ouse 84

Compound of Chinese house 85

Chinese funeral 120

Chinese funeral 121

Vice-President Feng Kuo-Chang 128

View of Peking 129

Village outside walls of Peking 204

Fortune teller 205

President Li Yuan-Hung 216

Entrance to Winter Palace 217

PART I

[Illustration: Sketch Map of China Showing Spheres of Influence]

PEKING DUST

I

POOR OLD CHINA

When I came away last August, you said you wanted me to tell you about
our travels, particularly about China. Like most Americans, you have a
lurking sentimental feeling about China, a latent sympathy and interest
based on colossal ignorance. Very well, I will write you as fully as I
can. Two months ago my ignorance was fully as overwhelming as yours, but
it is being rapidly dispelled. So I'll try to do the same for you, as
you said I might. Rash of you, I call it.

I'll take it that you have just about heard that China is on the map,
and occupies a big portion of it. You know that she has a ruler of some
kind in place of the old empress dowager who died a few years ago. Come
to think of it, the ruler is a president, and China is a republic.
Vaguely you may remember that she became a republic about five years
ago, after a revolution. Also, in the same vague way, you may have heard
that the country is old and rich and peaceful, with about four hundred
million inhabitants; and beyond that you do not go. Sufficient. I'll go
no further, either.

After six weeks in Japan, we set out for Peking, going by way of Korea.
On the boat from Kobe to Shimonoseki, passing through the famous Inland
Sea of Japan,--which, by the way, reminds one of the eastern shore of
Maryland,--we met a young Englishman returning to Shanghai. We three,
being the only first-class passengers on the boat, naturally fell into
conversation. He said he had been in the East for ten years, engaged in
business in Shanghai, so we at once dashed into the subject of Oriental
politics. Being quite ignorant of Eastern affairs, but having heard
vaguely of certain phases of them, we asked if he could tell us the
meaning of "sphere of influence." The Orient seems full of spheres of
influence, particularly China.

"How do the European nations acquire these 's