Directory_and_Chronicle_1904 — Page 706

148

PEKING

1899 saw the innovation of Legation Street being cleansed, levelled and macadamised -the greatest urban improvement in three centuries. Experts say that the money lost in time, wear and tear of men, mules and carts every year is greater than the prime cost. of macadamising all the main thoroughfares. The congestion of traffic and the personal discomfort of cart-transit are inconceivable to people who have not experienced them. There is an air of decay about Peking which extends even to the finest of the Temples and Palaces, and which powerfully impresses every visitor as symbolic of the decadence of Empire. The population of Peking is not accurately known, but according to a Chinese estimate, which is probably much in excess, it is 1,300,000, of whom 900,000 reside in the Tartar and 400,000 in the Chinese city. There is no direct foreign trade with Peking, and the small foreign population is made up of the members of the various Legations, the Maritime Customs establishments, the professors of the College of Peking, and the missionary body. In August, 1884, the city was brought into direct_telegraphic communication with the rest of the world, by an overland line to Tientsin via Tungchow. The year 1899 witnessed two other innovations, which would have been regarded as impossible ten years ago, viz: the erection of large two-storied buildings on prominent sites for the Austrian Legation and the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank. These are breaks with immemorial tradition that the feng-shui must resent elevation in houses other than those of the immortal gods and the son of heaven. A railway line to Tientsin was opened in 1897.

The year 1900 was the most memorable year in the history of Peking from the fact that for the first time in the history of civilization during two thousand years a dastardly and deliberate attempt was made by a responsible government to violate the sanctitas legatorum. The Chinese have made characteristic efforts to escape the responsibility for this turpitude; but the formal complicity of the leading men in the Government and of the Empress Dowager with the Boxer sedition has been proved up to the hilt, and endless Imperial Edicts remain to show that the Government as such was heart and soul committed to the anti-foreign and anti-Christian aims of the Reactionary Party. Reference is made elsewhere to the progress of the Boxer agitation: enough to say here that the I-Ho-Chuan or Boxers arrived in force vid Pao-ting-fu on June 13th, and between that day and the 19th began their policy of plunder, destruction and murder. All the buildings outside of the Legation cordon in the Chinese and Manchu cities, including all the Missionary premises and native preaching stations, as well as

the residences of all who were known even suspected of being in any way connected with foreigners were destroyed.. These people themselves were ruthlessly murdered. The most interesting building thus to suffer was the well-known Nan-Tang or Southern Roman Catholic Cathedral, built more than two hundred years ago. In the attempt to destroy the small foreign_drug-store belonging to Messrs. A. S. Watson and Company, Limited, of Hong- kong, the great Bazaar in which it is situated caught fire, notwithstanding the assurances of the chief Boxer that he, by occult influence, could prevent the fire from spreading. The destruction caused by this fire was inconceivably great: all the wealthy banks, silver shops, silk warehouses, and curiosity-shops, with their priceless and irreplaceable stocks of antique art, were consumed.

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Before this act of incendiarism the threatening aspect of affairs had led the Ministers to apply to their Admirals for marine guards, and late in May and early in June some five hundred men with two or three machine guns had been sent up to the Legations. On the 9th of June the Ministers wired urgently for more men, a request which the Navy met in a way described in the notes on Taku (see pages 168-9); but these latter reinforcements never arrived. On June 19th the Tsung-li- Yamen notified the Legations to quit the city by 4 p.m. on the 20th, assigning as a reason the Allies' attack on and capture of the Taku forts. Protection was of course promised; but even had the Imperial Government been acting in good faith and been willing to protect the thousand refugees in their long journey to the Coast, it was certain that they had not the ability to do so. The Boxers were now in complete domination of the City, and would have paid no heed whatever to any assurances of the Government. Moreover, such a policy of scuttle meant the certain massacre of several thousand Christian refugees who had fled into the City from the suburbs, and had placed themselves under the care of the Fathers and the Missionaries. The demand of the Yamen was refused. The next day, Baron von Ketteler, the German Minister, while proceeding to the Yamen to interview the Chinese Ministers, was shot at by Imperial soldiers from loopholed houses, and was brutally murdered; his Secretary, Mr. Cordes, escaping the same fate by a miracle, though he was badly wounded. This unheard-of atrocity precipitated the supreme crisis. The Chinese Government saw clearly