No. 216 - THE PENNY MAGAZINE - Aug. 15, 1835

CHINA.--NO. II.
THE CITIES OF CHINA.

IN its principal features, the city of Pekin differs little from the description we have given of it from Marco Polo. Its form, however, has varied from a perfect to an oblong square, and the city only occupies an area of twelve square miles. Its gates are no longer twelve but nine. Its suburbs, so vast in the time of the old Venetian, seem gradually to have been declining in the course of the two last centuries. The early missionaries found them of prodigious extent, and, in 1720, John Bell describes them as "very extensive;" but according to Staunton's account, it took the English embassy, going at a very slow cermonious pace, only fifteen minutes to traverse the suburb by which it entered Pekin, and twenty minutes that by which it departed.

The city itself is now divided into two--the Chinese and the Tartar cities. Except in its length of walls*, which are about thirty feet high, and twenty fee thick, its numerous towers flanking these walls, and its lofty gates, the first exterior view of Pekin is rather flat and uninteresting. There are no towers, spires, domes, obelisks, or great public buildings towering about the rest,--not even a chimney to break the uniformity of the house-tops, which being nearly uniform in height, and the streets being all laid out in straight lines, give the city the appearance of a vast encampment, or assemblage of canvass-tents, which would be almost complete if the roofs were painted white instead of red, blue, and other colours, as they are. Very few of the houses, even in the capital, are more than one story high. The city is situated in a plain, fringed at its extremity by the mountains of Tartary, the distant view of which, according to Mr. Ellis, is striking and agreeable.

* The materials of which these walls are built are sun-burned bricks and granite. "We reached the city of Pekin," says Mr. Clarke Abel, when describing his abrupt departure with Lord Amherst, "at the close of day, stepped from our carts to steal a piece of its walls;--had just time to observe that they were built of a sun-dried brick, of a blue colour, resting on a foundation of blocks of granite." It will be remembered that the great wall of China is composed of the same materials.

Before entering within its walls, we should not omit to observe that the road by which Pekin is approached is paved with fine granite stones, from six to sixteen feet in length, and proportionably broad, and that these enormous flags must all have been carried at least sixty miles, the nearest mountains where quarries of granite are found being those that divide China from Tartary*.

* Lord Macartney says, that on his way through the province of Pe-che-li, in which Pekin is situated, he did not find so much as a single pebble big enough to make a seal of.

Once within the gates, which are double, the sight presented by Pekin is novel, singular, and impressive. Two streets, as straight as a line, four English miles long, and 120 feet wide, run parallel from two gates in the southern wall to two gates in the northern wall, and these are crossed at right angles by other two streets of the same magnificent width. Opening on one of these main streets, which are four times as long as Oxford Street in London, or Princes' Street in Edinburgh, the traveller sees before him a double line of gay shops and warehouses, whose wares, as we have explained, are displayed in full view, and whose splendid sign-posts stand before them, not merely ornamental by the painted and gilded inscriptions, setting forth the nature of the goods and the exemplary honesty of the dealer, but generally entwined with silken ribands, and hung with flags, pennants, and streamers of every possible colour, from top to bottom, like, but still more gray, than the mast of a man-of-war on some great holiday. The sides of the houses are scarcely less brilliant, being generally painted of some delicate colour, mixed with gold ornaments. In singular contrast with our notions and practice, the articles exposed for sale that make the greatest show are coffins for the dead. Along these streets he sees a continual crowd during the day, which has scarcely a break or interruption. It flows in a central and two lateral currents. In the middle stream are mandarins and grandees of the court, on horseback or in palankeens, attended by their numerous retinues, bearing umbrellas, flags, painted lanterns, and other insignia of rank;--Tartar soldiers dashing along on horseback, or making their way by applying their whips to the crowd;--long strings of camels, brining coals from Tartary, and wheel-barrows and carts, with vegetables from every corner;--ladies carried in sumptuous sedan chairs, which are used in great numbers;--marriage-processions, and funeral-processions, the biers in the one case and the cars in the other being gilded and covered with canopies of silk, and the funerals being the most splendid portions of the moving picture.

The lateral streams are filled up by those who are busied in buying, selling, and bartering: the gaiety, buz, and confusion that prevail, are greater than might be expected from the general character of the Chinese: the dealer cries his goods, the purchaser chaffers and wrangles aloud, the barber flourishes his tweezers in the air, and clacks them together, inviting custom; comedians and quack doctors, mountebanks and musicians, pedlars and their packs, jugglers, fortune-tellers and conjurers, leave no space unoccupied on the sides of the street. And this noise, and bustle, and crowd, is not confined to any particular season or occasion, but reigns every day of the year. "I scarcely ever passed the gates, which happened twice or oftener in the week," says Mr. Barrow, "that I had not to wait a considerable time before the passage was free, particularly in the morning, notwithstanding the exertions of two or three soldiers with their whips to clear the way." The number of women in this crowd is by no means proportionate to that of the men. In the capital, the Chinese confine their wives more scrupulously than elsewhere, and though in the quiet streets or cross lanes young girls (who always retire at the approach of men) may occasionally be seen smoking their pipes at the doors of their houses, few women, except Tartars, are seen either in the crowd or in the narrow streets. The tartar women, however, go about everywhere, both on foot and horseback, which they cross like men. They are seen in the thickest of the crowd, clad all in long silken robes that reach to their feet, which appear as much too large as those of the Chinese women do too small.

