It would never have occurred to a Chinese—whether peasant, mandarin, minister, or prince—to question this sort of physical separation from and intellectual servility to the sovereign. Taught that the emperor ruled by the Mandate of Heaven, his subjects knew that as long as there was harmony in the land, not too many uprisings or natural disasters, this mandate rested securely with the head of state. But when the country degenerated into chaos and rebellion, they believed that their emperor had fallen from Heaven’s favor and another would take his place.
IT IS A truism of Chinese history that no matter what dynasty conquered China or where it originated, it was eventually subsumed into the Chinese way of life. This belief in the inevitable assimilation of onetime enemies, along with an intense pride in their ancient culture, gave the Chinese a sense of superiority and an attitude of condescension toward the West. Up until 1898, the Chinese government did not even have a permanent Ministry of Foreign Affairs, since it did not believe in conducting relations with other countries. China, according to its inhabitants, was the Middle Kingdom, the only true civilization. Its emperor ruled from the top of the pyramid of monarchs, while all other monarchs, from the tsar of Russia to the emperor of Japan, were considered his “younger brothers” and were ranged beneath. Outsiders—commonly referred to as “foreign devils,” “big-nosed hairy ones,”* or more politely, “barbarians”—were not welcome, and, as history eventually proved, the Chinese were remarkably foresighted in this regard.
Nevertheless, the British East India Company had conducted a lively trade with China during the eighteenth century, exchanging large amounts of silver for luxuries like Chinese silk, tea, and porcelains. Looking for a product to make up the balance of trade, the company began to transport opium from India, making cultivation of the poppy “compulsory” on their Indian lands. People living on the southeastern coast of China, where the drug was imported, soon became addicted, and by the end of the century, opium made up half of all British cargo transported from India. In spite of imperial decrees prohibiting its use, imports continued to grow, spurred by dishonest customs officials and porters willing to carry the drug into the interior for a price. By the 1830s, consumption had reached something like 20,000 chests, or more than 2,500,000 pounds, of opium.*
Up until this time, the Chinese had been able to keep foreign traders under firm control, and any commerce with the outside world was carefully regulated and heavily taxed for the benefit of the imperial court. Merchants had always been regarded as inferiors and their pursuit of profit, ignoble. Those who came to establish trade relations were required to execute three genuflections and nine prostrations before being allowed to approach the emperor, since it was beneath the Son of Heaven’s dignity to engage in conversation or diplomacy. Westerners sent to China also looked funny: “They had ugly noses and coarse manners and wore ridiculous clothes with constricting sleeves and trousers, tight collars and coats that had tails down the back but failed to close in front… not the garments of reasonable men.”
When Lord Napier went to Canton in 1834, empowered by the British Parliament to negotiate “for the purpose of protecting and promoting… trade,” the governor of Canton refused to even accept a letter from him. “There has never been such a thing as outside barbarians sending a letter,” the governor bristled. “… It is contrary to everything of dignity and decorum. The barbarians of this nation [Great Britain]… have, beyond their trade, not any public business; and the commissioned officers of the Celestial Empire never take cognizance of the trivial affairs of trade.… The some hundreds of thousands of commercial duties yearly coming from the said nation concern not the Celestial Empire to the extent of a hair or a feather’s down. The possession or absence of them is utterly unworthy of one careful thought.”
Brave words, but China soon found itself threatened by bankruptcy due to a huge outflow of silver, as well as the social problems of a nation where one in every ten citizens was said to use opium. Even the appointment of an opium suppression commissioner, who placed offending British merchants under house arrest and burned twenty thousand chests of opium, did not improve the situation. As a matter of fact, it only riled up the culprits, as did a letter sent by the commissioner to Queen Victoria, noting that since importing opium into Britain was illegal, “even less should you let it be passed on to the harm of other countries.… Let us ask, ‘where is your conscience?’” Prodded by the merchants who were realizing a 60 percent profit on the contraband, the British government registered its objections to the commissioner’s actions, claiming that Chinese courts had no jurisdiction over Her Majesty’s subjects, that the seizure of their property was illegal, and that China owed the merchants reparations.
