Sidelights on Chinese Life
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Title: Sidelights on Chinese Life
Author: J. Macgowan
Illustrator: Montague Smyth
Release date: April 20, 2012 [eBook #39486]
Language: English
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SIDELIGHTS ON CHINESE LIFE
* * * * *
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Imperial History of China
Being the History of the Empire as compiled by the
Chinese Historians
_SECOND EDITION NOW READY_
Enlarged and brought up to date. Royal 8vo, half calf.
L1 1s. net. To be obtained of
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUEBNER & Co., Limited,
Dryden House, 43 Gerrard Street, London, W.
* * * * *
[Illustration: GOLDEN ISLAND (ON THE YANG-TSE).]
SIDELIGHTS ON CHINESE LIFE
by
REV. J. MACGOWAN
London Missionary Society
Author of "The Imperial History of China,"
"A Dictionary of Amoy Colloquial,"
"Pictures of Southern China," etc.
With Twelve Illustrations in Colour by Montague Smyth
and Thirty-Four Other Illustrations
London
Kegan Paul, Trench, Truebner & Co., Limited
Dryden House, 43 Gerrard Street, W.
1907
[All Rights Reserved]
Richard Clay and Sons, Limited
Bread Street Hill, E.C., and
Bungay, Suffolk
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE CHINAMAN 1
II. FAMILY LIFE 21
III. CHILD LIFE 43
IV. RELIGIOUS FORCES IN CHINA 65
V. SERVANTS 94
VI. THE ADAPTABILITY AND TENACITY OF PURPOSE OF THE
CHINESE 112
VII. AMUSEMENTS 131
VIII. THE FARMER 150
IX. A RAMBLE THROUGH A CHINESE CITY 175
X. HADES, OR THE LAND OF SHADOWS 201
XI. A CHAPTER ON SOME OF THE MORE SHADY PROFESSIONS
IN CHINESE LIFE 224
XII. SCHOOLS, SCHOOL-MASTERS, AND SCHOOL-BOOKS 249
XIII. THE MANDARIN 272
XIV. PEDDLER LIFE IN CHINA 296
XV. THE SEAMY SIDE OF CHINESE LIFE 322
XVI. A TRIP THROUGH THE COUNTRY 346
LIST OF COLOURED PLATES
GOLDEN ISLAND (ON THE YANG-TSE) _Frontispiece_
AN IMPERIAL CONFUCIAN TEMPLE _To face p._ 65
THE WHITE STAR TEMPLE, NANKIN " " 89
JUNKS (ON THE YANG-TSE) " " 112
NETTING FISH " " 129
A FARM HOUSE " " 150
A HARBOUR SCENE (HONG KONG) " " 158
CHINESE FARMERS " " 169
A TEA HOUSE " " 225
A TYPICAL VILLAGE " " 249
ENTRANCE GATE (NANKIN) " " 272
CHINESE LOCOMOTION " " 346
UNCOLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS
A CHINESE GENTLEMAN _To face p._ 1
CHINESE EATING RICE AND DRINKING SAMSHU
(WHISKY) " " 9
A JOKE " " 17
SOME CHINESE BOYS " " 21
WOMEN CARRYING BABIES ON THEIR BACKS " " 24
AN OLD LADY " " 39
LITTLE URCHINS " " }
} 46
LITTLE LADS " " }
STUDIES OF CHINESE BOYS " " 51
A BOY CARRYING BASKETS " " 56
A SEDAN CHAIR " " 117
PLOUGHING WITH A WATER BUFFALO " " 124
A PASSENGER BOAT " " }
}126
A BOAT CARRYING SEDAN CHAIR " " }
A DRAGON BOAT " " 129
A STREET SCENE " " 131
ACTORS IN COSTUME " " 147
A BARBER AND HIS CUSTOMER " " 178
A REFRESHMENT STALL " " 184
A STREET SCENE " " 194
CARRYING A COFFIN " " 201
A BUDDHIST PRIEST " " 208
CEMETERIES " " 216
A SCHOLAR IN OFFICIAL DRESS " " 258
A POLICEMAN " " 280
A PEDDLER " " }
}296
A SHOEMAKER AT WORK ON THE STREET " " }
A PEDDLER " " 303
A WAYSIDE KITCHEN " " 317
FRUIT-SELLERS GAMBLING " " 327
A FAMOUS BRIDGE " " 361
[Illustration: A CHINESE GENTLEMAN.
