The Great Wall—Its failure as a defence—Forced labour—Mode of construction—Shih-Hwang-Ti orders all books to be burnt—Mandarins flung into the flames—The Shu-King is saved—How the sacred books came to be written—The sedan-chair and its uses—Modern hotels at Pekin—Examination of students for degrees—Cells in which they are confined—Kublai Khan conquers China—Makes Pekin his capital—Introduces paper currency—The Great Canal—Address to the three Philosophers—Marco Polo's visit to Pekin—His description of the Emperor—Kublai Khan's wife—Foundation of the Academy of Pekin—Hin-Heng and his acquirements—Death of Kublai Khan—Inferiority of his successors—Shun-Ti the last Mongol Emperor—Pekin in the time of the Mongols—When seen by Lord Macartney—The city as it is now.

It is a relief to turn from the terrible events which have given to Tien-tsin such a sinister notoriety to visit from it the celebrated Great Wall of China, the western termination of which is at no great distance from the town on the north. Begun by the Emperor Shih-Hwang-Ti, in B.C. 214, as a protection against the invasions of the Tartars, it was completed in the marvellously short time of five years, that energetic monarch sparing neither expense nor trouble, and ruthlessly sacrificing the lives of thousands of his subjects in his determination to keep out the hated barbarians. That he was not successful, but that his rampart in due time served his enemies better than it had done himself, is one of those ironies of fate with which the student of history is familiar. Tartars, Mongols, and Manchus have in their turn reigned over China from the sacred city, within the very defences supposed to be impregnable; the mighty wall remaining a standing proof, not of the wisdom, but of the short-sightedness of its builder.

To secure a sufficient number of men to work at his wall, Shih-Hwang-Ti issued an edict ordering every third labourer throughout the whole of the Empire to labour at it, and the unfortunate men thus selected were forced to work like slaves, with no wages but a scanty supply of food, their places when they fell down dead being quickly taken by other victims. The wall, when completed at the cost of so great an expenditure of human life, was fifteen hundred miles long; its breadth at the bottom was nearly twenty-five feet, and at the top fifteen feet, whilst it varied in height from fifteen to thirty feet. The materials employed would, it is said, be enough to build a wall six feet high and two feet thick to go twice round the world. Six horsemen could ride abreast upon it, and it was fortified by very strong towers, placed at regular intervals of about one hundred yards, that is to say, within two arrow-shots of each other, so that any one attempting to scale it would be covered from one tower or another by the guards stationed in them. The construction of the wall was very strong, the outside being formed of stone and brickwork, whilst the inside was filled up with earth. The wall started from the sea-shore at the Shan-Hai Pass, in N. Lat. 40° and E. Long. 119° 50', and ran over mountains, through valleys, and across rivers by means of arches, which are still marvels of engineering skill, to the most western province of Kan-su, where it ends at the Khiya Pass. Whilst only insignificant relics now remain of the immense Roman walls which once intersected England and France, this vast monument of an ambitious ruler still stands, ranking as one of the wonders of the world, an incidental proof that at the time of its erection, two thousand years ago, China must have already been a great and civilized Empire. There is no doubt that Shih-Hwang-Ti did succeed in centralizing authority, and absorbing the power of the numerous military chiefs who before his time reigned in the various small kingdoms, making up what is now the Celestial Empire.

Unfortunately, however, the monarch aimed rather at his own aggrandizement than at the good of his people, and his vainglorious desire to be looked upon as the founder of the Chinese monarchy led him to issue that celebrated edict, ordering all books and writings referring to his predecessors to be burnt, which inflicted an incalculable loss on future students of history. Those who endeavoured to evade this sweeping decree were to be punished by death, and according to some accounts, hundreds of literati were burnt on piles of the MSS. they had tried to save. In spite of all precautions, however, some few copies of the works of Confucius and other great writers were successfully hidden and brought out again on the death of the tyrant.

On this interesting subject Father Gaubil, in his valuable work on Chinese Chronology, says: "One thing is certain ... the books containing the geographical surveys and the departmental records were not burnt ... though the minister Lis-sse, like the Emperor himself, wished the people to remain ignorant, and know nothing about how the country was governed by the earlier kings, or to hear of the great and virtuous men of the past, or of the precepts left behind by them." It was this same minister, the Father tells us, who introduced the salutary reform of the use of one character only throughout the Empire, whereas before his time several different kinds of letters were employed in writing. This alphabet was known as the li-chu, and is supposed to be identical with that of the present day.

