Sidelights on Chinese Life
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AN IMPERIAL CONFUCIAN TEMPLE.
CHAPTER IV
RELIGIOUS FORCES IN CHINA
Chinese efforts to propitiate their gods—Figures of men on roofs of houses—Stone tiger—Fung-Shuy—The “Mountain City”—The county of “Peaceful Streams”—Density of population—The “dead hand”—Ancestral worship—Idolatry—Koan-Yin—Heaven—Description of a scene in a popular temple.
The Chinese are an exceedingly superstitious people, but they are capable of being intelligently religious when they become acquainted with the truths of the Gospel.Until then all their offerings and ceremonies and ritual are performed, either to avert the sorrows that the supernatural beings might bring upon them, or for the purpose of putting the minds of their gods into such a pleasing state of satisfaction that they will be ready to send sons into the family and prosperity into the business, and riches and honour and a continued stream of blessings upon the home.The spirits and the gods of all denominations are credited with having unlimited wealth at their command, which they can dispose of to any one who has gained their favour, without in the least degree impoverishing themselves.They are also believed to be high-spirited, easily offended and vindictive, and careless as to the moral qualities of those who worship them.The great thing is to keep these capricious beings in a good humour by making them constant offerings, which though comparatively valueless in themselves, by some sort of a hocus-pocus during the process of reaching the idols, become worth large sums of money to them.
Evidences of superstition abound in almost any direction in which one may turn.Looking at the roofs of the houses, one is struck with the large numbers of miniature figures of men, in all kinds of fantastic shapes and attitudes, armed with bows with which they seem to be shooting at the sky. These are supposed to be fighting with the invisible forces that are flying through the air, seeking for opportunities to descend into the houses and to bring plague or pestilence upon the people residing within them. Were it not for these little warriors it is believed that human life could not exist, and the homes that are now happy and prosperous would be filled with mourning and lamentation.
Walking along a straight street that terminates in another that is at right angles to it, one is surprised at seeing in the wall of the house at the extreme end of this road a rough slab of stone about three feet high and one in breadth, with the three words cut into it, “I dare defy.”Where the road is winding, or deviates from the straight, no such stone is ever found.
The reason for its existence at all is simply a superstitious belief that everywhere prevails that evil spirits who are at war with mankind have special power to work mischief along roads that have no turnings in them.Mad with glee, they fly swifter than the wind along them, and woe betide anything that lies in their course whilst they are careering along.It is for this reason that the owners of the house that abuts on this racecourse of the gods hasten to put up the stone with its three-worded inscription in order to avoid the baleful effects of their coming full tilt against it.Some calamity, they believe, would certainly be the result, but no sooner do the spirits see the words “I dare defy,” than, paralyzed with fear, and trembling at the mystic words that have struck terror into them, they fly in disorder from the scene.
The Chinese on the whole are endowed with broad common-sense, and in anything that has to do with money-making or with commercial matters they are as wideawake and as shrewd as a canny Scotsman or a Yorkshireman. They are gifted, too, with a keen sense of humour, and yet when they come to deal with the question of spirits and ghosts and ogres, they seem to lose their reasoning faculties, and to believe in the most outrageous things that a mind with an ordinary power of perception of the ludicrous would shrink from admitting.
Quietly sauntering along by a road that skirts a hill, a rock is pointed out that plays an important part in the fortunes of the town that may be seen stretching away over the plain in front of us.Looked at from a certain angle it certainly conveys to one the impression that it is a huge crouching tiger.It has a defiant look about it, and an air of alertness, as though some enemy were about, that it must be on its guard against.Its gaze is fixed on the smokeless city, from which no sound can be heard and which would seem to be a veritable abode of the dead.
It turns out that this great stone brute that nature has so deftly chiselled is the presiding genius of the city that lies so silently in front.The Chinese believe that objects in natural life which, by a freak of fortune, have any resemblance to bird or beast are inhabited by the spirits of that animal, and have all the natural powers of such, only in a greatly intensified degree.The physical strength of the tiger and its naturally ferocious character make it an object of dread, and so when a district is found to possess the figure of such, only in an immensely exaggerated size, then it is seized upon as the embodiment of physical and supernatural forces that can be used for the protection of a city or sometimes of a whole region many miles square.
In this particular instance, the stone tiger, with its massive jaws and huge body that seems to be vibrating with nervous energy, is looked upon as the real protector of the town and region which it overlooks.Through its mysterious influence plague and pestilence are kept away, and trade prospers, and twin sons appear in certain families, and boys are born and the ratio of girls is kept down, whilst a general air of prosperity pervades the city and the villages and hamlets on the plain beyond. This is not the casual belief of a few cranks. It is the profound conviction of the scholars and literary men, who are the leaders of thought. It is also one of the articles in the creed of the working men, and of the coolies and labourers, and it is tenaciously held by every woman in all the region. If any one should have the daring to suggest that this impostor of a tiger should be blown up by dynamite to see what it was made of, he would be looked upon as a dangerous heretic who ought to be put into a lunatic asylum, only there does not happen to be such a thing in the whole of China.
This form of superstition meets one in every direction, and is popularly called “Fung-Shuy,” which means “Wind and water,” chiefly, I presume, because in the province of the natural world these are the two agencies that seem to have a tremendous power in producing changes on the earth’s surface.
We have another instance of its dominating influence in this beautiful valley before us.More exquisite scenery one could hardly find in the whole of China than that which has been grouped here by Nature’s artistic hand.A mountain stream runs right through the centre of it, and night and day the sounds of its music break upon the air.The hamlets and villages scattered over it add to the beauty of the scene, for they give the charm of life to the silent forces that lie around.
The most beautiful feature about the whole, however, is the hills, which group themselves so artistically around this charming valley.They seem like colossal walls that mighty heroes built in ancient days to turn it into a city of which they should form the battlements.So obviously does this seem to have been the purpose, that the place has been called the “Mountain City.” Now the stone of which these hills are composed is a beautiful granite, that is specially adapted for house-building, and one would naturally imagine that the houses in the valley and in the city which lies just over the hills would all be built of the stone that is found in such abundance around.
But such was not the case.A tradition has come down from the past that underneath these hills are mighty spirits who would never tolerate that the granite they contained should ever be quarried, and that should any one dare to lay a chisel upon these rocks they would send disease and death upon the valley and exterminate every human being in it.
The result was that all the stone that was used in this region had to be carried up the river from some place fifty or sixty miles distant, where the geomancers had declared that no spirits were to be found.Such is the force of superstition that all the rocks and boulders and stones of this region are absolutely safe from the chisel of the mason, and the people prefer to go to the expense of importing the material for their homes and bridges, rather than incur the anger of the spirits, who would use all the terrible power they possess to avenge themselves upon them.
Superstition has been a most potent force during the whole course of Chinese history in preventing the development of the nation.The mineral resources of the country are exceedingly abundant, and if they had been rightly exploited, would have been the means of enriching great masses of people who are now in extreme poverty.To understand this let us come in imagination to one district in the county of “The Peaceful Streams.” As we stand gazing upon the scene before us, we are struck with the grandeur and magnificence of its scenery.In the far-off distance the mountains are piled up, one range higher than another, till the last with its lofty peaks seems to be resting against the sky.
In the foreground are countless hills along whose sides the tea plants flourish, and there are undulating plains, and miniature valleys, and gently flowing streams that have come from the distant mountains, and which have lost a good deal of their passion as they have travelled away from them.The soil is poor, and the farmers have to expend the severest toil upon it to be able to extract out of it enough to keep their families from starvation.The struggle for existence is so severe that large numbers every year have to leave their homes and their farms and emigrate to other countries, where they hope to make sufficient money to be able in the course of a few years to return to the old homesteads and start a new life of independence and comfort.
Now, but for a wretched superstition, this region ought to be one of the richest in China, and its people should be living in affluence; and instead of having to desert the land and being scattered in Singapore, and Penang and the Malay Peninsula, toiling to save their ancestral homes from perishing through poverty, every man would be called back in hot haste to share in the wealth that would be enough to enrich ten times the number of people that now exist on the land struggling to make ends meet.
The land that stretches before us is rich in coal, and one hill at least contains such a large percentage of the finest iron, that one engineer who examined it reported that there was enough of the ore in it to “supply the whole world for a thousand years,” and still it would remain unexhausted.Expert after expert has visited this region, and with unvarying unanimity they have declared that seams of coal abound throughout it that if worked would turn this poverty-stricken district into one of the great workshops of the South of China, and would give employment not only to its own population, but also to large numbers from the adjoining counties.
Now the one controlling reason why this great natural wealth, that God has put into the soil of this beautiful county for the service of man, is left untouched is because it is believed that there are huge slimy dragons who lie age after age guarding the treasures of coal and iron, and that any attempt to take them from them would end in the destruction of the people of the whole region.The pickaxe and the shovel and the dynamite would disturb their slumbers, and, filled with passion and mad with anger, they would hurl plague and sickness and calamities upon the unfortunate dwellers on the land.These unseen terrors, more potent than hunger and poverty and famine, have kept the mines unopened and the iron from being smelted, and have driven thousands of people into exile, very few comparatively of whom have ever come back to look upon the land of great mountains and peaceful streams, where untold riches lay ready for the gathering.
China is a country that is distinguished for its dense population.Wherever you travel you never seem to be able to get away from the human Celestial.The great cities and market towns and public thoroughfares present a never-ending succession of Chinese forms and faces that becomes absolutely monotonous.It is natural to expect them in these great centres of population, but you go into the most out-of-the-way places, and even there you are confronted with the same perplexing problem.
You wish, for example, to be alone, absolutely alone for a time, where no Mongolian visage with its acres of features and its yellow bilious-looking smile shall gaze upon you.There is a hill near by that you believe to be entirely deserted, and you think if you could only get up there, the desire of your heart would be gratified.
You walk briskly down the street, as though you were projecting a good long constitutional, in order that no one may be mad enough to think of following you. By and by you make a sudden flank movement that takes you into a lane leading off from the main road. Casting hurried glances back on the way you have just travelled to see that no one is watching you, you make rapid strategic doubles in the direction of the hill, till you find yourself calmly and with a contented mind slowly rising higher and higher, until at last you have fairly left all traces of human life behind you, and you are actually alone.
Seating yourself on a grassy mound, you look out on the broad expanse before you, and you breathe a sigh of content.No mechanical sounds of voices, as though they were being ground out by some creaking machinery, fall upon your ears.You hear the sighing of the wind and you see the grasses waving their heads as though they would talk in dumb show with you.You look down at the river, that winds like a silver thread along the plain, and you feel that this contact with nature is a most delightful break on the eternal monotony of faces that may suggest humour and pathos and lurking fun behind a yellow exterior, but never beauty.
All at once you receive a shock.You catch the gleam of an eye through an opening in two or three bushes that you never dreamed of concealing anything human behind them.You are startled, for you feel that the Chinaman has outwitted you.You turn round and cast suspicious glances towards a hedge, where wild flowers are growing and that you thought to be the very picture of sylvan solitude, and you see several figures dodging behind it.
The delightful sense of being alone vanishes, and you realize that that is an impossibility in China.You stand up disgusted, but with the feeling of amusement predominant, and one after another comes out of his hiding-place, where the black, piercing eyes have been scanning your every movement for the last ten minutes, and at least a dozen ungainly forms creep up to you and with smiling faces try to make friends with you.
Now, mighty and overwhelming though the living force of Chinese life may be, it is an undoubted fact that the dead and sleeping nation, as a religious factor, in many respects controls and dominates the living tides of men that impress us so vividly with their vast numbers.Even the casual traveller in China cannot help but be impressed with the way in which the graves of the dead thrust themselves upon the attention of the living.There is no getting away from them.The mountain sides very often are so thickly covered with them that one has to tread upon them if one would pass from one part to another.Every uncultivated spot on the lower levels has been eagerly seized upon as spaces where to bury the dead.Even the cultivated fields have been invaded by them, and mounds right in the centre of some diminutive rice or potato patches show how the little farm has been narrowed down in order to make room for some members of the family that have passed away.These graves thrust themselves up to the edge of the great roads, and seem to be prevented from grasping even them only by the incessant march of the countless feet that hurry along them from dawn till dark.The clearings and little hills outside the cities that cannot be used for cultivation are all seized upon as unprotected cemeteries for the dead, and the little mounds like tidal waves advance up to the very edge of the walls of the town, and are stayed in their progress only by these huge bulwarks.
But it is not simply by the signs that appeal to the eye that one gets an idea which is apt to appal one of the vast problem of the dead in China.In countless houses throughout the land, and more especially in those of the rich, one is astonished to find how many lie in their coffins, hermetically sealed, for weeks and months, without being buried. It is a most gruesome sight, and would give an Englishman the shivers to have the dead in the next room for many months and sometimes for years.
