Lilla's Feast by Frances Osborne Read Free Book Online

arose. On July 5, the New York Times splashed the headline ALL FOREIGNERS IN PEKING DEAD, then, eleven days later, printed the lurid details of the alleged massacre: FOREIGNERS ALL SLAIN AFTER A LAST HEROIC STAND—SHOT THEIR WOMEN FIRST. But when the rescue force—an early United Nations–like combination of twenty thousand Japanese, Russian, American, British, and French troops—arrived in August (to be followed later by a German contingent), they found just seventy of the several hundred foreigners dead and the rest alive.
    Foreign retribution was severe. “Russian and German troops in particular embarked on a campaign of rape and terror. Hearing that valuables were sometimes hidden in coffins along with dead family members awaiting an auspicious date for burial, they broke open any coffins they could find and even dug through the cemetery, flinging bodies away to be eaten by stray dogs.” The rest of the foreign soldiers set about sacking the palatial red-walled maze of the Forbidden City and beheading every Boxer they could find, grimly posing with their victims for photographs like big-game hunters who had tracked down their prey.
    And the effect on the Chinese imperial court of first siding with the Boxers and then losing to the foreigners yet again would turn out to be disastrous. Various financial and political penalties were imposed upon it by the occupying powers. But the most demeaning outcome was perhaps the breaking of the majestic isolation in which the imperial court had kept itself, as the empress dowager now found herself holding receptions—tea parties, I imagine—for the wives of foreign diplomats. And, in the longer term, with the Boxers and their antiforeignism defeated, the young Chinese started to examine their country’s own fallible imperial institutions in their search for a solution to China’s problems, so marking the first step on the road to a tumultuous and bloody upheaval.
    Chefoo, despite being an obvious Boxer target with both the Chefoo school for the children of missionaries and the bases of several missions in the town, seems to have been spared the worst. The clearest account is in a history of the school, which suggests that the town was threatened only for a week, and although the children “slept with a pillow-case containing a complete change of clothes ready by their beds,” they never needed it. Nonetheless, it must have been terrifying for those there. One former China resident writes that her missionary parents first ran to Chefoo from their station inland and from there fled China altogether, “travelling steerage” to Japan, her mother sitting up all night “to keep the rats off her babies”—including the author, who was just a few months old at the time.

    First Beach from Consulate Hill, Chefoo, 1900

    The Heavenly Twins: Ada and Lilla, Chefoo, 1901
    Although the foreign forces took Peking in August 1900, the military campaign throughout the rest of the country dragged on, leaving several thousand troops stationed in the treaty ports. The treaty-port residents took it upon themselves to entertain them. There were tea parties in the afternoon, regimental balls in the evening, and hunting at dawn the next morning in the countryside around the treaty ports. And when the cities turned into saunas the following summer, the soldiers decamped to seaside resorts like Chefoo whenever they were given leave. There, the entertainment went on. There were thinly sliced and peppered cucumber sandwich picnics at the temples in the hills; early-morning canters kicking the sand up along the beaches; energetic boat trips with well-muscled arms used to wielding swords turned to pulling oars through the water as far as the islands that circled the bay; race meetings at the track on the far side of the old town, with bets and adrenaline running high; and dancing whenever there was the slightest reason to do so. And with all too few young women around, Lilla’s and Ada’s days