Directory_and_Chronicle_1915 — Page 754

PEKING

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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 vid Tungchow. The year 1899 witnessed two other innovations, which would have been regarded as impossible ten years previously, 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 Governinent 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-Chüan or Boxers arrived in force via 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 & 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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Peking, though it suffered indescribably from the depredations of the Boxers, the Imperial troops, the awful ruffianism of Tung-fub-shiang's barbarians from Kansu, to say nothing of the subsequent attentions of the Allied troops, is at present more attractive as an object of travel than before, for the simple reason that the City was cleansed by the foreign Powers, and that many places of antiquarian, artistic or now accessible if the visitor sets about his object with due attention to national susceptibilities.

historic interest are

During 1903 the fortification of the Legation quarter was completed, the railway termini brought to the Chien Men in the Chinese City, and the reconstruction of the various Legations was begun. These were slowly brought to completion, and extensive barracks connected with each for the accommodation of the Legation Guards. As all Chinese buildings in this section were removed the Legation quarter presents the appearance of a European settlement of about half a square mile in extent. In, or bordering upon this section, there are three good hotels, Hotel du Nord and Hotel de Pekin, and in the Legation quarters a large Hotel has been built by the General Hotel des Wagon Lits, Ltd.; it is just near the memorable Water Gate leading to the railway station. There are now several large stores, German, French, Italian or Chinese, which sell all kinds of foreign goods. The Club House is much larger and more con- venient than it was before; there is a Soldiers' Y.M.C.A., and a Catholic Church for the Legation Guards, and two hospitals-St. Michael's and the Methodist Episcopal