in Peking. Many foreign
onlookers were gathered on the wall of the Tatar city to witness the
return of the court, and to these the dowager empress made a deep bow
twice, an apparently trivial incident which made a lasting impression.
On the 1st of February following the dowager empress received the ladies
of the various embassies, when she bewailed the attack on the legations,
entertained her guests to tea and presented each with articles of
jewelry, and from that time onward, as occasion offered, Tsz'e Hsi
exchanged compliments and civilities with the foreign ladies in Peking.
Moreover, Sir Robert Hart--after having been nearly forty years in
China--was now presented at court, as well as Bishop Favier and others.
Henceforth attacks on foreigners received no direct encouragement at
court. Tung Fu-hsiang,[57] who had been banished to the remote province
of Kan-suh, had at his command there his old Boxer troops, and his
attitude caused anxiety at the end of 1902. He was said to have received
support from Prince Tuan--who had been obliged to retire to
Mongolia--but events proved that the power or the intention of these
reactionaries to create trouble had been miscalculated. There were
indeed serious Boxer disturbances in Sze-ch'uen in 1902, but they were
put down by a new viceroy sent from Peking. Notwithstanding the murder
of fifteen missionaries during 1902-1905, there was in general a marked
improvement in the relations between the missionaries, the official
classes and the bulk of the people, and an eagerness was shown in
several provinces to take advantage of their educational work. This was
specially marked in Hu-nan, a province which had been for long hostile
to missionary endeavours. Illustrative of the attitude of numbers of
high officials was the attendance of the viceroy of Sze-ch'uen, with the
whole of his staff, at the opening in 1905 at Cheng-tu of new buildings
of the Canadian Methodist Mission. This friendly attitude towards the
missions was due in part to the influence of Chinese educated abroad and
also, to a large extent, to the desire to take advantage of Western
culture. The spread of this new spirit was coincident with an agitation
for independence of foreign control and the determination of the Chinese
to use modern methods to attain their ends. Thus in 1905 there was an
extensive boycott of American goods throughout China, as a retaliatory
measure for the exclusion of Chinese from the United States. R