When a Chinese man was killed by a group of British soldiers in Hong Kong and the British refused to turn the guilty men over for punishment, Chinese warships set sail for Hong Kong, where the British navy was stationed. The British, who had been looking for an excuse to legalize their presence in China, fired the opening shot in what came to be called the Opium Wars. They bombarded Canton, occupied Hong Kong, invaded the North, and within three years brought China to her knees. The Treaty of Nanking, which ended the First Opium War in 1842, ceded the island of Hong Kong to Britain, required the Chinese to pay $21 million indemnity, and opened the so-called treaty ports of Shanghai, Canton, Amoy, Foochow, and Ningpo to foreign trade. In a treaty port, foreigners could do business under their own laws, and if they committed crimes, they were subject not to Chinese law, which mandated death by decapitation or strangulation for trafficking in opium, but to the friendlier laws of their own countries.
A Second Opium War, started fourteen years later and lasting until 1860, was equally devastating to China. To guarantee ratification of the Treaty of Tientsin, which was to end this war, the British and French anchored warships off the northern Chinese coast, requesting permission to sail inland toward the capital of Peking. The court countered with a proposal that foreign delegations be sent overland, a request the British chose to regard as another provocation. They sent Lord Elgin, the man whose father had conveyed the Elgin marbles from Athens to the British Museum, as their representative to the imperial court and, a few months later, joined the French in attacking the mainland. They also dispatched a small group of representatives to Peking to negotiate safe passage back for Lord Elgin. In the middle of September, word arrived that their men had been ambushed and confined in iron collars and shackles. Furious, Elgin ordered a retaliatory attack on the Chinese capital.
Hearing that the British were on their way, the emperor hastily decamped, leaving his brother Prince Kung in charge, along with twenty eunuchs to guard the priceless treasures of the Dragon Throne. The French, who arrived in Peking first, scattered the eunuchs with a few shots over their heads before entering the Son of Heaven’s summer home—60,000 acres of palaces, gardens, goldfish ponds, and tranquil groves dedicated to pleasuring the senses. “The walls, the ceilings, the dressing tables, the chairs, the footstools are all in gold, studded with gems,” one French nobleman wrote in his diary. But by the time the British arrived the next day, many of these priceless artifacts had been looted or smashed. “Alas! Such a scene of desolation,” said Elgin. “There was not a room I saw in which half the things had not been taken away or broken into pieces.”
When word of the destruction reached Prince Kung, he released two of his hostages from their shackles. They immediately headed off to the Summer Palace to join in the looting. Six days later, two more hostages arrived— packed in boxes filled with quicklime. One could be identified only by his boots. At the sight of these men, Elgin, known as the “Big Barbarian,” set fire to the Summer Palace.
This precipitate destruction was followed by less impulsive but more economically debilitating retaliation, i.e., the terms enforced by the victorious Westerners on the Chinese at the end of the Second Opium War. More treaty ports were opened, and—far more devastating—the importation of opium was legalized. From the deniz
ens of the Imperial Palace to the poorest of coolies, opium was the preferred method of escape from a society that was ceasing to function both politically and economically. In 1895, an Australian journalist put it this way: “Edicts are still issued against the use of opium. They are drawn up by Chinese philanthropists over a quiet pipe of opium, signed by opium-smoking officials, whose revenues are derived from the poppy, and posted near fields of poppy by the opium-smoking magistrates who own them.”
If the Chinese were complicit in their own destruction, the English were masters of hypocrisy: “A pipe of opium is to the Chinese workman what a glass of beer is to the English labourer, a climatic necessity,” said one British consul. And from Jardine, Matheson & Co., a chief importer of the drug, came this statement: “The use of opium is not a curse but a comfort to the hard-working Chinese; to many scores of thousands it has been productive of healthful sustention and enjoyment.” This writer could find only one trader, a Scotsman, who admitted any personal concern in spreading the addiction. Sales had been so brisk, the gentleman confided to his diary, that he had had “no time to read my bible.”
