Around the World with a King

by William N. Armstrong

  We smiled at our luck in becoming the sole occupants of a fine steamer for the next ten days. We embarked without salutes or ceremonies of any kind. The captain was a Yankee skipper, with three American officers, while the crew were well-trained Chinese. The numerous stewards stood about the saloon, with no duty but to wait upon the King's party; the table of an Atlantic liner was not better supplied. Around the sides of the main saloon were fastened racks filled with muskets and cutlasses, and amidships were several cannon, for there is danger, although remote, of piratical attacks on the Yell ow Sea. It was possible that a Chinese Captain Kidd might bear down upon us, artd if he captured us, the King and suite might be directed in forcible pidgin-English to "walk the plank." The King did not like the warlike look of the steamer, and asked the skipper whether he would fight or run if pirates should make an attack. The answer was characteristic: "Fight, by gum! Mr. King. I'd like to get a show at those yaller dogs!"

  At the close of the day the steamer reached the mouth of the Peiho River. Extended fortifications stretched along the left bank, while on the right were the low batteries which crippled the British naval forces in r86o, upon which occasion the American commodore, Tatnall, allowed his boat's crew to man the British guns, and declared the future international policy of America and England: "Blood is thicker than water!"

  Crossing the bar, we steamed up the river to Tientsin. The royal standard was hoisted and was recognised by the Consular Corps. The docks were soon covered with people, who stood silent and stolid. The King's arrival was announced to the taotai, who, with a large retinue, paid a formal visit to the King, who received him in the "compound" or premises of the steamship company. The taotai said that the Viceroy, General Li Hung Chang, had ordered a search to be made for suitable apartments for his Majesty, but they could not be readily secured. He asked if the King's country was a part of America, and if he had come around Cape Horn. He retired with much ceremony. After he left, a mandarin, Li-Sun, the secretary of the Viceroy, called. He spoke English, informing us that he had been graduated at Hamilton College, Clinton, N.Y., many years ago, and that he had a son who was a student at Yale. He had known relatives of the King's Chamberlain, who lived in the town where the college was situated. We told him that we preferred to remain on the steamer, where we had excellent accommodations. He dined with us. While a member of the Consular Corps engaged the King's attention, the Secretary asked me if the King intended to visit Pekin. I told him that the King wished to meet General Li Hung Chang and would visit Pekin if it was practicable. Li-Sun replied that the Viceroy would appreciate the visit, but a trip to Pekin would require much preliminary study; many communications would have to be exchanged, and the Yamen would carefully consider the matter; he thought it would be at least five weeks before it could be definitely settled. He declined, however, to represent the views of the Imperial Government. After he left I told the King that it was quite clear to me that he was not wanted at Pekin; in the eyes of the Dowager Empress and her consort he was only a fanqui (foreign devil). Foreign ambassadors were received by her only through fear of the sword; if he persisted, he would catch a genuine "Tartar," who was quite as fierce as the bogie Tartars in the story-books; instead of making an ever-glorious journey to the Forbidden City, he would find the Celestial Family "not at home," and a sign on the gate-post, "Beware of the dog;" besides, as he had no army or navy behind him, he might be seized, put in a bamboo cage, and paraded through China. The King finally abandoned his intention of going to Pekin.

  Mandarin Li-Sun returned with a message from the Viceroy that he would send his own sedan chairs to the steamer in the morning, and they would bring the King and suite to the Yamen, which was the Viceroy's palace.

  During the day several members of the Consular Corps called on the King, and we visited a part of the city; a number of Chinese merchants called and tendered banquets to his Majesty.

  The Viceroy's sedan chairs arrived in the morning, with Secretary Li-Sun, and we, in uniform, entered them; each was borne by four men. The bamboo carrying-poles bent as if they would break under the heavy weights of the King and the Chamberlain; the wiry and lean coolie bearers were soon in a profuse perspiration. The route lay through several miles of narrow streets, whose walls were so close to each other that the extended hands of one seated in a chair could almost touch both sides at the same time. The people, at the sound of the Viceroy's gong and the cry of the Governor's guard, packed themselves close to the walls, and gazed silently and stolidly into the dark face of the King.

