COURT OF PEKIN

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 8681, 14 March 1914, Page 11

COURT OF PEKIN

CHINA YESTERDAY & TO-DAY TERRIBLE BLOOD-LUST. There was issued recently in London a new work on China, “Annals and Memoirs of the Court of Pekin,” written by E. Backhouse and J. O. P. Bland, the authors of that fascinating hook which appeared a short time ago and told of the inner life, of that extraordinary woman the late Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi. The present work covers more ground in Chinese history than its predecessor, and is just as absorbingly interesting. Its impressions of Chinese character, its anecdotes of Chinese rulers and statesmen —famous and infamous —its pictures, behind the scenes, of palace life —everything in it goes to make up a volume that everybody ought to read. Not the least important feature of the book is its delineation of Chinese character. It makes us grasp the meaning of many things which must be understood before Europeans can begin to discuss the problem of the yellow man with any advantage. The modern Chinaman is the complex product of the oldest civilisation in the world, certain things are ingrained in his nature, and, in spite of revolutions and so-called Republican institutions, he seems destined to remain the slave of the most ancient and the most exacting set of traditions that the world has known. The following stories illustrate the cruelty that lies at the bottom of a Chinaman’s nature, and show how quickly the veneer of civilisation slips off him and reveals the brutal savage underneath: —■ When a Manohu Emperor wanted to get rid of some high personage who could not be removed without due formality, h© handed the case of the proposed victim over to the Board: of Punishments for report. A certain general, Nien Keng-yao, who had served with great distinction, incurred the displeasure of the Emperor Yung Cheng, and the Board of Punishments reported that the unfortunate soldier was guilty of innumerable offences, including acts of treason and usurpation. Ho had caused the roads to ha sprinkled with yellow earth in his honour as for an Imperial procession; he had had the audacity to seat himself before the dragon tablet of the Emperor, instead of meekly kneeling jupon his! knees; he had seated himself ! (in the position of the Emperor, facing /south, when receiving the congratulations of his subordinates, who were mad© to kneel and prostrate themselves in th© dust. And so the board recommended the following punishment: —“Immediate execution by dismemberment; his father, brothers, eons, grandsons, uncles’, nephews, and cousins above the age of sixteen to he decapitated, all below that age, and. all the female members of‘the family, to b© given as slaves to the families of meritorious .officers; the whole of his property to be ponfiscafe to the throne.” And the punishment actually inflicted, did not differ very materially from’ that which was recommended. Such was th© vengeance of the Sons of Heaven in the eighteenth century, and so it remained down to our day, though it came to be exercised more often by those who ruled the Emperor than by tha Emperor himself. VEIN OF CRUELTY. ..

But an extraordinaxy vein of cruelty runs through the Chinese nature — callous, brutal, inhuman cruelty, which every now and then turns a patient, long-suffering and gentle people into a bloodthirsty pack of ravenous wolves. That always happens whenever there is a disturbance of the peace in China, and the authors of the book under notice give some striking pictures of the awful scenes that were witnessed first when the Ming dynasty was overthrown in the middle of the seventeenth century; and again, only a few years back, when' the Manchus were in their turn deposed. Never was there a better case of history repeating itself. Half a million men, women, and children perished in the most dreadful manner in the sack of the city of Yang Chu-fu by the Manohu army in 1645. The population had not resisted the invaders, they were just the victims of blood-lust. The scene of pillage, of rapine, and of slaughter is graphically described by an eye-wit-ness, a Chinaman, who escaped with life. “At every step we took,” he says—he was himself being led away to slaughter—“we saw dead bodies lying in agonised attitudes, babies who had been crushed to shapelessness beneath the hoofs of horses, women with their new-born babies by the roadside, all beaten to a pulp. The streets reeked like a shambles; here and there one heard the groans of a few dying wretches. Arms and legs protruded from every ditch, inextricably mingled.” And these scenes were repeated in October, 1911, when the Chinese sacked the Tartar city of Sianfu. “Old and young, men and women, little children, were alike butchered.” Thousands committed suicide—the women to escape outrage—leaping to struction from the walls, burning their houses over their own heads, throwing themselves into wells, until every well was full. And weeks after the general massacre the blood-lust remained alive, “Days after the outbreak an English-' man, passing down a side street, heardl groans, heard the cry of pain, coming up with hollow sound from the depths.! At the mouth of a well stood some] Chinese. It was their day. The pitiful cries went on, the feeble moaning varied with the sharp cries. A Manchu, who had thrown himself, or been thrown down this well, had lain there with broken limbs; lay there in agony, appealing almost unconsciously for pity. The men at the well mouth picked up lumps of earth, stones, or whatever came to hand. Then came up from the well’s depths the thud of missiles on human flesh.” PRESSING PROBLEM OF THE EAST.

This innate, ineradicable savagery in the Chinese nature is an important factor in the ever more pressing problem of the Far East; the white races may h.ave cause to remember it one of these days, when Chinamen take a turn at foreign, instead of civil war. “It is not possible for us,” say the authors of the book, “in our. well-or-dered materialism, to sympathise with the forces of atavism, the instinctive terrors and cruelties that dwell for ever in the soul of this people. The sack of Yang Chu-fu and that of the Tartar city at Sianfu are in reality insignificant incidents, normal features in the life history of a race which since the beginning of recorded time has learned ‘to eat its bread with quaking and to drink its water with trembling.’ ” When Englishmen understand the meaning of those words they will bo in a position to begin to understand the Chinese problem.