It was indeed fortunate that so many important manuscripts were saved from the general holocaust the sacrilegious Emperor had ordered, for had the Shu-King been destroyed, it would have been difficult to give any real account of the China of the past. This most celebrated and authentic of ancient books is supposed to have been begun about the year 2266 B.C., in the reign of the great Yao, brother of that King Ti-Ko, who introduced the polygamy still practised in China. This book, or rather collection of books, is to the Celestials what the Bible is to the Jews, the Koran to the Mahomedans, the Law-Book of Manu to the Hindus, and the Gospel to Christians. It is the very fountain-head of Chinese law, and not to be acquainted with its contents is to be unworthy of holding any place of trust in the Empire. Its authenticity is absolutely established, for it is well known that ever since the year 2637 B.C. there has been a historic Tribunal in Pekin, whose members are chosen from amongst the most distinguished literati of the whole Empire. Once appointed, these scholars can never be removed from office, and it is their duty to register daily everything of importance that occurs in any town, including meteorological and other natural phenomena, as well as what may be called purely historical events, such as the revolts, sieges, fires, and other misfortunes to which humanity is subject.

Father Amiot, a very cultivated and intelligent French missionary, says on the subject of the sacred books of the Shu-King: "The Chinese annals are superior to the historical documents of every other nation, because there is less fabulous matter in them, and because they are more ancient ... and more full of information of every kind ... They are worthy of our fullest confidence, because the epochs to which they refer are determined by astronomical observations, and the accounts of the events of all kinds which occur in those epochs can be mutually checked, and are found, when compared, to prove the good faith of the writers who have transmitted them to us."

They are indeed simply invaluable to the student, forming as they do absolutely trustworthy guides to their researches into the early history of China, carrying it back for long centuries, or rather sexagenaries, for, as already remarked, the Chinese chronology reckons by sixties, not hundreds of years. One incidental proof of their veracity is the fact that their writers, when not fully informed, have left gaps in their narratives instead of filling them up as so many chroniclers would have done with imaginary matter.

They are moreover works of literature rather than mere dry historical documents, and there is no series of books in the whole world on which so many able men have been employed as on the sacred records of the Chinese nation.

What tales the literati might have told in those old days of their adventures on their way to the capital to take up their work as chroniclers! Even when I made the journey from Tien-tsin to Pekin, before the opening of the railway, I had variety enough, travelling now by boat, now in a palanquin, now in a sedan-chair, and sometimes on horseback, and things must have been far worse in those early days of the beginning of history. One shudders to think of what our own diplomatic agents must have gone through when, after much difficulty, they did at last obtain the coveted honour of representing the Western powers in the chief city of the Celestial Empire. They must have suffered horribly, the more that their presence was thoroughly unwelcome, and it was the delight of every petty official to throw obstacles in their way. The old literati, on the other hand, were treated with the greatest respect, and except when they happened to make some mistake in their astronomical calculations, when their heads paid the forfeit, they lived in considerable luxury.

Pekin, though still not exactly the place Europeans would choose to live in, is now comparatively civilized, and in the spacious rooms of the European ambassadors the foreign residents dine, sup, and dance very much as they would in the capitals of their own countries. Thanks to the seclusion of the sedan-chairs, even ladies can go about without attracting notice, or having to pick their way through the ill-smelling rubbish which still encumbers the streets. No traveller in China with the slightest self-respect goes on foot, and any foreigner who attempts walking lays himself open to every insult. "A chair," says a writer who knows China well, "is far more effective than a passport," and the ambassadors and ambassadresses, the secretaries of legation, the consuls and their wives, employ large numbers of coolies to carry them to and fro. There is something truly wonderful in the way in which a mere handful of Europeans live their own lives, following their own customs, in the midst of a population of three hundred thousand Tartars, Mongols, and Manchus, not to speak of the four hundred thousand Chinese citizens, and the hundred thousand soldiers forming the garrison.

Pekin now actually boasts of two bakers who make bread of fine American flour, and are largely patronized by the foreign residents; and in the markets, the native cooks who cater for the Embassies, find plenty of variety for the tables of their employers at a very reasonable price, including two kinds of pheasant, the grey and the red-legged partridge. Wild geese and wild duck, the hare, the boar, the antelope and the roebuck are also all plentiful, and mutton can be had as tender as that of Wales, Normandy, or the Ardennes.