  At the gates of the Yamen a troop of soldiers awkwardly presented arms, and an explosion of three large fire-crackers-the regular salute-was made. Alighting in the court-yard, we advanced a few steps to meet the Viceroy, who stood alone, in a brilliant dress, while behind him was a retinue of his officials. He shook hands with himself cordially, according to Chinese custom, and then, in deference to the immemorial pump-handle welcome of the Europeans, shook hands with the King and with the suite. He led the way, between lines of bowing officials, through several large rooms, to a reception-chamber, where we sat around a large circular table. The room was ornamented with beautiful vases; and on the walls were silk curtains upon which were inscribed moral precepts. One of them, translated for me by Mandarin Li-Sun, was quite like the motto over Lord Coke's chambers in London, in the last century, "Prudens qui patiens,"-which his negro servant broadly translated, "The prudent man never hurries when he tries to catch a monkey."

  The Viceroy at once began to ask questions: "How many islands are there in your kingdom?"-"How old are you?"-"Do you have a Parliament?"-" How many people are there in your kingdom?" By his side stood his pipe-bearers. The bowl rested on the floor, and a servant holding a live coal knelt at the bowl, watching the Viceroy's face; the other bearer stood by the side of the Viceroy, who at intervals, without moving his head, raised and opened his hand, into which the vigilant bearer instantly placed the stem of the pipe, and the kneeling servant applied the fire. He took several whiffs of smoke, opened his hand, and the bearer removed the pipe-stem, while the lighter recharged the bowl with fresh tobacco. The Viceroy, who had information about the Hawaiian kingdom which Li-Sun had given him, continued:

  Li Hung Chang (1881).

  "You have many Chinese in your country, and you treat them well."-"Are you the son of your predecessor?"

  "No," said the King, "I come from another old dynasty."

  "What did you do when you were a boy?" asked the Viceroy.

  The King hesitated for a moment, reflected, and replied at a venture:

  "I went into the army when I was sixteen years of age."

  This provoked instantly the ever-vexing question, "How large is your army?"

  "I have few regular troops," replied his Majesty; "I rely on volunteers."

  "Are the gentlemen in your suite Hawaiians?" continued the catechiser.

  "Both are Hawaiians," replied the King.

  "I see," said the Viceroy, "that he [pointing to Colonel Judd] is dark; but he [pointing to me] is white. Why are they different? Do you have white natives among your subjects?"

  "The parents of both were Americans," was the reply.

  "You have missionaries; do you like them?" was the next question.

  "Yes, they are good people," said the King.

  His Majesty was rather confused with the rapidity of the questions. Secretary Li-Sun was the interpreter.

  The Viceroy rose and led the King to another room, where there was a table loaded with sweet-meats. Champagne was served. The Viceroy said he would return the King's visit the next day, and then walked with him to the court-yard and stood near the sedan chair while the King entered it. He remained there bowing until we had reached the gates and another salute of three explosions had been given. Mandarin Li-Sun arrived soon after, and his conversation gave us much interesting information about the Chinese, the life of the Viceroy, and the international relations of China with the Great Powers.

  The scope of t
his memoir excludes a general discussion of the Chinese problems which are vexing the European Powers. My own opinions would be those of a globe-trotter. Those things which make up the character and tendencies of a nation or a community} and shape its career, are not open, but concealed, and only patient industry or rare insight can detect them.

  The next morning our temporary yacht, the "Pautah," was decorated with flags, and the Viceroy's barge brought him down the river at ten o'clock. After some ceremonies on deck he entered the saloon with the King, and after tea was served he renewed his cross-examination. The suite aided the King, and the Viceroy would frequently turn to them and spear them with sharp queries. The King remarked that the Emperor of Japan had shown him great hospitality. The Viceroy replied that the Japanese could not be depended upon. He said he regretted he had no palace to which he could invite the King, but would give him a banquet the next evening in the compound of the steamship company. He then rose and walked slowly to the gangway with his Majesty; they appeared to be of the same height.

