Shall We Have Dinner on the Terrace?
Part of A Better Guide to Běijīng
The foreigners resident in Běijīng in the first part of the last century took full advantage of the willingness of temples to rent out rooms to them, and an invitation to ‘pop down to my temple for the weekend’ was commonplace.
According to visitors such as W. Somerset Maugham and Osbert Sitwell, and residents such as George Kates and John Blofeld who took an interest in Chinese culture, the atmosphere among the diplomats and businessmen was almost anti-intellectual, their time taken up by cocktail parties, love affairs, weekends in the country, and racing ‘griffins’ — their stocky Mongolian ponies. The temples were used as country cottages and in some cases now again receive paying guests.
No one depicted this world in more detail than the novelist Ann Bridge (Mary O’Malley), the wife of a British diplomat, whose first novel Peking Picnic, published in 1932, made her an instant success. It was praised even by fastidious critics such as L. P. Hartley, her strong-minded central female character in particular capturing the imagination of male and female readers alike.
Both Peking Picnic and a second novel set in Běijīng, The Ginger Griffin, show the constant battle of wills with servants, the inanity of diplomatic life, the desperation to create a familiar world away from home, a profound reluctance to engage with the Chinese in anything other than a master–servant relationship and, as Bridge’s more intellectual central characters complain, a complete lack of interest in the world of ideas. None of these traits is entirely absent from expat life today.
The central events of Peking Picnic take place on a weekend trip to Jiètái Sì and involve strings of donkeys carrying beds, halls converted into temporary residences, and servants in charge of food supplies that would shame Běijīng restaurants even now. Chilled wines, gin, and cigarettes are served at dining tables set out on the broad terrace, flirtatious exchanges take place near the Sleeping Dragon Pine, and there are romantic moonlight strolls, while the normal ceremonial of the then still fully functioning temple carries on, observed but undisturbed. One visitor with a fine voice sings a variety of traditional English songs for the others. The throb of the monks’ chanting is in the background.
All goes wrong when part of the party decides to make a side trip to Tánzhè Sì and is captured by bandits, but rescued at the last minute. Several lives are changed: a philanderer is persuaded to marry, a new love affair begins, and another ends with a death, caused not by the bandits but by over-exposure to the sun.
Bring a hat.
Next in Běijīng Suburbs and Beyond: Tián Yì Mù
Previously: Jiètái Sì
Main Index of A Better Guide to Beijing.
For discussion of China travel, see The Oriental-List.