Not so very long ago, visitors to Pekin had to go to wretched inns where they were far from welcome, or to ask hospitality from the foreign residents, but now there are two hotels where travellers are as well treated as in the West. One, called the HÔtel FranÇais, is kept by a jovial Chinaman, who was at one time cook to an English diplomatist; the other, called the German Hotel, is managed by a burly native of Frankfort, who reminds me of nothing so much as of a Heidelberg tun. In these two inns the rooms are big, with wide chimneys and good windows, so that really it is possible to be quite comfortable in them, even in winter, if one can avoid the streets, with their deep mud or dust, as the case may be.

It is to Pekin that thousands of students who have already won the second degree of rank, as literati, flock to compete for the distinction known as the Tsen-Sze, which corresponds to some extent with that of a doctor of law in England. The scholar who comes out first in the examinations is considered for the current year the most learned man in all the eighteen provinces of China, and is privileged to choose a post in the very highest department of the Government.

Out of the nine or ten hundred candidates who are examined by the doctors of the Han-Lin College, three hundred are selected, and again tested in the presence of the Emperor. Then ten of these three hundred are picked out to compete once more for the coveted first grade, to win which is the ambition of every literary man in China, for it is equally open to all, though achieved by but few. The ten who are considered worthy are subjected to a very severe final test by a jury selected by the Emperor himself. Their replies to the examination questions are written out, richly bound, and placed before the so-called Son of Heaven, who reads all the manuscripts, and points out the three he considers the best. The authors of these three are raised to first rank, and are fÉted throughout the capital for three days, marching round it, accompanied by processions bearing flags, beating drums, etc. Of the rest of the three hundred, some become professors at the Han-Lin College, whilst others receive appointments in various parts of the country.

The hall in which the examinations take place has attached to it a number of very small cells, not more than six feet long by three wide and five high—an incidental proof of the average stature of the Chinese—in one of which each candidate is shut up alone, so that the judges maybe quite sure his work is all his own. The aspirant to literary honour is even searched to see that he has no books or papers hidden in his robes. He is then supplied with writing materials, and his replies to the questions put to him are not signed, so there is no fear of partiality on the part of the judges. The only furniture of the examination cell is a plank placed across it about fifteen inches above the ground to serve as a seat, and a little tablet fixed to the wall to be used as a desk. There is sometimes such a run upon the cells that a student has to wait for days before he can secure one. Amongst the cells named after the "Red Dragon," the little room is still shown in which the fourth Emperor of the present dynasty worked at certain of the usual examination papers with a view to shedding lustre on the literary life. He had the courage and perseverance to remain shut up in complete seclusion for nine days; but he evidently found the task he had set himself very arduous, for, since his experiment, students have been allowed to come out of their cells every three days to breathe the outer air and stretch their limbs.

The two most interesting facts connected with the history of Pekin are that it is one of the most ancient cities of the world, occupying the site of the capital of the old province of Yen, which is known to have been in existence 1200 years before the Christian era, and that it was made the seat of government by Kublai Khan, the first Mongol Emperor of China, grandson of the mighty conqueror Genghis Khan. This Kublai Khan, though a conqueror and of foreign race, so won the affections of the Chinese that he was justly called the Father of his people, and during his reign the country enjoyed a prosperity never since equalled. The native rulers who had preceded the Mongols had been mere phantom sovereigns, the puppets of their eunuchs and the women of their harems, altogether oblivious of the great example set them by the early monarchs of China.

The warlike and highly civilized Mongols had long since conquered all the districts north and west of the great wall of China, and for years had cast longing eyes at the fertile regions on the other side of that artificial barrier, and when Kublai Khan came to the throne, a mere child; the last survivor of the Soong line was Emperor of China. In this fact the Mongol ruler saw his opportunity, and is said to have sent the following message to the young prince: "Your family owes its rise to the minority of the last Emperor of the preceding dynasty, it is therefore just that you, a child, the last remnant of the line of Soong, should give place to another family."

Whether this Mongol expression of the time-honoured doctrine that might makes right ever reached the ears of the infant prince or not, the approach of the great Khan warriors so terrified the Court, that the Emperor and the ministers took refuge with him on the vessels in the harbour of Canton. There they were followed by the Tartar war-ships, and the terror they inspired was such that the fugitives all flung themselves into the sea, one of the chief grandees being the first to jump overboard with the young Emperor in his arms. More than one hundred soldiers and sailors are supposed to have perished on this fatal day, either from poison, by drowning, or at the hands of the enemy.