_To face p. 1._]
Sidelights on Chinese Life
CHAPTER I
THE CHINAMAN
The Chinaman a puzzle--Oblique methods--Instances given--Mind
turbid--Shrewd--A bundle of contradictions--No love of truth in the
abstract--Hypnotizing power of the Chinese, in business, in foreign
official life--Full of human nature--Inability to be thorough.
The Chinaman's mind is a profound and inexplicable puzzle that many have
vainly endeavoured to solve. He is a mystery not simply to the foreigner,
who has been trained to more open methods of thought, but also to his own
countrymen, who are frequently heard to express their astonishment at some
exhibition of character, that has never occurred to them during the whole
of their oblique life. A Chinese cook who was living in an English family,
and who found life so intolerable through some petty devices and schemes
of his fellow-servants that he was compelled to resign his situation, was
so taken aback at the ingenuity and skill of the manoeuvres that had been
employed to oust him from his employment that, with flashing eyes and a
face flushed with excitement, he said, "I know the Englishman well, I can
accurately gauge his mind, and I can tell exactly how he will usually act;
but my own countrymen are a mystery to me that I do not profess to be able
to comprehend."
This of course was an exaggeration, as there must have been a great deal
in his own people that he must have been quite familiar with. He merely
meant that there were depths in the Celestial mind that even he had never
yet fathomed. Any one who has ever studied the Chinese character must have
come to the conclusion that the instincts and aims of the people of the
Chinese Empire are distinctly the reverse of those that exist in the minds
of the men of the West. An Englishman, for example, prides himself upon
being straightforward and of saying exactly what he believes. A Chinaman
would never dream of taking that position, simply because it is one that
he does not understand, and consequently he could never carry out. A
straight line is something that his mind recoils from, and when he desires
to effect some purpose that he has before him, he prefers an oblique and
winding path by which in a more roundabout manner he hopes to attain his
end.
It may be laid down as a general and axiomatic truth, that it is
impossible from hearing what a Chinaman says to be quite certain of what
he actually means. The reason for this no doubt arises from the fact that
a speaker hardly ever in the first instance touches upon the subject that
he has in his mind, but he will dwell upon two or three others that he
believes have an intimate relation with it, and he concludes that this
subtle line of thought ought to lead the hearer to infer what he has all
the time been driving at. One of my servants, for example, had a grievance
against another also in my employ. He did not dare to complain of him to
me, for he belonged to a powerful clan bordering on his own in the
interior, and if anything unpleasant had happened to this particular
member through any accusation that might be laid against him, they would
have wreaked their vengeance not only upon the man who had troubled him,
but also upon the members of the weaker clan who were connected with him.
The direct method that would have been pursued by a foreigner without any
regard to consequence, because he has no dread of hostile clans, and
because he has the law to protect him in case of need, evidently cannot be
adopted by the aggrieved person here, and so he naturally adopts the
method that he believes will secure him a redress of his wrongs without
any danger to himself or his clan.
He accordingly appears one morning with that blank expressionless visage
with which a Chinaman can conceal his thoughts, and asks permission to
return to his home in the country. He had just got news, he says, that a
brother of his has suddenly become very ill and is not expected to live,
and urgent entreaties have been sent him to come home as speedily as he
can. You are rather startled at this sudden demand to be left at a
moment's notice without a servant who is necessary to carry on the work of
the home; and besides, you have the uncomfortable feeling that this may be
one of those obscure but oblique ways by which the Yellow mind is working
to secure some end that lies concealed within its fathomless recesses.