Now, it is an unquestionable fact that the “dead hand” is a most mighty and a most potent factor in the religious life of the people of China.All the gods and goddesses that are worshipped throughout the Empire are not believed to have the same influence over human life in sending misery or in bestowing happiness as the dead members of a family have in regard to their relatives that are still alive on the earth.A man, for example, dies.He was a poor worthless fellow when he left the earth, and his life was a constant record of failure and incapacity.He never accomplished anything, and he was a mere nonentity not only in society but also in his own home till the very last.All that is changed now, and as he lies in his tomb he has acquired a new power that, in conjunction with the unseen forces that are supposed to gather round the grave, will enable him to pour riches and power upon the home he has left.
The dead to-day all over China hold the living within their grip.They are believed in some mysterious way of having the ability to change the destinies of a family.They can raise it from poverty and meanness to wealth and to the most exalted position, but if they are neglected and offerings are not made to them at the regular seasons, they will take away houses and lands from it, and turn the members of it into beggars.
A man died in a certain village.He was so poor that a grave was dug for him by the roadside and he was buried with but the scantiest of ceremony.He had never shown any ability in the whole course of his life, and he seemed in no way different from the ordinary commonplace looking men that one meets in shoals anywhere.
The eldest son who buried him was a young man of exceptional ability.He was rough and overbearing in his manners and a very unpleasant man to have to oppose, but he had the keen passion of the trader, and seemed to know by instinct every phase of the market, and what it was safe for him to speculate in.As he had no capital of his own, he was compelled to begin his life at the very bottom and to work his way up.This he did with great success, so that in the course of time he amassed a considerable fortune, and his name was known as that of one of the merchant princes in the region in which he lived.
Now, this man’s steady rise from poverty to wealth was not put down to his own ability or to any skill that he had shown in the management of his business affairs, but almost entirely to the old father who lay buried at the crossroads.It was he, the son believed, that guided the golden stream that flowed into his life, and it was his mysterious hand that had so prospered the combinations which the son had made, that the firm was built up till it was distinguished for the magnitude of its transactions.So convinced was he of this that he would never allow the grave to be touched, and he would never have a stone put up to show to whom this common-looking, neglected mound of earth belonged.He was afraid lest careless hands should break the spell that hung around it, and perhaps annoy the old man so that the run of prosperity should be broken, and in anger he should send misfortune instead.
Countless instances could be given similar to the above, all illustrating the profound faith that the Chinese have in the power of the dead to influence the fortunes of the living either for weal or for woe.From this has arisen the most powerful cult, ancestor worship, that at present exists in China.Its root lies neither in reverence nor in affection for the dead, but in selfishness and in dread.The kindly ties and the tender affection that used to bind men together when they were in the world and to knit their hearts in a loving union seem to vanish, and the living are only oppressed with a sense of the mystery of the dead, and a fear lest they should do anything that might incur their displeasure and so bring misery upon the home.
Looked at from a sentimental point of view, ancestor worship seems to be very beautiful and very attractive, but it is not really so.The unselfish love that is the charm that binds the members of a family to each other, and the willingness to endure and suffer for each other, are entirely absent in the worship that the living offer to their dead friends.The bond that binds them now is a vague and a misty one, and exists solely because there are hopes that lands and houses and wealth may come in some mysterious way from the unseen land, and sorrow and pain and disaster may be driven from the home.It is no wonder that this worship has such a powerful hold on the faith and practice of the Chinese, when it is considered how much that men hold dear is involved in it.It is the greatest religious force in the land, and will survive in some form or other even when all the others that are at present recognized have passed away from the hearts of the people.
We now turn to what to a casual onlooker might naturally seem to be the dominant and most powerful factor in the religious life of the people of this Empire of China, and that is idolatry.This popular and universal form of worship meets one everywhere and is practised by every class and condition of people throughout the country.The rich and the poor, the learned and the unlearned, the common coolie who earns his living in the streets and the most learned scholar who has risen to the highest rank in his profession, men and women of all grades, good, bad, and indifferent, all more or less believe in the idols and worship them.
That this is so, is evident from the almost universal presence of the idols.Every house has at least one, which is the household god of the family, whilst the more religious and devout will have several others as well. Then the cities abound with temples dedicated to certain well-known gods that have been built, some of them at great expense, and are kept in constant repair by the free-will offerings of the people. The villages, too, not to be outdone by the towns, have each of them at least one public temple where the people can make their offerings to their patron god, and where on the birthday of the idol the whole population gather to witness the play which is performed in honour of it.
Then, again, there are monasteries scattered very liberally through the provinces, some of them so large that they will have over a hundred resident priests, all engaged in the one duty of chanting the praises of the various gods in them, and in superintending the worship of the throngs of people who crowd to such places to make their offerings to the different idols.There are also numerous nunneries where women devote their lives exclusively to the service of the Goddess of Mercy, and spend their years in trying to get from her the peace of mind they have not been able to obtain in their own homes.The inhabitants of these establishments are nearly always widows whose homes are unhappy, or married women who, dissatisfied with life, and with the consent of their husbands, have retired to the quiet and solitude of these retreats, in the hope that by prayer and meditation the unrest of spirit that has made life intolerable may be exchanged for one of calmness and contentment.
In addition to the above, there are mountain temples that abound in all the hilly regions, and little shrines built by the roadsides, where passing travellers may offer up their devotions to the gods enshrined within them, and a multitude of devices for drawing the attention of men and women to the duty of remembering the services they ought to pay to the gods of the land they live in. The more one studies this question, the more one is impressed with the fact that idolatry is a huge system that completely covers the whole of the Empire with its ramifications. If the faith of the Chinese is to be measured by the money that they are willing to put out for its support, then it must be profound indeed. When one considers the innumerable number of temples of all sizes and description that meet one in every direction, and that the expense of building them and keeping them in repair falls entirely upon the people, one cannot but be struck with the sacrifices they are willing to make for the sake of their gods. But when one considers further that the huge armies of Buddhist and Tauist priests who are connected with these religious establishments are all supported by voluntary gifts freely bestowed upon them, one stands amazed at the amount of money that must be annually expended throughout the Empire upon a system that has no State endowment, but which depends entirely upon the spontaneous offerings of the people at large for its very existence.
But it is now time to go into detail with regard to the working of idolatry in order to understand what is its exact effect on the masses who practise it, and in order to make the picture as vivid as possible, I shall first describe how the home is affected by this form of religion.Any house taken at random will do equally well for our purpose, for, like the Chinese themselves, they are all built on the same general model, and a description of one would do for all the rest.
As we pass through the courtyard and enter in at the front door which stands open all day long, no matter what the weather may be, the first thing that we catch sight of is an oblong table on which is seated the family idol.The most popular and the most generally worshipped is Kwan-Yin, or the Goddess of Mercy.Her face is placid, and there is a look of tenderness about it that has won the hearts of the millions of China so that in nearly every home in the land her image is found as the one conspicuous object towards which all hearts are drawn.
Her whole attitude and the air of benevolence that sits so naturally upon her agree well with the beautiful story we have of her life, and the reason why she, an Indian woman, should have become almost the national goddess of the Chinese nation.
Kwan-Yin was the daughter of an Indian prince, and as a child she showed herself to be possessed of a most loving heart.As a girl she used to run in and out of the houses of the common people that stood near her father’s palace, and she was so distressed at the sights of poverty and sorrow that she constantly witnessed that she made a vow that when she became a woman she would never marry, but would devote her life to alleviate the miseries that the women of India were compelled to endure.
This vow she carried out to the very letter, and her days were spent in ministering to the wants and ailments of women, no matter how low in society they happened to be.Her fame spread far and near, and the story of her devotion and self-denial touched every one that heard it.With true Oriental imagination people declared that she was a fairy that had been born into the world in human shape, for never had such tenderness and compassion been shown by any human being, and therefore her home must originally have been amongst the gods and the goddesses that lived in the land of eternal sunshine, where no shadow ever fell upon their hearts to dim the happiness that perpetually filled their lives.
When she died it was felt that such a woman should be deified, and that her name and image should be added to the list of those that were worshipped by the nation.The story of this beautiful life somehow or other travelled over the mountains and plains and deserts that divide India from China, and the “Black-haired race” became so enamoured with it, that those who heard it declared that she was worthy, even though she were a foreigner, of being placed amongst the gods that they trusted in. With wonderful rapidity her cult was adopted by all classes, but especially by the women, till to-day her image is found in nearly every home in the Middle Kingdom.
The recognized place where the idol is enshrined is in the living-room of the family.It thus becomes a silent member of the home and a witness of the daily life of its worshippers.It seems to be treated with but scant courtesy, however, for no care whatever is bestowed upon it, and the dust that comes in at the doors, and that rises from the earthen floors, falls thickly on its head and makes it have a grimy, disreputable appearance.The furniture in the room and the table on which the idol rests may be cleaned and dusted, but no damp cloth may ever be used to relieve it of the dust that has accumulated upon it, lest it should consider itself insulted by such familiarity and express its resentment by sending down some calamity upon the family.The gods are believed to be very human, and to be liable to fits of passion, and to be very anxious to maintain their dignity, and to be cruel and merciless with those that offend against them.
A general theory with regard to the idols is that they have to be propitiated in order that they may exercise their power in the protection of the home.For this reason they are never formally approached on any occasion without at the very least an offering of incense or of paper money burned in front of the idol, which it is believed find their way to the spirit of the god, who can appropriate and use them for his own benefit.It is customary on the days of the new and full moon to burn a number of sticks of incense, just to keep the idol in a good humour, on the principle that a man makes a present to another, in the hope that should circumstances demand it, he will show himself friendly when he is appealed to.
The one great occasion in the year when the idol is worshipped with great ceremony is its birthday.Then special preparations are made to do it honour, and offerings of roast fowl and duck and boiled ducks’ eggs, and certain vegetables, are placed in front of it, and it is called upon to partake of the good things that its worshippers present to it.In the more wealthy homes, where money is plentiful, in addition to the usual offerings of food, the head of the house will engage a band of play-actors, and selecting some popular piece, he will have it performed in the courtyard right in front of the idol, so that it can be amused by the merry performers and be made to remember its birthday with feelings of pleasure and satisfaction.
There is one feature about idolatry that is very striking, and that is that it never proposes to have any effect on character.The theory seems to be that its help is only available when men are in trouble or want to get rich, or when they wish to be avenged on an enemy, or the business is failing and they desire that it should prosper, and so be relieved from the dread of poverty in the future.There may be a thousand things in the same line as these, and it is believed that the idols have resources at their command that enables them to meet all such contingencies in human life and to fill men’s hearts with content.
The idols, however, are never supposed to have any influence for good on the characters of those that worship them.A man never feels that as he has just been making an offering to the household god, he must therefore be a better man.Such a thought never occurs to a Chinaman.The connection between a lavish service to the idols and a life altered for the better is never dreamed of in this land.A man, for example, is an opium-smoker, and every day the habit grows upon him till at last he is perfectly powerless under its grip. He becomes indisposed to work and gradually the home becomes impoverished. The opium craving that comes over a man when the hour for smoking arrives is so intolerable that at all hazards it must be satisfied, but this man has stripped his home of everything he can pawn, and now only a bare and desolate house is left, and his wife is almost starving. Driven almost to despair by the awful pains that fill every joint and muscle of his body with the most exquisite agonies, he sells his wife, and she, only too glad to escape her wretched life, willingly consents.
Now, during the whole time that this gradual descent in the man’s character has been going on, the idol has been a daily witness of his conduct, but it has never entered the thoughts of the opium-smoker that the god that sits on the oblong table and gazes calmly upon him without a wink cares anything at all whether he smokes or not, or is concerned in the slightest degree whether he lives a moral life, or whether he wrecks it by the grossest iniquities.
I once said to a man who looked like an animated skeleton, though not half so cheerful, “Are you not afraid that the idol that is so close to you, and that sees how wretchedly you are living, may punish you for the great wrongs you are committing?”He smiled a grim and sickly smile, as though I was perpetrating a huge joke, and he was vastly amused at it.The idol had no concern with human character, and it was only a barbarian that would ever dream in his unsophisticated nature that such a thing was possible.
Again, a mistress of a home, who was a devout and earnest believer in the Goddess of Mercy, had a young slave girl about fourteen years of age.Whilst drawn by the beautiful and benevolent-looking face of Kwan-Yin to a keener belief and worship of her, she was daily treating this poor child in the most savage and brutal manner. Her body and her legs were all covered with scars caused by the beatings she had received. One of her eyes was nearly torn out of the socket, and she was brought to the hospital, so maimed and wounded that the doctor feared she could never be cured.