This terrible event took place in A.D. 1280 or 1281, when Kublai Khan became sovereign of the whole of China, and fixed his capital at what is now Pekin, but was then called Khan-balegh, or the capital of the Khan. He surrounded his palace with a wall six leagues in circumference, pierced by twelve gateways; the roofs of his residence were very lofty and spacious, richly decorated with gold and silver, and with paintings representing birds, horses, dragons, and other quaint symbolic animals. The roof of the palace was gilded, and six thousand warriors could take shelter in it at one time.

Kublai Khan, who was as wise in statecraft as in battle, took care not to interfere with the institutions of his new subjects; all the officials who submitted to him were allowed to retain their posts, and the Chinese themselves were exempted from military service. This of course concentrated all the power in the hands of the Mongols, and did more than anything else could have done to consolidate the new dynasty, though the Celestials themselves do not seem to have realized its full significance. The new Emperor was visited at his Court of Khan-balegh, or Cambalu, by Marco Polo, that most venturesome traveller and astute observer, whose account of his sojourn with the great Mongol conqueror gives so vivid a picture of life in China in the thirteenth century. Hospitably received by the Khan, the Venetian dwelt much in his book on the magnificence of his court, and makes the sage and humorous remark: "Kublai, who was the first to invent paper-money made from the inner bark of the mulberry-tree, had discovered the true philosopher's stone, for he could create wealth at his own desire."

A far greater boon than the introduction of paper currency was the making of the great canal, which rivals the celebrated wall in the skill of its construction, and has been of far more lasting value to the people of China than that monument of the energy and presumption of Shih-Hwang-Ti. One hundred and seventy thousand men were employed in this useful enterprise, which was not completed until after the death of its promoter. The wonderful waterway, before it fell into disrepair, extended from the capital to Hang-Chan in the province of Che-kiang, and was more than three hundred miles long. Marco Polo said of it: "He (Kublai Khan) has caused a water communication to be made in the shape of a wide and deep channel dug between stream and stream, between lake and lake, forming as it were a great river on which large vessels can ply."

Various sayings of the wise thinker and practical worker, at the head of the newly conquered country, have come down to us. Amongst these may be quoted as specially significant, the address made by the Emperor to three great philosophers whom he had summoned to his presence to aid him in the difficult task of government, in preventing the exodus of the inhabitants from the towns, and the desertion of the country by the cultivators. "You must help me," he said, "to make your fellow-countrymen listen to reason; they look upon us now as if we were bears or tigers; they are afraid of us when we only wish to do them good. My one desire is to make them happy under my rule, and they will believe it if you tell them so. You, Yao-Theu," he added, "I make general inspector of the agricultural districts; travel about in them, and manage to get them restored to their former owners and cultivated as before; I give you full authority to bring this about."

"As for you, Hin-Heng and Teo-mo, I place the people under your protection; watch over the health and tranquillity of the artisans and workmen, so that they labour as of yore, and that they look forward to enjoying the fruits of their industry in peace. Moreover, I give you full powers to re-open schools wherever they used to be, or to build new ones if you think it desirable; in a word, do all that you think will promote the good of the public—I approve in advance of everything you may decide on."

Long before the time of Richelieu, Kublai Khan formed an academy, to which flocked scholars and men of letters of every nationality. From India, from Persia, and from beyond the Oxus they came, as well as from the different countries of Europe, attracted by the fame of the learning in the Chinese capital. Marco Polo, who for three years was governor of one of the southern provinces of China, became a member of this academy, and Hin-Heng, one of the philosophers alluded to above, also belonged to it, excelling all his confrÈres in the variety of his acquirements. Speaking of him. Father Amiot says: "There was no science he had not studied, and he succeeded in them all ... he gave his attention to chronology, to history, and to music. He was a geometrician and astronomer, and he was one of the savants who worked at the reform of the Chinese almanac ... he was well versed in the ancient history of his nation, he knew the laws and customs of his native land, and explained them so clearly that Kublai Khan entrusted to him the drawing up of the code for his dynasty. To all this knowledge he added that of the Mongol language, in which he composed several excellent works, not to speak of the translations he made of the best Chinese books.... He also made commentaries on the Shu-King, or sacred books."