You ask particulars, but he has none to give. He simply waves before you a
letter covered with strange and weird hieroglyphics, and hands it to you
for inspection, though he is aware that you can no more decipher it than
you could the wedge-shaped symbols of the Assyrian language, and he
declares that he knows no more about the illness of his brother than what
is contained in it. As you cannot read the letter, and moreover you would
get no light from it even if you could, you look him straight in the face
to see if you cannot discover some little ray of light on this perplexing
question; but no, it is just as impenetrable as the document he holds in
his hands as evidence of the bad news he has received from his home. It is
perfectly sphinx-like, and gives no clue to the thoughts that lie behind
it. The eyes are liquid and childlike, and just that touch of sadness that
harmonizes with his sorrowful feelings has laid its lightest shadow over
his features, and you begin to feel that you have been doing the man an
injustice by doubting him.
You have gone through similar processes before, however, and the memory of
them inspires you with caution, so you tell him to go away and you will
think over the matter. You call another of the servants whom you know to
be on good terms with the other, and you ask him if he has heard of the
distressing news that has come to his friend. A flash of surprise like a
streak of lightning out of a clear sky shoots across his face, which he
instantly suppresses, however, and with a calm and unruffled look he says,
"I have not heard that any letter has come, but there may have been one. I
have been busy, you know, doing my work, and so have not been told."
This is decidedly suspicious, for if there is one thing that a Chinaman
cannot do it is to keep a secret. After a little further conversation with
this man he remarks in a very casual off-hand way--
"I have heard that so-and-so had a brother; it is very strange, and I
cannot quite understand this business," and after one or two miscellaneous
remarks he suddenly looks round, goes to the door, and peers up and down
the hall, to assure himself that there is no one looking about. He then
walks on tiptoe to the open window, and gives a rapid glance amongst the
flowers and shrubs in the garden to see that none of his fellow-servants
are there to catch snatches of the conversation, and, still treading like
a cat that scents a rat, he comes up close to you, and whispering in your
ear he utters just one word, "Examine," and then with a face full of
mystery and with the same cat-like motion he vanishes out of the door with
a face covered with smiles, and you feel that you are now on a fair way to
find out the secret of the hieroglyphic letter and the alarming sickness
of the brother.
You "examine" the matter, and you find that the man never had a brother,
that the letter was written by a clansman next door, and that the whole
plot was devised to get you to rectify wrongs without arousing in the
offender a suspicion that he had been informed against. There is
consequently no feud and no vendetta, and after a few strong and forceful
words as to what may happen if people do not behave themselves, the
household returns to its normal state of order and quietness.
In order thoroughly to understand and appreciate the Chinaman, a man must
be possessed of large powers of inference, for it is almost certain that
what lies apparent in his conduct is not the real thing that he has in
view.
One day a Chinaman walked into my study in the free and easy way with
which people enter each other's houses in this land, with a basket of eggs
in his hand. He was a complete stranger to me, but he talked as glibly to
me as though he had been well acquainted with me. He told me that he had
brought me a present, that the eggs had been laid by his own fowls, and
that though they were too small a present to be accepted by one so much
higher than he was, he hoped that I should still condescend to take them
from him. "But I do not know who you are, and moreover I do not see why
you should make me any present at all." "Oh, I merely wished to do myself
the honour of meeting with you, for I have heard others speak with great
respect of you, and my wife and I thought that a few eggs from my own
farm, though not worthy of your acceptance, would be a little token of the
respect in which we hold you."
In spite of all his professions of devotion and esteem for myself, I felt
convinced that he had some favour to ask of me; but, true to the
peculiarity of the Chinese mind, he kept it at first in the background,
and after talking with him for about an hour, and after I had hinted that
I had an engagement that would compel me to leave him, he began to
stammer out that he was in great trouble with some persons in his village,
and as he knew that I had great influence, he had come to me to help him
out of his difficulty. The secret was now out, and the basket of eggs and
the hour's conversation about everything in the world, except the one
subject that he had come miles to discuss with me, were but oblique
methods of leading up to the one important thought that was filling his
mind.
