Page:Peking the Beautiful.pdf/17

 Preface

PEKING, for ages the center of art and culture, the pride of an ancient and glorious civilization, has within its crenelated walls the best that China has ever produced in literature, art, and architecture. To appreciate China, therefore, one must first see Peking. To have seen Peking is to have seen something far more than a mere town inclosed by mammoth walls. The great Northern Capital possesses individuality. It radiates an atmosphere that is "different." It is like nothing else on earth, and that is in itself a rare merit. In this city, with its ancient monuments, some of which date back nearly two thousand years, we find at once a picture and a history of all China in miniature. True, the historic monuments, unused and neglected, are fast falling into decay; but this ruin, which greets us at every tumn, pitiful as it really is, seems only to enhance the romance of this mysterious and once all-powerful metropolis. The greatness, the vastness the glory of such celebrated places as the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, the Great Wall, or the Summer Palace, grips the imagination and holds one spellbound and humble before these emblems of an ancient and glorious past. For a long time there has been a recognized need for an album on historic Peking that would embody a representative set of all the important monuments of the capital. The very fact that so many of the ancient landmarks-priceless in their age-old glory-are being torn from their foundations and ruthlessly destroyed, makes an album of this kind not only interesting as an art volume, but a work of immeasurable value to China and to the world, as an authentic record of picturesque Peking. In the preparation of this volume it was recognized from the first that it should be as different as possible from any previous publication on Peking, so that it might not compete with, but add to the splendid contributions which have already been offered by others. Therefore, in the selection of photo-studies for Peking the Beautiful, the aim has been to present the ancient Chinese capital to the public in a new and entirely different setting. The photographs shown are the result of five years of tireless effort on the part of the author to reveal, through the medium of pictures, the charm and greatness of the capital, as revealed in its wonderful historic monuments. His collection of over three thousand photographs on Peking have been drawn upon for the material, and it has been the determination of the publishers to reproduce these as true to life as it is possible to make them. Photogravure-the only perfect medium of photographic reproduction-has been used in the printing of the monochromes, and of these there are fifty-eight.