Vol. XXXVIII, No. 5 WASHINGTON 



November, 1920 



PEKING, THE CITY OF THE UNEXPECTED 



By James Arthur Muller 



A S OXE passes within the walls of 

 /\ Peking he expects to find, as in 

 JL .\. other Chinese cities, the bannered 

 signs of shopkeepers throwing gay can- 

 opies across narrow, tortuous, huddled 

 streets : but behold ! broad avenues three 

 miles long, crossed by other broad ave- 

 nues three miles long, making squares as 

 regular as those of a checkerboard. 



The visitor wonders whether the build- 

 ers of this city saw in prophetic vision 

 the streets of Chicago, Denver, and 

 Philadelphia. Then he begins to suspect 

 that Peking is the one spacious Chinese 

 city because it is not a Chinese city at 

 all. but a Tatar city, built by adventur- 

 ous barbarians of the north, men who 

 lived in the saddle, upon steppes and 

 plains, whose feet were set in a large 

 room. 



THE CAMELS AND CARTS OF PEKING 



Wonder does not stop with the length, 

 breadth, and regularity of the streets. 

 The traffic upon them is equally unex- 

 pected. In the cities of southern China, 

 sedan-chairs edge their way with diffi- 

 culty through the crowds of pedestrians 

 and carrying coolies, who jostle each 

 other in the narrow lanes. In Peking 

 every street is alive with beasts and 

 vehicles. 



Down the smooth, tree-lined, macadam 

 center-roads autos, cabs, rickshaws, and 

 bicycles speed past slow-moving cata- 

 falques and crimson wedding proces- 

 sions. On each side, between sidewalk 

 and trees, along a highway of turf, go 

 mule-mounted equestrians, soldiers on 



sturdy Manchurian ponies, triplets of 

 donkeys hauling lumber, brick, coal, and 

 crockery, portly old gentlemen strad- 

 dling diminutive asses, blue-canopied 

 Peking carts, and caravans of camels 

 out of the north. 



Imagine a city where camels go up and 

 down the streets upon legitimate busi- 

 ness, not in a circus parade ! The visitor 

 strolls along Hatamen Street after break- 

 fast, and there they are, on their knees, 

 blinking in the morning sun — fine, 

 shaggy, brown beasts, an occasional 

 white one — rather dirty white — among 

 them, chewing their cuds in leisure. The 

 pavement before the shops whither they 

 have carried merchandise has been their 

 caravansary for the night. There are 

 dozens upon dozens of them lining the 

 sidewalk, up the street and down. 



By and by the drivers come forth, 

 throw their empty sacks between the 

 humps of the animals, rouse them, and 

 lead them oft down the street, slowly and 

 softly stepping, in single file, out beneath 

 the great stone arches of the Hata Gate, 

 then westward beside the frowning but- 

 tresses of the city wall. 



Almost as fascinating as the camels are 

 the carts of Peking, or rather the little 

 beasts which pull them — ponies, donkey?, 

 mules, and nondescript, elusive creatures 

 that are neither horse, mule, nor ass, but 

 subtle, indistinguishable mixtures. On 

 first sight one is sure they are horses, on 

 the second he is sure they are mules, on 

 the third he is equally sure the}* are 

 zebras with the stripes worn off. One 

 historian of China speaks of the ancient 



