Neither the Empress Dowager nor any of the Manchu ladies bind their feet; that custom prevailed in China before the Manchu conquest. The Manchus have adopted many of the manners and customs of the Chinese, but the Manchu women have retained their own individuality; and today, after more than two hundred and fifty years in China, they still wear their native costume, entirely different from the Chinese women. They still dress their hair in the picturesque Manchu fashion. They not only have never bound their feet, but they have as great a horror of it as Europeans have. Manchu ladies are not bound by the same rigid social conventions as are the Chinese women. They are less circumscribed and have more individual freedom than any other Oriental women. In fact, the Manchu woman seems to be, to other Oriental women, what the modern American woman is to her European sisters.
VIII
His Majesty the Emperor Kwang-Hsu
The Emperor Kwang-Hsu was barely eighteen years old when Her Majesty the Empress Dowager, Regent of the Empire, handed over to him the reins of Government, admonishing him in a parting Imperial Decree to “discipline his body, develop his mind, love his People, and give unceasing attention to the administration of Government,” which Decree His Majesty responded to in fitting terms, by another Decree, begging “Her Majesty the Empress Dowager to continue to advise him in important affairs,” saying he “would not dare to be indolent,” that only after prayer and sacrifice “to Heaven and Earth and his Ancestors would he Himself begin to administer affairs of State on the 15th day of the First moon of the 13th year of his Reign”! He began to reign by our count the 25th day of February, 1889, under the appellation of “Kwang-Hsu” (Glorious Succession). The name under which an Emperor of China reigns is not his own, but one chosen for him, and has generally some appropriate signification or some symbolic meaning.
His Majesty Kwang-Hsu is the twelfth Emperor, who has reigned over China, of the Dynasty of the “Great Purity,” as the Manchu Dynasty is called.2 His reign began at the age of five years, under the Co-Regency of the Empress of the Eastern and Empress of the Western Palaces. The former died in 1881, and from that time on Her Majesty, the present Empress Dowager, ruled alone as Regent. His reign, counting the years of the Regency, has already lasted thirty years, the third in point of length of any of the Emperors of the Manchu Dynasty.
His Majesty the Emperor Kwang-Hsu was nearing the completion of his thirty-second year when I was first presented to him. I found him an interesting study, but not to the degree of Her Majesty the Empress Dowager, who has charm and is so fascinating. The Emperor is singularly devoid of this quality of “charm,” and has but little personal magnetism. He interests one, nevertheless. Her Majesty is Universal, the Emperor is typically Oriental. In person he is of slight and elegant figure, not more than five feet four in height. He has a well-shaped head, with the intellectual qualities well developed, a high brow, with large brown eyes and rather drooping lids, not at all Chinese in form or setting. His nose is high and, like most members of the Imperial Family, is of the so-called “noble” type. A rather large mouth with thin lips, the upper short with a proud curve, the lower slightly protruding, a clear-cut, thin jaw, a strong chin a little beyond the line of the forehead, with not an ounce of superfluous flesh on the whole face, give him an ascetic air and, in spite of his rather delicate physique, an appearance of great reserve strength. His complexion is not so white and clear as that of the other members of the Imperial Family, for the Manchus have whiter skins than the Chinese; but this seems more the result of delicacy than natural with the Emperor. His luxuriant, very long hair, a characteristic of the Manchus, is beautifully silky and glossy and always arranged with the greatest care. It is said he much dislikes being shaved, but tradition, immutable in China, does not allow a man under forty, even if he be the “Son of Heaven,” to wear a mustache or whiskers. Like all well-bred Chinese, he has small feet and hands, the latter long and thin and most expressive. The Emperor dresses with extreme neatness and great simplicity, wearing few ornaments and no jewels except on State occasions. His face is kindly in expression, but the glance from his rather heavy-lidded eyes is shrewd and intelligent. His manner is shy and retiring, but this does not seem to be so much from a lack of confidence in himself as from the absence of that magnetic quality, which gives one an appearance of assurance.
He seemed to me the ideal of what one would imagine an Oriental potentate to be, whose title is the “Son of Heaven.” There is a Sphinx-like quality to his smile. In his eyes one sees the calm, half-contemptuous outlook upon the world, of the fatalist. There is an abstractness in the subtlety of his regard, an abstractness that embodies one’s idea of the “Spirit of the Orient.” At first it is difficult to tell whether this
