“The glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome” are unearthed a foot at a time to the wondering eyes of the world by the tireless antiquarian-architect. China has some extensive ruins that show the death struggle of a dynasty with the tooth of the destroyer, Time. Near Singan, in Shensi province, are the ruins of the tombs, arches and palaces of the builder of the Great Wall. On the left bank of the Orkhon River in Mongolia, southwest of Kuren, are the ruins of the Uigur empire, seventh to ninth centuries, A.D. These Mongols were first Buddhist, then Nestorian Christian, and afterward Mohammedan in faith, and their fathers took part in the terrific invasions of Europe that have made Russia one quarter Asiatic. Ujfalvy, Schott and Professor Thomsen have written books on the race, and Heikel and Radlov explored the ruins in 1890–1. On the right bank of the same river, fifteen miles southeast, at the edge of the Gobi Desert, are the ruins of the Mongol empire of the thirteenth century, founded by Ogodai Khan in 1234 A.D., and whose greatest conqueror, Kublai Khan, of whom Marco Polo wrote, overran all China and Turkestan. Had it not been for a lucky storm that destroyed his armada, he would have overrun Japan also. One hundred and fifty miles northwest of Pnom Penh, in a deserted tropical jungle, are the ruins of the Khmer dynasty which ruled Cambodia from the eighth to the twelfth centuries. Two hundreds miles north of Angkor, at Korat, are further Khmer ruins. The other ruins and tombs of old China are those of the Ming dynasty at Nankou pass, north of Peking, and Nanking; the Manchu dynasty at Mukden and northwest of Peking; and the Sung dynasty at Hangchow. The tomb of Prince Ki Chah of the then Chinese bronzes date back as far as the imperial Chou dynasty (1120 B.C.) which instituted the sacrifices and The new bronze portrait statue of Li Hung Chang at the Sicawei Gardens, Shanghai, is unusual, and marks a new era in memorials in China, pailoo arches and tablets having formerly been erected. True, there are many fanciful statues to Buddha and Confucius, and one to Marco Polo in the In Szechuen province, the piers of bridges have a stone dragon as a terminal, the head looking up-stream, and across the bridge, the tail pointing down-stream. The proportions are beautiful and the effect delightful. The best known and most beautiful camel’s back bridge in the empire is at Wan Hsien at the head of the Yangtze gorges. Stone steps mount up the arch, which is crowned with a beautiful house of blue stucco. The house is used as a rest place, and a restaurant These bridges show how much the Chinese understood of engineering and also that they were good masons. In the caves along the Min River in Szechuen province, pottery coffins have been found, dating back previous to the Christian era, and showing that the early Chinese of the Chou dynasty did not bring all the civilization of China with them, but found many arts among the aborigines. At Ning Hsia, an oasis city in the horn of Kansu province, is a peculiar pagoda where the joylessness of the north has cut the curling ten galleries down to mere ridges, and roofed the eleven stories with a mere turban roof. Each story has Roman windows, except the top, which has circular Many of the poorer huts of Pechili province are built of clay poured around a reinforcing of kaoliang stalks. Sometimes tiles are set in the clay roof, which is very heavy, and in the rainy season, it often falls in on the tenant. In Kiangsu province the thatching is made of reeds. Of course improvements are often designed, and they attempt to make a cement or chunam by mixing burnt lime and stone in the clay. The very poor, however, really live in mud burrows like the fox, whether the mud is made At the Edinburgh Mission Conference of the nations in 1908, the Chinese pleaded for the preservation of their architecture. Too great praise can not be given the British for their taste in occupying a Chinese palace as legation headquarters at Peking. Many missions, every foreign business house, nearly every foreign college, the government itself in its new buildings, even the kindred Japanese, and nearly every foreign legation, are all housed in an ugly adaptation of a Renaissance building with verandas. The fashion came from Singapore and Hongkong, but Hongkong gets some picturesqueness out of the style because that colonial city has a mountain to terrace it on. The ventilation and light are poor; the roof is hideous. There is one foreign architect whose soul will never escape from the purgatory of bad architects. He designed for the Honan Assembly a hall at Kaifong which is Moorish in general design; the roof is a Roman dome; the arches are Gothic; and the screens are Chinese. The Japanese do not bring their St. John’s University (American Episcopal), of Shanghai, has made the laudable concession of putting a Chinese roof on its valuable foreign buildings. The eaves have a slight Chinese up-turn, but there is little of Chinese ornament in apron, ridge, column, double roof, or pagoda spire here and there. However, America, nearly always the leader in sympathy with the Chinese, has here made a beginning in saving China’s peerless architecture and art. At Kweiyang, the capital of Kweichou, the French have erected a notable pagoda church, which concedes to Chinese canons a five-story pagoda entrance, and the rear faÇade is formed as a pailoo with five roofs. With the same idea the British architect has placed on the costly Renaissance “Audience Hall”, of Bangkok, three ornate Burmese pagoda spires. As Greece stands for simplicity and line, China stands for richness, curve and color. She should not die, if according to Keats, “a thing of beauty is a joy forever.” Ruskin insisted in his famous lectures to artistic Edinburgh that the salient feature of a building was the roof, and that there adornment should be rich, like a woman’s hair, or hat, her “crown of glory”. This rule, perhaps indirectly, he took from the Chinese, who from the buried centuries have undeviatingly been faithful to it. The Assembly Herald of the American Presbyterian Church, January, 1912, page twenty-seven, illustrates a gem of modern Chinese architecture. It is a chapel built by a native It is not the custom in stores, temples or homes to keep curios, silks, etc., on