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After the great Dowager was made the concubine of Hsien Feng, she succeeded in arranging a marriage, as we have seen, between her younger sister and the younger brother of her husband, the Seventh Prince, as he was called, father of Kuang Hsu and the present regent.
In the end, however, one of the secretaries came up and inquired what it all meant, and then, of course, weak counsels prevailed, and Hsu Tung was allowed to sneak off unmolested down a side lane. This incident is typical as showing the stamp of men who have commanding voices in our beleagued quarter. God help us if any considerable force is sent against us, for we can never help ourselves.
In fact, its old leader Sun Yat Sen now cuts one of the most ridiculous figures in China, as shortly before this upheaval he had definitely aligned himself with Tuan and little Hsu.
One day Hsü Chên-chün met him, recognized him as a dragon, and knew that he was the cause of the numerous floods which were devastating Kiangsi Province. He determined to find a means of getting rid of him. Shên Lang, aware of the steps being taken against him, changed himself into a yellow ox and fled. Hsü Chên-chün at once transformed himself into a black ox and started in pursuit.
During the nine years that Kuang Hsu had nominal control of affairs a series of dire calamities befell the empire. Famines as the result of drought, floods from the overflow of "China's Sorrow," war with Japan, filching of territory by the European countries, while editorials appeared daily in the English papers of the port cities to the effect that China was to be divided up among the powers.
These men were Li Hung-chang, Chang Chih-tung, Yuan Shih-kai, Prince Ching, and others, and it is they who, in ten years, with the Empress Dowager, put into operation, in a statesmanlike way, all the reforms that Kuang Hsu, with his hot-headed young radical advisers, attempted to force upon the country in as many weeks.
Kuang Hsu was therefore the first occupant of the dragon throne whose face was turned to the future, and whose chief aim was to possess and to master every method that had enabled the peoples of the West to humiliate his people.
I was at the Court long enough to study him, and found him to be one of the most intelligent men in China. He was a capital diplomat and had wonderful brains, only he had no opportunities. Now a great many people have asked me the same question, if our Emperor Kwang Hsu had any courage or brains. Of course outsiders have no idea how strict the law is, and the way we have to respect our parents.
I saw similar launches in the lake at the Summer Palace, and was told that in the play days of his boyhood, Kuang Hsu would have these launches hitched to the imperial barges and take the ladies of the court for pleasure trips about the lake in the cool of the summer evenings, as the Empress Dowager did her foreign visitors in later times.
The whole empire was aroused to indignation, and even in our Christian schools, every essay, oration, dialogue or debate was a discussion of some phase of the subject, "How to reform and strengthen China." The students all thought, the young reformers all thought, and the foreigners all thought that Kuang Hsu had struck the right track.
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