Nankow [Nankouzhen] - where's that, hey? Ap.21. Dearest Father. I must begin a very long way back, in fact from Shanghai. We had a most comfortable journey, a record journey between Shanghai and Peking [Beijing], 3 days, 3 hours and a half. But it was bitter cold. One morning, the first after we left, was the coldest I have ever felt on board ship. We were still in Shanghai weather, grey and chill, but in the afternoon we got into the northern sunshine and were quite happy sitting on sheltered places on deck, even without a coat. On Friday morning we passed quite close to Wei Hai Wei [Weihai], so close that we could see the battleships in the port behind the island, a most barren unpromising coast it is. In the afternoon we ran through clouds of fishing junks and between the islands that lie in the channel of the Gulf of Chihli [Bo Hai]. There were 2 Englishmen on board, Mr Chinnery and Mr Rafael, who have been playing in India for the Oxford Authentics. They made our 4 at Bridge, otherwise they left me cold. The rest of the party was mainly tiresome Americans who told endless tales about themselves, generally to each other, I'm glad to say. We got to the bar of the Pei Ho at dawn of Saturday, the low flat coast 5 miles away invisible, but lots of ships round us tossing on a heavy ground swell waiting to get in. There were only 9 ft of water on the bar, though it was high tide, and the Shengking needed more, so we were shipped off onto a dancing launch and bustled away lest we should miss the tide. We passed an unfortunate Jap which had just got onto the bar and stuck there and an Englishman which had been there for 4 days. We steamed under the dismantled Taka Forts; the French and German flags were flying everywhere, indeed on one small landing stage jutting out into the river mud, there was a French flag on one side and a German on the other. We steamed 3 miles up the river, past the uninviting town of Tongku [Tanggu], and were landed just opposite the railway station, and by a miracle of speed, caught the 10.18 train. This took us to Tientsin [Tianjin] over desolate flats, almost uncultivated, the houses and villages in ruins. It was strewn with a plentiful allowance of round grave mounds like big molehills. We got to Tientsin about 12 and had 3 hours there - quite enough, for a dustier arider town it would be difficult to imagine. The sun was very hot and we were baked in our thick sea clothes. Hot weather is so much hotter in cold countries than in warm. They are building like mad in the foreign quarters, banks, shops, the arl sarts. One is accustomed to seeing English signs in the most outlandish places, French and German take one by surprise: Li Chang, Waschanstalt; Ah Fook, Epicerie et la farine (sic!) After lunch we rickshawed out to the French Cathedral which was burnt in '70, restored and reburnt in 1900. We lost our way and a kind English doctor got off his bicycle and came to our help, we not being able to communicate with the Chinese gnomes. "This was a very hot corner" he said pointing to where we stood. "The English guns were there and there were wire entanglements all across. The Boxers came pouring down that road." Suddenly one remembered how close agonised 1900 was to peaceful 1903. By great good luck Smith's big book on the siege has just come out and I read it with wild interest all the way to Peking. The country has gone back to its normal condition, was full of springing corn and flowering fruit trees and prosperous villages. There was a most curious mirage for over an hour; a field or two away we saw the sea where no sea was, with islands in it, wooded islands. It was most thrilling arriving at Peking. The railway goes through the wall of the Chinese City (which is the southernmost). The area enclosed by the wall is not near full of houses; you run through a long stretch of waste land and marsh before you come to the mud streets. It's all mud colour, dust colour. The station is outside the middle of the Tartar Wall. On the platform we saw a tall square man, with a large shaven face waiting for us. It was Dr Morrison. He had got us rooms in the Peking Hotel; he apologised profusely for not putting us up, but he has let his own house and is in a very small one with only one spare room. He suggested we should all walk to the hotel together while he sent his servant with our luggage. So we walked through the famous Water Gate by which the Japanese troops entered the city and up the Canal between the Legation, Dr M explaining things as we went and taking us in to see places. As we passed the English Legation we thought we would go and inquire for the Russells. They