view. They are all wrapped in paper, and kept in boxes or cupboards. When a trusted guest arrives, there is an exciting scene as the treasures are unpacked and revealed to admiring eyes. China has always had court painters, a notable one in the reign of the Empress Dowager Tse Hsi being Li Shih Chuan. He was a believer in joy, and developed the more human aspects of the countenance. He was a master in painting fine gowns, dainty embroideries and rich furniture. Portrait paintings are not common, but in the Yangtze provinces some are to be seen. They are in water color and painted on screens. Actors carry an enormous bamboo or ivory tusk, on which is engraved or painted their repertoire. The giver of a feast selects from this the plays which he wishes to have performed for his guests. The Chinese manufacture a hard wall-paper, similar to what we call Lincrusta Walton and use on the walls of our parlor cars and saloons of steamships. The mold is of hard wood, on which the sharp design is carefully chiseled en relievo. The blotter-like bamboo paper composition is hammered on this mold, then taken off and sun-dried. Sizing is applied. Afterward the design and final Ningpo or Szechuen rhus-nut varnishing is added. The Chinese of Queens Road, Hongkong, made me two bamboo trunks that have served me on a trip around the world, and are strong enough to make several more. They are remarkable in five important points, elasticity, lightness, strength, resistance to dampness, and cheapness in purchase price and transportation cost. Travelers and explorers bemoan the fact that excess baggage charges cost them almost as much as passenger fares. This problem the wonderful Chinese solved with these remarkable trunks. The framework is of strong bamboo, on which a tough rattan and bamboo envelope is wound. This is lined with soldered zinc, and covered with strong canvas, and for serviceability in the five important points mentioned, the iron and leather trunks can not compare. Go to the Chinese, thou traveler, and be wise! Many of the chairs used at Tientsin have a dome-top, with curious scale design and knob, and are therefore more Burmese than Chinese in design. The chairs of Hongkong are strictly flat-topped. Jade is green, pink and crystal, and retains a soapy glisten. Jades buried in tombs as mortuary ornaments, however, acquire a brown smoky tinge, and the distinction should be made in assorting collections at museums. The Bishop collection of art jades, and the Peters collection of tomb jades in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, are deservedly world famous. Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company. The Japanese type of girlhood, as contrasted with the Chinese, shown in another photograph. The typical Chinese rug shows beautiful apricot ground, spangled with blue medallions. Rich brown and gold rugs are also frequently made, the centers of weaving being Tientsin, Nanking, Hangchow, Canton, etc. The most accessible places where specimens are shown are the large museums. The yellow rugs are used in China in connection with the red tile floorings, and the brown rugs are used China is almost depleted of her ceramic treasures. The Anglo-French expedition of 1860 under Lord Wolseley destroyed the Emperor Hien Fung’s summer and other palaces near Peking. Some of the allies of 1900 looted Peking itself. The Manchus in the 1911–12 revolution sold the Peking, Mukden and Jehol palace treasures. The collection of the Roman Bishop of Peking, Monsieur Favier, gathered during a long life, was sold in New York in 1912. The Taiping rebellion of 1854 swept bare the pottery province of Kiangsi, and the distress following the 1911–12 revolution and the floods of 1910–11–12 sent the hidden treasures of the Yangtze and Hwei River provinces to the block. An artist of the King Teh Ching potteries would now have to resort to Occidental museums to find his models of cloisonnÉ and champlevÉ enamels studded with precious stones; yellow and red Lang Yao monochromes of inimitable In an attempt, even so late, to save China’s art from the foreigner, the public-spirited Tze Tsan Tai, of Hongkong, a collector himself, proposes the establishing of national museums to preserve at least the paintings of China that are notable for their graphic quality, color, humor and love of nature. The most famous schools were in the Sung, Yuan and Ming dynasties, and Mr. Tze’s collection, which he proposes to give to the cause, includes collections from many other schools also. It would be better to open at first museums at Hongkong and Shanghai, and then at Peking, Nanking, Hankau, etc. Some of the names of the artists Chinese temple and house furniture is made of teak. This wood does not grow in China, but in Siam, Java, Ceylon and the Philippines, the main source of supply being the afforested belt of Northern Siam. The tree is an upland one. It is barked or girdled and allowed to die. After two years the tree is felled, the exposure killing off the small branches and developing the oils which help in giving the extraordinary life of the wood. The government does not permit trees of under six and one-half feet girth to be felled. The Chinese of Canton particularly carve the wood in its rich red color, and they also stain it ebon black. Another desirable quality in the Orient is that the wood resists the white ant. The woodwork and furniture of the palatial Hongkong Club is teak, and many of Hongkong’s, Canton’s, Shanghai’s, Manila’s and San Francisco’s palatial residences and public buildings and yachts now use the wood. Hard as it is, the Chinese seem to prefer to saw it by hand even in Hongkong. They tilt the immense logs on end, and one man works under the log, and one stands on the log, the dust being dragged upward by their contrary cut saws, which are designed to save the eyes of the under-man. The natural oil in the wood prevents driven nails or bolts from rusting, and is therefore valuable in ship-sheathing. It is the most durable wood known. The teak piles of West End, Hongkong, and Kowloon over on the mainland, are a unique sight. Water-buffaloes are used to drag up the immense timbers. A Chinese proverb is, “Speed for a horse, but a slow race for a good jeweler”. The German machinery-stamping jeweler has not yet reached the Orient with his machines, |