PEKING, or Pekin, a celebrated city of Asia, and capital of the great empire of China. It is built in the form of an oblong square, of which the four walls face the cardinal points, and enclose an area of about fourteen square miles, independently of the suburbs, which are very extensive. The walls are built of brick, and are thirty feet in height. In the south wall there are three gates, and in each of the other sides two, from which it is sometimes called the city with nine gates; but its usual name is Peking, or the Northern Court. The city is divided into two parts; namely, the old city, which is inhabited by the Chinese; and the new city or the imperial city, which is inhabited by the Tartars. It is in the shape of a parallelogram, and is about a mile in length from north to south, and three fourths of a mile from east to west. The middle gate on the south side opens into this space; and it is surrounded by a wall built of large red polished bricks, twenty feet in height, covered with a roof of tiles painted yellow and varnished. Here are contained the imperial palace and gardens, all the tribunals or public offices of government, and lodgings for the ministers, eunuchs, artificers, and tradesmen belonging to the court. Within the enclosure flows a winding rivulet, which being formed into canals, basins, and lakes, with artificial mounts, rocks, and groves, exhibits a lively imitation of the picturesque and the beautiful in natural scenery. The imperial palace of Yuen-mien, which is situated without the city, is even on a larger scale, the grounds being at least ten miles in diameter, and comprising an area of 60,000 English acres, laid out, like the grounds in the palace within the walls, in representing all the great features of nature, namely, lakes, mountains, forests, rocks, and rivers, which are thrown together with an irregular boldness of style that has a striking effect. These grounds contain thirty distinct places of residence for the emperor, besides a village of considerable size. These buildings, however, are remarkable for their meanness, resembling rather cottages than palaces. Even the very dwelling of the emperor, and the grand hall of audience, when divested of their colour and gilding, are not much superior to the barns of an English farmer. Nor is any rule of proportion studied in the construction of these apartments. The length of the audience-hall is a hundred and ten feet, by forty-two in breadth, and the height is twenty feet. The ceiling is embellished with circles, squares, and polygons, and loaded with a great variety and glare of colours. The throne, placed in the recess, is adorned with exquisite carving. It is supported by rows of pillars painted red, and consists entirely of a wood resembling mahogany. Between the other two gates in the south and north walls run two streets in a straight line, four English miles in length, and about a hundred and twenty feet in breadth. These are crossed by one street of the same breadth, which runs from the gate of the eastern wall to the opposite gate on the west. There is another street which runs in the same direction; but it is interrupted in its progress by the north wall of the imperial city, round which it is carried. The cross streets, which branch off from the main streets at right angles, are merely lanes, being very narrow. They are all unpaved, and covered with sand and dust, but are frequently watered, and kept very clean. The houses are low, few being more than one story in height; not a chimney is to be seen rising above the ordinary level; and this circumstance, together with the regularity of the streets, all laid out in straight lines, give to the city the appearance of an encampment. None but the great shops have either windows or openings in the front wall, though most of them have a sort of terrace, with a railed balcony or parapet wall in front, ornamented with flowers, shrubs, or stunted trees. The principal streets have on each side a line of buildings, consisting entirely of shops and warehouses, in front of which the goods are displayed; and large wooden pillars are erected higher than the houses, on which are notified in gilt characters the nature of the goods to be sold, and the honest character of the dealers, and which are, besides, decorated with various-coloured flags, and streamers and ribands from top to bottom, exhibiting the appearance of a line of shipping dressed in the colours of all the different nations of Europe. Nor are the sides of the houses less brilliant in the several colours in which they are painted, consisting generally of sky-blue or green, mixed with gold; and amongst the articles which make the most splendid show are the coffins for the dead, and the funeral biers, which vie in their expensive trappings with the marriage cars. Barrow, who visited China with Lord Macartney’s embassy, gives a lively description of the animated scene which the first coup d’ail of the streets presented to the view. “The multitude of moveable workshops,” says Mr Barrow, “of tinkers and barbers, cobblers and blacksmiths; the tents and booths where tea and fruit, rice and other eatables, were exposed for sale, with the wares and merchandise arrayed before the doors, had contracted the spacious street to a narrow road in the middle, just wide enough for two of our little vehicles to pass each other. The cavalcade of officers and soldiers that preceded the embassy; the processions of men in office, attended by their numerous retinues, bearing umbrellas, and flags, and painted lanterns, and a variety of strange insignia of their rank and station; different trains that were accompanying with lamentable cries corpses to their graves, and, with squalling music, brides to their husbands; the troops of dromedaries laden with coals from Tartary, the wheelbarrows and hand-carts stuffed with vegetables; occupied nearly the whole of this middle space in one continued line, leaving very little room for the cavalcade of the embassy to pass. All was in motion. The sides of the streets were filled with an immense concourse of people buying and selling, and bartering their different commodities. The buzz and confused noises of this mixed multitude, proceeding from the loud bawling of those who were crying their· wares, the wrangling of others, with every now and then a strange twanging noise like the jarring of a cracked Jew’s harp, the barber’s signal made by his tweezers, the mirth and laughter that prevailed in every group, could scarcely be exceeded by the brokers in the bank rotunda, or the Jews and old women in Rosemary Lane. Pedlars with their packs, and jugglers and conjurers, fortune-tellers, mountebanks, quack-doctors, comedians and musicians, left no space unoccupied.” Tartar women are commonly seen amongst the crowd, either walking or riding on horses, which they bestride like men. The Chinese women are, however, rigidly confined to the house in Peking, as in other parts of the empire.

