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. However that
may be, when Kuang Hsu heard of the railroad and the carts that
were run by fire, he wanted one, and he would not be satisfied
until they had built a narrow gauge railroad along the west shore
of the lotus lake in the Forbidden City, and the factories of
Europe had made two small cars and an engine on which he could
take the court ladies for a ride on this unusual merry-go-round.
The road and the cars and the engine were still there when I
visited the Forbidden City in 1901, but they were carried away to
Europe by some of the allies as precious bits of loot, before the
court returned.
Not long after he had heard of the railroads, he was told that
the foreigners also had "fire-wheel boats." Of course he wanted
some, and as I crossed the beautiful marble bridge that spans the
lotus lake, I saw anchored near by three small steam launches
which had evidently been used a good deal. I saw similar launches
in the lake at the Summer Palace, and was told that in the play
days of his boyhood, Kuang Hsu would have these launches hitched
to the imperial barges and take the ladies of the court for
pleasure trips about the lake in the cool of the summer evenings,
as the Empress Dowager did her foreign visitors in later times.
The Emperor in those days was on the lookout for everything
foreign that was of a mechanical nature. Indeed every invention
interested him. In this respect he was diametrically opposite to
the genius of the whole Chinese people
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