ku-ping

Updated: May 28, 2025

But there was something I missed. These ku-ping had been emphatic about the valuable weights we would find hidden the standard weights of China in pure gold, which were centuries old, they said, and were the same as had been used during the Ming dynasty hundreds of years before. I asked for them where were they kept? Perhaps we might at least have these.

- Indiscreet Letters From Peking : Being the Notes of an Eye-Witness, Which Set Forth in Some Detail, from Day to Day, the Real Story of the Siege and Sack of a Distressed Capital in 1900—The Year of Great Tribulation

Faster and faster they worked, as if the same frenzy had spread to them; wider and wider moved the rings of floating dust, until they hung high above everything and made the day seem dull and threatening. Then suddenly the ku-ping inside gave a shout. They had got low enough for the time being they wanted to be able to see.

- Indiscreet Letters From Peking : Being the Notes of an Eye-Witness, Which Set Forth in Some Detail, from Day to Day, the Real Story of the Siege and Sack of a Distressed Capital in 1900—The Year of Great Tribulation

It appeared that the men he had brought with him were ku-ping, or Treasury Guards of the Board of Revenue under the old regime; and, according to their accounts, they knew exactly where the secret stores of treasure were hidden in the secret vaults of the government.

- Indiscreet Letters From Peking : Being the Notes of an Eye-Witness, Which Set Forth in Some Detail, from Day to Day, the Real Story of the Siege and Sack of a Distressed Capital in 1900—The Year of Great Tribulation

The thing was now interesting, if only from a psychological point of view.... The ku-ping advanced, without hesitation, and brought us to a high wooden paling which shut off one half of this immense hall from the other. Inside the paling, as far as we could see, there were just mountains of empty sacks hundreds of thousands of them, even millions, I should think. But the paling was impassable.

- Indiscreet Letters From Peking : Being the Notes of an Eye-Witness, Which Set Forth in Some Detail, from Day to Day, the Real Story of the Siege and Sack of a Distressed Capital in 1900—The Year of Great Tribulation

In a few blows they had cleared a broad opening; the ku-ping sprang through, and, like bloodhounds that scent a trail, ran swiftly up the steep slopes of the great masses of empty bags, looking eagerly about them. Then, finally calculating aloud, they marked down a spot. They had located the exact place where they would have to begin to work.

- Indiscreet Letters From Peking : Being the Notes of an Eye-Witness, Which Set Forth in Some Detail, from Day to Day, the Real Story of the Siege and Sack of a Distressed Capital in 1900—The Year of Great Tribulation

The new officers, when they heard this, looked so sharply at one another, that everyone began to comment on it, and say that if there was nothing left they knew who was guilty. It was becoming delightful. We started off in a body with the ku-ping, or treasury guards, who were giving the information, leading us.

- Indiscreet Letters From Peking : Being the Notes of an Eye-Witness, Which Set Forth in Some Detail, from Day to Day, the Real Story of the Siege and Sack of a Distressed Capital in 1900—The Year of Great Tribulation