The Chinese as a rule are a highly shrewd and thoughtful people. They are
keen observers of human life as well as of the natural world that lies
around them. It is very striking to notice with what intelligence the
uneducated countryman, who has never had any education, and whose life has
been spent in labours that never call forth any effort of the imagination,
will describe the leaves of the different kinds of trees, the habits and
lives of a great variety of birds in the region around, and the
peculiarities of insect life which they have never studied scientifically,
but simply with that keen power of observation which the Chinese seem
intuitively to possess.
In spite of all this it is quite safe to say that the Chinese mind is
wanting in lucidity, and in the ability of grasping an idea with the same
readiness that a Westerner does. This is specially the case with the
uneducated, and therefore with the great mass of people. You tell a
coolie, for example, to take a letter to the post-office. He has gone
there perhaps a dozen times before. He stands and gazes at you with a
perplexed look, as though you had told him to go to New Zealand. Knowing
this peculiarity of the Chinese mind, you repeat your order, and you ask
him if he knows where the post-office is? The blank look becomes more
confirmed, and he says, "I'll inquire of some one where it is." As you
feel anxious about your letter, you say, "Now tell me what I have asked
you to do." "Asked me to do?" he exclaims, and the dense look deepens on
his face. "Yes, I have asked you to take this letter to the post-office,
the place where you have often gone before. Do you know where it is?"
"I'll inquire," he says briskly, as though it was just beginning to dawn
upon him that he had some idea where the post-office was. He moves away,
and you have doubts in your mind whether your letter may not go astray and
never be posted, when the coolie returns with hasty steps and with an
anxious look on his yellow face, and inquires of you, "Did you say that I
was to take this letter to the post-office?" "I did, and I hope you
understand now where it is." "I'll inquire," he says, and vanishes.
This singular feature in an otherwise intelligent mind is a continual
source of irritation to a foreigner, who has never had any experience of
such turbidity of thought in matters that seem to him to require no
exertion to grasp at once. You say to a man, for example, more for the
purpose perhaps of having something to say than anything else, "How old
are you?" A blank look of amazement comes over his countenance, much as
though you had asked him if he had committed murder. "Do you mean me?" he
asks. "Yes, I mean you; how old are you?" "How old am I?" and now the idea
seems to have filtered into his brain, and the vacant, dazed look is
replaced by a slight smile that ripples over his face, and he tells you
his age. It is no exaggeration to say that all over this great empire,
wherever the above questions have been put, the same comedy has invariably
been gone through in getting a reply to them.
This haziness of thought is especially annoying to the medical men who are
in charge of general hospitals, where all classes of people come for
treatment. One day a woman came to one of these to consult the foreign
physician about her health. She was tall and severe-looking, with a face
that forbade any attempt to trifle with her. She was evidently a person
that never indulged in a joke, for the lines on her countenance were hard
as though they had never been relaxed by any of the pleasantries or
humours of life. You could fancy her being a hard-working, industrious
housewife, but one that neither husband nor children would ever approach
excepting with a certain diffidence and restraint.
Coming to her turn to be treated, the doctor said to her, "What is your
name?" This question always seems to paralyze a Chinaman, so that he never
answers it at once. The woman's face was at once convulsed with amazement,
and her eyes became staring as she gazed intently on the doctor. "You mean
me?" she asked with every line livid with emotion. "Yes, I mean you," he
said; "what is your name?" "You mean my name?" she cried, and she struck
her breast with her open hand to make sure that she was the person he
meant. "Yes, I mean you; so answer me quickly, as I have no time to
waste." "I have no name," she answered, with a pathos that seemed to
tremble through her voice. "No name!" he said. "What do you mean? You must
have a name, everybody has some name or other." "I have no name," she
answered deliberately, whilst she slowly shook her head as if to give
emphasis to her statement. "May I ask," said the doctor, with a smiling
face, "what people generally call you?" "They do not call me anything, for
I have no name," she protested. "Well, when you were a girl what did your
mother call you?" "She called me 'Pearl,'" she said, and now a flash of
sunlight came into her face, as no doubt a vision of by-gone days rose
before her. "Very well," said the doctor, "I shall put your name down as
'Pearl' in my register," though if he had only persevered a little longer
he would no doubt have got the one by which she was commonly known amongst
her neighbours.
