ABSTRACT
By mid-September the hot weather broke. Dust from the Gobi Desert, carried on winds of the previous spring and beaten pale gray by bright sun, settled. Beijing in autumn was usually beautiful, and 1921 was no exception. Traffic was dense on broad Hadamen Street, the major thoroughfare running north to south in the eastern half of the city. An unceasing procession of vehicles and pedestrians—tram cars, automobiles, bicycles, rickshaws, men in long gowns, coolies burdened with shoulder poles, old women stumping on bound feet, and animals too, hogs, sheep, and caravans of camels—filled the seventy-foot-wide avenue, a central paved portion with mule-cart roads on each side.
