Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1900-09-22
HER PATH OF EXILE
Flight Of the Chinese Empress to
Mountain City.
HARDSHIPS OF ORDINARY TRAVEL
Wonderful Engineering Works and
Sights Of the Road.
PS OF ORDINARY TRAVEL
NOT HER FIRST RUN, THOUGH

+ Copyright, 1900, by l. T. Headland)
Written for The Evening Star by Prof. Iaaac T.
Headland
| Hsianfu or Siganfu. the ancient capital of
China, to which the empress dowager is
said to have fled, is one of the most i'm
portant as we'll as one of the most inter-
esting cities of the middle kingdom. More
than three thousand years ago, or about the
time of Solomon, this ancient city, under the
name Of Perpetual Peace" was the capital
city of one of the feudal princes Of the
Chou dynasty, and from that time to this,
under various fortunes, it has been either
the first the second city of the empire.
1t is situated more than COO miles south
west of Pekin, behind range after range of
mountains. Next of the Chinese cities in
size to Pekin, it is of an entirely different
character. Let us imagine we are taking
the trip thither with the empress dowager,
if the "old lady" is not hiding in some Of
those wonderful .wayside temples in the
mountains, and notice the road as We pass
over it.
The old empress, If she followed the GUS
tom of the Chinese, would have to leave
the city by the East Side Gate the 'West
Side Gate" or the Back Gate for 1t is an
understood law that no woman connected
with the palace dares to leave the forbidden
city through the Ch'ien men Front
southwest over the eastern plain, crossing
the Muddy river 1Iun Hoo on the great
stone bridge which Is called Marco Polo's
bridge" This is of the most remarka-
BILE bridges in China. On the top of every
upright stone, which holds the panels, there
is lion carved and the Chinese say that
it is impossible for any one to count cor
rectly the exact number of the lions on the
bridge. Those who have counted them have
all varied in their estimate, and the Chinese
in that neighborhood are SO superstitious as
60 1~,,n f~ui Il to hnr,
The next place of Importance as con-
nected with the present trouble to which
she would come would be Pao Ting Flu, the
capital city of the Chilli province, a city
which, if reports be true, must take a
unique place in American-Chinese inter-
course, being the scene of the first muir
der of any American citizen in China by
the Chinese.
"Bumpety-Bump Roads,"
One cannot but wonder whether, when
the old empress with the emperor and the
heir apparent left the city, there would be
as much repairing of roads as there is on
ordinary occasions when they go for a trip.
When they go to visit their ancestral
tcmhs, or when the emperor goes out to
worship at the Temple of Heaven, all the
roads over which one travels ordinary
occasions, "bumpety-bump" in q springless
cart, are leveled down with hoes and rakes.
and sprinkled with yellow earth, the royal
L
to be feared that the old lady did not have
time to start off in style this occasion.
But this occasion is not her first run.
She is becoming accustomed to this kind of
thing, having done 1t before. When her
husband was still alive, and the English
and French armies paid visit to Pekin, 1t
occurred to Hsien Feng and his wife, with
this lady as concubine, that they wanted to
pay visit TO Jehaul. place northeast of
Pekin, in the direction of their native land.
The present visit of the allied powers gives
her an opportunity of seeing the ancient
capital of the Chous, the Hans and the
Tangs.
1t will be impossible to note all she sees
on the way, though the trip at more
favorable season of the year, and under
nc re favorable circumstances, would be one
which any pleasure seeker or globe pilgrim
might well wish to take 1t lies through
beautiful valleys, and over mountain ranges,
through deep gorges alongside muddy riv-
ers or clear mountain streams, over which,
along which or through which no carts
can go, filters can scarcely go, and even
chairs and donkeyS or mules go with diff
Guilty. In some places she will pass along
narrow road, with high mountain on
one side above her, and a deep mountain
gorge on the other below, in which flows
clear stream, bounding over great bould-
ers, and falling over precipices, sending up
spray to join that which at the same time
may be coming down upon her from the
clouds above.
She will pass over mountain ranges which
she must ascend by little winding paths
I'D which 1t will be almost impossible for
men to carry her, which. when she has as
cended, will be SO high as to be almost
above the region of the ordinary rains. and
she will see the valleys rolled full of great
white cloud masses as though they were
heaped up with snow. The sun will be
shining in all his splendor above her, but 1T
will not be hot, while at the same time 1t
may be laundering and raining In the val
leys below.
Wonderful Flower Land.
But she will find other and miIder beau
ties than mountain gorge and roaring
streams She will find that which has
given China one of her most attractive
names, the 'fowery land" Along these
valleys and covering these mountain sides
is spread carpet of flowers; masses of
varicolored begonias, hundreds of varieties
of purple flowers, which have exchanged
pollen with white and pink flowers until
the white and pink and the purple are al
most lost in the lightest and most delicate
shades of lavender. She will find great
tracts of roses on these mountains, planted
of the Buddhist temples of the region,
which since that time have grown and died
and grown and spread, until the mountain
top is wilderness of roses.
She will see as she passes along these VAL
leys, great caves in the mountain sides,
carved out of the solid rock, In some of
which a huge Buddha has been chiseled in
the making of the cave, and left sitting in
the center, the stone all cut away from the
statue which the pious excavators saw in
imagination sitting in the center Of the
solid mass of granite or sandstone. She
will see other caves. the length or depth
of which, like the great Mammoth Cave,
has never yet been ascertained. and which.
like that. was not made by the work of
mems hands, but was the result or natures
own commissions.
She will see advertisements painted on
the mountain side, similar to our pain de-
stroying oil" and ''sure relief extracts" ex-
tallinR temples where all kinds Of diseases