When the main streets cross each other at right angles, there are erected at the four points of intersection, four of those ornamental arches which we have described as monuments to those who have attained venerable age, or merited well of the community. They consist of three gateways, the central one of which is bold and lofty,--the narrow roofs thrown over them are like the roofs of the houses, pensile, painted, gilded, and varnished.

The ample breadth and continuous crowd are confined to the four large, main streets: all the other streets are mere lanes branching from the great avenues (also at right angles), and are very narrow, solitary, and silent. In these lanes, however, the houses of the state officers, and of most of the rich and great, are situated. Lord Macartney, and the gentlemen of his embassy, were lodged in a house of this sort in a lane near to the city-walls, which had not been long built by a former Hou-pou of Canton, who was said to have spent nearly 100,000l. in its erection. What increases the dulness of these streets is, that there are no windows or openings (save a little mean door, generally closed) in the fronts of the houses. Such things are only found in the great shops and magazines, which are all situated on the four principal streets. Many of the houses of the wealthy class have, however, a sort of terrace, with a railed balcony or parapet-wall in front, which is ornamented with miniature trees, shrubs, and flowers growing in pots, and produce rather an agreeable effect.

Neither the broad nor the narrow streets have any pavement, but both are cleaned every morning, and the latter regularly watered to lay the dust, which is often intolerable.

Every one who has had access to this remarkable city has affirmed that the police maintained is singularly strict. At the two ends of each street there is a wooden gate or barricade, closed at night, which cuts off the inhabitants of that particular street from communication with the rest of the town, nor will the sentries there permit ingress or egress to any one who has not a lantern in his hand, and urgent business to plead. Night-watches also perambulate from gate to gate, who, instead of crying the hour as our watchmen used to do, strike upon a short tube of bamboo, which gives a dull, hollow, and loud sound. To show their vigilance they exercise this instrument every two or three minutes as they go their rounds. Lord Macartney, who had two or three of these noisy guardians of peace and tranquillity constantly near his house, could not sleep a wink for the first three or four nights, but, by degrees, became so accustomed to the noise that it did not disturb his slumbers. In addition to these measures, which, though they admirably secure the safety and tranquility of the inhabitants, probably originate mainly from the jealousy and apprehension of their despotic government, the proprietor or inhabitant of every tenth house in the city, like the ancient tything-men of England, takes it in turn to keep the peace, and be responsible for the orderly conduct of his nine neighbours. If any riot should take place he is obliged to give instant information at the nearest guard-house. These regulations are common to the rest of the Chinese cities.

Pekin, as we have mentioned, is divided into two. The Mantchoos or Tartars inhabit the northern, the Chinese the southern portion. The court end, or what is called "The Imperial City," in which are situated the emperor's palace and gardens, all the tribunals or public offices, lodgings for the ministers, the eunuchs, tradespeople, and artificers of the court, occupies a paralleogram about a mile long by three-fourths of a mile broad, and is surrounded by a wall twenty feet high, built of large red glazed bricks, and covered with a pensile roof of tiles, which are yellow and varnished. The enclosure offers a delightful inequality and variety of surface, not produced by nature, but by the industry of man, and "a rivulet* winding through it not only affords a plentiful supply of water, but adds largely to the beauty of the grounds, by being formed into canals, and basons, and lakes, which, with the artificial mounts, and rocks, and groves, exhibit the happiest imitation of nature †."

*This small river issues from a chain of hills about ten miles to the west of Pekin, and, under the name of Yun-ho, falls into the Pei-ho, about sixteen miles to the east of that city.

† Barrow

There are very few more remarks to be made on the capital of the Chinese empire. Its exuberant population was stated, both by the missionaries and the Chinese themselves, (when neither were suspected of any motives for exaggeration,) at 3,000,000 of souls! Mr. Barrow, who had the most ample means of observation, and who is always rather under than over the mark, confidently calls it the greatest city on the surface of the globe. The picture it presents to the Europeans contains many grand, imposing, and some beautiful features; but our primary comforts and advantages are utterly wanting. It has no pavements, no cloaca or sewers, and no commodious supply of wholesome water; consequently, it is muddy in winter and dusty in summer. It abounds in the foulest smells, proceeding from ordures and all sorts of filth, which the wealthy try to neutralize in their houses by making use of a variety of violent perfumes, and burning strongly-scented woods and compositions; and its inhabitants are obliged to draw their supplies of the indispensable fluid from wells dug in the city, whose water is execrable. Were the magnificence of Pekin ten-fold what it is, it might be sacrificed for the supplying of these wants. The lofty gate and the gilded palace, the royal garden and the ornamental lake, are not to be put in competition with those things which contribute to the comfort and health of millions. The greatest work of ancient Rome was her cloaca,--and the greatest defect of modern Paris is in her not being supplied with water like London.