Very vivid is the light thrown by these quotations on the civilization of the capital of China under the Mongol ruler, and, thanks once more to Marco Polo, we are able to form a very accurate idea of the personal appearance of Kublai Khan. "The great Lord of lords," the celebrated traveller tells us, "is of a good stature, neither little nor big, but of medium height ... his limbs are well formed ... his face is white, with cheeks like a rose; his nose is well shaped and prominent." The chronicler further tells us that Kublai Khan had four wives, whom he treated exactly alike, and that his eldest, no matter by which mother, would succeed him when he died. According to other authorities, one wife alone enjoyed the title of Empress, and she had three hundred female slaves to attend upon her.

The founder alike of the Mongol, or, as it is sometimes called, the Yuan dynasty, and of Pekin, lived to the advanced age of eighty-three, and was succeeded by his grandson Timur; but able as that prince was, he was by no means equal to his predecessor. Later members of the Tartar race, who occupied the Chinese throne, did not follow the example of the old Manchu rulers, so that the wonderfully-organized government of Kublai Khan gradually fell to pieces, and at the end of seventy-three years yet another new dynasty supplanted that which had appeared so firmly established. No one can wonder at this who reads the stories told of Shun-Ti, the ninth and last Mongol sovereign, who, called to the supreme power at the early age of thirteen, amused himself by watching the dancing of sixteen young girls, called the sixteen spirits, and wasted time and treasure in endeavouring to pry into the future, with the aid of soothsayers, whilst he neglected every duty he owed to God and to his subjects.

Marco Polo left a glowing description of the Imperial Palace at Kambala, or Pekin, where, he tells us, "twice five miles of fertile ground, with walls and towers, were girdled round," and as late as 1793, when Lord Macartney visited the city, he found that it was still very much what it had been in the thirteenth century. On the change of dynasty, after the expulsion of Shun-Ti, the capital was transferred to Nanking, but in 1421 Pekin was restored to its old dignity, and its walls were still further extended. In the following centuries its fortunes fluctuated greatly, and it was not until 1860, when it was taken by the Anglo-French forces, that it began to assume anything of its present appearance. The central or inner city, known as the Manchu, is divided into three parts: the Purple Forbidden Town containing the imperial residences; the Imperial or August City, with the great temples, where the imperial family worship their ancestors; and the general city, beyond which again is the so-called Chinese town, consisting of a net-work of lanes and alleys, with two wide thoroughfares intersecting each other at right angles.

The foreign legations are all grouped together in the south-eastern corner of the August City, and consist of Chinese palaces transformed into a semblance of European houses. The French Legation is the largest, though perhaps not the most comfortable, and is situated in the centre of a very fine park. After describing the imperial palaces, the temples and pagodas of Pekin, and remarking on the great uniformity of their style of architecture, a modern writer, who knows the city well, says: "The chief ornaments of the streets are the fronts of the shops; large panels of carved wood, sometimes gilded, frame the faÇades, the carvings representing dragons, phoenixes, etc., the effect being very decorative ... on the other hand, the private houses, with their lofty walls and numerous entrance courts, do nothing to contribute to the beauty of the street." The modern Chinese are ardent lovers of their homes, and the humblest artisan lives alone, with his family, in the strictest seclusion. "There is nothing," adds this true observer, "to distinguish any one house from another, and it is the same with the theatres and opium dens; uniformity is the guiding principle in everything, and even the priests of the various missions have adopted the Chinese customs and mode of plaiting the hair." The town of Pekin is, in fact, unique in the power it seems to have of making all who reside in it conform to one style. It perfectly represents the country of which it is the capital, with its intense hostility to innovation, holding itself aloof from every other nation, ignoring the very existence of the West for more than twenty-five centuries, and only waking up to its existence to despise it as the home of outer barbarians. But of late years there has been change in the very air even of Pekin; the opening of the railway from it to Tien-tsin, two years ago, was indeed a significant sign of the times, and the next decade will doubtless witness the breaking down of convention even in that stronghold of conservatism, the Purple Forbidden City. Already Tartar carts, Chinese chaises, blue and green sedan-chairs, strings of camels, condemned prisoners wearing the fatal cangue, Buddhist priests chanting litanies, and even eunuchs of the Emperor himself, in their black and yellow uniforms, are jostled by riders on horseback or by carriages, but little different from those in use in Paris and London. The West has introduced the thin edge of the wedge of its civilization into the inner citadel, the time-honoured watchword of "China for the Chinese" has lost its conjuring power, and the attempt of the Empress Dowager to revive it can but end in disaster for her and those she rules in such an arbitrary and old-fashioned style.