The Europeans on their small spotty Chinese ponies, or driving in their cabriolet carriages, are returning from their evening exercise. Tientsin seems to be a pleasant place socially, particularly in the cold though bright winter, when business is slack on account of the frozen river, and the little community join together to amuse themselves with skating and sailing of ice-boats. And so soon as the first dust storm spoils the river ice, they enclose this pond we are passing, and make a covered skating rink.
My husband has just returned from a visit to the great Viceroy, Li Hung Chang, who sent soon after our arrival to say that he would be glad to see him. So at five o'clock he and Mr. Brennan started out in state-green palanquins, the official colour being green in distinction to the ordinary blue, with a numerous retinue and an outrider on a white horse to clear the way, and present the Chinese card, a single sheet of long pink paper. On arrival at the Viceregal Yâmen, exterior and surroundings of which were little in keeping with the high offices of state held by His Excellency, the chairs were carried into an inner courtyard, flanked by wooden shields, bearing all the titles of the Viceroy. The visitors were conducted to the small foreign reception rooms, where His Excellency immediately joined them.
Li Hung Chang is a tall handsome man of seventy, six feet four inches high, and was dressed in a grey plush robe. He is frequently styled the Bismarck of China, and is certainly the most prominent and influential statesman of this vast Chinese Empire. For many years Li, the Viceroy, has held his present post of Governor-General of the large Province of Chihli, and unites with it that of Grand Secretary, Guardian of the Heir Apparent, and what is most important of all to us, Commissioner for Trade, in which capacity all Foreign Affairs are referred to him from Peking. In the conversation, His Excellency placed great stress upon his sincere desire to develop closer trade relations with England, and took great interest in the details of the trade of the British Empire which C. gave him. The interview lasted about an hour, the Viceroy conducting his guests back to their chairs, and sending me his photograph.