PEKING.

Waikato Times, Volume 2632, Issue 2632, 25 May 1889, Page 2 (Supplement)

PEKING.

Of interesting places, however there are certainly a few in Peking. First among these I rank the wall itself. It is built of large bricks, filled in with sand, and is 50ft. high, GOft. wide at the base, and 40ft. at the top. Peking seen from the wall is a stretch of flat roofs, morn than half hidden in foliage, from which here and there a tower of a pagoda or highrooted temple projects. Not a trace of theactual dirt and discomfort and squalor is visible, the air is fresh, the smells are absent and the Celestial capital is at its best. A walk of a mile along the top brings yon to the famous Observatory, and the marvellous bronzes of the Jesuit Father Verbicst, who made and erected them in IGOS. Below the wall in a shady garden are the much older ones which Marco Polo saw, less accurate astronomically, but even more beautiful for their grace and delicacy, and linking one's imagination closely with the romantic past, tor this great globe and sextant and armillary zodiacal sphere were constructed in by the astronomer of Khublai Khan. Either the climate or their own intrinsic excellence has preserved them so well that every line anil bit of tracery is as perfect to our eyes as it was to those of the great Khan himself. Then there is the F.tamination-hall. The Government. of China is a vast system of competitive examination tempered by bribery, and this Kao Chang is its heart. It is a miniature city, with one wide artery down the middle, hundreds of parallel streets running from this on both sides, each street mathematically subdivided into houses, a big semblance of a palace at one end of the main street, and little elevated watch-towers here and there. But the palace is merely the examiner's hall. The streets are three feet wide and one side of them is a blank wall ; the towers are for tho '' proctors" to spy upon cribbing, and the houses are perfectly plain brick cells measuring MS inches by 50. In the enclosure there are no fewer than 14,000 of these. After emerging successfully from a competitive examination in the capital of his own province, the Chinese aspirant comes to Peking to compete for a second degree. He is put into one of these cells, two boards are given him for a seat and a table, and there he remains day and nigh for fourteen days. Every cell is full, an army of cooks and coolies waits upon the scholars, and anyone caught cribbing or communicating with his neighbor isvisited with the severest punishment. Tim condition of the place when these 14.000 would-be literati are thus cooped up for a fortnight, with Chinese ideas of sanitation may be imagined, and it is not surprising to learn that many die. But what joy for the successful ones. They are received in procession at the gates of their native town, and everybody hastens to congratulate their parents upo.i havinggivensuch a sonto the world. By-andby there is anoth r exan ination in which the already twice successful compete against each other, the 14,000 again flock to Peking, and the winners are honored by the Son of Heaven himself, and their names inscribed forever upon the marble tablets. Better still, they are provided with Government posts, and this is the roward of their efforts. But what, you will ask, is the subject-matter of their examination ? Simply and solely the letter-per feet knowledge of the works of Confucius the history of China, and the art of composition and character-forming as practised by the great masters of old. In the works of the masters, argue the Chinese is all wisdom ; he who knows these works best is therefore the wisest man ; whatever needs doing, the wisest man can do it best. So the successful literati are sent all over the country to be magistrates and generals and ootunanders of ships and engineers and everything cine, haphazard, without the slightest acquaintance of any kind with their subject, denselyand marvellosly ignorant and impenetrably conceited. The Marquis Tseng is almost the only one of the great Chinamen of to-day who has not entered public life by this triple portal to invincible incompetence. The shrine of the master himself is really an impressive spot. The great hall and its columns are of bare wood, tho floor is of plain stone, and no adornment mars the surprcme solemnity of the place. In fcho middle, upon a square altar, stands a small tablet of red lacquer, upon which is written in Chinese and Manchu—" The tablet of the soul of the most holy ancestral teacher Confucius." Up the marble terrace to this ha'l ths Emperor comes to wor ship twice a year, and tho Chinese do really hold this place in some veneration for when I offered its miserable guardian five dollars to let me photograph it, he repulsed tho offer with much scorn. Yet the five dollars would have been a fortune to him. Above all other characteristics however, of Peking one thintr stands out in horrible prominence, and I have put this oIT to tiie hist. Not to mention it would be to wilfully omit, the most striking color of tho picture, I mean its filth. It is the most horribly and indescribably filthy place that can he itnag- | ined. Indeed, imagination must fall far i short of tho fact. Some of the daily sights of the pedestrian in Peking could not hardly be more than hinted at by one man to another in the smoking-room There is no sewer or cesspool, public or private, but the street; the dog, the pig, anc} the fowl are the scavengers ; every now and then von pass a man who goes along tossing the most loathsome of the refuse into an open work basket on his back ; the smolls are simply awful ; the - city is one colossal and uncleansed cloaca. As I have said above, the first of the two i moments of de'ialit vouchsafed to every ] visitor to tho Celestial capital is at his 1 first sight of it. Too second—though I I must not omit to thank my too kind host ( for one of the plesantest and most iu- ( structivo fortnights of my life—is when I he turns his biek. hoping it may be for t ever, upon the " body and soul stinking c town" (the words are C'oloi idge's) of Pe- c king.—Melbourne Argus. i