Imperial Masquerade: The Legend of Princess Der Ling

30 Scheherazade of the Hotel Wagons-Lits

30 Scheherazade of the Hotel Wagons-Lits Der Ling, in the meantime, was doing very different things with her life — most of them unacceptable to the women of Rong Ling’s circle. While Rong Ling was playing the part of decorative general’s wife in her redcolumned palace, Der Ling was taking on a more active role in Beijing society — not her sister’s high society milieu but in the company of foreigners, European and American, who had come to Beijing to see the sights and have a good time. For this, most Pekingese native and foreignborn congregated at the Hotel des Wagons-Lits, Der Ling’s home until she moved to America. Writer Fei Shi, in his 1924 book on Beijing, commented that “Any visitor to Peking who loses his way should say to a ricksha coolie ‘Liu Kwo Fan Tien,’ whereupon he will take him at once to the centre of Legation Quarter, in other words to the Hotel des Wagons-Lits.” The hotel’s Chinese name meant “The Hotel of the Six Nations,” and such the Wagons-Lits was, being “a meeting place of Princes of the Blood and of the highest mandarins of the Empire.” The Grand Hotel de Pékin, lavishly monikered “The Ritz of the Far East,” was newer and fancier than the Wagons-Lits, but the latter had the cachet of being the “only 284 Imperial Masquerade Hotel inside Legation Quarter and in the Centre of Legation Street, since early days the “Rendez-Vous of Diplomats, of Hommes de Lettres, the Military, Concessioneers, Business-Men, Globe-Trotters, Tourists, etc.,” as a Wagons-Lits advertisement from the 1920s blaringly described it.1 American writer Ellen LaMotte, freshly arrived in Beijing around the time Der Ling first lived there, stayed at the Wagons-Lits, which she claimed was called by local marines the “Wagon-Slits.” “It is the most interesting hotel in the world, too,” she wrote, where all the nations of the world meet, rub elbows, consult together, and plan to “do” one another and China, too. It is entertaining to sit in the dark, shabby lounge and watch the passers-by, or to dine in the big, shabby, gilded dining room, and see the various types gathered there, talking together over big events, or over little events that have big consequences. In the lounge it was possible to see, all at one time, British advisors to the Chinese government, marching portentously to and fro among the palm fronds, “concession-hunters and businessmen,” from the small fry adventurers out to make a quick buck to “representatives of great commercial and banking firms from all over the world,” antiques buyers from Europe and ministers wandering in from the nearby foreign legations, along with tired and sallow tourists.2 LaMotte also saw in the lounge a most unusual woman, “a socalled princess, a Chinese lady, very modern, very chic, very European as to clothes, who was formerly one of the ladies-in-waiting to the old empress dowager . . . Next to her sits a young Chinese gentleman, said to be a grandson of one of the old prime ministers, a slim, dapper youth, spectacled and intelligent.” LaMotte must have done more than give Der Ling a glance in the rich gloom of the lounge, as she remarked on how intimately connected the two seemed to be. Newcomers like herself found this display unusual, she pointed out, but not the old hands in the lounge: they had seen it all before. Given the fact that Der Ling was the wife of a consular official and mother of a seven-year-old boy, LaMotte’s remark says more about Beijing gossip, which had always cast Yu Keng’s daughter in a jaundiced light, than it does about Der Ling’s private life — Der Ling would later hint that people who saw her with her teenaged son,Thaddeus 285 Scheherazade of the Hotel Wagons-Lits Raymond, would tattle similar opinions about her relations with young men, not realizing that the young man in question was her own boy.3 Living at the Wagons-Lits, which was around the corner from T.C.’s office at the American embassy, probably served as the most secure place to live in the turmoil caused by the warlords. It seems to have only added to Der Ling’s sense of herself as being above the fray. American Mrs. Gertrude Bass...