1898 is a very important year in China's modern history. This year, a change of law shook the whole country and is still a hot topic in historiography.
On March 6, 1898, the Qing government signed the Jiao'ao Lend-Lease Treaty with Germany. On April 10, German journalist Paul Goldmann was assigned by the Frankfurter Zeitung to conduct an interview with China from the Port of Geniana, Italy.
After setting off on the German "Prussia" long-distance mechanical ship, Goldman crossed the Mediterranean Sea, through Egypt, the Suez Canal, the Gulf of Aden, and sailed to singapore, a European-style oriental new city. Then, he landed in Hong Kong, through Guangzhou, Shanghai, and all the way to the hinterland of China for a detailed investigation. In Shanghai, he took a boat down the Yangtze River and stopped at Zhenjiang, Hankou, Wuchang and other places. In Qingdao, Weihai, Zhifu (Yantai) and other places in Jiaozhou Bay, he made in-depth visits to the Jiaozhou area, which had just been incorporated into the German concession. Of course, he also visited Tianjin and Beijing.
Goldman's testimonials help us understand the scenery of the cities along the way at the end of the 19th century and the face of Chinese society. With the acumen of a journalist and the writing of a writer, he recorded the customs of Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Hankou, Wuchang, Jiaozhou, Tianjin, Beijing and other cities in the late Qing Dynasty, which has a sense of picture. As a German journalist, Goldman was friendly to China, and his position and integrity on major historical issues such as opposing the Nazis were commendable. However, it should be noted that in the specific historical context of the time, Goldman's perspective was German, and sometimes it was inevitable to reveal some racial arrogance, and even occasionally with the tone of a colonizer, which was both a limitation of history and his personal prejudices.
In early November 1898, shortly after visiting Li Hongzhang, who had just stepped down, Goldman wrote down his observations on the city of Beijing. This article specifically selects Goldman's account of Beijing's commercial districts, which are particularly light-hearted compared to other content, but can also be seen in it.
The following is an excerpt from "Summer of 1898: A German Journalist's Observations on China", subtitled by the editor, not original. It has been authorized by the publishing house to publish.
Summer of 1898: A German Journalist's Observations on China, by Paul Goldmann, translated by Wu Weili, People's Literature Publishing House, January 2022.
From Hademen all the way to Beijing Railway Station,
The best shops are in the middle of the alley
On the main streets and commercial streets of Beijing, like other cities in China, every house is a shop, and every shop is a house. The houses were built in a way that would not be seen anywhere else in China.
Beijing has a unique style, wooden stakes as the main structure and basic style of the building is widely used, these wooden stakes are not only standing in front of the house, but also standing inside the house, they are part of the house. The construction process begins with the construction of the house from below and ends with a railing above. Or rather, Beijing is a city of wooden stakes, and the houses are under the stakes, moving in like drawers. The pillars of the house are about two-thirds of the height of the house, and the overall appearance is like two-thirds of the air, which is really a remarkable city. The inhabitants were in their houses as if they were perched in a pavilion in the air. They tried to put as much air into the house as possible. Many of the roof railings were broken, and curved wooden beams jumped out at the front of the roof ridge to connect the faucets. A piece of cord hangs from top to bottom at the entrance to a woodcarving shop.
According to the custom of Chinese, there is no door at the entrance to the shop, and the top of the railing is covered with tin or gold-plated lids, and the tops of the railings, stakes, and wood carvings are often gilded. A newly built house will shine like a wonderful golden toy in the sun, but most of the houses are covered with gray dirt, not only losing the luster of the Orient in color, but also losing lightness and elegance in form.
Stills from the TV series "New Beijing Smoke Clouds" (2014).
The most noble people in Beijing are the ones with the most pillars in the mansion, and the middle class people have two poles. But in Beijing's wealthy shopping districts, there may be six or eight. If there is a wooden stick standing in front of a certain shop, with a stone pedestal underneath, and a dragon flag hanging from the top, it means that it is a pawnshop. Many of these flags can be seen on some commercial streets.
There is a pawnshop near the home where you can pawn your own clothes, which seems indispensable to Chinese. Wooden sticks and flags representing shops are often seen on the streets, and perhaps the origins of this architectural style can be found here. As mentioned earlier, Beijing's main arterial roads all have the appearance of military roads. The street was so wide that merchants had to use sticks to stop customers, and the wood that was originally used for the shop was finally used to decorate the houses in the hands of the group of architects.