It never occurred to this cruel woman that the savage way in which she was murdering her slave girl, in the very presence of an idol who owed her power to the reputation she had universally gained for mercy and compassion, would so set the goddess against her that her prayers and her offerings would be rejected.What had her conduct got to do with the favour of the goddess?Absolutely nothing.The gods have no concern about human motives and mundane morality.They have other things to attend to, and certainly no time to give to such complex questions, and so men and women are left very much to themselves, and if in the cycles of time retribution comes upon men for their evil lives, it is not the gods and the goddesses that men worship that will see to the ordering of that.
That the Chinese have profound faith in their idols is a fact that cannot for a moment be questioned.China is a nation of idolaters, and neither learning nor intelligence nor high birth tends to quench the belief that has come down from the past that these wooden gods have a power of interfering in human life, and of being able to bestow blessings or to send down curses upon men.
There are times, however, in the life of the people when the gods seem to vanish out of their sight, and they turn to a great power which they call Heaven for deliverance or protection.In the very earliest days of Chinese history, ages before idolatry was introduced into China from India (A.D. 61), there is no doubt but that the people worshipped the true God. In the course of time the word for God became mixed up with certain heroes that were deified by successive emperors, and so the monotheistic craving of the nation took refuge in the word Heaven. The Chinese character for that is composed of two words, “one” and “great.” The combination then means, “The One Great,” which truly expresses the thought that men have of the Great and the Mighty One whose power is absolute and whose decisions are final throughout the whole of creation.
That this belief is no mere abstract one is seen in many instances in ordinary life where men appeal directly to Heaven instead of to the idols.The country, for example, is suffering from the want of rain.Months have gone by and the rainy season has come and passed away without the usual rainfall, the crops are withering in the fields, and there is a prospect of hunger and famine unless the clouds send down of their richness and revive the drooping forces of nature.
The priests of a certain temple notify that on a certain day a procession will be formed to march through the city to beseech Heaven to pour down the much-needed rain upon the land.The people gladly respond to this appeal, and on the day appointed, scholars dressed in their long robes, and priests in their yellow dresses, and the common people in the clothes that they wear only on special occasions, all turn out and join in the long line that winds its way along the narrow unsavoury streets to intercede with Heaven, that it will send down copious showers on the thirsty earth.
One singular feature in this public demonstration is the attendance of the idols.They are brought out from their temples and carried in the solemn procession to join with the people in the universal prayer for rain.Every ten yards or so the slowly-moving line makes a halt, and every one kneels down and a piteous cry is raised to Heaven, that it would have pity upon the land, so that the crops may not perish and the poor may not die of hunger and starvation.It is intensely interesting to watch the long line of suppliants at this stage in their supplications. Many of them, in order to show the intensity of their purpose, have come dressed in sackcloth; others who are musical have brought their instruments with them, and as they walk with a solemn step they play a sombre funereal air that is intended to show to Heaven with what sorrow their hearts are filled at the calamity that threatens to overwhelm the people if the rain is withheld.
Now the music is stopped and the whole procession is on its knees, and even the idols, as it were, with silent supplications join in the mournful confession of sin and in the agonized entreaties to Heaven to have pity upon the people.
Heaven is recognized as being supreme in power.In the mottoes that the Chinese paste on their doorposts and lintels at the beginning of the year are several that show the popular thought on this great subject.“May Heaven send down upon our home peace and happiness”: “Life and Death, adversity and happiness are all decided by Heaven”: “Honour and wealth as well as poverty and lowly station are in the hands of Heaven”: “Men may plan, but it is Heaven that decides what the result shall be.”
There is no reference to the idols here.In fact, when Heaven is mentioned they are never referred to as having any authority in the great movements and principles by which human life is controlled and influenced.Heaven to the Chinese is a great impersonal power, so far exalted and so mysterious that in despair they have adopted the idols as a means by which they can communicate with the unseen.And yet there are occasions when men seem to lose their dread of Heaven, and they appeal to it, as Christians do to God.Heaven, for instance, is believed to have a stern sense of justice and of righteousness.It is also the redresser of wrongs, which it invariably puts right, upholding the innocent and bringing swift judgment on the guilty. Its government is one that is founded on great principles of right, that work automatically in the destruction of all that is evil and in the furtherance of all that is good.
There are many times in the life of this people when Heaven becomes to them a veritable Person, who can hear their cry when they are in distress and who, they believe, is ready to vindicate their character when it has been unjustly assailed.
One day, in passing through one of the side streets of a great town, a crowd was observed standing with a kind of shocked look upon their faces gazing upon a woman that seemed to be raving mad.It turned out that she was a poor woman living down the street, who had gone to assist in the household work of the family opposite to where she was now standing.Some trifling thing had been missed in the house, and she had been accused of stealing it.She defended herself passionately and with all the eloquence at her command, but without avail.Being originally of a high temper and of a hasty, fiery disposition, she was enraged beyond measure not only at the false accusation that had been levelled against her, but also because the woman refused to accept her defence of herself, and still reiterated her firm conviction that it was she that had stolen the missing articles.
Feeling that there was no other way of clearing her character except by appealing to Heaven, she rushed out into the street, and letting down her long hair till it fell in thick tresses over her shoulders, she looked up at the sky where the Power she called Heaven was, and she poured out the grievance that was filling her heart almost to bursting.She told how she had been falsely accused, and how every attempt to right herself had been listened to with scorn and contempt.Then with tears streaming down her face, she called upon Heaven to avenge her and show to the neighbourhood that she was guiltless of the charges that had been made against her.With a rush and a torrent of imprecations that positively made one shudder she then prayed “The Great One” to hurl down upon the woman that had injured her all the miseries and woes that poor human nature has ever been called upon to endure. Her vocabulary of evils was amazing in its luxuriance, and as each was shot forth from her passionate lips, some of the onlookers actually shuddered with horror at the awful sorrows that she wished her enemy to have to suffer.
In studying the religious forces that are in operation amongst the Chinese, one is deeply impressed with the illogical position that is maintained in regard to each of them.“Fung-Shuy,” for example, especially when it is acting in conjunction with the graves of the dead, is declared to be able to fill a home with boundless wealth, and to secure that sons shall be born into the family and the highest honours of the State be bestowed upon the sons and grandsons.The idols again are credited with the most marvellous powers.They can get men out of scrapes, and they can build up businesses so that colossal fortunes shall be made.They can fill the desolate homes with troops of children.They have the power, when they are enraged at the neglect of the people of any particular district in paying them proper honour, of sending cholera and deadly fevers that shall carry them off by the hundreds.All these are firmly believed in by priests and gentle-faced looking nuns, and fortune-tellers will all prove to you that the popular faith is founded in philosophy and experience.You retort to all the laboured arguments of these various interested parties by asking them whether it is not a fact that life and death, and prosperity and adversity, and kingly honours as well as the meanest station in society, are all decided by Heaven, and that they are its special gift.There never is any other answer to that question but one, and yet five minutes after the same person will be as enthusiastic as ever in his glorification of the idols, and in his profound belief that some favourite god has the power of bestowing every blessing that the heart longs to possess.
I have described the idol in the home, and I will conclude now by giving a description of a temple scene such as may be witnessed on the birthday of the chief idol or on the first or the fifteenth of the moon, which days are supposed to be specially lucky for those who wish to make their offerings to the gods.
The temple I am about to describe is situated on a rising hill that has an outlook of great natural beauty.Immediately below it and stretching considerably in the distance is a large city containing over one hundred thousand inhabitants, that live in the confined streets that look from the temple like narrow arteries along which the human tide ebbs and flows without cessation.Beyond the town there runs an arm of the sea, dotted with numerous islets and sparkling with the rays of the great Eastern sun, which he flashes on islands and capes, and the sails of the junks that are passing up and down from the inland waters to the coast.Further on and completely filling up the background are ranges of mountains with the great shadows resting on them and their lofty peaks bathed in sunlight, whilst here and there the floating clouds rest like beautiful crowns upon the summits of some that tower the highest amongst them towards the blue sky.
The scene in the temple and its surroundings was very charming and attractive, for the sun shone upon the temple, and played amongst the solemn-looking pine-trees, and sent his rays down courtyards that seemed to delight in shadow, till everything appeared to be laughing for very joy.Even the idols looked as though they had caught the spirit of the day, and the “God of War” appeared to be less stern and bloodthirsty than was his wont, and the “God of Literature” had put on a light and jaunty air, hardly in keeping with the profound subjects that ever claim his attention.
THE WHITE STAR TEMPLE
(NANKIN).
But see!here come the people from the great city below, slowly winding their way up the stone steps that the feet of countless worshippers in the years gone by have worn smooth and thin.Some few are coming with purposes intent upon appealing to the “Goddess of Mercy,” for their faces are sombre, and the shadows of troubles from which they hope the idol may deliver them, cover them with a sad and sorrowful aspect.Others, again, have come for an outing and to get out of their monotonous surroundings, to catch a glimpse of the far-off hills, and to see the sun as he puts forth his powers to turn the world into a thing of beauty.
Here is a jolly little party that has almost reached the top.It consists of an old lady whose hair is completely grey, but whose face is made beautiful by as sunny a smile as ever lighted up a human face.With her are two lads, evidently her grandsons, full of life and fun, and wild with the excitement that the mountain air has put into their blood.They race and chase each other up and down the steps, and round the huge boulders that lie on the roadside, and they dodge behind the old granny, who seems as if she would like to be a girl again and join them in their mad romps.
Whilst she is standing taking breath, and gazing with rapture upon the distant hills flooded with great waves of light, and upon the waters of the sea that are sparkling with sunbeams, a woman of about forty with slow and sorrowful motion climbs up the steep ascent.She has a slave girl with her, and she leans one hand upon her shoulder to support her as she walks.She is a widow, and evidently has some sorrowful story that she is going to tell the goddess.One is struck with the pallor of her face, and the utterly hopeless air that rests on every feature in it.She hardly looks at the pleasant-looking old lady, but passes up with downcast eyes till she reaches the open space that is in front of the temple.
Immediately behind these people I have been describing, there appears a party of young fellows of the better class.They are well dressed, and have an air of refinement about them.There is no sign of trouble or sorrow among them, for they laugh and chat and joke with each other, whilst the road resounds with the echo of their merry voices.Their visit to the temple to-day is merely one of pleasure.The streets below are grimy and evil smelling, and in order to have some object in view they have determined to spend the afternoon in a picnic to the well-known temple on the mountain side.
The temple as a whole consists not simply of one large room where the image of the goddess is enshrined, but is made up of a number of smaller buildings connected with each other in a cunning and artistic fashion by winding ways that nature seems to have devised in order to add to the attractions of the place.In each of these lesser temples there are placed images of some of the more commonly worshipped idols, a veritable kind of Pantheon where each visitor can find the particular god that he deems the most suitable for his individual requirements.Leading to these various buildings, there are little grottoes, and covered pathways, and natural adjustments of rocks, in which stone seats and granite tables have been arranged, and where the crowds of worshippers, tired with their climb up the mountain path and anxious to get out of the glare of the great sun, can sit and enjoy the refreshing coolness that these recesses in the hillside naturally give.
But let us take our stand a little to the side of the goddess and watch the worshippers as they come in turn and take their position in front of her to offer their petitions to her.The widow with the sorrowful face, whom we saw climbing the hill, without one thought of the glorious scenery that filled the landscape with its beauty, comes in with the shadow deepening on her face, and lifting up her folded hands in the attitude of devotion to the goddess begins to mutter to her the story of the trouble that is weighing on her heart. The sight is truly a most pathetic one. The face is in agony, and the eyes are turned with an intensity of gaze upon the calm face of the wooden image before her. The faith expressed in the impassioned look is profound, for it would seem as though her whole soul was absorbed in the telling of her story and in her wish to touch the heart of the placid image of the goddess.
After a few minutes, anxious to know what the answer of the idol is going to be, she takes up two pieces of bamboo that are lying on the table in front of it, and throws them up in the air.With a clatter they fall on to the tiled floor, and by the way they lie she learns that her prayer has been granted, and that the goddess will give her the desire of her heart.A smile like a flash of sunlight in a winter sky fleets across her pale thin face, and one can see what a sweet one it might be, were her heart relieved of the sorrow that has painted it with such sombre colours.
Her place is taken by another who has been standing by waiting her turn.Evidently her business is not a very pressing one, or such as to cause her much trouble at heart, for after a few seconds of muttering she tosses up with almost an irreverent fling the two divining bits of bamboo, and looks with a casual air at the position they take on the floor.The answer they give is No—her prayer is not granted—so with a bow to the goddess, and a kind of pout upon her lips, she passes out into the open air.Her matter could not have been of any importance whatever, for in a moment she is laughing and gossiping with her friends, as though her visit to the goddess had been a joke that was now ended.
