The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1911-10-28
BY FREDERICK MOORE.

an empire thai is numbering toward
progress through paths beset with
uuicksands And wheE one studies
the wonderful city and beholds the
heavy impress of the hoary traditions
one wonders how progress can come
at all out of this shell-backed capital.
Yet closer inspection proves that
changes are at work, threatening even
the Forbidden City itself. The For
hidden City is a strangely construct
ed place-a place of walls many times
within walls. No community of the
Western world would permit such an
Enclosure to arrest and turn out of its
course the traffic of an entire city.
This innermost city" where the
Emperor of China, Son of Heaven"
lives with the wives, eunuchs and sol
diers bequeathed to him by his prede-
cessors, is Enclosed by high walls of
rectangular compass, whose greater
length is north and south and whose
central roadway, overhung by many
pagoda-topped gates, marks the me-
ridian of the sun. For more than two
miles these palace grounds prevent
the crossing of Picking from east or
west.
Outside the Forbidden City is a
broad and wonderfully picturesque
moat, almost entirely covered at this
season with huge, fiat lotus leaves
and soft pink flowers floating on the
water. Around the moat on several
sides lies the second or Imperial City,
originally the dwelling-place of loyal
Manchu princes and noblemen Even
today only very few foreigners, pro-
fessors at the Imperial University, are
permitted to have homes there.
The Imperial City is walled again
from the Tartar City, reserved to Or
binary soldiers and poorer Manchu
families in the days when the secur-
ity of the conquerors was not so sub
stantial-even so substantial, l might
say-as it is today. For after all these
generations the Chinese do not love
the Manchus.
Though the greatest of Picking 9
walls, that inclosing the Tartar City,
is wonderfully formidable-being ev.
erywhere forty feet, and in places
where bulwarks run out hundred
feet wide-the early Manchus at.
tn,,n+od 10 oDcOp,pooc tho yubO1o Mo 90
again, so that even the market gar
deners supplying the capital with veg
etables and fishermen who drop their
nets in the Grand canal might be pro
tected from the assaults of barbarian
tribes. But at this they failed large
" because vanity and not necessity
called for this unnecessary outer line
of defense, and only one side, inClOs
ing to the south a rectangular flank
of many square miles, was finally
completed This latter section is call
Chinese penetrate even to the Forbid
den City, being councillors to minor
extent of the Manchu Prince, whose
will is law.
Many interesting tales could be re
lated of the various walls of old PEEK
ing, but it is my purpose here to tel
of the foreign encroachments which
have reached, against the will of the
police and the people of China, to the
very gates of the Forbidden City. In
deed, within a stones throw of the
Chem Men, the great Front Gate, the
railway trains from Europe, having
come through the outer walls, arrive
and take their departure again.
From the Chem Men stretches t.
the east another compound, the small
est, yet the most formidable and i'm
portant, perhaps, of all On one side
the southern, this compound is flank
by a section of the Tartar City's grea
wall; on the east, north and west b.
much lower, but likewise battlement
ed defenses and a narrow trench.
Among the walls of this little in
closure one can see guardhouses a
intervals, where strange soldiers, fol
eign to the country, do sentinel dut
night and day. And all the house
within the inclosure-one can Sc
them on looking down from the wal
are peculiar to this quarter, No tw
of the great residences here are sin
iler in design, nor are the soldiers a
any two of the outer guardhouses tn
same.
If one starts along the great wa
from the Chem Men one finds, beneat
the Chem Men pagoda, a continger
of kahki-clad fellows, with broad TIE,
as hats and banner floating nea
them, of Stars and Stripes. Beneat
the next pagoda, that of the Hat