United States or Bulgaria ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


At the ferry we meet the officer who first ordered the soldiers to take me in charge, and who now accompanies us back to the yamen. Evidently desirous of unfathoming the mystery of my incomprehensible mode of travelling through the country, these two officers spend much of the evening with me in the hittim smoking and keeping up an animated effort to converse.

Hence, unless we hasten to put our present wishes clearly before all, we greatly fear that the petty yamen officials and their underlings will put their own construction on what commands have gone before, and create a ferment in the midst of the usual calm of the people. This will indeed be contrary to our desire, and put our reforms for strengthening and enriching our empire to naught.

Six weeks after Gordon brought his operations in the field to an end at Chanchufu in May he returned to Soochow, and Li Hung Chang, wishing to do him honour, asked him to an official breakfast at his yamen. At the same time Li Hung Chang said to Macartney: "I have asked Gordon to breakfast. I know you and he have had some difference. How would you meet him if you came too?"

The mob seem half inclined to pursue us even inside the precincts of the yamen, but the authoritative voice of the Che-hsein restrains their aggressiveness within partly governable measure; nevertheless, in spite of his presence, showers of stones are hurled into the yamen so long as I remain in sight.

"The Censor K'o-yih, he who rebuked Shan Tien's ambitions and made him mend his questionable life? His yamen is about the Three-eyed Gate of Tai, a half-day's journey to the south." "The lines converge and the issues of Shan Tien, Ming-shu and we who linger here will presently be brought to a very decisive point where each must play a clear-cut part. To that end is your purpose firm?"

No sooner was I seated at an inn than two messengers from the yamen called for my passport. They were officious young fellows, sadly wanting in respect, and they asked for my passport in a noisy way that I did not like, so I would not understand them. I only smiled at them in the most friendly manner possible.

They even went so far as to throw petitions in hundreds over the walls of his yamên petitions all reminding him of the fate of Yeh Ming Shen, the Governor-General of Canton in 1858, whom the British seized and sent to Calcutta, where he died.

One of his ears was crushed, and there were ghastly wounds in his neck and shoulders. Even now he was not out of danger for as he stood at the gate Mrs. Ogren saw to her dismay a mob of infuriated Boxers rushing towards him, and it seemed as if he would be killed before her eyes. But the yamên servants protected him, and, later in the day, he was brought to his wife and child.

"The Mandarin in question lived during the reign of the accomplished Emperor Tsint-Sin, his Yamen being at Fow Hou, in the Province of Shan-Tung, of which place he was consequently the chief official.

Her next step was to procure an audience of the local magistrate, and to do this she was obliged to expend a considerable part of her remaining cash in bribing the yamên underlings ere they would consent to lay her case before the official or give her admittance to his court.