AUTUMN IN PEKIN.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1313, 16 December 1911, Page 11

AUTUMN IN PEKIN.

In North China jnst as day vanishes with hardly any twilight so Summer giveß place to Autumn with tho briefest leavetaking. This year she left us in less than twenty-four hours. Little moro than a . week afio we were dressed in light clothes —pongee silk, duck, or flannels—when suddenly out of tho north came, the first cold wind. It is iinpossiblo to describe exactly tho sensations which that first wind produces. They are too contradictory. i'irst you feel relief, tho relief that comes with the cessation of long oppression. "All! it is over!" you cry, and your wholo being feels refreshed. If winds can really be compared with., kisses—and all the poets say they can—then this ono has in it the comfort of a kiss after doubt or separation. Then, oddly enough, comes fear, or something very similar—a grim anticipation of tho icy blasts which will soon howl down upon you bringing the stinging dust of tho Gobi Desert. You glanco at tho sky and see it as it will bo, cold and hard. But the first sensation is tho stronger, for you aro at the beginning of six or seven splendid weeks during which no climate in the world is finer than ours. Perpetual Sunshino. Every morning one wakes up to find the city with all its wonderful colours glittering in sunlight that has lost all fierceness. Tho change is extraordinarily pleasant. In Peking, except during the rainy season, which in a normal year lasts less than two months, wo see the sun nearly all day and every day. About the middle of Slav this perpetual sunshine boating down upon whito roads, gilded shop fronts, and yellow roofs becomes trying to the eyes". But now the city is bathed in a mellower, softer light, and one finds exquisito pleasure in all its varieties of colour. They are seen best, perhaps, from tho stretch of wall between the central south gate and the gate at the east corner. This is no longer a place where at evening languid men and women go in search of a cool breeze,'but a promenade for brisk walking. From it Peking looks like a pleasure ground, in the centra of which, surrounded by trees, gleam the golden roofs of tho Imperial Palace. Almost in a line with them, to the south, rise 3 tho deep blue dome of the Temple of Heaven, and as the eye travels from ono to the other it rests upon tho green, dark red, and gold of the inner and outer ch'ion men. The hills on tho west and north, which aro really fourteen miles away, seem far less distant. So clear has the air become that, if ono knows them well, one can recognise landmarks easily, and pointing say, "In that valley we halted, you remember; over that ridge we spent the night.-" The bareness which in summer time repels and maker, one disinclined for the dusty ride across the plain has lost all severity. Faintly pink in the early morning, purple as tho sun sots, the hills invite one now. Jlalf-way towards them ono dismounts to sit for a while by Pa li Chuang Pagoda and listen to its tinkling bells, or to stroll in tho shade of cypresses among the quiet avenues and carved marble tombs of the Eunuch's Cemetery. Near it is a temple owned by a well-known Buddhist priest. Exchanging, the gossip of the day with him, one watches soft-footed camcls journeying slowly in long patient lines to and from Mcntakou. Six weeks ago they were almost naked, but now they are clothed again in coats of light brown wool, matching tho sandy road. Pastimes in Peking. During the autumn nearly everybody rides. Interest in tennis practically ceases after the first week of October, when the final matches of the autumn tournament are played off. Skating does not begin till the end of December, so that there is an intervening period during which, if you do not ride, you are left without any re- j gular form of exercise. You need to be ' very fond of hockey or "soccer" to play either 011 stony ground, and one soon tires of long tramps along tho city wall. . But it is something more positive than absenco'of other means of exerciso that makes ono ride. It is the joy of swift motion through this eager autumn air, the pleasure of a good gallop in open country. The China pony is a good little .-.bsast, when all's said. . Before breakfast or after four o'clock in the afternoon are tho favourite times. Good Fellowship. On Sundays, very often, one joins a party and goes out for tho day, lunching probably either on the verandah of the Kace Club or at somebody's "temple." It is rather "tho thing" in Peking to own or rent a "temple" near tho racecourse. Though called by this name many of these buildings are really only threo or four joomcd houses, with mud walls, . mud floors, and paper windows. Bnt they can be, and are, made very comfortable. Here ono gets the latest news from the various •stables—how so-and-so's "griffin" (a griffin is a pony that has never started in any official meeting in China or llong-lvoug) did the last quarter in :!9 i-ssec., and how last year's champion did the full mile in .2.00 minutes. The autumn races are approaching, and dark trials, whispered information, and a little modest betting make these "temples" centres of the liveliest interest., Ihey are social centres too, bien entendu, and ho who would be in the swim must seo that he gets invited to them occasionally. But thoy are social centres where precedence and office are for tho time forgotten. You are "en famille" when you are at the racecoursejust one of a jolly, party enjoying tho autumn sunshine. That so-and-so is the accredited representative of a Power does not, after all, help him very much in tho handling of China ponies or their grooms. So the essence of these Sunday picnics is camaraderie, and tho distinctions of Legation Street disappear. At the end of eo genial a day one rides back at peaoo with all men, the sun behind ono a dying splendour of flame, tho towers of tho city with its huge darkening wall lit by the last rays.—Edward Manico, in tho "Manchester Guardian."