And so one after another come and take their stand before the idol.Some have a free-and-easy air about them, whilst others are intense and impassioned.Some accept at once the answer of the goddess as final, whilst others again continue to fling up the two coarse pieces of bamboo until they give the reply that they wish to have. One young lad about eighteen attracts my attention. For fully a minute, with calm and untroubled face, his lips keep moving and his gaze is concentrated on Kwan-Yin. I ask him when he is finished what he has been asking of her. “I have been out of employment for some time,” he replies, “and I have been round to several temples and entreated the gods there to find me a place; but they have done nothing for me, so I thought I would come here and see if I should be more successful with the idol of this temple.”
As the evening sun began to set behind the mass of clouds that seemed to gather on the Western mountains to catch the last glimpse of him before he disappeared, we began to descend the hill.Numbers of those that I had seen standing with devout faces and uplifted hands before the idol were fellow-travellers.Others, again, who had ascended the hill for an outing, and whom I had watched sitting in the grottoes, eating peanuts, and deftly cracking dried melon seeds, and sipping tea, moved down at the same time.The wooden gods were left behind in the gathering gloom of their shrines, and the only figures they saw were the opium-visaged priests that flitted about like ghosts.The people at any rate had had a pleasant day, and a breath of pure air, and a vision of nature in her most beautiful aspect, but nothing more.“What have you gained to-day in your appeal to the goddess?”I asked of a man that I had seen very devout in his prayers.He looked at me with a quick and searching glance.“You ask me what answer I have got to my petition to the goddess?”he said.“Yes,” I replied, “that is what I want to know from you.”“Well, you have asked me more than I can tell you.The whole question of the idols is a profoundly mysterious one that no one can fathom.Whether they do or can help people is something I cannot tell. I worship them because my fathers did so before me, and if they were satisfied, so must I be. The whole thing is a mystery,” and he passed on with the look of a man who was puzzled with a problem that he could not solve, and that look is a permanent one on the face of the nation to-day.
CHAPTER V
SERVANTS
General character of servants—The duties and perquisites of the cook—Taking account with cook—His oblique ideas of morality—The boy, his duties, etc.—The way that small things mysteriously disappear in a house—Percentages—The servant question.
The general experience of Englishmen in China with regard to the servants is, taking it all in all, a pleasant one.The average intelligence of the class of men and women that are employed is a fairly good one.They consequently learn their work easily, and as they are industrious and moved by a sense of fidelity they render such very pleasant services that when families have to return to England, they think with regret of the home life they have left behind them in that far-off land, which owed a good deal of its charm to the cheerful and willing service rendered by the servants in it.
It must not be inferred that there never is any friction.That would be to assume a state of things that could be found nowhere in the wide world.Disagreements do happen and collisions do take place, but these are but as it were the occasional clouds in a sky that is usually sunny, and besides there is so much of the grotesque mingled with the unpleasant, that after the affair is over and the irritation has subsided one is more inclined to laugh at the whole affair than to be angry.
If there is a family, the servants usually required are a cook, a table boy, a water coolie to carry water, and an amah or nurse, who will help with the children, if there are any, look after the bedrooms, and do any mending that may be needed.The most important amongst them all is the cook, for the comfort of a home depends in a very large measure upon him, so the great aim of every housewife is to secure a man who knows his work well, is clean, and is fairly honest. If such a one as this can be secured, there will never be any disposition to get rid of him, even though he may have serious faults that it requires considerable patience to endure.
As soon as it is known that you wish to engage a cook, you have almost an immediate application for the situation.You gaze upon the applicant with a good deal of anxiety, and if it were possible you would like to read into his very heart to know what kind of a character he is.Is he good-tempered, or is he touchy and masterful, and, like most Chinese, does he want his own way?You scan his face to see if you can catch a glimpse of the soul within, but it is as expressionless as a statue.The control that a Chinaman has over his features is one of the mysteries of this wonderful people.He has so schooled them, that when he likes they will show no trace of what is going on in his mind.
You inquire of him if he knows how to cook.If he is a really clever artist, he will reply, “A little.”There is a double motive in saying this.It is a sign of pride, and it also secures him in the future from any very serious criticism of the mistress, for if he should fail to please her in any particular dish, he will remind her that he warned her when she was engaging him that he did not profess to be an adept in cooking.
All the time you have been questioning him he has been looking at you with those black, piercing eyes of his and trying to read you.Are you shrewd and wideawake, or are you so green that you can be cheated with your eyes open?Are you acquainted with the wiles of the Chinese mind, or will you accept everything you are told as though it were gospel truth?Will you watch everything that is going on in your kitchen, or will you leave the full control in his hands? These are some of the questions that flash through the Yellow brain, and before he quits you he will have formed a very accurate idea of the kind of mistress you are to whom he has engaged himself.
There is one thing that is quite settled, and that is from the moment of his engagement the one great aim of his life is to make as much money as he can out of the situation he has just gained.His facilities for doing so are very great, for the custom in the East is for the cook to purchase all the daily food that is used in the family.The mistress never does this.It would be impossible for her to rise every morning by daylight and go into the narrow ill-smelling streets and buy from the farmers as they bring in their produce from the country in the early dawn.There are months in the year, besides, when the heat is so intense and the rays of the sun are so scorching that she would not dare to venture out to make her purchases.The result is, the duty of buying is left to the cook, and as his conscience is an exceedingly elastic one, it may easily be conceived what an opportunity this gives him of making money.
In the art of doing this every Chinaman is an adept.He begins to learn it when he is a boy.His mother sends him out when he is a small lad to buy some simple thing for the home.He returns with the article minus ten per cent., which he considers his lawful commission, though he is careful not to let his mother know, and with this he plays pitch-and-toss with other youthful gamblers in the street.As he grows in years, he becomes more expert in the art of extracting commissions from every sum entrusted to his care, and now that he has become a cook a golden field is opened up before him, where his gains are only bounded by the ignorance or carelessness of his employer.
As it is impossible for his mistress to follow him down the narrow, crowded streets where the provisions for the day are to be bought, he has a wide field for the exercise of his ingenuity as to how much extra he is to charge for everything he buys. She does not know the market rates, and therefore within certain very undefined limits she is at his mercy.
It is as good as a play to watch the progress of the taking an account of the purchases for any particular day, and to see how the wily Chinaman, with his childlike, innocent-looking face, and the Englishwoman with her open-hearted, guileless disposition, settle such a difficult financial problem.
The latter seats herself at the table with her account-book open and with pen in hand.She is restless and uneasy, for she is conscious that she is going to be cheated, and that she herself will have to register the figures that will ensure her own defeat.The Oriental stands some way off, with head slightly drooping and with a face that might have been that of a saint.With a calmness and simplicity of manner, as though he were stating one of Heaven’s eternal principles, he mentions the first item of his account.There is no faltering or hesitation in his accent, or any sign of guile, though it is precisely fifty per cent.more than he actually paid for the article he has mentioned.
The lady moves restlessly in her seat.Her heart is beginning to swell with indignation, for she is positive that she is being overcharged.She has no proof, however, and with her Occidental training that it is not right to bring an accusation unless supported by some evidence, she puts down the lying figures.The Oriental looks on without the shadow of a smile, though with his sense of humour bubbling up within him, he is conscious of the huge comedy that is being played.He has scored his first success, but to let his face show that would be to throw victory from him when it was just within his grasp.
Another and another item is given, as though they were quotations from his own sacred classics, each one as mendacious as the first, and the scribe, conscious that with every additional figure sums are being stolen from her own pocket and transferred to the cook’s, nervously writes them down, though her heart is vigorously protesting all the time.The only protest she can make is an indignant “Too dear, too dear by far,” which the Oriental listens to unmoved, and as though they were eulogies upon his honesty.
At length one sum, that she has certain information about, that is a hundred per cent.over the market price is given her, without a quaver in his voice.She at once asks him, with a ring of passion that up to this time she has managed to suppress, how it is that he dares to charge her just double of what he gave.The Chinaman is equal to the occasion.No man, indeed, in this great Empire is ever at a loss for an answer on the spot to the most awkward question that may be put to him.An Occidental will stammer and hesitate when a difficulty of this kind occurs, and the scarlet flush that will flash over his face will announce his confusion.An Oriental will instantly become more calm.His eyes will melt into gentleness, and his face assume the appearance of one that is absorbed in some great moral problem that he is endeavouring to solve.
The cook looks at the lady in gentle wonder.The charge has steadied him, and made him more tranquil and composed.“What does the mistress mean?”he asks.His face is childlike in its assumption of innocence.“Do you really think I would cheat you?I may be poor,” he continues, “but I am honest, and if you only go to the market and inquire the price of goods, you will find that I am charging exactly what I paid.”“Well,” she triumphantly replies, “I have been there already, and I find you have charged me just double the market rate.”
This seems to be a crushing answer, but it only serves to bring out the true resources of the Chinese mind. Instead of being flustered with this decided evidence of his guilt, he becomes more self-possessed. “It is quite true,” he says, “that such goods can be bought at the price you name, but they are inferior articles, and such as would not be accepted by you, were I to buy them for you. You always want the best, and I would never dream of purchasing such things. I can get them for you at the price you mention, but you must not complain if they are not as good as you are used to.”
The lady is determined not to be beaten, so she puts down the price at half that he has named, the cook meanwhile protesting that he is a loser, and that himself and family will have to suffer.
But it is not simply in the matter of overcharges that the cook finds a large field open to him for successful financial operations.Overweights are also a fruitful source of revenue to him.When he goes to market he always carries with him his steelyard, and every purchase that is made is weighed with it.
Chinese law has never legislated with regard to weights and measures, and no inspector ever goes round to see that the public is not cheated when they make their purchases. The consequence is that every man that can possibly afford it carries his own steelyard, in order to check the tradesmen who might be inclined to give them short measure. The cook would no more dream of going out to market without his steelyard than he would think of going without his fan in the dog days. It is his vade mecum by which he can measure his gains, for when he returns home he reports to the mistress that he has bought so many ounces more than he really has, and the money she pays him for these mythical weights is so much pure gain that he pockets.
If the lady, however, takes a pride in the management of her household and is anxious to keep down expenses, she will insist that every article that the cook buys shall be brought and weighed in her presence before she pays for it. This home is not an ideal one for a cook. He has, however, to submit to the inevitable, but he at once sets his wits to work to circumvent her by ingenious ways and dogged perseverance in his plans, such as no watchfulness on her part will ever enable her entirely to frustrate. There is no profession in China like a cook’s for developing the inventive faculties or for stimulating the imagination.
The mistress in self-defence gets a steelyard.Without that she would be at the mercy of the man whose whole aim in life is now to circumvent her, and circumvent her he will, or the Yellow brain will have lost its cunning.Some of his schemes are most ingenious.For example, he is told one day to go out and buy a fowl.He goes to the market, and secures one after an immense amount of haggling and carries it home.
After he has got there he proceeds to cram down its throat some very common stuff, till its crop is as full as it can contain.This is to increase its weight and consequently his gains, for the animal is sold at so much an ounce.
The cook brings the fowl to be weighed, with a look of the sweetest simplicity on his face.Such a thing as guile could never exist behind such a bland and childlike countenance as his.The mistress, who is up to all his dodges, is unmoved by the seraphic air his face wears.She feels the fowl that is hanging by its legs from the hook on the steelyard, and she remarks how thin it is, and then points to the distended crop, and asks him what he means by such cruelty, and how he dares to try and cheat her by such a transparent device.The cook at once assumes an air of surprise, and looks at the swollen crop with the utmost indignation.“Oh!”he exclaims in a truly theatrical tone, “I have been cheated.This was done in the shop, and, as it was dimly lighted, I did not perceive how I was being taken in. I shall give that man that sold me the fowl a piece of my mind when I next see him.”
The lady is accustomed to such tricks as this, and she says, “I shall deduct two ounces from the weight you have given me.”The man puts on an injured air and in a plaintive voice says, “You surely do not wish me to be a loser by my purchase, I am a poor man and I cannot afford that.”The lady, however, is firm, and by and by his usually placid look once more overspreads his sphinx-like countenance, whilst his admiration for his mistress’ ability is vastly increased.
One day a cook brought in a round of beef to his mistress to be weighed.There was an ingenuous look about him that disarmed suspicion.There was evidently no deception there, and she was just about to accept it, when the instinct of suspicion that lingers in the mind whenever you have to do with the Chinese about money prompted her to say, “Undo the string that ties this beef and let me see inside.”A sudden flush ran through the man’s face, and he hesitated for a moment to carry out her orders, but knowing that any delay would only excite her anger, he cut the string, when out rolled a stone of fully half-a-pound in weight.A look of surprise and indignation swept across the face of his mistress, for even she, with all her knowledge of the fertility of the Chinese brain, had never dreamed of such a cunning device to cheat her.
