XII
The Home of the Court--The Forbidden City

The innermost enclosure is the Forbidden City and contains the
palace and its surrounding buildings. The wall is less solid and

high than the city wall, is covered with bright yellow tiles, and
surrounded by a deep, wide moat. Two gates on the east and west

afford access to the interior of this habitation of the Emperor,
as well as the space and rooms appertaining, which furnish

lodgment to the guard defending the approach to the dragon's
throne. --S. Wells Williams in "The Middle Kingdom."

XII
THE HOME OF THE COURT--THE FORBIDDEN CITY

During the past ten years, since the dethronement of the late
Emperor Kuang Hsu, I have often been asked by Europeans visiting

Peking:
"What would happen if the Emperor should die?"

"They would put a new Emperor on the throne," was my invariable
answer. They usually followed this with another question:

"What would happen if the Empress Dowager should die?"
"In that case the Emperor, of course, would again resume the

throne," I always replied without hesitation. But during those
ten years, not one of my friends ever thought to propound the

question, nor did I have the wit to ask myself:
"What would happen if the Emperor and the Empress Dowager should

both suddenly snap the frail cord of life at or about the same
time?"

Had such a question come to me, I confess I should not have known
how to answer it. It is a problem that probably never presented

itself to any one outside of that mysterious Forbidden City, or
the equallymysterious spectres that come and go through its

half-open gates in the darkness of the early morning. There are
three parties to whom it may have come again and again, and to

whom we may perhaps be indebted both for the problem and the
solution.

When the deaths of both of their Imperial Majesties were
announced at the same time, the news also came that the Japanese

suspected that there had been foul play. With them, however, it
was only suspicion; none of them, so far as I know, ever

undertook to analyze the matter or unravel the mystery. There is
no doubt a reasonableexplanation, but we must go for it to the

Forbidden City, the most mysterious royal dwelling in the world,
where white men have never gone except by invitation from the

throne, save on one occasion.
In 1901, while the court was in hiding at Hsianfu, the city to

which they fled when the allies entered Peking, the western half
of the Forbidden City was thrown open to the public, the only

condition being that said public have a certificate which would
serve as a pass to the American boys in blue who guarded the Wu

men, or front gate. I was fortunate enough to have that pass.
My first move was to get a Chinese photographer--the best I

could find in the city--to go with me and take pictures of
everything I wanted as well as anything else that suited his

fancy.
The city of Peking is regularly laid out. Towards the south is

the Chinese city, fifteen miles in circumference. To the north is
a square, four miles on each side, and containing sixteen square

miles. In the centre of this square, enclosed by a beautifully
crenelated wall thirty feet thick at the bottom, twenty feet

thick at the top and twenty-five feet high, surrounded by a moat
one hundred feet wide, is the Forbidden City, occupying less than

one-half a square mile. In this city there dwells but one male
human being, the Emperor, who is called the "solitary man."

There is a gate in the centre of each of the four sides, that on
the south, the Wu men, being the front gate, through which the

Emperor alone is allowed to pass. The back gate, guarded by the
Japanese during the occupation, is for the Empress Dowager, the

Empress and the women of the court, while the side gates are for
the officials, merchants or others who may have business in the

palace.
Through the centre of this city, from south to north, is a

passageway about three hundred feet wide, across which, at
intervals of two hundred yards, they have erected large

buildings, such as the imperialexamination hall, the hall in
which the Emperor receives his bride, the imperial library, the

imperial kitchen, and others of a like nature, all covered with
yellow titles, and known to tourists, who see them from the

Tartar City wall, as the palace buildings. These, however, are
not the buildings in which the royal family live. They are the

places where for the past five hundred years all those great
diplomatic measures--and dark deeds--of the Chinese emperors and

their great officials have been transacted between midnight and
daylight.

If you will go with me at midnight to the great gate which leads
from the Tartar to the Chinese city--the Chien men--you will hear

the wailing creak of its hinges as it swings open, and in a few
moments the air will be filled with the rumbling of carts and the

clatter of the feet of the mules on the stone pavement, as they
take the officials into the audiences with their ruler. If you

will remain with me there till a little before daylight you will
see them, like silent spectres, sitting tailor-fashion on the

bottom of their springless carts, returning to their homes, but
you will ask in vain for any information as to the business they

have transacted. "They love darkness rather than light," not
perhaps "because their deeds are evil," but because it has been

the custom of the country from time immemorial.
Immediately to the north of this row of imperial palace

buildings, and just outside the north gate, there is an
artificial mound called Coal Hill, made of the dirt which was

removed to make the Lotus Lakes. It is said that in this hill
there is buried coal enough to last the city in time of siege.

This, however, was not the primary design of the hill. It has a
more mysterious meaning. There have always been spirits in the

earth, in the air, in every tree and well and stream. And in
China it has ever been found necessary to locate a house, a city

or even a cemetery in such surroundings as to protect them from
the entrance of evil spirits. "Coal Hill," therefore, was placed

to the north of these imperial palace buildings to protect them
from the evil spirits of the cold, bleak north.

Just inside of that north gate there is a beautiful garden, with
rockeries and arbours, flowering plants and limpid artificial

streams gurgling over equallyartificial pebbles, though withal
making a beautiful sight and a cool shade in the hot summer days.

In the east side of this garden there is a small imperial shrine
having four doors at the four points of the compass. In front of

each of these doors there is a large cypress-tree, some of them
five hundred years old, which were split up from the root some

seven or eight feet, and planted with the two halves three feet
apart, making a living arch through which the worshipper must

pass as he enters the temple. To the north of the garden and east
of the back gate there is a most beautiful Buddhist temple, in

which only the members of the imperial family are allowed to
worship, in front of which there is also a living arch like those

described above, as may also be found before the imperialtemples
in the Summer Palace. This is one of the most unique and

mysterious features of templeworship I have found anywhere in
China, and no amount of questioning ever brought me any

explanation of its meaning.
Now if you will go with me to the top of Coal Hill I will point