The Color of Mukden
MANCHURIA means an interminable brown plain, — dry stubble, endless empty furrows to be filled, by and by, with millet (kaoliang), waving, wonderful, green plumage, high as a man and higher, in which four years ago the Japanese hid whole armies of their troops.
To-day it is the emptiest, most silent spot in Asia. It spreads out flat and tranquil in unthinkable forgetfulness. The sun beats down fiercely out of a deep unbroken field of turquoise blue. The air is biting cold. A sudden breath of it is like a slap. A great tingling follows, and a sense of extraordinary buoyancy. One feels impelled to laugh, to shout, to strike out, to do violent things. To sleep, or sit with folded hands, would drive one mad. There is that in the air which compels like the lash of a whip.
Over this brown waste, sheltering a million seedlings, trails an endless line of native life. A dull blue, curiously blunt outline; wheelbarrow-men with sprawling legs and arms wide-outstretched, coolies with bamboo poles slung across their shoulders, innumerable mules cased like warriors in brassstudded bridles and head-pieces, donkeys picking little steps with litters on their backs, with wide-toppling loads, with native women sitting astride far back upon their tiny haunches.
These Manchu people are a big, boldfaced race, with brown skins whipped dull red by the northern winds. Shapeless bundles of them, hoods pulled over ears, stand at the stations and stamp their feet and beat their arms and watch the train come in. A straggling line of native soldiers in bungling black uniforms, their heads wound tightly in black turbans, a great splash of bloodred lettering across their breasts, present arms rigidly, with bayonets fixed, as the train pulls in and draws out. There is nothing else to see all day, a few mud-made villages, the wide sweep of the bare brown plain, the biting blue sky, and the little human trail of life trudging its endless silhouette.
Mukden came at nightfall. There was nothing to see of it but its lights, irregular and scattered. We left the train, and for two miles or more drove through the clear cold air that cut like a knife but held the freshness and sweetness of frozen flowers—something indescribably crisp and clean. The sky was shining black, like jet, with brilliant, swiftly-twinkling stars. Closely muffled figures appeared noiselessly at our sides and disappeared. Clumsy rickshaws passed us, their ironbound wheels ringing out sharply on the hard stone road. Each coolie held a little lantern, swinging in his hand, and these made bobbing luminous spots in the bright blackness of the night. One’s senses groped out in a blind, helpless way for bearings, for the familiar, the accustomed.
Suddenly there was wafted the illusive, sweetish, distinctive scent of another race, as distinct in its difference as speech or dress. One reached out eagerly, sniffed, hesitated — and memory cried out triumphantly, “ Japan! ”
There was nothing to see but indistinct rows of low dwellings with opaque translucent screens tightly drawn. It was Japan, of course, settling in the wake of the vanquished Russians. Vague silhouettes moved across these dimly-glowing squares. It was not needed that a samisen should of a sudden send a minor chord groping into the night.
In the morning all that had suggested Japan, or anything we knew, had vanished. We were in a wide, flat, gray
town, covered all over, as it were, by one huddling roof. A centuries-old, slow
town, crude in structure, bungling in outline; a northern town built by dogged, big-boned northern men.
This was the first impression; but walking in the streets one saw great splashings of vermilion and gold, and, over all, the aching, vivid, turquoise sky. These crude, bold colors gasped at one another and quickened one’s heart-beats even as the vigor of the air had done, and the breadth of the plains and the indescribable blue above.
The street life was nondescript, neutral; mule-carts and mangy donkeys, lean, sniffing pariah dogs. The natives, great bundles of blue-gray rags, all one tone, clumsy hoods dragged over their ears, with curious, outstanding, fur-lined flaps, like wings. And some with little ear-muffs shaped like hearts, rimmed with fur and embroidered in gay colors. They wore blackvelvet and black-leather boots, soft things like gloves, that made no noise. The narrow street seemed crowded with their bulk. Carts of fodder of kaoliang, dried, yellow, rustling stuff, brushed the crowd to right and left.
Most of the shops were wide open to the street. There were booths of food, cooking and spitting in pans of boiling fat, shoeshops with mammoth boots of gold and painted lacquer hanging from the curling eaves. Monstrous fans five feet across, with gilded sticks and roses painted pink and red on black, hung from other shops. Carved gold and deeply fretted woodwork topped other houses, and golden rearing dragons, with wide-reaching, trembling antenna;. Long narrow boards of black shining lacquer splashed with bold gold Manchu letters, and red boards streaked with black, dangled from many eaves. Strange square-cut bloodred shirts swung out on iron bars far over the street.
