CHINA'S TREASURES 



By Frederick McCormick 



Author of "Present Conditions in China," in the National Geographic Magazine 



FAINT echoes of China's inscribed, 

 sculptured, and wrought memorial 

 wealth have reached the world 

 through travelers' tales and erudite re- 

 searches by sinologues. Hitherto the 

 image in the popular mind of the monu- 

 ments of China had for its center some 

 poetical structure like the "stately pleas- 

 ure dome" of Kublai Khan imagined by 

 Coleridge in his poem "Cambaluc" : 



"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 

 A stately pleasure dome decree; 

 Where Alph, the sacred river, ran 

 Through caverns measureless to man 

 Down to a sunless sea. 



■"So twice five miles of fertile ground 

 With walls and towers were girded round ; 

 And there were gardens bright with sinuous 



rills, 

 Where blossomed many an incense-bearing 



tree; 

 And here were forests ancient as the hills, 

 Enfolding sunny spots of greenery." 



Coleridge could not have selected a 

 phrase more apt than "stately pleasure 

 dome" had he intended to call attention 

 to the best-known form in Chinese archi- 

 tecture and among China's monuments. 

 Like so much of the wrought beauty of 

 China, such as is still seen in parks and 

 gardens, pagodas are the work of the 

 Buddhist church almost exclusively. Per- 

 haps none of them are older than 900 

 years and most of them were built by the 

 Ming dynasty, 1368- 1644 A. D. 



The most beautiful specimens are in 

 the Yangtse Valley, where pagodas are 

 most numerous. Every important Chi- 

 nese and Manchurian city is garlanded 

 with them. From the walls of Peking 

 a dozen pagodas and towers may be 

 counted within the city, and with a good 

 glass half a dozen famous ones may be 

 seen rising from the surrounding plain. 



Materials of sacred import are incor- 

 porated in these structures. In the west- 

 ern park, adjoining the Forbidden City, 

 is a famous white pagoda, part of the 



stones of which were brought from a 

 mountain in Honan province by the Kin 

 Tartars. 



Another white pagoda, which stood in 

 the western hills, 12 miles from Peking, 

 was constructed of stamped bricks, many 

 of which had this inscription: "The 

 Buddhist doctrine comes from the Cause. 

 I say there is a Cause. The Cause van- 

 ishes. I do according to this saying." 

 The last sentence has been interpreted by 

 a Chinese scholar as meaning: "When the 

 Cause is vanished, still I make this decla- 

 ration." 



As Buddhism is in a state of arrested 

 development, nearly all pagodas are laps- 

 ing into ruin. At the same time the ruin 

 of the pagodas has been singularly as- 

 sisted in China by European armies in 

 1844, i860, 1900, and 1904. 



March 9, 1905, the Russian army south 

 of Mukden blew up a small pagoda in 

 its retreat in order that it would not be 

 a landmark to the Japanese artillery. The 

 debris was used by the Japanese to mend 

 roads. The white pagoda in the western 

 hills, just mentioned, was destroyed Sep- 

 tember, 1900, by troops of the allied 

 powers. It was a beautiful pagoda and 

 its loss was lamented more by foreigners, 

 perhaps, than by Chinese. Vandalism in 

 China has not been confined to any race 

 or civilization. The revolutionist soldier 

 of 1911 used an ancient tower on the 

 lower Yangtse as an artillery target. 



Pagodas range in height from 20 to 

 more than 200 feet, and are of various 

 shapes — round, square, hexagonal, octag- 

 onal, etc. They always have an odd num- 

 ber of stories, ranging usually from seven 

 to nine, and sometimes possessing 11 and 

 even 13. The famous porcelain pagoda 

 at Nanking, which, according to Long- 

 fellow, was a "blaze of colors," and 

 which was destroyed in 1844 by foreign 

 troops, was 261 feet high. So far as I 

 know, there is only one other pagoda in 

 the Chinese Empire of this height. The 



996 



