Court Life in China | Page 5

in Peking there was a beautiful child, the daughter of a Manchu woman whose husband was dead. One day this widow came to the principal of the school and said: "A summons has come from the court for the girls of our clan to appear before the officials that a certain number may be chosen and sent into the palace as serving girls." "When is she to appear?" inquired the teacher. "On the sixteenth," answered the mother. "I suppose you are anxious that she should be one of the fortunate ones," said the teacher, "though I should be sorry to lose her from the school." "On the contrary," said the mother, "I should be distressed if she were chosen, and have come to consult with you as to whether we might not hire a substitute." The teacher expressed surprise and asked her why. "When our daughters are taken into the palace," answered the mother, "they are dead to us until they are twenty-five, when they are allowed to return home. If they are incompetent or dull they are often severely punished. They may contract disease and die, and their death is not even announced to us; while if they prove themselves efficient and win the approval of the authorities they are retained in the palace and we may never see them or hear from them again."
At first the teacher was inclined to favour the hiring of a substitute, but on further consideration concluded that it would be contrary to the law, and advised that the girl be allowed to go. The mother, however, was so anxious to prevent her being chosen that she sent her with uncombed hair, soiled clothes and a dirty face, that she might appear as unattractive as possible.
The prospects for a concubine are even less promising than for a serving maid, as when she once enters the palace she has little if any hope of ever leaving it. She is neither mistress nor servant, wife nor slave, she is but one of a hundred buds in a garden of roses which have little if any prospect of ever blooming or being plucked for the court bouquet. When, therefore, the gates of the Forbidden City close behind the young girls who are taken in as concubines of an emperor they shut out an attractive, busy, beautiful world, filled with men and women, boys and girls, homes and children, green fields and rich harvests, and confine them within the narrow limits of one square mile of brick-paved earth, surrounded by a wall twenty-five feet high and thirty feet thick, in which there is but one solitary man who is neither father, brother, husband nor friend to them, and whom they may never even see.
When therefore the time came for the selection of concubines for the Emperor Hsien Feng, and our little Miss Chao was taken into the palace, her parents, like many others, had every reason to consider it a piece of ill-fortune which had visited their home. The future was veiled from them. The Forbidden City, surrounded by its great crenelated wall, may have seemed more like a prison than like a palace. True, they had other children, and she was "only a girl, but even girls are a small blessing," as they tell us in their proverbs. She had grown old enough to be useful in the home, and they no doubt had cherished plans of betrothing her to the son of some merchant or official who would add wealth or honour to their family. Neither father nor mother, brother nor sister, could have conceived of the potential power, honour and even glory, that were wrapped up in that girl, and that were finally to come to them as a family, as well as to many of them as individuals. Their wildest dreams at that time could not have pictured themselves dukes and princesses, with their daughters as empresses, duchesses, or ladies-in-waiting in the palace. But such it proved to be.

II
The Empress Dowager--Her Years of Training
The kindness of the Empress is as boundless as the sea. Her person too is holy, she is like a deity. With boldness, from seclusion, she ascends the Dragon Throne, And saves her suffering country from a fate we dare not own.
--"Yuan Fan," Translated by I. T. C.

II
THE EMPRESS DOWAGER--HER YEARS OF TRAINING
The year our little Miss Chao entered the palace was a memorable one in the history of China. The Tai-ping rebellion, which had begun in the south some three years earlier (1850), had established its capital at Nanking, on the Yangtse River, and had sent its "long-haired" rebels north on an expedition of conquest, the ultimate aim of which was Peking. By the end of the year 1853 they had arrived within one hundred miles of the capital, conquering