PEKING, THE CITY OF THE UNEXPECTED 



353 



There, in the central hall of worship, 

 he reclines upon his elbow, a bronze 

 figure twenty feet long, surrounded by 

 pairs of huge cloth slippers, left as votive 

 offerings by pious pilgrims to protect 

 him, presumably, from unhallowed tacks, 

 should he walk in his sleep. 



It is this temple, or rather the temple 

 inclosure beyond the main building, which 

 the Princeton Center in Peking has leased 

 as a vacation home. There are tennis 

 courts, swimming pools, a modern kitchen 

 and dining-room, and space for several 

 score cot beds in buildings once devoted 

 to monastic uses ; but the bronze Buddha 

 sleeps on, unmindful of these innovations, 

 and a few monks still burn incense daily 

 before him. 



After supper with the Sleeping Buddha, 

 we crawled into our blanket bags and 

 tried to follow his somnolent example. 

 Our bedroom was a sort of little summer 

 building, with the front quite open, 

 perched high upon a rock among the pine 

 tops. It had been the shrine of Kwan 

 Yin, Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, but 

 when the Princetonians moved in, the 

 monks deemed it no fit place for a god- 

 dess ! She moved out and was buried by 

 her servitors in the hillside, back of the 

 shrine. So we lay in her place, the crisp 

 winter air of the hills in our nostrils, a 

 flood of moonlight in our .eyes, making 

 a gilded mystery of temple roofs and 

 pine shadows, and in our ears and dreams 

 the temple bells a-calling, for all night 

 long the little brazen bells, which hang 

 lightly from the overjetting corners of 

 the roof, swayed and tingled drowsily in 

 the wind. 



Next morning the sun shone as it can 

 only in the cold, dry winter of north 

 China, like a brand-new sun, shining for 

 the first time from a fleckless sky, blue 

 above bright-brown hills. It must have 

 been in such a sun that the Psalmist sang 

 of the little hills that skipped like lambs 

 and the mountains like young sheep. 

 Even the barren hills of Peking are resili- 

 ent in such sunshine. 



Again we set out behind our inde- 

 fatigable rickshaw men, first to Pi Yun 

 Ssu, the Temple of the Green Jade 

 Clouds, the loveliest temple in the north, 

 a cube of pure white marble set in a grove 

 of lustrous, white-stemmed pines. 



Then we turned toward the city again 



by a route different from that by which we 

 came. It took us past the Old Summer 

 Palace, left a ruin by the Anglo-French 

 punitive expedition of i860. What was 

 once an imperial residence of unprece- 

 dented extent and magnificence is now a 

 place of heaps, with here and there a 

 broken arch or a shattered pillar still 

 standing, strangely reminiscent of France 

 or Italy ; for this palace, built in the 

 eighteenth century, in the style of Ver- 

 sailles, was planned by Jesuit fathers. 

 then in high favor at the imperial court. 

 It is one of the most unexpected of the 

 unexpected things in Peking, to come 

 suddenly upon a Renaissance portal or a 

 cluster of Ionic columns among the ruins 

 of a Chinese emperor's pleasure house. 



how America's boxer indemnity funds 

 were spent 



Adjacent to these remains there stands, 

 by a kind of historic compensation. Chin 

 Hwa College, with most modern equip- 

 ment — library, assembly hall, gymnasium, 

 science buildings — built and maintained 

 with that portion of the Boxer indemnity 

 which the United States gave back to 

 China. When one thinks of the incal- 

 culable repayment in international friend- 

 liness and the boundless admiration 

 among the Chinese for the United States 

 which has come from that small gift, one 

 wonders why it is that nations have not 

 more frequently dealt with one another 

 in the same generous fashion. 



A week later I went out again from 

 the city, this time to the Great Wall. 

 Now when I look back it seems like a 

 dream. It is not quite believable that I 

 have really been to the goal of my child- 

 hood's imaginings, that last fence of the 

 universe, the Great Wall of China. More 

 improbable still does it seem to have rid- 

 den to it and through it in a modern rail- 

 road train. 



The world has surely grown small 

 when travel agencies in Peking can ad- 

 vertise a day's excursion to the Great 

 Wall. 



It is wonder enough for one journey 

 to have walked atop the wall and looked 

 out over the dusty brown plains of the 

 north where Tatar horsemen once 

 swarmed toward the passes, and to have 

 seen trains of pack-mules straggling 

 through the great stone gatewavs. obliv- 