From Hademen to Beijing Railway Station, the straight and wide road is full of commercial activities. The best shops are located in the alleys, especially those that start from Hademen and turn right into Han Chinese towns. In general, herb shops have the most expensive decorations, and they are more profitable from patients than healthy people. Even the soap shop attracts the attention of the people with its extravagant line, Chinese seems to buy a lot of soap, but because they express shyness about these cleaning products, the luxury of the soap shop is not easy to understand. What do they want these soaps to do? Maybe it's used to scare children: "If you don't behave, take this for a bath!" "Maybe it's used as an ingredient — that's probably true, because soap shops are often linked to pastry shops." Judging by the exquisite decoration of the latter, these Beijing pastry chefs are also very good. Just like in our Germany, these pastries have meaningful words written with sugar, otherwise they wouldn't seem so tempting. China's basic hue of gray also extends to these things. However, if you take some soap from the next door to bake together, it is obviously an unlikely thing.
Fruit merchants also stir people's appetites. At this time, the basket usually contains Beijing's autumn fruits, persimmons, like flat oranges. In the city's gardens, this golden persimmon can be seen glowing among the treetops all year round. It was an extremely delicious food for Chinese, especially since it hung on the tree for so long until it was frosted. Europeans find it to taste like watery wax, but perhaps that's why Chinese find it delicious. The other baskets contain beautiful dark blue grapes, even cherries.
Stills from the TV series Four Lives Together (1985).
On the street in front of the fruit merchants, there are small ovens made of black stones with conical protrusions on them, on which people roast chestnuts in winter. Many of the stoves in the houses are heated with spherical peat, and Beijing residents put the fuel on the street to dry it in order to maintain its integrity. As you ride through the streets of Beijing in the fall, you'll cross these black peat balls that are placed behind the houses in front of and behind the houses for the following winter.
What customers don't buy is cheap,
The things that attract customers are too expensive to afford
Clothing stores in Han Chinese urban areas can be identified by narrow fabrics that hang from rooftops onto the street. In these clothing stores, there are full costume discounts from morning to night, accompanied by shouting at auction, usually by two clerks. One of them took a robe from a pile of clothing and handed it to the other, and began to chant a shout of scales up; the other, when unfolding the robe, sang another paragraph of call with a downward scale. The melody of the costume duet leaves an impression that will haunt your ears all day long, whether you like it or not. If you can understand the meaning of the lyrics, I think it will be quite interesting. Maybe we can do this kind of musical drama here, let the auctioneer sing a melody from "Song of the Evening Star" (a song from the opera "Don Huaiser"), and then add a sentence of "new men's suit", which must sound quite beautiful.
Copper cans are often hung in front of oil stores. That would be reminiscent of the plates used in European barbershops for hair. Many large shops sell tea. In front of the merchants who sold live chickens and ducks, ducks with pink feathers croaked in round baskets. In the shoe store, there are shoes on the ground and on the walls, all carefully wrapped in paper to prevent them from being stained by the dust falling everywhere in the Beijing air. It is still necessary, if you take something out and take it back after half an hour, it will be covered with a thin layer of dirty ash. Even if the doors and windows are closed, dust will still enter the house, and of course, into the spacious shop.
Merchants struggle to maneuver with it, and some contrast can be drawn: buyers, sellers, and goods with a little dust on them. Watchmakers have the most thorough approach, if you have tried to shake off the water in the clock as a child to let it continue to run, you will know that the clock does not like foreign objects running into it. Clocks tell people time, which is such a delicate task that time can be disturbed whenever a little dust invades, so that watchmakers in Beijing must try their best to prevent dust. So they installed vitro windows and doors in front of the store. Watchmakers are the only ones to do this.
Antique dealers are elegant men, and the shops are filled with wonderful objects. What customers don't buy is cheap, and what attracts customers is too expensive to afford. It's hard to imagine how antique dealers can profit in this situation. There must be profit lurking somewhere, because the price of the commodity will be as high as hundreds or thousands. All copper incense burners should undoubtedly come from the Ming Dynasty; and all vases should come from the Kangxi and Qianlong periods, because the porcelain produced during this period was the most expensive.
Defects that detract from the value of the goods — a firing error on a vase, a crack in the glass, etc. — are called "faults" by antique dealers. Just recently, when someone mentioned to Mr. Li Hongzhang about the coup d'état carried out by the empress dowager and asked about the deeds and future of the poor young emperor, the old Chinese official smiled treacherously and replied: The emperor has "problems."
