5. The Winter Palace.
This is not much of a palace in my estimation but the grounds are marvelous though now unkempt.
6. The Great Wall of China.
The only work of man’s hand visible from Mars. Come on all of you mountaineers and put on all of your cliff climbing equipment if you want to see the wall....
This wall is very hard to reach. The railroad goes through Nan–k’ou Pass (a most marvelous railroad) and the wall extends both ways from the track to an enormous height. The wall here is 2,600 feet above sea level.
The description is somewhat misleading because it speaks of the walk to the top as being 15 minutes in length. It is an hours’ hard climb to the place I went.
7. Confucius Temple.
This is more commonly known as the “Hall of Classics.” It is a forest of great stone slabs which are erected in commemoration of those men who passed the examination on the “Book of Confucius” which contains 800,000 phrases, all of which were memorized by a student.
There is a throne in the central building in which the Emperor crowned was made to study. He had a different garb for every motion of his hands it seems.
All these stone slabs are placed on the backs of stone turtles and other worshiped denizens of the animal world, as in the “Lama Temple” a great wooden hippopotamus stood ready to snap at trespassers.
All these places were surrounded by supposedly insurmountable walls and wide, deep moats, besides inner walls and moats. I overheard a remark to the effect that “all these kings were sure afraid of their necks.”
But the grandeur of China and even the smoothness of government has departed with the emperors. Then they had unrest it is true, but to offset it they had peace. Now they have both unrest and war. The average coolie does not know what it is all about anyway. He does not even know who is hiring the soldiers who make him behave.
I saw and admired the “Rockefeller Foundation” in Peking. It is grandly built and painted in intricate designs. But according to the residents of Peking, Rockefeller was foolish to spend $10,000,000 on such an institution. According to them, he is cutting off the only safety valves China has for her ever increasing population, i.e.: disease, sickness, and flood menace....
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