were staying there, in the empty Legation (Sir Ernest is away on leave) so we all walked in and were warmly received. Claud asked us to dine, but it was past 7 and we were dirty and dusty and tired, so we thought we would not. Dr M. took us to the hotel where we washed and dined and went to bed. It's quite decently comfortable. Next morning, Sunday, he came to fetch us at 9. H decided that he would rather go to church so Dr M and I went off together in his Peking cart drawn by a big mule. He took me to the top of the Tartar Wall and there for 2 hours we walked about and he told me tales of the siege. It was awfully interesting - that adverb is for once admissible. At one point he stopped and related how after the siege an English maxim was trained against a great crowd of Chinese hurrying across an open space 1000 yards or so away who were trying to escape. "We stood watching for the shot, longing to see them mown down" he said calmly. War stories sound terrible in peace. He spoke very warmly, by the by, of Backhouse, said he was the ablest person he had ever come across, a great friend of his, his knowledge of Chinese extraordinary. He is engaged on a Chinese dictionary which is to be the wonder of the age. Dr M. is going to try and get him to meet me, which is seems will be difficult as he has foresworn the world. He's also ill, fever or something. He lives in a charming house and is entirely absorbed by his work, but it's not a bit true that he lives the life of a Chinaman. The heads of Dr M's conversation that morning occupy 13 pages in my diary! I won't therefore try to repeat it all to you. This however is interesting: he's wild against the Germans, says they have siezed every stick and stone they could lay hands on, that the troops sent to relieve the Legations were frankly sent to be bloodied and the result was entirely satisfactory to their leaders; he admires and respects the Russians immensely and he says Mr Townley has done extremely well. The Empress has given Lady Susan extraordinary marks of favour - all the other Legations are rampant with jealousy. Dr M. has absolutely no fears for the immediate future at any rate; he says the Europeans are on closer terms with the Chinese than they have ever been before and there are absolutely no such signs as those which preceeded the Boxer rising. Then we went to the place where Kettler was killed. There's a big handsome marble memorial arch across the street, but as usual the Chinese have defeated the objects of the foreigner while seeming to fulfil them for this has only 3 doors and all Chinese memorial arches have 5. He took me to the Tsung li Yamen, the Buddhist Temple where Li Hung Cheng used to live - in squalor, surrounded by the gifts of all the Kings of Europe - and to the gates of the Forbidden City. Then we went to his house in the Imperial City - he's the only European living in it - a charming little Chinese house, one little court opening out of another. There he showed me beautiful things and took me into his library which is an enchanting room lined with books, none of them too high to reach and lighted by windows above the bookshelves. He also arranged all the details for our journey to the Great Wall. By this time it was near one and I hurried back to the hotel, picked up Hugo and went to lunch with Claud. We found Lady Arthur and the Townleys. The Townleys are a delightful couple, I like them both immensely. Lady Susan had been summoned to a private visit to the Empress the other day - the Court is outside Peking at a Hunting Park - and she took Flora with her. The Empress was very gracious and presented them each with a jade ring. Lady S. says she thinks she is quite sincere in her protestations of friendship at the moment she makes them and that she never intended things to go so far - the Boxers forced her hand. She is limitlessly ignorant (the Empress) of course; especially, or at least just as much, about China. She thinks the Emperor is wanting: Dr M. thinks that he is very intelligent but quite under the thumb of the Empress. He says Smith's stories of his intervening with tears on behalf of the Legations are pure fiction. After lunch I photographed the Legation and Lady Susan and her Chinese dogs. Mr Cockburn, the Oriental Secretary of Siege fame, also appeared. Then we went back to the hotel, wrote our diaries and arranged about our journey. The dust of Peking opens out possibilities even to people inured to dust, as we of Delhi may claim to be. It's unspeakable. We dined with Claud and his family. Mr Kidstone, 3rd Sec., was also there. He has been to R'ton [Rounton] and said he knew me. There he had the