Of the ornamental structures to be seen in Peking, the most remarkable are three singular erections at the four points where the great streets intersect each other, called triumphal arches, but which are rather monuments to the memory of distinguished characters, especially of those»
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who have attained to extraordinary longevity. They are formed sometimes of stone, but generally of wood; and consist of a large central gateway, with a smaller one on each side, all covered with narrow roofs; and, like the dwelling-houses, they are splendidly painted, varnished, and gilt. Large characters of gold announce that each monument was erected in commemoration of some distinguished person, or of some interesting event.

The police of this capital is well regulated, and the public peace seldom disturbed. At certain distances, and at the end of every cross street, is placed a soldier, who keeps watch in a sentry-box; and few streets are without a guardhouse. The proprietor or inhabitant of every tenth house is, besides, held responsible for the conduct of his nine neighbours; and is bound, on the appearance of any riotous conduct, to give intimation to the nearest guard-house. The soldiers also on guard go their rounds, and at intervals strike upon a short tube of bamboo, which gives a dull hollow sound, and which, Barrow mentions, prevented himself and other members of the British embassy from sleeping until they became accustomed to it. “The city,” says Sir George Staunton, “partakes of the regularity and interior safety of a camp, but is subject also to its constraints. In the suburbs only public women are registered and licensed, though they are not numerous. The inhabitants of Peking are not remarkable for their cleanliness. There are no common sewers in the city to carry off the dirt and dregs that must accumulate amid such a large collection of people; and such are the singular and revolting habits of the people, that no kind of filth or nastiness is thrown into the streets to create an offensive smell: it is carefully stored up within the house in an earthen jar kept for the purpose; and when it is full, it is sold for manure, and carried off in small bored carts with one wheel, which supply the city with vegetables. The consequence of this filthy practice is, that a disgusting odour remains about all the houses the whole day long.”

The walls by which the city is surrounded do not appear to exceed twenty-five, or at most thirty feet in height. They are flanked with square towers, placed at regular distances of about seventy yards each, with a small guardhouse on its summit; and these towers project about forty feet from the line of the wall. The wall at its base is about twenty-five feet thick, and the width across the top within the parapets is twelve feet. The middle part, composed of the earth which had been dug out of the ditch, is kept together by two retaining walls, partly of brick and partly of stone. No cannon are mounted on the walls or bastions; but in the high building surmounting the gate, and which is several stories in height, the port-holes are closed with red doors, on the outside of which are painted representations of cannon, not unlike the sham ports in a ship of war.

The most exaggerated ideas were formerly entertained of the population of Peking. In the last century the Jesuit Grimaldi carried it to the amount of sixteen millions. According to the most accurate information that could be obtained by the embassy of Lord Macartney, the present population of Peking may be estimated at three millions. The low houses seem to be by no means adequate to so vast a population; but very little room is required for a Chinese family, especially amongst the middling and lower classes. A Chinese dwelling, surrounded by a wall six or seven feet in height, contains a whole family of three generations, with their respective wives and children. Still, with all these allowances, it is probable that this estimate of three millions, given by the Mandarins to the British embassy, is considerably exaggerated. Long. 116. 28. E. Lat. 39. 55. N.