One of the reasons that has led the foreigner to entertain the idea
that the Chinaman is incomprehensible arises from the fact that he seems
to be an absolute bundle of contradictions. It is the existence of totally
diverse qualities in the same person that has made one feel that after an
intimate knowledge of him for many years there are still surprises in his
character that show the complex nature of his being, and the difficulty of
predicting what he will do in the future under any circumstances. He would
be a daring man indeed that would take upon himself the _role_ of prophet
about any individual, no matter how well he might be acquainted with him.
[Illustration: CHINESE EATING RICE AND DRINKING SAMSHU (WHISKY).
_To face p. 9._]
A coolie, for example, is engaged by you to do general household work. He
comes to you from an inland country where poverty is the prevailing
characteristic of the whole population. Sweet potatoes are the staple food
three times a day, year in, year out, helped down perhaps by salted
turnip, bean curds and pickled beans--for it is only on special occasions
that they have the rare happiness of indulging in the luxury of rice.
He has absolutely nothing excepting what he stands in, and so few cash
that no sooner have you agreed to employ him than he at once asks for an
advance to buy his next meal. The sum you promised him is princely when
compared with what he could earn in his own country, and his mode of
living is on a most luxurious scale, when contrasted with the meagre food
he had in his native village. Now he has rice every day and fish, and
luxuries brought from northern seas, no longer a vision of dreams, but
realities that he indulges in every day.
Now, judging from an English standpoint, one would imagine that this
poverty-stricken Chinaman, whose experience of want has been so real,
would hold on like grim death upon a situation where life has been made so
easy for him. But here comes in one of the surprises that often makes the
Chinese character so inexplicable. A month goes by, and one day with the
silent tread of his shoeless feet he sidles up to you, and he says he
wants to tell you that he is going to leave you. You are astonished, and
you ask him, with a look of wonder on your face, what he means and what he
intends doing? He is not going to do anything, he declares, and he gives
you nine reasons for his conduct, not one of which is the true one, the
tenth and real one being hidden away in that mysterious brain of his, and
he leaves you. A few days hence you see him loafing about with no apparent
means of livelihood, and he is fast reverting to the original potatoes-fed
type that he was when he left his country home.
Another point that is inexplicable in the Chinese is his amazing
credulity. His character is naturally a strong one, his common-sense of
the broad and robust kind. There is hardly any subject in common life
where his opinion is not of a healthy, breezy description. It is one of
the mysteries of the inscrutable Chinaman that at times he seems to be as
credulous as the most unenlightened African that trembles before the
decision of the Obi doctor.
In the early years, when the foreigner was an unknown and dreaded
character, the wildest and most improbable stories were circulated amongst
the common people, and more believed in. A mandarin in a large city in the
northern part of the Empire, where the people were inspired with a dread
lest they were going to be attacked by the English, took advantage of
their credulity by putting out proclamations all over his district, which
informed them that they had no reason whatever to fear the foreigners,
because, as they had no knee-joints, when they fell down they could not
rise up again. This was at once accepted as a truth, and the agitation and
alarm from that time passed entirely away.
About the same time, in a very wide and extended district, a rumour arose
that the missionaries, when any of their converts died, took out their
eyes and made them into opium. The thing was so utterly absurd and the
number of Christians then so very small, that it seemed as though the
monstrous report must speedily die a natural death. But this was not the
case. It spread with remarkable rapidity through towns and villages and
hamlets, and was implicitly believed in not merely by coolies and rough,
uncultivated labourers, but also by scholars of high degree and by great
mandarins, and for more than twenty years it was a prime article of faith
with millions of people.
It is the unexpected that so often happens in Chinese life that has given
such an air of mystery to this strange and wonderful people. The very
opposite virtues and vices seem to flourish and exist in the same
individuals. The Chinese, for example, in ordinary and everyday life have
no sense of truth. It is not that they are any worse than other nations of
the East. The moment you pass through the Suez Canal and have come upon
the confines of the Orient, you realize that truth as it is looked upon in
the West does not exist in all the vast and glowing regions beyond.
