Across Asia on a Bicycle - William Lewis Sachtleben (best free ebook reader for pc .TXT) 📗
- Author: William Lewis Sachtleben
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The foreign reception-room in which we were now sit[pg 223]ting was the only one in any official residence in the empire, and this single instance of compliance with foreign customs was significant as bearing upon the attitude toward Western ideas of the man who stands at the head of the Chinese government. Everything about us was foreign except a Chinese divan in one corner of the room. In the middle of the floor stood a circular sofa of the latest pattern, with chairs and settees to match, and at one end a foreign stove, in which a fire had been recently lighted for our coming. Against the wall were placed a full-length mirror, several brackets, and some fancy work. The most interesting of the ornaments in the room were portraits of Li-Hung-Chang himself, Krupp the gun-maker, Armstrong the ship-builder, and the immortal “Chinese Gordon,” the only foreigner, it is said, who has ever won a spark of admiration from the Chinese people.
While we were waiting for the viceroy, his second son, the pupil of Mr. Tenney, came in and was introduced in the foreign fashion. His English was fluent and correct. He was a bright, intelligent lad of nineteen years, then about to take his first trial examinations for the Chinese degree of scholarship, which, if attained, would make him eligible for official position. Although a son of the viceroy he will have to rise by his own merit.
Our conversation with the viceroy’s son extended over ten or fifteen minutes. He asked many questions about the details of our journey. “How,” said he, “could you get along without interpreter, guide, or servant, when every foreigner who goes even from here to Peking has to have them?” He questioned us as to whether or not the Chinese had ever called us names. We replied that we usually traveled in China under the nom de Chinois, yang queedza (the foreign devils), alias yeh renn (the wild men). A blush overspread his cheeks as he said: “I must [pg 224]apologize for my countrymen; I hope you will excuse them, for they know no better.” The young man expressed deep interest in America and American institutions, and said if he could obtain his father’s consent he would certainly make a visit to our country. This was the only son then at home with the viceroy, his eldest son being minister to Japan. The youngest, the viceroy’s favorite, was, it was said, the brightest and most promising. His death occurred only a few months before our arrival in Tientsin.
We were holding an animated conversation when the viceroy himself was announced. We all stood to show our respect for the prime minister whom General Grant included among the three greatest statesmen of his day. The viceroy was preceded by two body-servants. We stood before a man who appeared to be over six feet in height, although his head and shoulders were considerably bent with age. His flowing dress was made of rich colored silk, but very plain indeed. Any ornamentation would have been a profanation of the natural dignity and stateliness of Li-Hung-Chang. With slow pace he walked into the room, stopped a moment to look at us, then advanced with outstretched hand, while a faint smile played about his features and softened the piercing glance of his eyes. He shook our hands heartily in the foreign fashion, and without any show of ceremony led the way into an adjoining room, where a long council-table extended over half the length. The viceroy took the arm-chair at the head, and motioned us to take the two seats on his left, while Mr. Tenney and the viceroy’s son sat on his right. For almost a minute not a word was said on either side. The viceroy had fixed his gaze intently upon us, and, like a good general perhaps, was taking a thorough survey of the field before he opened up the cannonade of questions [pg 225]that was to follow. We in turn were just as busily engaged in taking a mental sketch of his most prominent physical characteristics. His face was distinctly oval, tapering from a very broad forehead to a sharp pointed chin, half-obscured by his thin, gray “goatee.” The crown of his head was shaven in the usual Tsing fashion, leaving a tuft of hair for a queue, which in the viceroy’s case was short and very thin. His dry, sallow skin showed signs of wrinkling; a thick fold lay under each eye, and [pg 226]at each end of his upper lip. There were no prominent cheek-bones or almond-shaped eyes, which are so distinctively seen in most of the Mongolian race. Under the scraggy mustache we could distinguish a rather benevolent though determined mouth; while his small, keen eyes, which were somewhat sunken, gave forth a flash that was perhaps but a flickering ember of the fire they once contained. The left eye, which was partly closed by a paralytic stroke several years ago, gave him a rather artful, waggish appearance. The whole physiognomy was that of a man of strong intuition, with the ability to force his point when necessary, and the shrewd common sense to yield when desiring to be politic.
