Page:Twentieth Century Impressions of Hongkong, Shanghai, and other Treaty Ports of China.djvu/763



EKING, or rather a city which once stood on the site of that which is now the southern portion of Peking, was in ancient days the capital of the kingdom of Yan, but during the supremacy of the Chins, about 222B.C., the seat of Government was removed elsewhere. About 936A.D. Peking was taken from the Chins by the Khaitans, who made it their southern capital. Later, the fourth sovereign of the Kin dynasty, which had overthrown the Khaitans, established his Court here. In the time of the Mongols, about 1267A.D., the city was removed about a mile to the north of its original site, the new city becoming known as the Northern or Tartar City, and the old as the Southern or Chinese City. The early Ming emperors held their Courts at Nanking, but in 1421 the third emperor of that dynasty reverted to Peking, which has remained the capital of China ever since that date, though its Chinese name, Shun-tien, really signifies only "the Northern Capital."

Few capitals are less favourably situated, geographically and politically, than Peking. It has practically no direct foreign trade, and has no possibilities either as a manufacturing or as a commercial centre. It lies in a sandy plain about 13 miles to the south-east of the Pei-ho, and about 10 miles west-north-west of the mouth of that river. A canal connects the city with the Pei-ho. The population is estimated at about 1,300,000—900,000 in the Northern, and 400,000 in the Southern City. The small foreign population consists almost solely of diplomatic representatives of the various Powers having treaties with China, of Customs officials, missionaries, and school teachers.

The Northern or Tartar City is commonly known among the Chinese as Nei-cheng, which means "within the wall." It consists of three separate walled enclosures, one within the other. The innermost is called Kin-ching, or the "Prohibited City," and contains the palaces and pleasure grounds of the Emperor and the Empress Dowager. These sacred precincts were visited by foreigners for the first time in history in 1900, after the relief of the Legations and the flight of the imperial family at the close of the Boxer rising. Outside this enclosure is Hwang-ching, the Imperial City, 2 square miles in extent, and surrounded by a wall covered with yellow tiles, known as the Imperial Wall. It is not so sacred as the inner enclosure, but it can only be entered by authorised persons. It contains Government Offices and the residences of the official classes. The outer portions of the city contains dwelling-houses and shops. Round the whole of the Tartar City run walls averaging 50 ft. in height and 40 ft. in width. They are built of earth and concrete, faced with brick, and are buttressed at intervals of 60 yards, while the parapets are loopholed and crenelated. These walls are pierced by several gateways, each surmounted by a pagoda, while in the south wall is the Water Gate, through which the waters of the Grand Canal flow into the city. The Southern or Chinese City known as Wai-cheng, which signifies "without the wall," is the business quarter of Peking, and contains the foreign Legations, the Llama, Confucian, and other temples, and numerous shops. It is oblong in shape, and is surrounded by walls about 30 ft. in height and from 25 ft. in thickness at the base to 15 ft. at the summit. The streets are narrow, congested, and, for the most part, in spite of much that has been done to improve them, indescribably dirty. The year 1899 saw the first attempt made to level and macadamise Legation Street, and that thoroughfare is now the centre of the section of the city known as the Legation quarter—practically a European settlement, half a square mile in extent. Here rigorous reformatory measures have been resorted to, and a degree of salubrity—years ago deemed impossible—is gradually being attained. In this fortified settlement, or its immediate neighbourhood, are the Hotel du Nord, the Hotel de Peking, and the Wagon Lits Hotel; the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, the Russo-Chinese Bank, the Deutsch-