You are in a new land, and the atmosphere of straightforward honest
expression of thought has vanished, and now it seems that, except in the
most trivial affairs of life, where concealment is unnecessary, you are in
a world where every one has a mask on, and the great aim is to conceal the
face that lies behind.
The oblique and angular way by which a Chinese loves to express the
intention he has in his mind has no doubt intensified the Oriental
disposition to lie, until now he seems to have absolutely no conscience on
the subject. A Chinese coolie one day made some statement to me that I
knew to be false. I was exceedingly annoyed at this, and so told him, and
yet I could not help being amused, for the look of childish simplicity and
artlessness that beamed over his face was so real and natural that I
could not but admire the perfect acting of this rough, uncultivated
fellow. "You are mistaken," he said to me, "when you accuse me of telling
you a falsehood, for I assure you that I never told a lie in all my life."
I instinctively thought of a picture that appeared in _Punch_ many years
ago, where two rough miners stood by the roadside, one of them having a
kettle in his hand, which was to be given to the one that could tell the
greatest lie. A person comes along who asks them what they are talking
about? When told, he was shocked, and declared that he had never told a
lie in his life, and he was rather taken aback when the kettle was handed
to him, and he was told that he rightly earned it. I thought if only I had
had a kettle at hand I would have passed it over to him and told him the
legend.
Now the contradictory element in the Chinaman's character comes out
particularly strong in connection with this national defect of
untruthfulness. A lie to him has no moral side, it is simply a display of
cleverness, and the more perfectly it succeeds the greater is the applause
it elicits; and yet there are occasions when the Chinaman's word is as
good as his bond, and is as much to be relied upon as that of an
Englishman who may have gained a reputation for integrity and honour.
A Chinese merchant, for example, makes a contract months before to deliver
so many chests of tea at a certain rate. The market in the meanwhile
rises, a dearth has suddenly occurred in the foreign trade, and the buyer
finds that if he keeps his engagements he will lose thousands of dollars.
He never for a moment hesitates as to what he shall do; he does not even
attempt to get the purchaser to make an advance upon the terms agreed to.
The tea comes down the river from the mountain side on which it is grown,
over rapids and down through whirling gorges, and away from the pure
breezes of the hillside, and it is brought to the city where the merchant
lives, and is handed over to him with as scrupulous a care as though he
were being paid the advanced price that the later teas are getting.
It is no uncommon thing for foreign merchants to bear testimony to the
perfect honesty of the Chinese with whom they may have large business
transactions, and one manager of a banking concern even declared in public
that, though business extending over hundreds of millions of taels had
been transacted with Chinese, the bank had never suffered by one single
defaulter. This is all the more extraordinary, and is one of the startling
perplexities in the Chinese character, since we know that in ordinary
business life one has to keep one's weather eye open or he will find
himself cheated most unmercifully.
In spite of the complex nature of the Chinese, and the veiled way in which
that mysterious brain of his works, there is no doubt but that there is a
fascination about him to the men of the West such as none of the other
nations of the East possesses. It is not because he is handsome, for,
taking the ordinary run of Chinese that one sees in the streets, they are
entirely wanting in all the elements of beauty that constitute the
standard of the West.
The features of the face, with the exception of the eyes, have not a
single good one amongst them. The cheek-bones of the typical Chinaman are
high and protruding; the nose is flat, as though the original progenitor
had had his bruised by falling on a fender and had transmitted it
flattened and disfigured through successive generations, and the mouth,
too, is large and sensuous looking. In addition to all this there is a
yellow strain that lies as a foundation colour through all the others that
nature or the burning sun lays on, and the effect is not at all a pleasing
one. That there are really handsome women in common life and amongst the
more refined classes, and that there are good-looking men in all grades of
society is undoubtedly true, but they are by no means common. The great
mass of the people are exceedingly plain-featured and unattractive, and
they are wanting, too, in those delicate and refined graces that of
themselves are sufficient to give a charm even to a personality that is
otherwise anything but pleasing.
The attraction lies in the people themselves, and without any effort on
their side the foreigner feels himself drawn by a kind of hypnotism
towards them. You cannot explain this and you cannot tell the reason why.