advantage of me, but I pretended I remembered him perfectly. A friend of Walter's is he? very pleasant, anyhow. We came away early as we were to be off at 7 next day. So we started off on Monday morning, H on an excellent pony of Dr M's, I on another of Lady Susan's, with a boy, a cook, a groom and 2 Peking carts drawn by 2 mules each: We made a great show. Our servants were all selected by Dr M, who arranged every detail for us. The cook is a cordon bleu; the boy (who waits on us) is a admirable servant and endlessly cheerful. He wears grey plush trousers and a blue vest and he speaks with remarkable fluency a tongue which we take to be English, as every now and then we distinguish a sound which seems familiar. We get on extremely well nevertheless. Today we thought it really was time we should begin to learn Chinese so we learnt the word for donkey. Hugo thinks it ought to be written in English Lñ, but I thing Lugh-h-h is nearer. Aint it paltry! I could make as good a language as Chinese out of a piece of chalk. We rode for an hour through the town; then for a long time between scattered houses. The roads were unmetalled, very wide, deeply rutted and sunk low between high banks so that one can't see the surrounding country at all. It's flat round Peking, but at this moment the willows are brilliantly green and the fruit trees in flower so all country is pretty. We passed through villages, too, which entertained us immensely. Here and there a diminutive river had to be crossed by a magnificent solid stone bridge, parapeted and paved with huge stones clamped with iron. Very uneven the paving stones, it's the sort of road making of which the Chinese say that it's good for 100 years and bad for 1000. The bridges being of such magnificence you will be disappointed to learn that they ended in a cascade of huge paving stones up which you had to climb just as you could. It hasn't ever occurred to the Chinaman during the past 4000 years that it would be more convenient to join the bridge onto the road smoothly and I don't suppose it ever will. We broke off 20 miles out of Peking at a place called Shah Ho where we stopped 3 hours and lunched. It was very hot. Then we rode on 15 miles more to Nankow, which stands at the opening of a pass through hills running up to 6000 ft. It's very picturesque, the hills, bare and rugged, the opening of the valley fortified with huge - and ruined - walls and towers. Mà ng (that's our boy) introduced the innkeeper, whose name is Master Chien Sheng Wu - it's written up outside - as "my flend" and said it was "Number One Hotel." We have 3 little rooms with oiled paper windows. They contained no furniture, unless you can call the Kang furniture. It's a raised platform under which are the hot pipes which keep you warm in winter. We put in our own - or rather Dr Morrison's own - camp beds and "my flend" produced some tables and chairs. And a charming baby who has struck up an alliance with us, on a basis of paper boats and biscuits. Today we rode up to the Wall by a delightful road through the hills. And the hills were white with plum blossom. The more I travel the more I see the uselessness of learning things when you're little. They're always wrong. You couldn't drive a pair of carriages along the top of the Great Wall, because it's so steep up and down that sometimes the top is like a flight of stairs. But, oh! it was curious and interesting to see! It climbs up and down hill like anything and through the double gateway, half ruined, passes the immemorial, slow moving traffic of the East, an endless stream of camels mules donkeys and ponies. Where does it all go to, I wonder? up into those northern places which are marked in the map Urdu, Camp, the home of all the hordes which have devastated the world. Anyway we wished we were going too. There are two walled villages between Nankow and the Wall, blocking the whole pass with their great walls and gates. It was a fine scheme in its time. There were Buddhas carved in the faces of the rocks by the roadside and high perched temples, one hewn out of the rock high up above the narrowest gorge. H and I climbed up to it by some steep narrow rock cut stairs. One porcelain Buddha had been taken out and beheaded - by a soldier, said Mà ng - but the little roofs and gallery hanging over the road were very charming. It was only a Number Fifty temple as regards size. An immensely interesting day - we wished you could have known we were on the Great Wall! I like travelling in China. H. nods and b.... to everyone he meets and they nod back delighted.

Wed. [22 April 1903] No time for more. We're back and dining with Claud. Gertrude