She looked at the cook with flashing eyes, but he was apparently unmoved.No flush of shame mantled his cheeks.Instead of that an innocent air crept over his countenance, and a look of wonder stole into his eyes, as he exclaimed, “Dear me, however did that stone get there?The people of the shop must have put it in whilst my head was turned.How dishonest of them!I really must give up dealing with them.The principles of Heaven are evidently unknown to them.” The withering tones of indignation uttered by his mistress seemed to make no impression upon him, and he left her presence, muttering to himself, “How wrong of that butcher to cheat me as he has done to-day, and to cause me to lose face, and to make me a laughing-stock to every one that may hear this story.”
The steelyard is an invention that is intended to promote honest dealing.It is sometimes, however, the unconscious instrument of a systematic deceit, which is all the more effective because it is so entirely unsuspected.On one occasion a young fellow had been engaged as cook.He was a man of engaging manners, with a pleasant open face, and a winning disposition that made one unconsciously have great faith in him.He was consequently greatly trusted by his employers, though they never forgot the terrible temptations to which as a cook he was exposed.
It seemed that after a while the spell of money spun its subtle web over him, and he succumbed to its fatal fascination.With the implicit faith that his mistress had in him, the opportunity for making money on all his purchases became enlarged.This led him into gambling, and as the gambler nearly always loses, he had to look around for some method that would give him a larger revenue than could be secured by his squeezes on the articles he bought every day for the use of the home.
In this dilemma, a bright idea occurred to him; he would so manipulate the steelyard that it should serve his purpose, and enable him to pay his gambling debts, and still give him funds to pursue his favourite vice.He accordingly filed off two ounces from the iron weight attached to it, and which acted as a counterpoise to the goods that were being weighed at the other end of the yard, and by a single stroke he secured to himself twelve and a half per cent.on every purchase that he made.
The mistress had no suspicion of this deep-laid scheme, for she never dreamed of testing the iron weight, and the cook with guileless looks and childlike smiles gathered in his gains, feeling confident that he had now struck a mine that would never be exhausted.But a Nemesis was at hand, and one day his treachery was revealed by a person with whom he had quarrelled, when he was instantly dismissed as a man with a mind too original and too dangerous to be allowed to hold any position in the household for the future.
From the above it will have been inferred that the difficulty of controlling a cook in China is one that no foreigner ever hopes to cope with successfully, and the same thing only in a milder form exists with regard to all the other servants that are employed in the running of a home in this land.If the Chinaman was less expert in disguising his thoughts, the matter would be simpler.Ages of practice, however, have taught them to conceal their feelings from the keenest scrutiny to which they may be subjected.Looks and language, which in other peoples are usually an index to the condition of the mind, are in their case no guide whatsoever.
The boy, for example, who really is a full-grown man, comes to you one morning, and in a low, melodious voice informs you that he wishes you to engage another servant, as he is compelled to leave you.You are surprised, for no intimation of anything of the kind has come to you till the present moment.You ask him why this sudden decision, and if there is anything in the home with which he is dissatisfied.He says, “No, you have been very kind to me, and I am exceedingly unwilling to leave you, but I have had a letter from my father, and he is very urgent that I should go home as quickly as I can.The fact is,” he continues, “he is getting old, and he needs my help on the farm, and I must ask you to let me go.”
He tells his story in such an easy, natural manner, that you are inclined to believe him, though lingering doubts will run through your mind.You remember that his family is desperately poor, and depend very largely upon this son for the wages he earns to keep them from starvation.You are perplexed to know what to do, but finally you pay him the wages due to him, and with many bows and a genial smile lighting up his yellow features, he bids you good-bye.
Not long after he has gone, the true secret of his desire to leave his employ comes out.The letter from his father, and the need of his help on the farm, are myths that his fertile imagination conjured up, and never had any existence in fact.The real truth is he had a row with the water coolie, who comes from a village in the country contiguous to his own, and who belongs to a more powerful clan than his.He dreads any further collision with this man, who might send word to his relatives there, who would speedily take measures to avenge their wrongs on their weaker neighbours, and so, to save himself and the family, he resigns.
Chinese servants, taking them all in all, may be considered to be honest.It is true that from a ten commandments point of view, and the higher morality we have been accustomed to in England, they cannot in a strict sense be said to be so.Of course they have never heard of the Decalogue, and therefore they cannot be blamed for not knowing what it demands.The training they have been subjected to during the past two thousand years has taught them to look with very different eyes upon certain subjects from what ours do.
Overcharges, for example, and skilful manipulations of the steelyard to make it lie, are not considered so much moral defects as tokens of an unusually active brain.A man who does not know how to do such things is not looked upon as one who has a higher standard of life, but one who is, in the expressive language of the vernacular, “idiotically honest.” It is not a question of conscience with such a man, but rather a lack of brain power, which has made him less mentally fit for those keen and rapid movements of thought that are essential in the conflict of mind with mind.
It is not simply, however, in the question of overcharges and the manipulating the steelyard that the servants’ ideas of morality differ materially from our own.There are a good many other points where they certainly look with leniency upon certain questionable actions that we should never dream of doing.Small things, for example, of comparatively little value, will mysteriously disappear.The Chinese would repudiate the idea that they were stolen.They simply vanished, and no trace is left of them.A kerosine tin, for example, has been emptied and placed in the yard for a short time.The mistress is aware of the peculiar idiosyncrasies of the Chinese with regard to articles of the kind, and she keeps a sharp look out upon it.She happens to have to go to another part of the house for a few minutes, and when she returns it is gone.She calls each of the servants, and asks them all where is it.They all feign surprise, and remark to each other about the daring of the man that had carried it off.“Very remarkable,” says one.“Why, I saw it myself only a moment ago!Where can it have got to?”“The men of the present day are not to be compared with those of ancient times,” remarks another sententiously, as though he were one of the sages of China.They gather round the spot where the tin stood and peer into the ground, as though some sprite had bewitched it into the earth.
The acting of the servants on this occasion is inimitable.Not only is the one that absorbed it present, but each of the others knows that he is the culprit; yet not a twinkle of the eye, nor a movement in the muscles of the face of any one of them can be discerned to show that they are either moved by the absurdity of the matter, or indignant that the honesty of the whole should be called in question by the act of one of them.
Again, a half-dozen empty bottles are left on a table.One by one they slowly disappear, and nobody knows where they have gone, though the itinerant rag merchant who makes his daily rounds could tell you exactly how much he gave for them, and from whom he bought them.If there is one thing, however, more than another that has a fascination for the Chinese, it is a pocket-handkerchief.
The nation as a whole knows nothing of this useful article.The ancient worthies that founded the Empire never dreamt of such luxuries.Their descendants, however, have taken to it with an avidity that is perfectly amazing, and whenever they can get a chance they quietly absorb them.You buy a dozen and have them marked with the blackest of indelible ink.The identity of those handkerchiefs can never be disputed, so you feel satisfied that you will have a fair service out of them.
A week passes by, and you suddenly find two of them have vanished.You are staggered, for you remember that handkerchiefs have a fatal facility for disappearing.You put off the decision of the question by assuming they have gone to the wash, or they are hidden away in some of your pockets, and they will turn up by and by.Another week goes by, and others vanish, till in the course of no very long period only one is left.You question the servants, but blank and child-looking faces meet you at every inquiry that you make.
It is never suggested that the cat has walked off with them, as might be in England, where all kinds of unspeakable immoralities are put down to that animal.Chinese civilization has never yet produced a cat that has got the reputation of the same species in the West.Everybody simply denies that he ever saw the handkerchiefs, or knew indeed that they existed; and yet it is quite probable that if you were to visit their homes, you would find the lady members of their families sporting them on all public occasions, and making their female members green with envy because they could not have the same.
Now, it must not be inferred that the Chinese servants are systematic thieves, because they are not.With regard to the more valuable things in a house, they may be said to be strictly honest.Articles of considerable value, such as clocks, opera-glasses, and ornaments for the mantelpiece, one need never have any anxiety about.They would fetch much more than some of the other things that are bound, by a law as unvarying as that of the Medes and Persians, to disappear, but they are as safe in the rooms as though a policeman’s eye was constantly upon them.What are the mental processes a Chinaman goes through to enable him with a good conscience to appropriate something worth a dozen cents or so, whilst he would scorn the idea of walking off with any of the more valuable property of his master, is a mystery to the foreigner.Perhaps he could hardly analyze his own feelings on the subject.His love for the indirect and curvilinear method of approaching a subject may have had some influence in making him unable to decide the question even for himself.
There is one subject that must not be omitted in this discussion of the servants, and that is the percentages they claim upon everything that the dealers from outside bring into the house.These are quite distinct from those that the cook makes in his purchases, and he never lays claim for any share in them.Although they are perquisites that are supposed never to come to the ears of their superiors, and are strictly private transactions, they do in a certain sense seriously affect the pockets of their masters.
The baker and the milkman, for instance, have to pay the boy ten per cent. at the end of the month when they receive payment for the goods they have supplied, whilst the washerman is more severely taxed, for, in addition to the above tax, he has to wash all his clothes for nothing. No tradesman attempts to evade these impositions, for he well knows that were he to do so, the boy would so manipulate matters that he would lose the custom of the house, which would at once be transferred to a rival that could offer more.
On one occasion a milkman was being coerced into increasing the percentage that he had been accustomed to pay.He declared that he could not possibly afford to do so, as his profits were so scanty.The boy became silent, but there was a gleam in his eyes that boded no good to the milkman.Next morning the latter as usual brought round the daily bottle of milk for the house.The boy placed it beside the hot kitchen range and, when the family assembled for breakfast, he brought the milk to his mistress and showed her that it had gone bad.When he was asked the reason for this, he assured her it was the milkman’s fault, whose milk was of a decidedly inferior character; and as for his cows, they were well known to give only adulterated milk at the best.The lady is naturally indignant, and at once asks him if he cannot get another man to supply the home with milk.“Oh!yes, I have number one man, milk number one good, can do.”He is directed to see if he could not get sufficient immediately to do for breakfast, which he declares can be easily done.This he can well guarantee, as he has already a man outside just waiting to be called.He produces a bottle of milk, which it would appear he came by accidentally, though the whole thing is planned and engineered by the boy.The milk turns out to be so excellent that the whole family is charmed with it.It has a rich creamy look about it, such as they have not seen since they left England, and which they will not probably see the like of for many a day to come. It has the look and taste of milk, and has no suspicion of the pump about it, and so the tea this morning has not tasted so nice since they know not when.
Imperative orders are issued that the old milkman who had dared to bring such inferior milk should be at once dismissed and the new one taken on, and so the deep-laid scheme of the boy has succeeded, and his increased percentage secured.From this moment the services of the pump will come into requisition, and the old sky-blue hue will colour every bottle of milk that comes into the house.
Chinese servants as a rule never accept a situation under a foreigner simply for the wages that are offered them.These usually are higher than could be got in a purely Chinese home.It is the fat percentages that are the main attraction, for by these the salary will often be increased as much as fifty per cent.A Chinaman is ever on the look-out for these, and like the eagle in the sky can scent his prey from afar.
You have had occasion, for example, to dismiss your boy.The news spreads in the most rapid and unexplained manner.There are no registry offices that are interested in supplying servants.Not an hour has passed by, however, before you are told that two men want to see you.“Ah!the new boy,” you mutter, as you walk out to see them.One of the two is your cook, and a glance shows you that the other is the expectant boy.
The cook does all the talking, whilst the other looks nervous and uncomfortable.He moves uneasily from one foot to the other, gives now and then a short, dry cough, all signs of that species of nervousness that a man feels when some important question is going to be decided.He hangs his head, and his black, piercing eyes seem absorbed in his contemplation of the ground, but in the meanwhile he is reading your character and figuring up in his own mind how much he is going to make and whether he is likely to get on with you.
The cook seems to be in the happiest of moods.His face is wreathed in smiles, and his speech is adorned with Oriental similes that excite poetic thoughts in your mind, if it is capable of such.He knows that you are in want of a boy, he says.Boys are difficult to be got: they are at a premium just now.Good capable ones are not to be obtained at any price, but as good luck would have it, here is one that has just turned up, a very paragon in his way, and one that would suit the master down to the ground.
