Court Life in China | Page 4

few who have looked upon the countenance of the Dowager
describe her as a tall, erect, fine-looking woman of distinguished and
imperious bearing, with pronounced Tartar features, the eye of an eagle,
and the voice of determined authority and absolute command. --Eliza
Ruhamah Scidmore in "China, The Long-Lived Empire."
I
THE EMPRESS DOWAGER--HER EARLY LIFE
One day when one of the princesses was calling at our home in Peking,
I inquired of her where the Empress Dowager was born. She gazed at
me for a moment with a queer expression wreathing her features, as she
finally said with just the faintest shadow of a smile: "We never talk
about the early history of Her Majesty." I smiled in return and
continued: "I have been told that she was born in a small house, in a
narrow street inside of the east gate of the Tartar city--the gate blown
up by the Japanese when they entered Peking in 1900." The princess
nodded. "I have also heard that her father's name was Chao, and that he
was a small military official (she nodded again) who was afterwards
beheaded for some neglect of duty." To this the visitor also nodded
assent.
A few days later several well-educated young Chinese ladies, daughters
of one of the most distinguished scholars in Peking, were calling on my
wife, and again I pursued my inquiries. "Do you know anything about
the early life of the Empress Dowager?" I asked of the eldest. She
hesitated a moment, with that same blank expression I had seen on the
face of the princess, and then answered very deliberately,--"Yes,
everybody knows, but nobody talks about it." And this is, no doubt, the
reason why the early life of the greatest woman of the Mongol race,
and, as some who knew her best think, the most remarkable woman of
the nineteenth century, has ever been shrouded in mystery. Whether the
Empress desired thus to efface all knowledge of her childhood by
refusing to allow it to be talked about, I do not know, but I said to
myself: "What everybody knows, I can know," and I proceeded to find
out.

I discovered that she was one of a family of several brothers and sisters
and born about 1834; that the financial condition of her parents was
such that when a child she had to help in caring for the younger
children, carrying them on her back, as girls do in China, and amusing
them with such simple toys as are hawked about the streets or sold in
the shops for a cash or two apiece; that she and her brothers and little
sisters amused themselves with such games as blind man's buff,
prisoner's base, kicking marbles and flying kites in company with the
other children of their neighbourhood. During these early years she was
as fond of the puppet plays, trained mice shows, bear shows, and
"Punch and Judy" as she was in later years of the theatrical
performances with which she entertained her visitors at the palace. She
was compelled to run errands for her mother, going to the shops, as
occasion required, for the daily supply of oils, onions, garlic, and other
vegetables that constituted the larger portion of their food. I found out
also that there is not the slightest foundation for the story that in her
childhood she was sold as a slave and taken to the south of China.
The outdoor life she led, the games she played, and the work she was
forced to do in the absence of household servants, gave to the little girl
a well-developed body, a strong constitution and a fund of experience
and information which can be obtained in no other way. She was one of
the great middle class. She knew the troubles and trials of the poor. She
had felt the pangs of hunger. She could sympathize with the millions of
ambitious girls struggling to be freed from the trammels of ignorance
and the age-old customs of the past--a combat which was the more real
because it must be carried on in silence. And who can say that it was
not the struggles and privations of her own childhood which led to the
wish in her last years that "the girls of my empire may be educated"?
When little Miss Chao had reached the age of fourteen or fifteen she
was taken by her parents to an office in the northern part of the imperial
city of Peking where her name, age, personal appearance, and estimated
degree of intelligence and potential ability were registered, as is done in
the case of all the daughters of the Manchu people. The reason for this
singular proceeding is that when the time comes for the selection of a
wife or a concubine for