Court Life in China | Page 7

away from
the world, as ghost stories become more terrifying when told in the dim
twilight. May this not account in some measure for the attitude
assumed by the Empress Dowager towards the Boxer superstitions of
1900, and their pretentions to be able at will to call to their aid legions
of spirit-soldiers, while at the same time they were themselves
invulnerable to the bullets of their enemies?
It was when Miss Chao was ten years old that the conflict known as the
Opium War was brought to an end. It has been said that when the
Emperor was asked to sanction the importation of opium, he answered,
"I will never legalize a traffic that will be an injury to my people," but
whether this be true or not, it is admitted by all that the central
government was strongly opposed to the sale and use of the drug within
its domains. It is unfortunate, to say the least, that the first time the
Chinese came into collision with European governments was over a
matter of this kind, and it is to the credit of the Chinese commissioner
when the twenty thousand chests of opium, over which the dispute
arose, were handed over to him, he mixed it with quicklime in huge
vats that it might be utterly destroyed rather than be an injury to his
people. They may have exhibited an ignorance of international law,
they may have manifested an unwise contempt for the foreigner, but it
remains a fact of history that they were ready to suffer great financial
loss rather than get revenue from the ruin of their subjects, and that
England went to war for the purpose of securing indemnity for the

opium destroyed.
The common name for opium among the Chinese is yang yen--foreign
tobacco, and my wife says: "When calling at the Chinese homes, I have
frequently been offered the opium-pipe, and when I refused it the ladies
expressed surprise, saying that they were under the impression that all
foreigners used it."
What now were the results of the Opium War as viewed from the
standpoint of the Chinese people, and what impression would it make
upon them as a whole? Great Britain demanded an indemnity of
$21,000,000, the cession to them of Hongkong, an island on the
southern coast, and the opening of five ports to British trade. China lost
her standing as suzerain among the peoples of the Orient and got her
first glimpse of the White Peril from the West.
Although the Empress Dowager was but a child of ten at this time she
would receive her first impression of the foreigner, which was that he
was a pirate who had come to carry away their wealth, to filch from
them their land, and to overrun their country. He became a veritable
bugaboo to men, women and children alike, and this impression was
crystallized in the expression yang huei, "foreign devil," which is the
only term among a large proportion of the Chinese by which the
foreigner is known. One day when walking on the street in Peking I
met a woman with a child of two years in her arms, and as I passed
them, the child patted its mother on the cheek and said in an
undertone,--"The foreign devil's coming," which led the frightened
mother to cover its eyes with her hand that it might not be injured by
the sight.
On one occasion a friend was travelling through the country when a
Chinese gentleman, dressed in silk and wearing an official hat, called
on him at the inn where he was stopping and with a profound bow
addressed him as "Old Mr. Foreign Devil."
My wife says that: "Not infrequently when I have been called for the
first time to the homes of the better classes I have seen the children run
into the house from the outer court exclaiming, --'The devil doctor's

coming.' Indeed, I have heard the women use this term in speaking of
me to my assistant until I objected, when they asked with
surprise,--'Doesn't she like to be called foreign devil?' " And so the
Empress Dowager's first impression of the foreigner would be that of a
devil.
Colonel Denby tells us that "A Frenchman and his wife were carried off
from Tonquin by bandits who took refuge in China. The Chinese
government was asked to rescue these prisoners and restore them to
liberty. China sent a brigade of troops, who pursued the bandits to their
den and recovered the prisoners. The French government thanked the
Chinese government for its assistance, and bestowed the decoration of
the Legion of Honour on the brigade commander, and then shortly
afterwards demanded the payment of an enormous indemnity for the
outrage on the ground that China had delayed to