A rude, rough-looking coolie comes in, and you do not feel repelled by him
as you would were the person a countryman of your own who had suddenly
appeared out of the slums. A man has cheated you, and you know that he
has, and though you may at first feel indignant, it is not long ere you
are laughing at the whole affair because of the grotesque side that almost
invariably accompanies such a transaction. A person comes to see you about
whom you are suspicious. You stand on your guard, and you put on your
coldest and most reserved air, as you ask him to be seated. The Chinaman
acts as though he were quite oblivious of your state of mind. There is a
smile upon his face that travels over the rough hollows of his expansive
countenance, and spreads to the back of his neck, and seems in some
mysterious way to vanish down his long tail. No amount of coldness can
long resist the eyes that are flashing with good humour and the features
that are lighted up with such a pleasant look. Insensibly you begin to
thaw, and before you are aware of it you are talking with him on the most
friendly terms. You laugh and chat with him, and when he leaves, you
accompany him to the door, and with the usual polite phrase to the parting
guest, you entreat him "to walk slowly, and come again as soon as he can."
Ten minutes after he has gone, your old suspicions revive, and you wonder
at yourself in being such an egregious fool as to give yourself away as
you have done. The fact is, it was the nameless something about the man
that worked the miracle, and now that the bright black eyes have gone, and
the moorland of smile has vanished, and the hypnotism no longer works, you
come back to the old thoughts that you had before, which you are certain
after all are right.
Circumstances of this kind are of exceedingly frequent occurrence. You go
into a bank that has a large business. The manager is an energetic, shrewd
business man. He is full of schemes and plans to promote the interests of
the establishment, and people speak of him as being the cause of the
prosperity that is now giving it a golden reputation. The real man who
lies at the back of all this success is the Chinese compradore. He is a
most unpretentious man, and if you visit him in the little room that he
uses as an office, you would be anything but struck by him. His clothes
are of a very common description, rather slovenly and untidy, and his
shoes are slipshod. He is perhaps smoking a long bamboo pipe of
vile-smelling native tobacco, but this quiet, unassuming Chinaman is the
force that lies behind the business that brings in such large dividends to
the shareholders. He has the whole of the markets in his brain, he knows
which of the clients of the bank are prosperous and which are tottering on
the brink of bankruptcy. He finds out to whom amongst his countrymen loans
may be made with safety, and he will know by a single glance at documents
that have been drawn up in the hieroglyphic language of the Chinese of
what value they are for the purpose of negotiating large monetary
transactions. No bank in China, and no large business firm could exist for
a month without its compradore.
The hypnotic influence of the Chinaman is seen in almost any direction in
which you like to turn. The mistress of a home is as wax in the hands of
her cook, whose words, as far as the table is concerned, are a law that
even she would be very chary of opposing. A foreigner engages a Chinese
teacher, and ere long he comes so thoroughly under his influence that he
will accept every word that he says about Chinese subjects, will repeat
his very mistakes, and will refuse to listen to any criticism that
outsiders may make either regarding his scholarship or his methods of
teaching.
Perhaps the most conspicuous instance of the dominating influence of the
Chinaman is seen in the foreign Consulates. In each of these there is a
Chinese official employed that is called a writer. He is a gentleman and a
member of the literary class. His duties are to write dispatches in
Chinese to the mandarins and to be the one connecting link between the
native authorities and the particular foreign Consul in whose service he
happens to be. All petitions or complaints from the Chinese have to go
through his hands, so that his position is one of great responsibility and
power.
If the Consul happens to be a man of strong, independent character he will
hold his own, and the business of the Consulate will be in a large measure
under his own control. If he is, however, easy-going or of average
intellectual ability, he comes at once under the hypnotizing influence of
the wily self-contained Chinaman, who before long becomes the master
spirit in the office. This fact is so far realized by the leading mandarin
of the place that he actually subsidizes him to influence the policy of
the Consul to be favourable to him. A hostile writer could so easily
influence his mind against the former, and cause such strained diplomatic
relations, that he would incur the resentment of his superiors and be
dismissed from his office.