You look at the man with a critical eye, but you get but very little out of that sphinx-looking face of his.Does he understand his work?you weakly ask the cook, more for something to say than for any hope of obtaining any exact knowledge about the man before you.“Certainly he does,” he replies, with a toss of his head in the air and a wave of his right hand as though he had just demonstrated a problem in Euclid, and was ending with the triumphant formula, Q.E.D.
After some further questioning, you ask the cook if he is prepared to stand security for the man and be responsible for his honesty.He is evidently ready to do so, for he at once strikes an attitude, slaps his breast with his open palm, and with gleaming eyes and impassioned look he says, “This is my affair; I will guarantee the man that he is a good and a safe one, and you may accept him as a servant without any fear.”
You are satisfied, and you at once take him on.The cook is also pleased, for the man will have to pay him the heavy percentage of one-half of his month’s salary for the service he has just rendered him.
The servant question is a most interesting one for watching the play of thought and the subtle and unexpected ways in which the Yellow brain works.It is at times a very irritating one, and is apt to give one distorted views of the whole Chinese race, and to cause one to make sweeping statements about the general incapacity of the whole nation. In one’s saner moments one will freely confess that the home servants are on the whole less obliging and more exacting than the same class out here. There is besides the ludicrous element in the Chinese, that always takes off the edge of almost any unpleasantness. Even when one is most annoyed there is something so funny about the way in which a Chinaman acts, that one’s anger is most likely to explode in laughter. There is one thing highly in their favour, and that is their great love and tenderness for children. Taking them all in all, any one who has had large experience of the servants in China can honestly declare that on the whole they are a faithful and satisfactory class of people.
CHAPTER VI
THE ADAPTABILITY AND TENACITY OF PURPOSE OF THE CHINESE
Can live and thrive in any climate—Absence of nerves—Bear pain heroically—Great staying power—A long ride through the country—Dogged inflexibility of ordinary Chinese—Contempt for other countries.
The strength of the Chinaman lies in his power to adapt himself to the circumstances in which he may be situated.Place him in a northern climate where the sun’s rays have lost their fire, and where the snow falls thickly and the ice lays its wintry hand upon the forces of nature, and he will thrive as though he had descended from an ancestry that had always lived in a frozen region.Transport him to the torrid zone, where the sun is a great ball of molten flame, where the air is as hot as though it had crossed a volcano, and where the one thought is how to get cool in this intolerable maddening heat, and he will move about with an ease and a comfort just as if a sultry climate was the very thing that his system demanded.
He is so cosmopolitan in his nature that it seems to be a matter of indifference where he may be or what his environment.He will travel along lofty peaks, where the snows of successive winters lie unmelted, or he will sleep in a grass hut where the fever-bearing mosquitoes will feast upon him the livelong night to the sound of their own music, and he will emerge from it next morning with a face that shows that the clouds of anopheles have left him a victor on the field.He will descend into the sultry tin mines of Siam, and at night he will stretch himself on the hard, uneven ground, with a clod for his pillow, and he will rise as refreshed as though he had slept on a bed of down.
JUNKS
(ON THE YANG-TSE RIVER).]
You meet the Chinaman everywhere under the most varied circumstances, and he seems natural in every one of them.He walks about in an easy, unsurprised way, a first-class passenger in a crack mail steamer, or he curls himself up in a native river boat, in a space where no human being but himself could live an hour, and he sleeps a dreamless sleep the livelong night in a fetid atmosphere that would give an Occidental typhoid, from which he would perhaps never recover.Whatever the social condition of the Chinaman may be, whether merchant, or coolie, or artisan, one becomes conscious that behind those harsh and unæsthetic features there is a strength of physique and a latent power of endurance that seems to make him independent of climate, and impervious to microbes, germs, bacteria, and all the other scientific scourges that seem to exist for the destruction of all human life excepting the Chinese.
One advantage the Celestial has over the Occidental is what may be called his absence of nerves.The rush and race and competition of the West have never yet touched the East.The Orient is sober and measured, and never in a hurry.An Englishman, were all other signs wanting, could easily be distinguished, as he walks along the road, by his rapid stride, the jerky movements of his arms, and the nervous poise of his head, all so different from the unemotional crowd around him, who seem to think that they have an eternity before them in which to finish their walk, and so they need not hurry.
There is no doubt but that this absence of nerves is a very important factor in enabling the Chinaman to adapt himself so readily to the circumstances in which he may be placed.Take the matter of pain.He bears it with the composure of a saint. The heroic never seems to come out so grandly in him, as when he is bearing some awful suffering that only a martyr could endure. I have seen a man come into a hospital with an abscess that must have been giving him torture. His face was drawn, and its yellow hue had turned to a slightly livid colour, but there were no other signs that he was in agony. The surgeon drove his knife deep into the inflamed mass, but only the word “ai Ya,” uttered with a prolonged emphasis, and the twisting up of the muscles of one side of his face, showed that he was conscious of any pain. An Occidental of the same class would most probably have howled, and perhaps a couple of assistants would have been required to hold him whilst the doctor was operating.
It is this same absence of nerves that enables the Chinese to bear suffering of any kind with a patience and fortitude that is perfectly Spartan.He will live from one year’s end to another on food that seems utterly inadequate for human use; he will slave at the severest toil, with no Sunday to break its wearisome monotony, and no change to give the mind rest; and he will go on with the duties of life with a sturdy tread and with a meditative mystic look on his face, that reminds one of those images of Buddha that one sees so frequently in the Chinese monasteries or temples.
The staying power of the Chinese seems unlimited.The strong, square frames with which nature has endowed them are models of strength.They are not graceful, neither are the lines of beauty conspicuous either in face or form, but for endurance there is nothing to surpass them anywhere throughout the world.
On one occasion, I had to make a journey to a large city some twenty miles or more distant.It was in the hottest days in summer, when the temperature was over ninety in the shade. I engaged two chair-bearers to carry me, who were taken at random from the nearest chair shop, where such men wait to be hired. There was nothing to distinguish them from the ordinary men who get their living by carrying chairs. They had the look of the farmer class from which they were taken, and were as dull and as uninteresting as shabby clothes and tanned and bronzed faces could make them. They had a mean and insignificant appearance, being not more than five feet and a half in height, and the blue colour in their garments, which is so popular with the Chinese, gave them a commonplace look that did not raise one’s opinion of them.
We started very early in the morning, just before the light of the dawn had touched the darkness that covered the land with its shadows.We had not gone far before the men began to show their mettle.With the heavy chair upon their shoulders, they kept on at a steady swing of over three miles an hour, in spite of the fact that the roads were simply footpaths, that had been worn into ruts and hollows by the feet of countless travellers and by the wear and tear of storm and rain.
The first hour’s travelling was comparatively cool, for the sun had not risen above the mountain tops to flash his fiery rays upon the world around us.The scene at this time was full of beauty.The earth lay clothed in a dim, subdued, cloisterlike light that gave it an air of mystery.The rice in the fields looked shy and modest as it appeared to be hiding itself amid the shadows that still rested upon the earth.The clumps of trees took fantastic and grotesque shapes, and seemed like spectres that had come out to travel during the uncanny hours of night and had dallied too long by the way.But most beautiful of all were the hills in a blue thin haze that clung to them, and turned the rocks and boulders into seeming fortresses and castles, behind which one could fancy gallant knights and armed soldiers kept watch and ward.
After a time, the sun rose with fire in his face and flashed his molten rays across the land, till everything glowed beneath their touch, and made life a misery.My men, however, strode on through the scorching air, with as firm a step as though they were on a Highland range with the purple heather at their feet.The sun blazed down upon their bare shaven heads till it seemed as though I should have a sunstroke out of sheer sympathy from looking at the glare that flashed about them; but on they went, their bodies steaming with perspiration, but with overflowing spirits that made them catch the humours they met by the way, which now and again sent them into uproarious fits of laughter.
The hours went by, and with a tread like fate they marched on along the burning roads, through villages and across flooded plains, till at last we reached the great city.It was a little after midday when we passed through the great gates that gave us entrance into the narrow streets, where the crowds jostled each other, and where the tide of human life flowed in a perpetual stream.
After transacting our business, I spoke to the men about returning.This was a most unusual proceeding, for one such journey was universally considered to be enough for one day.The day, however, was young, and the heat in the city, where the crowded houses kept away the breeze, made it a perfect oven where men could scarcely breathe, and where the mosquitoes revelled in the luxuries that the half-dressed people afforded them.
I asked them whether they could engage fresh men to carry me back, for I never dreamed of suggesting that they might be able to do so.“What need is there,” they replied, “to search for other bearers, when you have us, who are perfectly willing to make the return journey with you?” As they said this, their eyes perfectly danced with delight at the prospect of earning two days’ wages in one.
A SEDAN CHAIR.
To face p.117.
I was perfectly delighted at this, for I knew the men by this time to be pleasant, good-tempered fellows, who would play me no tricks by the way, and then they were going home, and would not dally by the journey as strangers might be tempted to do.Preparations were at once made to start back immediately.The chair was brought round to the door, and the men with beaming faces and as fresh-looking as though they had done nothing all day, started back on the long weary journey of fully twenty miles.
Once more we were retracing our way through the long, winding streets of the city, and then we emerged through the gates into the open country beyond.A haze of heat lay upon the fields and on the hills.The afternoon sun, still breathing out fire, glared into the chair and shone upon my face and played upon the bare skulls of the bearers.Surely that fierce heat would break their spirit, for I began to feel limp and fagged, though the only exertion I had to make was to try and keep cool by fanning myself.
As the afternoon went on, the steps of the bearers became less elastic, and when we rested at the regular stopping-places, they were less eager in resuming their journey.Beyond this, they seemed as vigorous as ever, and forged their way through villages, and past market towns, and round the foot of hills glowing with amber colours that were flung there with the lavish hand of the fast-descending sun.
We reached home long after darkness had settled on the landscape, and had blotted out the hills around which the clouds had gathered to let the sun paint his evening pictures.We could hear the rustling of the rice, as the night wind sighed amongst it, and sometimes we would be startled by the sudden looming up of trees like huge fantastic spectres that had escaped from the land of darkness to terrify men by their presence.
Travelling in the dark was not an easy matter, for we had to pick our way over narrow uneven pathways, and across broken dilapidated bridges, and over stepping-stones in a mountain brook, till finally, worn out and wearied to death, we stumbled down the dark street that led to our home, and there I threw myself into the first chair I could find, utterly exhausted by a journey that few men would undertake even in the coldest days in winter.
The chair-bearers, after a few whiffs at their bamboo pipes, started to light the furnace and cook their supper.All the weariness they had shown during the last hour or two seemed to have vanished, and they laughed and chatted about the incidents on the road and the funny sights they had seen.One chopped the wood, whilst the other washed the rice and poured it into the cauldron, and prepared the vegetables they were to eat with it.
No one looking in casually upon the scene and listening to the merry voices and to the animated conversation of these men would ever have dreamed that they had travelled fully fifty miles, carrying two hundred pounds’ weight upon their shoulders, through the blazing heat of an Eastern summer day.
In one’s dealing with the Chinese one is continually being reminded of the strain of dogged inflexibility that runs throughout the character of nearly every individual that one comes in contact with.It is not simply occasional instances that one runs up against.It is in the race, and there is no doubt but that it is this force that has given it such a strength that it has been able to stand the wear and tear of ages and to be as strong physically as it was a thousand years ago.
Of course there are differences.There are strong men and there are weak men.There are those whose wills are as firm and unbending as the granite hills around. There are others, again, whose temperaments are of an easy, yielding description, and one is apt to imagine that they can be moulded this way or that at the will of another. Up to a certain extent this is true, and yet one soon discovers that even with them, when the true temper of the man is tested, there is a tenacity of will that nothing seems to be able to shake.
A man, for example, comes in to see you.He is common looking, with a face hardened and battered by toil.His clothes, which are shabby and well worn, consist of the ordinary blue cotton cloth that in its dull and dingy colour helps to give a mean and uninteresting look to the wearer.If the nation would but depart from the eternal tradition that has come steadily down the ages in regard to its clothing and would take some hints from nature, whose varied moods make her look so charming, how different would these unæsthetic people appear from what they do now!
His face is a weak one, and there are lines about his mouth that in an Englishman would indicate a want of will.Your idea of the man is a very low one, and you ask him with as much politeness as your poor opinion of him will permit you, what he wants with you.
In a hesitating, nervous kind of way, he informs you that he has ventured to come and ask a favour of you.It is a very important one, he says, and as he knows no one that is so kind as you are or who has so much influence as you have, he has taken the liberty to address himself to you and he hopes that you will not refuse his request.
You find as he tells his story that he wants you to use your good offices to get his son into employment in a responsible firm in the town.You are startled, for you do not know any one in the said firm, and moreover you have no knowledge of the young man either as to his character or abilities.You try and impress upon the father that it is impossible for you to help him in the matter, because you really have no influence with any one responsible in the house of business to which he refers, and that therefore he had better apply to some one else who has the ability to help him.