FROM THE MOMENT Shanghai was designated a treaty port, it became the preferred home of foreign traders. The name “Shanghai” means “up from the sea,” which is a fair indication that “as recently as 2,000 years ago,” much of Shanghai was still under water. Considered a young city by Chinese standards, it had started as a small fishing village, blossoming into a full-fledged town and commercial port divided into two unequal parts by the waters of the Whangpoo River, In the sixteenth century, residents built a twenty-seven-foot-high wall to protect themselves from Japanese pirates. Within the wall, dark alleys overhung with long poles draped in drying laundry led off both sides of the major roads, while streets where workers in the same trade tended to congregate acquired such names as Pickled Melon Street, Jade Alley, and Jiang Family Medicine Lane. During the seventeenth century, “mud men” were employed to clean out the huge silt deposits that often clogged the river in order to keep it navigable, and by the early eighteenth century, Shanghai had begun to serve overseas as well as domestic trade. After the end of the First Opium War, the city gave 140 acres of muddy shoreline to the British, who employed local coolies to drive piles deep into the swampy muck—underpinnings for their future homes away from home. American traders moved into an area next to the British, while the French took possession of a large piece of land located between the British and the Chinese, and the famous International Settlement was born. Paved avenues, neoclassical mansions surrounded by walls, and large brick industrial buildings known as hongs composed the dignified outposts of empire along the famous Bund.
It did not take long for the privileged residents of the International Settlement to learn to overlook the problems of their neighbors living in the Chinese city to the south. Their attitude was exemplified by the laconic words of a reporter for the English weekly paper, the North-China Herald, when a secret society called the Small Swords entered the old Chinese walled area of Shanghai in 1853: “The Small Sword Society men attacked the city early this morning.… We suspect it will end in the S.S. men taking possession… and organizing a government of their own.… Foreigners need be under no apprehension.” Beyond indifference there was greed, and the foreigners soon discovered they could make fortunes erecting cheap housing that could be rented out to the Chinese rich enough to take refuge from the Small Swords in the International Settlement. In answer to the British consul, who criticized his countrymen’s eagerness to profit from the tragedy of their fellow citizens, one taipan* (manager of a trading firm) expressed the point of view of many: “It is my business to make a fortune with the least possible loss of time. In two or three years at farthest, I hope to realize a fortune, and get away; and what can it matter to me, if all Shanghai disappear afterwards.… We are money-making practical men. Our business is to make money, as much and as fast as we can.”
Money was only part of the recompense for a taipan or griffin, the assistant to a taipan.* The rest was a way of life far more luxurious than anything these men could have afforded back home. “Philistines to the core,” as one chronicler describes them, the residents of the International Settlement and the French Concession took advantage of quantities of cheap servants along with inexpensive food and wines to indulge in a modicum of work and a maximum of pleasure. In the afternoons they paraded in the park, conveyed by sedan chairs borne by Chinese bearers dressed in the colors of their consulates or their business firms. Even the poorest among them had a Chinese “boy” to lay out his clothes and keep his liquor cabinet well stocked. For those with families, there were armies of chefs, amahs, gardeners, porters, laundresses, table boys, houseboys, and stable boys. Even in their offices, the taipans and griffins had native managers who allowed their employers plenty of time for long lunches and billiards at the Shanghai Club. These native managers—called compradores—were never allowed to forget their inferior position. A compradore’s office was in the basement of the hong, and he was not allowed to use the front door.
Although sports were the foreigners’ chief form of amusement—cricket, tennis, riding, and hunting were favorites—it was said that you could always spot a taipan by “his florid complexion and wide girth.” No wonder. According to one doctor, “they begin dinner with rich soup and a glass of sherry; then they partake of one or two side dishes, with champagne; then some beef, mutton, or fowls and bacon, with more champagne, or beer; then rice and curry and ham; afterwards game; then pudding, pasty, jelly, custard, or blanc-mange, and more champagne; then cheese and salad, and bread and butter, and a glass of port wine; then in many cases oranges, figs, raisins, and walnuts are eaten with two or three glasses of claret or some other wine; and this awful repast is finished at last with a cup of strong coffee and cigars!”
