Korea & Her Neighbours/Chapter XVI

MUKDEN Stands at an altitude of t6o feet above the sea, in Lat. 41° 51’ N. and Long. 123° 37’ E., in the centre of an immense alluvial plain, bearing superb crops and liberally sprinkled with farming villages embowered in wood, a wavy line of low blue hills at a great distance limiting the horizon. It is 3 miles from the Hun-ho, a tributary of the Liau, and within its outer wall idles along the silvery Siao-ho or " small river," with a long Bund affording a delightful promenade and an airy position for a number of handsome houses, the residences of missionaries and mandarins, with stately outer and inner gates, through which glimpses are ob- tained of gardens and flowering plants and pots. This city of 260,000 inhabitants, owing to its connection with the reigning dynasty, is the second city officially in the empire, and the Peking "boards" with one exception are nominally dupli- cated there. Hence it not only has an army of Chinese and Tartar officials of all grades, but a large resident population of retired and expectant mandarins, living in handsome houses and making a great display in the streets. There is an in- cessant movement of mule carts, the cabs of Mukden, with their superb animals and their blue canopies covering both mule and driver, official mule carts driven at a trot, with four or more outriders with white hats and red plumes, private carts belonging to young mandarin swells, who give daily en- tertainments at a restaurant on the Bund, mandarins on horse- back with runners clearing the way, carts waiting for "lotus viewers," tall, "big-footed" women promenading with their children, their hair arranged in loops on silver frames and decorated with flowers, hospital patients on stretchers and in chairs, men selling melons and candies, and beggars who by- blowing through a leaf imitate the cry of nearly every bird. Then in the summer evenings, when the mercury has fallen to 80°, the servants of rich men bring out splendid ponies and mules and walk them on the Bund, and there come the crowds to stare at the foreigners and hang round their gates. The presence of well-dressed women is a feature rare in the East. Up to the war people were polite and friendly, but progress was difficult and the smell of garlic strong. At night the dogs bark, guns are fired, drums and gongs are beaten, and the clappers of the watchmen rival each other in making night hideous.

All this life lies between the outer wall and the lofty quad- rangular inner wall, 3 miles in circuit, built of brick, flanked by lofty towers, and pierced by eight gates protected by lofty brick bastions. This wall, on which three carriages could drive abreast, protects the commercial and official part of the city, which is densely crowded, Mukden, besides being a great grain emporium, being the centre of the Chinese fur trade, which attracts buyers from all parts of the world. Fine streets, though full of humps and quagmires, divide the city into nine wards or quarters, the central quarter being Imperial property, and containing a fine palace with much decorative yellow tiling, the examination hall, and a number of palaces and yamenSy all solidly built. To my thinking no Chinese city is so agreeable as Mukden. The Tartar capital is free from that atmosphere of decay which broods over Peking. Its wide streets are comparatively clean. It is regularly built, and its flne residences are well kept up. It is a busy place, and does a large and lucrative trade, specially in grain, beans, and furs. It has various industries, which include the tanning and dress- ing of furs and the weaving of silk stuff's; its bankers and merchants are rich, and it has great commercial as well as some political importance.

As the old capital of Manchuria and the abode of the Prince ancestors of the family which was placed on the Chinese throne in 1644, it has special privileges, among which are " Ministres de Parade," nominally holding the same rank as the actual ministers in Peking. Near it are the superb tombs of the an- cestors of the present Emperor, on which grand avenues of trees converge, bordered by colossal stone animals after the fashion of those at the Ming tombs near Peking. Formerly the Manchu Emperors made pilgrimages to these tombs and the sacred city of their dynasty, but since the second decade of this century the Chinese Emperor's portrait only has been sent at intervals in solemn procession, the Peking road being in the meantime closed to ordinary traffic.

The Governor-General of Manchuria resides in Mukden, as well as the military Governor, who is assisted by a civil ad- ministrator and by the Presidents of five Boards. The great offices of State are filled in duplicate by Chinese and Manchus, and criminals of the two races are tried in separate courts.

The favorable reception given to Christianity is one of the features of Mukden. The fine pagoda of the Christian Church is en evidence everywhere. The Scotch U. P. missionaries, who have been established there for twenty-five years, are on friendly terms with the people, and specially with many of the mandarins and high officials, who show them tokens of regard publicly and privately on all occasions. Dr. Christie, the medical missionary, is the trusted friend as well as the medical adviser of many of the leading officials and their wives, who, with every circumstance of ceremonial pomp, have presented complimentary tablets to the hospital, and alto- gether the relations between the Chinese and the missionaries are unique. I attribute these special relations with the upper classes partly to the fact that Dr. Ross, the senior missionary, and Dr. Christie, and those who have joined them subse- quently, have studied Chinese custom and etiquette very closely, and are careful to conform to both as far as is possible, while they are not only keen-sighted for the good that is in the Chinese, but bring the best out of them.

Thus Christianity, divested of the nonchalant or contemp- tuous insularity by which it is often rendered repulsive, has made considerable progress not only in the capital but in the province, and until the roads became unsafe there was scarcely a day during my long visit in which there were not deputa- tions from distant villages asking for Christian workers, repre- senting numerous bands of rural worshippers, who, having received some knowledge of Christianity from converts, col- porteurs, or catechists, had renounced many idolatrous prac- tices, and desired further instruction. Of the " professing Christians," Dr. Ross said that it was only a very small per- centage who had heard the Gospel from Europeans ! Four thousand were already baptized, and nearly as many again were “ inquirers " with a view to baptism. It was most curious to see men coming daily from remote regions asking for some one to go and instruct them in the " Jesus doctrine," for "they had learned as much as they could without a teacher." In many parts of Manchuria there are now Christian communities carrying on their own worship and discipline, and it is note- worthy that very many of the converts are members of those Secret Societies whose strongest bond of union is the search after righteousness.