It was a curious effect that one looked at, with a sensation one might almost say of hunger. The street itself was gray and neutral; dun-colored mules, dun-colored walls, dun-colored natives, and the sudden terrific splashing of gold, and spatter of red, fresh and clean and beautiful as blood. And at the end of the street the dull red gateway, low and curving, through which only foottraffic might pass, and that almost with bended head.
About the town spread high, smooth, beautiful walls of gray, with regular indented battlements. They meant strength, and protection, and dignity; and over each deeply-cut gateway sprang a wonderful three-storied belltower, like the flare of a great brilliant flower blooming in the heart of a desert. These towers were colored fiercely vermilion, with golden dragons writhing and lifting at their four corners; then came the smooth lift of plain red surface with square openings, tiers on tiers. The roof was smooth and slanting, row on row of shining tiles of green. From every pointed cave hung a little golden bell. These beautiful gateways blossomed out in half a dozen places, in the heart of the city, and at intervals on top of those smooth, austere gray walls.
This love of fundamental color must be in the very bones of the Manchus, something that the freedom of their roving lives has forced them to express — the limitless sweep of the plains, the lash of the northern wind. It is shouted out of them, and stands for the primitive strength and vitality of the North. For two hundred years and more this rude northern race has ruled in China. It is this forceful, vivid blood that filled the veins of that wise, wicked, wonderful old woman, who for half a century held the destiny of an empire in her tiny yellow palm.
VOL. 105 -NO. 2
The Manchu tombs and temples lie out across the plains, — three miles, as our sleigh slipped over them. Dry grasses, and weeds like little feathers, stuck up through the snow, and stiff, stunted bushes. Here and there were rusty hemlocks and oak trees holding fast in their empty branches enormous balls of mistletoe — mistletoe with orange-red berries. These people have an intuitive sense of color and effect. Our eyes for miles had known almost an unbroken field of white, the dazzling glare of it, and, bowling over all, the masterful blue of the sky. In the middle of this blank page, as it were, there sprang up suddenly a passionate red gateway, the pai-lou, with its triple entrances, its cross-beams, and curling eaves. A gray wall flanked it on either side, and leaning heavily upon the walls were the curving branches of pine trees, resting there in their great age.
We were in a grove of pine trees, through which gleamed red temples, low and spreading, with beautiful roofs of royal yellow. It was a silent place. We walked into the deserted court and looked down an avenue flanked on either side by crouching, grotesque marble beasts. These fanciful, beautiful temples, carved and gilded, held great monoliths imprisoned, upright steles borne on the backs of sprawling marble tortoises. We peered through the red bars at these curious symbols, climbed innumerable little steps to other temples, heard our footfalls echo in the marble court, and drank in color, red and gold, blue and yellow, with a background of dense dark green.
The treetops were full of a constant murmuring. A kite wheeled and whistled in the blue sky above our heads. Two native pilgrims approached the temples, bowing low, step by step.
Every year some prince of the blood comes to Mukden to offer up prayer and incense to his ancestors in these beautiful red temples lying out in the white snow. Last year the EmpressDowager herself had planned to visit this ancient capital of her forefathers. A great clearing and rebuilding and a flood of vermilion lacquer followed this vaguely expressed wish, — and then the Empress died.
But the old palaces which she was to have occupied have been rescued from ruin, and their lovely grace and brightness give delight to the few who chance to visit them. This glowing group of red and gold and royal yellow lies in the heart of Mukden. They are not palaces as we know them, but low, single-storied buildings, with beautiful straight beams and curling eaves, suggesting and probably copied from the ancient Tartar tents.
Behind these fragile lacquered walls is hidden an untold wealth of treasure, the sacking of which was so feared by the Chinese that they brought their war with Japan to a halt. There was a great unbolting and unlocking of the red doors and a t earing away of absurd paper seals, before we could gain admittance; two soldiers, with bayonets fixed, standing meanwhile by our sides.
Treasure after treasure, endlessly wrapped and packed with little papers of camphor, was placed for a moment for inspection on a sort of yellow lacquer counter. Golden helmets, rubyset and sapphire-starred, royal coats of yellow satin embroidered solidly in seed pearls, daggers with diamond hilts, priceless kakemonas painted by China’s greatest artists, and others painted with a needle cunning as a brush. All these things, and many others, were shown us in this temple storehouse piled to the eaves with cabinets and boxes.
