Page:China Under the Empress Dowager - ed. Backhouse and Bland - 1914.pdf/304

 with him Wang Wen-shao (who had succeeded Li Hung- chang as Peace Plenipotentiary). They invited Her Majesty to enter her chair: “There is no hurry,” she replied. She stood for some five minutes in full view of the crowd, talking energetically with the bystanders, and looking extremely well and youthful for her age, until the chief cunuch returned and handed her the list of baggage and treasure, which she scanned with close attention and then returned to him with an expression of satisfaction.

After this, at the request of the Viceroy of Chibli (Ytian Shih-k’ai), the foreign manager and engineer of the rail- way were presented to her, and received her thanks for the satisfactory arrangements made throughout the journey. She then entered her chair, a larger and finer conveyance than that supplied to the Emperor, and was borne away towards the palace; by her side ran one of her favourite eunuchs repeatedly calling Her Majesty’s attention to objects of interest. Whencver foreigners were in sight he would inform Her Majesty of the fact, and by one he was heard distinctly to say : “Look! Old Buddha, look quickly at that foreign devil,” whereupon the Empress smiled and bowed most affably. Passing through the southern gate of the Chinese city, her bearers carried her straight to the large enceinte of the Tartar city wall at the Ch’ien-mén, where stands the shrine dedicated to the tutelary God of the Manchus. Here crowds of foreigners were in waiting on the wall. Looking down on the courtyard towards the shrine, they saw the Old Buddba leave her chair and fall upon her knees to burn incense before the image of the God of War, whilst several Taoist priests chanted the ritual. Rising she next looked up towards the foreigners, smiling and bowing, before she was carried away through the gate into the precincts of the Forbidden City. No sooner had she reached the inner palace (the Ning Shou kung) at about 2 P.M., than she commanded the eunuchs to commence digging up the treasure which had been buried there at the time of her Aight; she was gratified beyond measure to find that it had indeed remained untouched,