it is quite black, and neither a stalk nor a leaf can be seen in it, as in the other bricks. On looking at it, it might be supposed to be a block of coal or peat. This tea is sold for a mere trifle, and is a great resource for the poor of Siberia as well as China.

The intelligence and skilfulness of the Chinese are everywhere apparent, and they know how to turn these advantages to account in everything. They have also brought to great perfection the art of sail-making. I am not acquainted with all the systems adopted in France, but in mentioning the lateen sail (la voile latine), which bears the name of our race, I mention, I believe, one of the inventions of Europe. But this lateen sail in swelling out excessively under the action of the wind does not at the same time utilize all the force this moving power is capable of imparting. Besides, in squalls, the handling consists in slackening the rope that ties it below. The canvas flapping then at the top of the mast imparts a pitching or tossing to the boat that may be very dangerous. This method of sailing is, therefore, imperfect. The Chinese sail is, on the contrary, held in by a series of parallel bars, and thus constantly opposes an even surface to the play of the wind. Then, with the aid of a pulley at the top of the mast, it can be lowered to any degree. In this way the Chinese may, in the most violent squalls, still have a sail spread that offers little, much above the deck, for the storm to grapple with, consequently exposing in no way the ship to danger.

I might quote many examples of this ingenious and practical mind; and in travelling through China I have conceived the highest opinion of the intelligence, the cleverness, and the perseverance of the Chinese. There is only one thing wanting to these people: a government that will let them know there are other nations in the world besides the Chinese; that these nations have also a civilization, from which it would be judicious and especially profitable to borrow certain inventions. But the day will come, and perhaps it is not afar, when the Chinese will immigrate into Europe, as they already immigrate into Japan, California, and Peru; they will form at Marseilles, Paris, and London more important quarters than the depÔts of Shanghai, Macao, and Saigon, and foreign commerce will take an expansion unknown with this nation.

The majority of the French people believe the intelligence of the Japanese is very superior to that of the Chinese. It is a serious mistake. The Japanese resemble us very much in their character, and that is the reason this people pleases travellers. They are gay, enterprising, boastful, disputative, and a little revolutionary. There is in Japan an actual pretender, and consequently among the Japanese partisans of such and such a family, and, perhaps, even republicans more or less democratic or socialistic. The French, therefore, like the Japanese, and on the other hand the Japanese admire the French. They create a little army in which they adopt our costumes; nothing is more singular than to see a chasseur de Vincennes mounting guard in the streets of Yeddo. They construct little railways, little telegraphs; but in the end these things are not serious, because in the first place there is not, nor can be, anything serious in these people; these applications of our inventions are insignificant because they are confined to a little tongue of land very narrow along the sea, beyond which it is impossible for Europeans to penetrate. The interior of Japan is absolutely closed to us, whilst we are perfectly free to travel from one end of China to the other. It is, therefore, I consider, quite an error to suppose that Japan is marching towards civilization. The existing transformations are limited to a very minute portion of the territory, and consequently have no significance.

The Chinese government does not permit to its people either telegraphs or railways, or anything that is European; but the day when the Chinese, through some much desired revolution, will have obtained these concessions from its government, it will not only apply our inventions with judgment but will perfect them, and perhaps we shall be astonished one fine day to learn from the Chinese the means of uniting on railways the highest speed with the greatest security. To impose on the Chinese a new form of government, or on the existing government a new constitution, is what our last expedition there should have taken in hand, instead of destroying the Summer Palace, a piece of work repugnant to my feelings to dwell on.

A little lake, surrounded entirely with marble galleries and covered with miniature islands, in the middle of which are displayed the most charming pavilions in the world; a large range of steps in porcelain, rising to the top of the hill of Wan-tcho-chan, and two little temples in porcelain,—these are the remains of the marvels that once astonished the wondering sight in this palace and surrounding park.

I took leave of my kind hosts at the Legation of Pekin, whose hospitality and attentions I shall never forget, on the 18th of May, and went to Tien-tsin by the course of the Peiho. M. Rystel, then at the Consulate of Tien-tsin, entertained us very agreeably the time we were obliged to wait for a boat, and at last, on the 24th of May, I embarked for Shanghai with my three young companions already mentioned. I could not make up my mind to leave Pablo at Tien-tsin, and I, therefore, took him with me. The poor fellow was so faithful and devoted, and never ceased expatiating with tears in his eyes on the far niente life he had enjoyed, with so much good living, at the Embassy of Pekin. On going to sea at the mouth of the Peiho I was overcome with rapture. For this great sea is all one, and, in washing the shores of every land it touches, it brought me nearer to my native land; its waves caressed as lovingly the beaches of Trouville and Biarritz as the cliffs of the gulf of Pei-Chi-Li.

My fatiguing travels over the Siberian steppes and the Desert of Gobi were decidedly at an end, and I now had before me the prospect of my friends and my home.

My readers, perhaps, will wonder what could have induced me to have undertaken so wearisome a journey: I had imagined the bright side of it only then, but now I have seen the other I can advise them not to follow my example; for though there are many novel, grand, and striking scenes of nature, accompanied with much exciting adventure, still they are not to be enjoyed in so rigorous a climate as that of Siberia in Winter without incurring much hardship, and even a certain exposure to a considerable share of danger.