  During the next day crowds of people pressed to the edge of the dock, peering into the doors and windows of our steamer. Some of them were motionless for hours, for they saw in the Viceroy's guest not only a ".foreign devil," but a black foreign devil. The children were brought to the dock in their fathers' arms that they too might see the awe-inspiring sight.

  Late in the day we walked across the street to the compound. The Viceroy had already arrived in his brilliant dress, and we appeared in full uniform. The Viceroy received the King at the door and led him to the reception-room, where the prominent men of the city, both Chinese and foreigners, were presented to the Viceroy and King. Tea was served, and we entered the dining-room. The Viceroy placed the King on his right hand, and myself on his left, and next to me his son, a young man who was studying the English language and spoke it with hesitation. When this young gentleman discovered that I was an American, he asked me many questions about the relation of the States to the Federal government, for he could not understand the dual system; he thought it confusing and dangerous. The dishes and food were entirely Chinese, but they were served at tables, and forks were furnished to the foreigners. The fine ware had been brought from the Viceroy's residence. The room was decorated with silk curtains and embroideries, upon which were worked moral texts from the Chinese classics, quite like the pious aphorisms which appeared on the walls of New England homes in early days, but which are removed as prosperity increases, because they are annoying and impracticable.

  The democratic life of the Chinese was seen in the freedom allowed to the crowd to enter the compound and look at the guests through the window while they ate. The people stood on one another's shoulders and backs; some of them raised themselves with bamboo sticks, so that the windows were filled to their upper frame-work with stolid faces pressing against the glass. The Viceroy occasionally asked questions, but Li-Sun was seated at a distance from him and could not interpret with ease. He asked me questions through his son: "Why is not your office of Minister filled by a native?"-"Are the natives incapable?"-"Do you fear the United States?"-" How much good have the missionaries done?"-"Do you know General Grant?-he is a great man."

  While I sat by the side of this celebrated ruler I felt some aversion to him, for it was he who, after the Taeping rebellion, had beheaded 80,000 Chinese prisoners in Canton. After all, he was no worse than Napoleon, who said to Metternich at the signing of the Peace at Tilsit, "What are a million of lives to me if they come in my way?"

  One could only admire the fine, strong faces of the Chinese merchants and mandarins at the banquet, and yet De Quincey, in his scholarly ignorance of them sixty years ago, wrote: "It must be said that the Chinese are in their childhood." De Quincey did not foresee the time when the citizens of the Great Republic would tremble at the industrial energy and economy of these children. The Secretary, Li-Sun, told me that the Viceroy realised the need of political reconstruction in China, but he could not move far in advance of the people he governed without losing his prestige. He realised Burke's aphorism that "he who leads must in a great measure follow."

  At the close of the banquet the Viceroy, the King, and the guests returned to the reception-room, and the King and the Viceroy parted. It was our final interview with this man, whose fate it was, not to rule the great wave of Chinese humanity, but to float on it, be swayed by it, and be landed in the future on some unknown shore, as all great statesmen are landed by the wave of popular will.

  Menu of Dinner given in honour of King Kalakaua, by Li Hung Chang.

  When we boarded the "Pautah," the King found valuable presents of tea and silk which the Viceroy had sent to him.

  CHAPTER XII

  Return to Shanghai — Cordial Receptions — Chinese After — Dinner Customs — Sail for Hongkong — Chinese Superstitions — The Missionary Misunderstands Them.

  EARLY next morning we steamed down the Peiho. At the mouth of the river the forts displayed Chinese flags for a mile on the ramparts, and gave the royal salute of twenty-one guns. On the third day we landed in Shanghai, where we were received and entertained by Mr. J. J. Kiswick, the head of the large British mercantile house of Jardine, Matheson & Co. We attended a banquet given by the taotai; it was like those given by the Viceroy, and by the Chinese Consul in San Francisco. At its close there was another example of the working-out of the dining problem in Chinese civilisation, as it has also been solved in Japan. Within a few moments after reaching the reception-room after the dinner, servants, without request, appeared with. our coats and hats and offered them to us. The Chinese believe that repose should follow a feast; animals, after feeding, need sleep and not action. They avoid the inebriate loquacity of the European dinner. The guest is not left to choose the time of his leaving, which he might delay, but angels of mercy, in the shape of servants, enter with hats, coats, and umbrellas, and release the host from post-prandial stupidity.