The man in a weak kind of way appears to agree with you, expresses his appreciation of your kindness in so pleasantly listening to him, and bids you good-bye, and any one not acquainted with the Chinese character would certainly come to the conclusion that the whole incident was at an end and nothing more would be heard of it.
To-morrow morning you are engaged, say, in writing when the same man is ushered into your room by your “boy,” and he in a timid, hesitating way expresses a wish to say a few words to you.In his hand he carries a fowl, with its legs tied and its head hanging down, and as this is the usual way in which such animals are carried in China, it seems to recognize the universal custom and to utter no protest against the indignity to which it is exposed.
Without referring to it, he lays it down in a corner of the room, and proceeds to make his request for his son in precisely the same language that he had done the previous day.Your statement then that you had no influence in the firm mentioned was considered by him to be a pleasant and refined way of showing your displeasure that a present had not been made you, and so to-day he is atoning for this by bringing you the fowl that lies fluttering on the ground.
You try and make him understand that you really cannot help him, that you would do so if you could, and you insist upon his taking away his present, as you absolutely refuse to accept it.He agrees with all you say, expresses his admiration at your disinterested and generous conduct, is quite sure that you cannot help him, and finally leaves you holding the fowl which you have forced upon him in his hand, and declaring that he is afraid you are angry with him since you refuse his gift, which he declares he knows is too small to be accepted by a person of your position and character. You happen to go out half-an-hour after and you see the identical fowl lying in the yard struggling to get free, and with a look of pain and misery in consequence of its legs having been tied so tight and because of the cramped position in which it has been compelled to lie so long.
You call the “boy” and you ask him why the man has not taken the fowl away, as you had positively refused to accept it.“Oh!it would never do,” he replies with an anxious look that pushes its way through its permanent sphinx-like veneer, “for the man to take back the trifling present that he has made you.He would have lost ‘face,’ for people would say that you were angry with him for making you such an insignificant gift that you could not possibly receive it.”
Next morning the man once more appears, but this time accompanied by a person well known to you.After a few complimentary remarks, the newcomer introduces the man, and begs of you to use your influence to get his son the employment about which he has already spoken to you.You state the case fully to him and explain that it is quite a mistake to imagine that you can assist him in the way he wishes.Both men listen with the most wrapt attention to what you say, and by smiles and vigorous nods of the head seem to believe in every word you speak.By and by they leave, and you feel convinced that the incident is at an end, and that you will hear nothing more of it.
In the afternoon of the same day, the man turns up once more, with a smiling countenance and a look of supreme satisfaction upon it.He holds a letter in his hand which he delivers to you with the air of a man who is delivering a pleasant ultimatum that will settle the whole question in a manner satisfactory to all. It is from an Englishman who has been approached on the subject, and he asks me to do what I can to get the old fellow’s son into a firm where he has been told I have some influence.
You are getting annoyed by this time, not simply because all your protestations have not been believed, but because you see that the dogged persistence that lies rooted in the Chinese character will not allow the matter to drop until you have either given him a piece of your mind, more forcible than polite, or taken some plan to carry out his wishes.After a few minutes’ consideration, you remember that an acquaintance of your own has business relationships with the firm in question, so you at once write a note to him and request him as a great favour to exert himself to introduce the son of the bearer to the manager of a certain business house with which he is intimately concerned.Having sealed it up, you hand it over to the man, and direct him to take it to your friend, who may possibly be able to assist him in procuring the employment he wishes for his son.
The very next day, he once more appears, but this time with two fowls, a small basket of oranges and a tiny box of tea, and also with the most profuse thanks for getting his son that situation.You tell him that you have had nothing to do with that, and that if he is inclined to make presents, he had better take them to the friend who has really engineered the business.If the Chinese could only see the humour there is in a wink, there is no doubt but that he would express his feelings by one just now, but as he has never been taught the subtle part that the eye can take in conveying a joke, he simply smiles prodigiously, clasps his own hands instead of yours and leaves you with a profusion of the most elegant and polite phrases, such as the great Sage of China penned more than two thousand years ago for the guidance of people in contingencies such as this.
It must be perfectly understood that the man never believed from the very first that you could not have got that situation for his son, if you had been so disposed, and the fact that you procured it for him at last proved that.Your writing the letter and sending it to a friend were but little subtle by-plays to save your “face.”Acting like that is something inexpressibly dear to the Chinese, who are always posing before each other, and exhausting their histrionic powers to produce certain effects that shall redound to their credit.The one thing that was really to be admired in this Chinaman was the tenacity of purpose that caused him never to falter until he had gained the object that he had in his mind.
This distinguishing virtue in the Chinaman has unquestionably been a very large factor in the building up of their Empire, and yet on the other hand it is just as true that it has been one of the most powerful forces in preventing its progress and development.
The very persistence of character that made the Yellow race build the Great Wall of China and extend their conquests from their original home on the banks of the Yellow River, until the whole of the vast extent of territory embraced within the eighteen provinces has been subdued by them, has made them cling to old traditions and customs with a tenacity that has stayed the progress of new ideas, and has prevented them from adopting new methods that would have benefited both the people and the Empire.
The Chinese within certain limits are practical common-sense people and keenly alive to anything that will improve their worldly condition, but the moment they scent an innovation they recoil from it as though it were an enemy that was going to destroy them.
Illustrations of this abound everywhere.Take the farmer, for example.He has been accustomed to plough his fields with an old-fashioned implement that was devised ages before the Christian era. It is of the exact pattern that it was when it issued from the brain of the man who is credited with having thought it out. Through countless ages it has done the work of the Empire, but time has left it absolutely untouched, and if the inventor could come to life to-day he would see that the old clumsy thing that he had hastily thought out when the fathers of the race, tired of their wanderings, settled down on the banks of the mighty river that met them as they wandered eastwards, had never changed with the advancing fortunes of their children, but was identical in every detail with the one with which they began their first ploughing in the far-off misty ages of the past.
You talk to a Chinese farmer about the wonderful ploughs of the West, and how sometimes they were driven by steam, and in a few hours acres of land would be ready for the harrow.His eyes flash, for he is a farmer to the very tips of his fingers, and he thinks of the days of toil that it takes him to accomplish the very same thing, and for the moment he would like to have some of those ploughs to upturn the hard and rugged soil that his own antiquated implement seems so helpless to break through.He has a vision for a moment of how the monotony and drudgery of labour might be exchanged for a time of comparative rest, when nature in response to a new impulse should yield the fruits of the soil with a more generous hand.But the vision quickly dies out of his imagination, and the old conservative instinct flashes once more through his brain, and so the old plough and the hoe that have done the work of the centuries are more firmly fixed in his imagination than ever they were before.
PLOUGHING WITH A WATER BUFFALO.
To face p.124.
One of the great results of the intense tenacity of purpose that characterizes the Chinese is to repress original thought.From their very loyalty to the discoveries and inventions of past ages, they have become merely imitators, and any one who should dare to deviate from well-established lines on any subject would be looked upon as a man dangerous to the well-being of the Empire. It may be confidently asserted that for a thousand years no new thought or original ideas that have quickened the pulse in this old country have been propounded by any one of its vast or varied population. Whilst the West has been seething with excitement and new continents have been discovered and society has been upheaved by vast discoveries, this great nation has been going on in its easy-going, sleepy way, content with the half-dozen or so of meagre ideas with which it started its career ages ago.
The Chinese are a proud people, and look down with supreme contempt upon every country outside of their own.They are very impartial in this and make no exceptions, for they call them all by a term that has been generally translated “Barbarian,” and which really means uncivilized, untaught, idiotic, and wanting in refinement; and yet after one has got over the first excitement caused by the odd and grotesque sights that Chinese life and scenes afford to the Westerner, there comes a sense of oppression at the absolute monotony that prevails in every department of life, and all as the result of the one idea of being true to established ideals.A man, for example, builds a house.There is no use asking him what is the plan he is going to adopt.That was settled for him a good many centuries ago, and though slight variations are allowed to meet the peculiar requirements of the land, the essential idea is scrupulously retained by every builder throughout the eighteen provinces.It is for this reason that the profession of architect is unknown in this land, and the sacred plan upon which every house is built is conserved with as much fidelity by the people of this Empire as though it were a great moral principle that lay at the root of all noble action and that had been specially revealed from Heaven for the guidance of the nation.
You travel up a river and you expect to find great diversities in the population, that has deserted the land and taken up its permanent habitation on the water, but the same inflexible devotion to ancient ideals is just as marked as it is on shore.
Here is a typical boat that belongs to the fisher class.Let us examine it for a moment, for I can promise that we shall get a glimpse into the mysteries of Chinese life and see how men and women can lead what seems to be a merry, happy existence in the closest possible quarters.It is twelve feet long and five feet wide in the centre, and tapers slightly as you approach the bows.It is divided into three distinct divisions, the front part being the open space from which the nets are cast when they are fishing.In one sense it might be called the workshop of the family, for besides the manœuvring with the nets, any odd jobs that are required to be done in connection with their mode of life are performed on this part of the boat.The centre is the family residence, and performs the part of sitting-room, dining-room, and bedroom, and is covered in with thick bamboo matting that is capable of resisting the heaviest rain.The hinder section is the family kitchen, where all the meals are cooked, and where, too, the steerer stands when he is guiding the boat.
The family in this particular craft consists of an elderly fisherman and his wife, a grown-up son with his wife and two little ones, six people in all, and as though the space were too ample for these, they have improvised at the extreme bows a small pigsty, where a pig that will add to the comforts of the home when it is ready for the market, lies apparently contented with its narrow and confined surroundings.It will never move from its home till it is carried to the butcher.The old couple are weather-beaten and their faces are covered with the wrinkles that advancing age has put into them, but they are perfectly content with their life, and though they take a ramble now and again on shore when they wish to buy anything or when they want to look at some theatricals, they return to their home with as much zest as though it were a spacious house in which every accommodation was provided for their comfort.
A BOAT CARRYING A SEDAN CHAIR.
A PASSENGER BOAT.
To face p.126.
There is really, after all, no mystery in this.Fifty or sixty years ago they were both born upon a boat of the precise size and shape of the one they are now living in.The old lady with the wrinkled features, and the eyes of which the flash and the sparkle have died out, and with the raven locks that have turned to grey, came here forty years ago as a bride, from a neighbouring boat, amid the sounds of fire-crackers and the chorus of congratulations that the Chinese are always prepared to give the newly-made wife.
The young fellow that received her then as his future wife was the pick out of all the fisher lads in the fishing fleet of that time, but he, too, is old now.Yet both husband and wife are content, for their home is a happy one.Have they not their own son to care for them in their declining years, and to save them from sorrow and hunger now that their strength is not what it used to be?
The son is indeed a man to be proud of by a Chinese father.He has the look of a man who can hold his own in the world, and though utterly uneducated, his face has a semi-refined appearance, that speaks of a tender heart and of a mind that would easily be influenced for good.His young wife has a face that it is a pleasure to look upon.It is not by any means a beautiful one, for there is not a single feature in it that could by the widest charity be called pretty, and yet it is just such a one that has an attraction about it, that it wins men’s homage though every canon of beauty is defied by it. She has high cheek-bones and a large mouth, and a nose that is as far removed from the Grecian as it is possible to be conceived, but her eyes are bright and sparkling, and it seems as though the spirit of fun lay close behind them, for there is a perpetual suggestion of laughter in them. Her face, too, browned with the great Eastern sun, is a most kindly and pleasing one, and smiles at the least provocation ripple over it, and fill it with sunshine or shadows, as the mood happens to take her.
She and her young husband are busy hoisting the nets high up on a bamboo pole to have them aired and dried in the sun.The youngest child, which is but a baby, is strapped on her back, where he is sound asleep, the motions of the mother acting as a cradle would do in lulling him into forgetfulness of everything around him.The other child is a little over two, with a round, chubby face and large, staring black eyes, that look upon you with wonder as you make various signs of friendliness to him.He is stationed in the “sitting-room,” to be out of the way of the workers, and to guard against his moving beyond certain limits and tumbling overboard, a good strong string has been tied to one of his legs, which effectually prevents any such accidents happening to him.
The old father, calm and placid looking, is sitting on his heels near the tiller smoking a long bamboo pipe.This mode of resting is a most popular one amongst the middle and lower classes of the Chinese, but one which an Englishman could not endure for five minutes without considerable discomfort.His wife is fussing about the diminutive kitchen, getting ready the meal for the family, and deftly cooking the rice and the salted turnips and the pickled cabbage that are the principal features in the daily meal of vast numbers of the Chinese.