Every merchant who wanders around has his own musical instrument,
But there is always only one tone
Living in the capital of the Empire, people can certainly do something for their own cultivation. There is a special street full of booksellers and old book stalls. In this alley where so many books are gathered, there is silence everywhere, and the people who use the words do not make a sound, as if the sound is only in their heads. This Beijing book street is reminiscent of a street in the Latin Quarter [of Paris], where a large library stands silently between houses— a small Latintown that doesn't use Latin.
In bookstores in Beijing, books are placed on cabinets. The label of the book is outwards, and the title of the book is written on it. Here, the Pentateuch can be bought at a very cheap price, which is a set of books containing multiple books, which are placed in a blue box, like Chinese chess, and locked in it in the same way. If you are not interested in the classics, you can also buy some indecent albums, which will of course be much more expensive than the wise words of Confucius and Mencius. Compared with these albums, Kong Meng's wisdom is indeed much inferior. These albums have a special purpose – as bridal gifts. In the court farce, there is a parting scene known, a daughter who is about to marry and a mother who is crying tears and saying goodbye. After a young Chinese woman took a look at the atlas gifts she received before marriage, she would be immediately enlightened by this practical knowledge, and she would no longer need a mother who cried into tears.
There is also printing work in the bookstore street, and printing plates are placed in front of the printing workshop shop to be dried. Traces of ink remain on these wooden or stone slabs used to print long patterns. In addition, on this bookstore street, people can buy everything they need to become a learned person. There are many paper shops, ink shops, brush shops and, of course, glasses shops. If you want to be a person who reads poetry, you must first get a pair of glasses to hang on your nose.
There are musical instrument lines on almost all the streets, which makes one wonder if Beijing is a music capital. However, I, a foreigner, obviously would not listen to chinese musicians playing things, as if I had never been exposed to art at all. If we say that Beijing has the meaning of a music capital, it may be based on the recognition that music is noisy. Every Chinese who wants to sell something, especially street vendors, will use as much noise as possible to sell. There are many Chinese attract others only by making sounds, rather than presenting their musical cultivation to others. This sound sounds better if it is accompanied by a rhythm. Every merchant in Beijing has his own musical instrument, at least his own shouting, but always with only one tone. Here, the music seems to be separated on the score and assigned to different people, so that the music is detached from harmony and wanders the streets alone.
One vendor went door to door with a bell to sell goods; another carried a hollow piece of wood and struck it with a stick to make a sound; the third carried a door knocker; the fourth carried a tuning fork and tapped on a piece of iron; and the fifth carried some kind of horn, like the dance of triumph in the opera Aida. Merchants usually came with the sound of musical instruments, and different sounds meant different goods or services; sometimes it was a song that prompted the sale of a certain commodity. Shouts from the streets are heard all day long, and people get angry at them if they sit in their rooms and work, and they instill in your ears a thought: they want you to buy things that you don't need in life.
Sometimes, there will be merchants squatting in front of the gate of the house, just for several hours, even if everyone knows that the others are there, there is no need to shout. Want to wait for him to shout hoarse? That was in vain, Chinese throat would not become hoarse. If he thought it was his duty to shout, he would hold out until the end of his life, or until suddenly a boulder fell over his head, and if it wasn't hard enough, he would even continue to shout beside the stone. This kind of whispering merchant sounds like a painful lament. When the sky above Beijing becomes gloomy and people look toward the walls of Manchuria, which are isolated from the outside world, but also from wealth and beauty, it is sad to hear the lament inspired by such unsettling pain, and repeatedly appear through the alleys.
Stills from the movie "Evil Does Not Pressure righteousness".
As the sun goes down, the little businessmen who are selling on the streets also go home. The night should be silent and peaceful, right? Because no one leaves the house in the middle of the night, who wants to bump into a ghost? All gates were bolted and no cars were driven down abandoned streets. But at this point, the Night's Watch began their work. In Beijing, the main duty of this group of people who maintain order at night is to hinder the sleep of residents.
The night watchman rested from morning to night, belonging to a group of people who did not shout during the day, and as if to make up for this deficiency, they shouted at night, from street to street, calling to each other. In addition, they carried a gong and constantly passed the sound forward as they patrolled. Under my window, there was even a night watchman with a small drum, shuttling back and forth through the alleys. To what extent is the noise of the night watchman necessary for the residents being guarded? What kind of well-being can they bring? This is completely confusing. But the benefits of the night watchman to thieves are fairly clear: thieves always know where the police are now, and are able to search for invading houses in the silence of a noisy gap. Thus, this group of night watchmen relieves the thieves of the heavy burden of "work".
The original author 丨 [de] Paul Goldman
Excerpt 丨An also
Edited by 丨 青青子
Introduction Proofreading 丨 Liu Jun