We walked at last out of that cold, dim treasure-house, into the court, full of melting snow and blinding sunlight, and across it into the audience-chamber, where that audacious, ivory-colored, paint-enameled Manchu princess had meant to hold her court. It was dark as we stepped in from the dazzling light — but full of the gleam of gold: eaves gold, walls gold, and in the centre of the room a raised and canopied dais. On this, before a monstrous screen, stood the throne — a giant’s chair of gleaming old gold lacquer, a deep shining seat, smooth as a mirror, wide enough and deep enough to seat three men—a royal, five-clawed dragon rampant on arms and back.
The whole chamber was carpeted with a thick and brilliant rug of royal yellow, and this yellow, newly laid, and newly woven tapestry, was covered inch-deep with the dust and dirt of months,— feathers, broken birds’nests, bits of earth; and as we looked in amazement we heard a stir and movement above our heads, where amid the golden eaves the fowls of the air were nesting unmolested.
We followed our guide into the gloom and deathlike chill of still another wonder-house, and paused on the threshold in amazement. The place was lined with cabinets and shelves, and there, row on row, piled and stacked, was an array of imperial porcelains, each bit a fortune in itself; bowls and basins and vases of matchless “ blue and white,” ginger-jars with lovely plum pattern, clear white with rich blue medallions, curious old vases of Persian blue, — form and pattern Persian, — plain blue and “ powder blue.” There they stood, great toppling columns of them; rice-bowls, tea-bowls, ordinary vessels of everyday use, cast as it were in gold, and piled as unconcernedly as coarse hotel crockery bought by the ton.
One end of the room was packed in yellow: rice-bowls, soup-basins, tiny sam-shu cups, frail as eggshell, piled by the dozens — or hundreds rather: the pure undecorated royal yellow, half mustard, half canary, with the imperial dragon swimming beneath the glaze.
There were big vases of a glistening bronze, of swelling and perfect proportions, with iridescent gleams of flame and peacock green, dim and drowning. There were others of sea-green, of a pure and delicate wash, others again pale blue, the very ghost of a summer’s sky, with outlines simple and demure. One’s fingers itched for the feel of them, the sliding surface and the satisfying shape. There were gourd-like vases running through every tone of purple and thick brown, and ending in petunia and amethyst and rose. There were scores of deep cream pieces, and biscuit boldly crackled. There were vases black as night and glossy. Famille verte, in pairs, with handles and quaint decorations, each color distinct and pure.
We found four shelves of precious “peach-blow,” — slender little vases, ident ical in form, some placid and perfect peach, some a trifle pale, others ruddy, but all of the surface of satin and without a flaw. There were thirty in the group, a common sisterhood, doubtless of one firing, and probably akin to the “peach-blow ” in the “Walters ” collection—identical as it is in shape and color. On another shelf were as many little “ peach-blow ” boxes, varying as a flame varies in tone and intensity.
Above was another room, crowded as that below. More “ blue and white,” some wondrous sang de bœuf, pulsing, throbbing tones, red and thick as bloodclots. On the same shelf stood a pair of vases of greenish-blue, with a glaze brilliant as enamel, and crushed into it a warm fawn-color, like a turquoise matrix, mixed and melted. Hundreds of bowls again of dazzling white, thin and exquisite, each piece with the clear chime of a bell — rice-bowls, wine-cups, tea-bowls, fish-bowls, repeated and repeated. Near them were dozens again of cups and bowls, “ apple green ” this time, the royal dragon sprawling round the brim half smothered in the paste — and so it went.
Finally we dragged ourselves away, out again into the dazzle of the snow and the bold blue sky, and faced once more those amazing dwellings of vermilion lacquer.
What was the sum of it all ? It made one pause and consider. A race that can think in such fearless, fundamental colors, without fuss, or futile decoration? And one sees this legend repeated again and again on every side, in the hard, enduring things of stone, the blunt monoliths, the time-serving tortoise. Every symbol of the land pointing alike to fundamental, enduring things, — patience, labor, discrimination. This chaotic, inchoate, centuries-old China — what is the meaning of it all? It is a thing to make one think — to think mightily, and think again.
We left Mukden at sunset and turned into the street, to be smitten mute by a crushing sense of color. The world to the west was one gorgeous conflagration — an intense, molten, blinding flame. Every tone in the street paled and faded. One paused, stunned and helpless, with a sense, rather than sight, of dim blunt figures looming up confusedly along the whole length of the way. Bewildered and half-blinded, we strove to advance against this crushing color in the west. But with the world black and swimming, we dropped our gaze and turned in desperation to a side lane for escape. A spell had fallen on the noisy thoroughfare — utter silence, save for the jangling bell of a mule that stubbornly pursued his course. His long black ears, as we turned for a last look, stood out in comical and wagging silhouette against that background of boiling gold.