Page:Illustrations of China and Its People vol. IV.pdf/25



O exhaustive or thoroughly satisfactory description of the domestic architecture of the Chinese house has, so far as I am aware, ever yet been given. A principal reason for this omission is the lack of anything like complete acquaintance with the subject. The fact is, the country is in itself a vast one, and its domestic architecture, though remarkably similar throughout, yet presents wide divergences of construction, designed to meet the varying requirements of climate and position.

A second difficulty arises from the strong dislike entertained by the people against admitting strangers into the inner courts of their dwellings; for these they hold to be sacred and inviolate. To such an extent, indeed, has this idea of privacy and family isolation been carried, that Chinese homes have for ages been constructed, on all occasions, after a model which seems to aim at perfect family seclusion from relatives even, and friends, no less than from strangers.

I cannot venture to describe here all that I have myself observed with respect to the architectural styles adopted in different provinces of the Empire. I must limit myself to a few general remarks, such as bear more especially upon the illustrations numbered 12, 13, and 14.

I enjoyed exceptional advantages for gleaning information about the inner life of the Chinese wealthy classes, and the arrangements of their households, inasmuch as I never let slip an opportunity of volunteering to take family portraits, in order that while thus engaged I might obtain for myself such groups and interiors as those which I have here represented.

The dwelling to which I am about to introduce the reader is that of Mr. Yang, a gentleman enormously rich, and holding an official rank in Peking. His abode, like all others of its kind, is walled around, and can be entered only by a plain doorway through a high brick wall which skirts an obscure alley. Within the door were two silk lanterns, dangling from supports above, and daubed with the name and titles of Yang. About six feet from the lintel was a movable partition designed to conceal the inner court, as well as for purposes of geomancy. Having entered the first court within the wall, I was brought to a stand-still by the porter and his huge dog, a shaggy brute, who fiercely showed his fangs. The porter conveyed my card to Mr. Yang, and the latter thereupon came to the threshold of an inner court to meet me, and conducted me through a quaint, narrow passage, overgrown with a grape-vine, into a sort of Chinese paradise. In this paradise was a miniature lotus lake, spanned by a marble bridge. A small marble pagoda embowered in vines and fruit-trees, rose on the one side, while on the other an artificial rockery had been constructed, and ferns and flowers were growing out of its mossy crevices. Passing along a marble-paved pathway, roofed over, and open in front, to this half-garden, hah -quadrangle, I came next to the reception-hall. It is the interior of the reception-hall which is shown in No. .13, and I must own that never during my wanderings in China had I fallen in with anything more quaint and pretty than the view from this apartment into the second smaller court, to be seen in No. 14. Symmetry, as nearly perfect as possible, had been observed in the design of this establishment, as well as in its details; and the interior of the reception room will convey a very just impression of this feature in Chinese dwellings. One exception only to this rule of severe symmetry was to be discovered, and that was the central window, whose frame had been filled with irregular forms, and glazed with sheets of European glass. This last circumstance was due to the excessive predilection for foreign appliances entertained by Mr. Yang, of which we shall have more to relate further on. The other windows were regular in design, and were covered with white paper, as in most houses of this class. This paper, one might suppose, would have the advantage of preventing the curious from seeing what is going on inside. But such is not really the case, for the ladies, who are so strictly secluded in China, have devised a means of seeing through it, while they themselves remain unseen, and thus they make themselves acquainted with the appearance and manners of the guests of their lord. Their plan is to steal up noiselessly to the window, and applying the moist tips of their tongues to the paper, the soft substance yields silently to the little weapon, and thus a hole is made through which a bright eye surveys the interior of the forbidden chamber, and a quick ear drinks in the delicious tones of the prohibited conversation.