  The next day we left in the "Thibet" for Hong-kong. The King had "sucked" some instructive knowledge in China; he could regard with some equanimity his failure to see the Forbidden City. If the ambassadors of the great European Powers were not permitted to approach the Imperial Chinese Throne without striking the ground with their heads nine times before that awful Presence, Majesty itself would certainly refuse to humiliate itself. My royal master had without due consideration approached the sacred city, looked over its walls at the imperial door, and had put his hand on the door-bell. But before he pulled it he discovered the notice, posted near the Celestial gate, of which I had warned him: "Beware of the dog." He took his hand from the bell and retired without urging an entrance. From that time forward he was pleased whenever the European Powers pulled the Celestial noses of the Chinese Imperial Family.

  Among the passengers were several Englishmen and Americans who with much Anglo-Saxon conceit related many of the singular characteristics of the Chinese people as evidences of their heathenism and present childhood: the whipping of their idols if prayers were not answered; their offering, at the tombs of their ancestors, wooden pigs and ducks instead of the real articles; stealing back at night the food offered during the day; their belief that evil spirits infest the world, but invariably travel on straight lines, so that garden paths are made crooked in order to deceive them, and the roofs of houses are made so irregularly that the demons lose their way when moving over them and withdraw. These self-satisfied Occidentals, however, forgot that there were many millions of people in their own country who devoutly believed in the "manifestations "conducted by "mediums," which are quite as grotesque and superstitious; these mediums, like the priests of the Chinese joss-houses, revealing the secrets of the supernatural world only on a cash basis.

  Nor are the Chinese superstitions, in their most extravagant forms, more grotesque than the very recent belief of Christendom, and by no means wholly abandoned yet, that the many hundreds of millions of Asiatics are condemned to eternal torment for not accepting a religion of which they have never h
eard. The tourist in the Orient, as well as the merchant and trader, forgets that the Occidental civilisation of the nineteenth century is, as Emerson says, "yet in its swaddling-clothes," and if taken as a whole, instead of in its parts, is so badly composed that the wisest philanthropists would not advise the Chinese to take it as it really is, but would recommend them to pick out only its virtues. If the wisdom of Providence has leisurely taken nineteen hundred years from the erection of the Cross to bring European civilisation up to its present imperfect conditions, in which brute force represented by armies and battle-ships is largely the evidence of a nation's progress, China may justly claim that her own civilisation should not be subjected to any violent changes, but only be placed in the course of a gradual evolution which is normal and healthy.

  The missionary in China is confronted by the same difficulties that exist in Japan. His teachings, sound and admirable in themselves, tend to overturn a political principle accepted throughout Christendom, that no foreigner shall preach in any State a doctrine which tends to impair the supreme political power. The doctrine of the missionaries in China does not directly attack that power, but it does attack the idea of ancestral worship, upon which political power stands. The missionary, as I have already said, is inevitably a political reformer. He is impatient. He wishes to see Christianity rise in the Far East as the tree rises in the trick of the Hindoo juggler, who spreads his mat, places a flower-pot on it, plants in it a seed, and holds his wand over it till it sprouts, throws out leaves, rises to a tree, extends its branches, and casts its fruit to the ground, all within the space of an hour. It's this haste of Christendom to see "results" which prevents it from adjusting its methods to the existing conditions; that is, from adopting the "scientific," which is the divine method of making progress; of building up, instead of destroying what exists. No one has yet discovered in the Chinese mind an insuperable barrier against progress. No class of men has yet studied that mind for the purpose of reaching it. The humble locksmith opens a vault, the key of which is lost, not by trying it with common keys, but by studying its combinations and taking impressions of its intricate devices.