“Well, gentlemen,” he said at last, through Mr. Tenney as interpreter, “you don’t look any the worse for your long journey.”
“We are glad to hear your excellency say so,” we replied; “it is gratifying to know that our appearance speaks well for the treatment we have received in China.”
We hope our readers will consider the requirements of Chinese etiquette as sufficient excuse for our failure to say candidly that, if we looked healthy, it was not the fault of his countrymen.
“Of all the countries through which you have passed, which do you consider the best?” the viceroy then asked.
In our answer to this question the reader would no doubt expect us to follow etiquette, and say that we thought China was the best; and, perhaps, the viceroy himself had a similar expectation. But between telling a positive lie, and not telling the truth, there is perhaps sufficient difference to shield us from the charge of gross inconsistency. We answered, therefore, that in many respects, we considered America the greatest country we had seen. We ought of course to have said that no reasonable [pg 227]person in the world would ever think of putting any other country above the Celestial Empire; our bluntness elicited some surprise, for the viceroy said:
“If then you thought that America was the best why did you come to see other countries?”
“Because until we had seen other countries,” we replied, “we did not know that America was the best.” But this answer the viceroy evidently considered a mere subterfuge. He was by no means satisfied.
“What was your real object in undertaking such a peculiar journey?” he asked rather impatiently.
“To see and study the world and its peoples,” we answered; “to get a practical training as a finish to a theoretical education. The bicycle was adopted only because we considered it the most convenient means of accomplishing that purpose.”
The viceroy, however, could not understand how a man should wish to use his own strength when he could travel on the physical force of some one else; nor why it was that we should adopt a course through central Asia and northwestern China when the southern route through India would have been far easier and less dangerous. He evidently gave it up as a conundrum, and started out on another line.
“Do you consider the Shah of Persia a powerful monarch?” was his next question.
“Powerful, perhaps, in the Oriental sense,” we replied, “but very weak in comparison with the Western nations. Then, too, he seems to be losing the power that he does have—he is compelled to play more and more into the hands of the Russians.”
“Do you think that Russia will eventually try to take possession of Persia?” the viceroy interrupted.
“That, of course, is problematical,” we answered, with the [pg 228]embarrassment men of our age might feel at being instigated to talk politics with a prime minister. “What we do know, for certain, is that Russia is now, with her Transcaspian railroad, within about forty miles of Meshed, the capital of Persia’s richest province of Khorasan; that she now has a well-engineered and, for a great portion of the way, a macadamized road to that city across the Kopet Dagh mountains from Askabad, the capital of Russian Transcaspia; and that half that road the Persians were rather forcibly invited to construct.”
“Do you think,” again interrupted the viceroy, whose interest in the Russians now began to take a more domestic turn, “that the Russians would like to have the Chinese province of Ili?”
To this question we might very appropriately have said, “No”; for the reason that we thought Russia had it al[pg 229]ready. She is only waiting to draw it in, when she feels certain that her Siberian flank is better protected. The completion of the Transsiberian railroad, by which troops can be readily transported to that portion of her dominion, may change Russia’s attitude toward the province of Ili. We did not, however, say this to his excellency. We merely replied that we believed Russia was seldom known to hold aloof from anything of value, which she thought she could get with impunity. As she was now sending cart-load after cart-load of goods over the border, through Ili, into northern and western China, without paying a cent of customs duty, while on the other hand not even a leaf of tea or thread of cotton passed over the Russian line from China without the payment of an exorbitant tariff; and as she had already established in Kuldja a postal, telegraph, and Cossack station, it would seem that she does not even now view the province of Ili as wholly foreign to the Russian empire.
At this the viceroy cleared his throat, and dropped his eyes in thoughtful mood, as much as to say: “Ah, I know the Russians; but there is no help for it.”
At this point we ventured to ask the viceroy if it were true, as we had been informed, that Russia had arranged a treaty with China, by which she was entitled to establish consuls in several of the interior provinces of the Chinese empire, but he evaded the question with
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