The Mission Hospital is one of the largest and best equipped in the Far East, and besides doing a great medical and surgi- cal work, is a medical school in which students pass through a four years' curriculum. There also Dr. Christie gives illus- trated popular scientific lectures in the winter, which are at- tended among others by a number of sons of mandarins. Donations, both of money and food, are contributed to this hospital both by officials and merchants; and General Tso, a most charitable man and beloved by the poor, only the night before he started for Korea, sent a bag of tickets for ice, so that the hospital might not suffer for the lack of it during his absence. Only a few months before he presented it with a handsome tablet and subscription.1

Even in so civilized a city as Mukden, with its schools and literary examinations, its thousands of literary aspirants to official position, its streets full of a busy and splendid official- ism, its enormous trade, its banks and yamens, its 20,000 Mussulmans, with their many mosques, and hatred of the pig, and the slow interpenetration of enlightened Western ideas, Chinese superstitions of the usual order, well known by every reader, prevail.

The system of medicine, though it contains the knowledge and use of some valuable native drugs among the sixty which are exported, is in many respects extremely barbarous. The doctors have no operative surgery and cannot even tie an artery ! They use cupping, the cautery, and acupuncture hot or cold, with long coarse uncleanly needles, with which they pierce the liver, joints, and stomach for pains, sprains, and rheumatism. They close all abscesses, wounds, and ulcers with a black impervious plaster. Witch doctors are resorted to in cases of hysteria or mental derangement. Vaccination is now to some extent adopted with calf or transferred lymph, the puncture being made in the nostrils. In order to ascer- tain whether a sick person is likely to live, they plunge long needles into the body, and give np the case as hopeless if blood does not flow. When death is near the friends dress the pa- tient in the best clothes they can afford and remove him from the kang (the usual elevated sleeping place) to the floor, or lay him on ashes. As the spirit departs they cry loudly in the ear. In connection with death, it may be mentioned that some of the most striking shops in Mukden, after the coffin shops, are those in which are manufactured and sold admirable lifesize representations of horses, men, asses, elephants, carts, and all the articles of luxury of this life, which are carried in procession and are burned at the grave, sometimes to the value of $1,000.

Few children under nine years old are buried, and those only among the richest class. When death occurs, the mother, wailing bitterly, wraps the body in matting, and throws it away, i.e. she places it where the dogs can get at it. This ghastly burden must not be carried out of a door or window, but through a new or disused opening, in order that the evil spirit which causes the disease may not enter. The belief is that the Heavenly Dog which eats the sun at the time of an eclipse demands the bodies of children, and that if they are denied to him he will bring certain calamity on the household.

I have mentioned the kang, which is a marked feature of the houses and inns of Manchuria, which for its latitude has the coldest winter in the world, the mercury often reaching 17° F. below zero. The kang is a brick platform covered with matting and heated economically by flues, and is at once sleeping and sitting place. The stalks of the Hokiis Sorghum are used for fuel. In winter, when the external temperature may be a little above and much below zero for a month at a time, the Chinaman, unable to heat his whole room, drops his shoes, mounts his kang, sits crosslegged on the warm mat, covers his padded socks with his padded robe, and there takes his meals and receives his friends in comfort. When I was invited to climb the Jzang I felt myself a persona grata.

The pawnshops of Mukden, with their high outer walls, lofty gateways, two or three well-kept courts, fine buildings, and tall stone columns at the outer gate, with the sign of the business upon them, their scrupulous cleanliness, and their armies of polite, intelligent clerks, are as respectable as banks with us. They demand for every sum borrowed movable property to double its amount. If the pledge be not redeemed within two years, it falls to the pawnbroker. Government fixes the interest. The proprietor takes the same position as a capitalist owning a bank in the West, and a samshu distiller takes an equal place in local esteem.

The prevalence of suicide is a feature of Mukden as of most Chinese cities. Certain peculiarities of Chinese justice render it a favorite way of wreaking spite upon an employer or neigh- bor, who is haunted besides by the spirit of the self-murderer. Hence servants angry with their masters, shopmen with their employers, wives with their husbands, and above all, daughters- in-law with their mothers-in-law, show their spite by dying on their premises, usually by opium, or eating the tops of lucifer matches ! It is quite a common thing for a person who has a grudge against another to go and poison himself in his court- yard, securing revenge first by the mandarin's inquiry and next by the haunting terrors of his malevolent spirit. Young girls were daily, poisoning themselves with lucifer matches to escape from the tyranny of mothers-in-law and leave unpleas- antness behind them.

But it is not the seamy side which is uppermost in Mukden.

1 General Tso's cavalry brigade was perhaps the best disciplined in the Chinese army, and he was a severe disciplinarian, but he was also an earnest philanthropist, and though a strict Mussulman, always showed himself friendly to the Christian religion, specially in its benevolent as- pects. His soup kitchens saved many a family from starvation. He established and was the chief support of a foundling hospital. During the terrible inundation of 1888 he distributed food among the famishing with his own hands. His friendly help could always be relied on by the missionaries, who joined in the sorrow with which Manchuria mourned for his premature death at Phyong-yang in Korea. The benevolence of rich Chinese ought not to be overlooked. The charities of China are on a gigantic scale, and many of them are admirably administered by men who expend much self-sacrificing effort on their administration.