NETTING FISH FROM THE SHORE.
The above is an attempt to describe the kind of boat that a certain class of people who get their living by fishing in inland waters everywhere use.They are absolute facsimiles of each other.The question often arises, how is it they are all so identical?Why should not some of them be, say, a foot or two longer, and a few inches wider, so as to anticipate the needs of a growing family?
Such a thought never occurs to a Chinaman, or if it does, it is at once rejected as heterodox, or as treason to the original designer.A profound sense of the benefits conferred upon them by the man who had the brain to devise such a boat, though an Englishman would have the daring to think that any idiot could devise a much better one in five minutes, will prevent this nation from ever venturing to think it possible that any change could be made in it that would improve it in one single respect.
The fishermen are absolutely content.They spend their lives on these boats.Men are married upon them, and children are born upon them and grow up to be men and women, and men lie down and die upon them, and from them they are carried to their long homes on the shore, which during their lifetime they have looked upon as a place where they had no inheritance, but which perforce would have to give them a narrow space when they had finished with life, in which to hide them away from the world.
The boats I have described are but a sample of the multitude of ways in which the Chinese are circumscribed and prevented by forces greater than the enactment of special laws from making progress in their national life.There are signs at the present moment that China is awakening and that the dead hand of the past is being lifted.It will be long, however, before the new movement will permeate into the villages and into the more retired and out-of-the-way places of the Empire, where under the shadow of lofty mountains, and out of the lines where human thought and human traffic are most vigorous, men cling to the traditions of the past. But that the movement will spread and finally change the whole character of the country, there is not the least shadow of a doubt.
A STREET SCENE.
To face p.131.
CHAPTER VII
AMUSEMENTS
Chinese a laughter-loving people—Fond of society—Sources of amusements few—No seaside outings or holidays—New Year’s time—Dragon boat festival—Feast of Tombs—Theatricals—Battledore and shuttlecock—Kites—Punch and Judy.
The Chinese are a laughter-loving people, and their broad, unæsthetic-looking faces seem to have been made with a wide and generous area, in order to allow their latent humour to have plenty of scope for its expansion.
No matter what a Chinaman does, there always seems to be a comical element about it that provokes one to smile.With other nationalities, when certain unpleasant things are done, one is inclined to be roused to sudden passion and to strong and vigorous language, and a feeling of indignation that takes a long time to die out.With a Chinaman the experience is quite different.He does something most aggravating, and your mind is filled with the deepest resentment, and you feel as though you could never forgive him.You look with indignation upon the man who has offended you.As you gaze at him, the subtle humour that somehow or other seems to lie about his yellow homely features grips you, and you find a smile rising to your face and your anger explodes in laughter.
There are no people in the world that seem to have such a hypnotizing power over the men of the West as the Chinese.It is not their beauty or their eloquence, nor the fascinating way in which they talk, but in the large amount of human nature they all possess, and in the strain of humour that seems to run through them as music does through an exquisite piece of poetry.
From this it may be easily believed that they are fond of laughter and merriment and the bright and joyous side of things, and social intercourse, and plenty of company, and loud-sounding music and firing of crackers.The solitary feeling that makes an Englishman like to be alone, and shut himself up day after day in a house by himself and not care to see visitors, is something that is quite incomprehensible to a Chinaman.
A man rents a house, for example, and he finds that in the other rooms that are built round an open courtyard there are one or two other families already residing.He welcomes this as one of the advantages that the house he has taken possesses.He comes in with smiling face, and remarks how very cheerful everything is.His wife stands by his side and expresses her pleasure that there are so many people close by them, so that they need not feel dull or lonely.They are both received with overflowing expressions of welcome, and are assured that their coming is an immense comfort, and will make their homes much more cheery and enjoyable than they would be without them.
Their love for their fellow-kind is a passion with the Chinese, and they seem to be able to stand an amount of noise and loud talking and screaming babies and barking of dogs, such as would send an Englishman off his head.
Now, many of the sources of amusement that are open to the people of the West have no existence in this country whatever.They have no Sunday on which they can lay aside the eternal round of work, and forget for one day that life is a treadmill which never stops its grinding.There are no stated holidays, when people rush off to the seaside or to the moors or to some fishing stream, where midst the hills they can forget the heat and pressure of the city.The legislators of China have never dreamed that any one needed a vacation.The school-boys, indeed, after eleven months of cramped school life have been thought worthy of a month’s holidays at the end of the year, but the grown-up people have to work. Without that, large sections of the community under present conditions would starve.
The most serious thing of all, however, is the illiterate character of the people.It has been reckoned by competent critics that only ten, or at the most fifteen, millions out of the four hundred can read.The result is that, excepting in the houses of the favoured few, there are no books or magazines or pictures, or, in fact, literature of any kind in the vast majority of the homes into which one may enter.What this means for the young people, full of restlessness and with an immense fund of animal spirits, may be more easily imagined than understood.
In their idle hours or during the dark nights of winter, they are thrown upon their own resources, and as these are extremely limited, it is no wonder that the young fellows take to the only things that they can think of to while the hours away, and that is gambling and opium smoking.
Of course, for the nation at large, these two forms would not meet the demand there is in human nature for some sources of amusement that shall be harmless.There are troops of children, in this land so prolific in little ones, who have to be amused with laughter and smiling faces, and feasts, and outings on the hills, and visits to relatives.There are equally large numbers of young girls, who must have the monotonous life in which they are compelled to live in their narrow homes changed from the unending routine that confronts them almost every day of their lives.
In order to satisfy this demand for recreation, there are certain forms of amusement that have become popular throughout the country, and which, to a limited extent, do meet the needs of the case.They may be roughly divided into two classes.
The first of these is the great festivals, that are religiously observed by the people of the whole Empire.The most important amongst these is the New Year’s holiday.The feasting and jollity really extend over three days, though, as is natural, it is the first one that stands out the most conspicuous of them all.
On this day all business is suspended, and for once during the year China puts on a Sunday look, for the shops are all closed, with the exception of those that deal in shoes and stockings, which by a licence that has come down from the distant past, are permitted to sell their wares, even though it is a New Year’s day.
Every one is dressed in his very best, and the women put on their gayest and most attractive garments.The children, too, decked out in clothes that have been carefully folded and put away in boxes for this special occasion, appear early in the morning, with faces full of joy and eyes sparkling with delight, ready for all the fun and enjoyment that the day is going to bring them.
The male members of the household go and pay visits to their friends, whilst the ladies stay at home and entertain the neighbours or relatives that may be calling upon them.It seems to be the object of every one to be as nice and agreeable to each other as they can be.No unlucky words must be uttered, for they might bring sorrow and disaster during the coming year, and so one sees everywhere pleasant, smiling faces, whilst the air resounds with kindly greetings and with wishes for prosperity and happiness.
Even the very houses put on a festal appearance, and bright red papers on the lintel silently join with the well-wishers in their loving congratulations to all and sundry, by themselves offering up a prayer to Heaven to send down blessings upon the home within.
It is the custom on this festal day of the year to paste bright red papers on the lintel and on both sideposts of the door, on which have been inscribed in large Chinese characters a wish for some form of happiness to be bestowed upon all that live within. “May the five happinesses descend upon the home.” “May Heaven bestow peace and happiness, and may clouds of trade gather round the business carried on here.” “May righteousness have its fullest accomplishment in this home.” “May the days of Shun and the times of Yau (two ancient rulers of China, when it is believed that the country attained its greatest prosperity) be the experience of this home.”
The above are quotations from some of the thousands of gaudy-looking strips of paper that deck the houses and give an air of gladness to the scene.Every house in the town, and even the temples of the gods have some pasted over the front doors.For three days the feasting and the visiting and the congratulations go on, and then the people go back to the old humdrum style of things, and to the steady grind and wear and tear of life, but in the meanwhile there has been a delightful break in the eternal monotony that has made things look so grey, and that has put so many shadows into the everyday working life of this patient people.
Another great festival is one that is held wherever there is a sea or a river or a stream on which a boat may be floated.This is called the “Feast of the Dragon Boat,” and is held in honour of an ancient statesman who committed suicide in the river Mi Lo.The story is that one of the feudal states into which China was then divided, named Tau, was prospering under the wise guidance of Ku Yuan, who was the Prime Minister of its Prince.The people were happy, and peace and plenty made the state a good one to live in.Suddenly, through the machinations of a rival, the ruler was tempted into evil courses, Ku Yuan was dismissed, and adversity loomed in the distance for the country.
Unwilling to be a spectator of the sorrows that were coming on the people, Ku Yuan threw himself into the river and perished. As soon as the news of his death was known, boats were sent out to search the river for his body, but days went by, and it was never recovered. So grieved was the nation at his loss, that it was determined that the anniversary of his death should be commemorated by boat races, in which the fiction should be kept up that the boats were not simply racing, but were in search of the long-lost body. The death happened about B.C. 314, but though ages have elapsed, and revolution after revolution have torn and convulsed the country to its very foundations, the custom is as keenly kept to-day as though it had only just lately been established.
It is, indeed, one of the most popular festivals of the year, and is looked forward to for weeks before it takes place, and during the three days on which it is being kept, the whole place is full of excitement.It has been our good fortune on several occasions to witness the gatherings of the people who have assembled on a famous estuary to watch the racing of the boats in their mad search for the body of Ku Yuan.
This happens at the beginning of the Chinese fifth moon, which corresponds with about the middle of our June.The weather then is hot and the sun is bright, though rain often falls during some part of the three days, as though Heaven were weeping for the sad fate of the lost minister.
Nearly every one of the population who can possibly get away from their duties deserts the town and hastens to the seashore to witness the moving scene on the water.As it gets towards noon, strings of people may be seen wending their way in the direction of the harbour.There are young men, full of life and merriment, and with their black eyes flashing with excitement, for the dulness of the dingy, evil-smelling town is going to be forgotten amidst the salt sea breezes that have blown over many a hundred leagues of ocean.
There are old ladies, with the young girls of their families chattering and laughing about them, glad to get out of the narrow homes in which they are usually confined to gaze upon the life of the streets and to look upon the strange faces of the people that are hurrying on to the great gathering by the seaside.
Wherever one looks one sees signs that the Dragon Boat Races are the great thought that is upon every heart.The peddlers are going to have a royal time of it, and see how, with flushed faces, they are rushing on with their goods to the hungry crowds on the hills and rising grounds by the sea shore.Here is a man with two great baskets balanced on a bamboo pole that rests on his shoulder.They are full of all kinds of cakes, just fresh from the oven, and some of them that have the appetizing name of “mouth-melters” seem longing to be bought, so that they may show how crisp and luscious they are, and how suited for such a holiday as this.
Following hard upon his heels, for the street is too narrow to allow of two such men walking abreast, comes the “Sweet and Sour” man, with his two loads heaped up with all kinds of goodies, such as every one likes to indulge in on a huge picnic such as the town is keeping on this bright, sunshiny day.
This popular street-dealer in toothsome and, to the younger generation at least, fascinating luxuries, has prepared himself to meet the large demand of the crowds, who at a merry time like this will be more reckless of their cash than they would be on ordinary occasions.He has sugared orange lobes, and pine apple cut into dainty succulent little mouthfuls.He has also crab apples from the far North, crushed and flattened, but just as sweet as sugar can make them. These and other varieties of fruit that have no English names are pierced with thin slips of bamboo, which the buyer can hold between two of his fingers and drop each piece into his mouth without soiling his fingers.
Then for the sours, he has pickled olives, and rich luxurious-looking arbutus berries, that in the distance look like strawberries, and delicate little plums, and sliced peaches, and limes with the green of the trees still upon them.Every one can take his choice, and whether he likes sweets or sours he can put his hand into his pocket and select the kind that suits him best.
And now the crowds have gathered by the seaside; and what a scene of delight and joy it is to the men and women and children, who have been for weeks “cribbed and cabined and confined” in their homes, in the narrow streets and alleyways, where the green fields are never seen and where the sight of the sun is what they see of him as he passes overhead, as he pours down his fiery scorching rays upon the unsavoury, vile-smelling streets below!
There is hardly a sombre-looking face amongst them all, for the spirit of the day is upon every one.They present a most interesting and beautiful appearance; usually only men are seen in any numbers on the streets, but to-day women are quite as numerous as the men, and their gay and showy coloured dresses relieve the sombre blue in which the sterner sex delight to array themselves.
All at once the hum of voices is hushed and all eyes are turned in the direction of the sea, for there the Dragon Boats have suddenly made their appearance, each one madly striving to beat the other as they both race on towards a junk anchored in the stream, from which flags and many-coloured streamers float in the breeze, and which has been appointed to be the goal towards which the boats must race.