When May was approaching the weather got better and it was announced on our bulletin board that a party of men with good conduct records would have the opportunity to go to Peking for a whole week. Well you may be sure I got on that list as quickly as possible. May 3rd we boarded the train at Chinwangtao on the Peking-Mukden Railway. First off we found we had been given a first class coach which was divided up into little roomettes having all conveniences including a button to push when we wanted a boy to bring more beer. The trip took all day and what an interesting experience that was crossing the farming section of North China. It all seemed very different from around Shanghai. Once we saw in the distance what looked like a bunch of sampans sailing round and round out there in the open fields but when we got closer we found it was a lot of sails fastened to a large round fram. It was a kind of horizontal windmill. In the little towns tht we went through we saw many women still with little bound feet. Everything was unusual to us in one way or another. When we arrived at our destination I hired a rickshaw boy to take me to the Peking Central Hotel. It was a small establishment but adequate. I would have loved to have gone to the Grand Hotel des Wagon-Lits but I knew if I did I wouldn’t have much money left to see al the wonderful things in that most exotic city. I was completely free to go anywhere but if I wanted to see the special sights like the Winter Palace, the Forbidden City or the Ming Tombs all I had to do was go to the Marine non-commissioned officer’s club in the American Legation and join with others to go on a scheduled tour.
One of the sergeants told me an amusing account of how things were with them in Peking. It seems that the rickshaw fraternity in the city have nicknames in Chinese of course for every man in the Peking Marine battalion. So if some morning there is a man missing at 8 o’clock muster the sergeant, or one of the man’s buddies who knows his Chinese name, goes out and commandeers the first rickshaw that happens along. He looks straight at the coolie, waves his arm around in a circle and shouts, for example, “Hoop-ekack-where?” The coolie immediately picks up the shafts of the rickshaw and with his passenger trots off down the street. Every time he meets another rickshaw coolie he shouts in Chinese, “