Shanghai did, however, offer certain inconveniences. As late as 1917, Europeans had to protect themselves with netting from the swarms of mosquitoes bred in the swampy land, and their servants walked around the house spraying the ankles of the family and guests with a kerosene solution. As the city grew and prospered, the canals and ponds were filled and the open municipal drains were sprayed with an oil solution that nearly eliminated the pests.
Since the ratio of European men to European women never fell below ten to one and there were laws prohibiting British griffins from marrying until after they had been in China for five years, many European men took Chinese mistresses. This commingling of the races, along with drinking, dancing, and card playing, appalled the only other important group of Westerners in China—the missionaries. Protestant missionaries, who had begun arriving at the beginning of the 1830s, were, by the 1880s, a well-established fact of Chinese life. Called “the biggest evangelical army in Christendom,” the missionaries had set themselves the dual task of converting the heathen and criticizing the ungodly ways of their more prosperous countrymen.
It was into this multilayered, bifurcated society that Charlie Soong had been sent by the Southern Methodist Mission. As we have seen, however, the father of the Soong family refused to be satisfied with what one historian called the “abstemious ways and threadbare clothing” of his fellow missionaries.
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I have often thought that I am the most clever woman that ever lived, and others cannot compare with me.… Although I have heard much about Queen Victoria… I don’t think her life was half so interesting and eventful as mine.… She had… really nothing to say about the policy of the country. Now look at me. I have 400,000,000 people dependent on my judgment.
—THE DOWAGER EMPRESS OF CHINA
THE AVERAGE Westerner stakes his honor on truth, or what he believes to be the reality lying beneath the surface. Honor for the Chinese, however, resides in appearances or “face”—how matters are perceived by others. On either scale—actuality or appearance—the West emerged the winner of the Opium Wars, humiliating the inhabitants of the Middle Kingdom. The unfortunate emperor who ruled China during this period
was a young man named Hsien-feng. Twenty at the time of his accession in 1851, he was well meaning but lacked conviction, competence, and enough money to deal with the problems confronting him. He died in Jehol less than a year after the British entered Peking, a victim of alcohol and other dissipations.
What one chronicler calls Hsien’s “most lasting contribution” to the history of China was to father a child with the concubine Cixi (Tz’u-hsi), a descendant of a poor branch of the Manchurian clan that had produced a wife for the founder of the Ch’ing Dynasty. Cixi was endowed with what must have been considered an unfeminine amount of curiosity and managed to teach herself the basics of reading and writing. When she was eighteen, her father was discharged from his banner* for deserting his post in the face of marauders, but the captain of the banner still included the names of Cixi and her sister when assembling a list of possible concubines “to bring the harem of the young Emperor Hsien-feng up to full strength.” Dressed in the best silks and jewels their families owned or could borrow, Cixi, her sister, and fifty-eight other girls joined a procession to be carried into the Imperial City sitting cross-legged on yellow satin sedan chairs, hidden in curtained conveyances from thousands of curious onlookers. Upon arrival, they were ushered into the Department of the Imperial Household to be inspected for defects and diseases by the staff of the emperor’s stepmother, who checked under their makeup for signs of smallpox and goiter, common ailments of the day. Cixi was then told to lie on a couch so that a midwife could examine her for virginity and yin, her ability to arouse sexually and be aroused. This, it was believed, could be told by looking at her hair, eyes, breasts, and vagina. It was the test most feared by the candidates. The story—possibly apocryphal—is told that Cixi went into the room wearing a pair of valuable jade bracelets. “When her turn came… she went into a theatrical tantrum and indignantly refused to be pawed over. As she did… she deftly slipped off the costly bracelets, and unseen by the eunuchs, dropped them into the eagerly waiting hand of the midwife. The elder nodded her head; and [Cixi] was able to stand in line with the other selected maidens.” True or not, the story is indicative of the corruption that pervaded the Imperial Palace.
The Last Empress Page 6