I have known a case where the whole policy of a Consulate was dictated by
the writer, who was a clever, intriguing scamp. All Chinese documents had
to pass through his hands, and it depended upon the amount of the bribes
received whether any of them got a dispassionate investigation at the
hands of the Consul. His reputation became so bad that he was finally
asked to resign, but he did so with a very comfortable fortune that
enabled him to take a commanding position amongst the leading men in his
neighbourhood.
[Illustration: A JOKE.
_To face p. 17._]
In whatever direction one likes to take the Chinaman, he seems to have an
hypnotic power that secures, if not favour, at least attention. An English
mother takes her little girl, a delicate, fragile little morsel, with blue
eyes and golden hair, and she puts her into the arms of one of her coolies
to amuse and care for her. He is about as ugly-looking a specimen as you
could pick out. He has large, uncouth features and hair unkempt, and the
general air of a rowdy. You would naturally suppose that the
refined-looking little mortal would shrink from him, but nothing of the
kind happens. Her eyes glisten, and she jumps into his arms with alacrity,
and by and by you will see her with one arm round his neck and looking
with pleasure into his face, full of the most perfect content.
There is no doubt but that one secret of the extraordinary power that the
Chinese undoubtedly have is the very large amount of genuine human nature
with which as a race they are endowed. The Chinaman is a person that is
full of fun. It would seem as though a sense of humour lay at the basis of
his character and tinged everything with its subtle influence. A joke with
the Chinaman is a solvent that disperses anger and drives away passion
from the heart, and makes the broad, uncouth faces shine with a light,
like sunbeams playing upon the rugged sides of a hill. If the Chinese had
been a nation of sombre, gloomy people, without a gleam of humour in their
natures, they would have been a positive peril to the world. As it is, the
genial strain that is the woof and warp of the Celestial's being makes him
a person that can win his way into the hearts of strangers, and slowly
dissipate the prejudice that they at first have, because of his homely and
unattractive features, and the yellow hue that tinges his skin with a
most inartistic colour.
He can be very cruel when the passion is upon him, but under ordinary
circumstances he is full of kindness and sympathy, and he will exercise
these qualities in such a genial way that one's heart feels drawn out
towards him. When one gets beyond the outside formalities and into the
inner life of the people, and beyond the crust of selfishness that
heathenism has caused to gather round their hearts, one discovers a fund
of possible human virtues that under the influence of Christianity will
expand and develop so that the nation that the world has been accustomed
to look upon with a smile, and as simply an ingenious puzzle that the West
has never been able to put together, will turn out to be amongst the most
fascinating and most attractive of the peoples of the earth.
There is one feature about the Chinaman that, from a Western point of
view, is a most disappointing one, and that is his apparent inability to
be thorough. The watchword of the West is "thorough," and in every
department of life the aim is to do everything as perfectly as human hands
or brains can make them. Now in China there is no such ideal motive
anywhere to be found. A workman, for example, will make some exquisite
work of art, and yet he will finish off some part that is not obvious to
the eye in the most slovenly and inartistic manner. You order a hardwood
table, to be inlaid with pearl, and after weeks of patient toil and most
elaborate workmanship, that will bear the keenest investigation, you find
the legs, or perhaps the underside of the table, finished off in a
slovenly, careless way, more suited to an article that was intended to be
used in the kitchen. One is being continually provoked by Chinese workmen
bringing in things, that have been ordered, without proper finish. You
remonstrate with them, and they look at you with amazement. They are
amused at your being annoyed at something which the turbidity of the
Yellow brain never discovers as being at all wrong. A broad smile
illumines their faces, and they say, "Oh, well, never mind, for after all
it is a matter of no importance; let it go."
This tendency of the Chinese mind is visible in every direction. You
arrange with a builder for some work to be done. You impress upon him that
the matter is urgent. You give him your reason for thinking this, and he
agrees with you, and you finally settle with him a near day when he will
have his workmen assembled and operations will be begun. As the Chinaman's
brain is apt to work slowly, and it is difficult to get him to grasp a
consecutive statement of any length, you go over the whole thing to him
once more, and finally you make him repeat in his own words the ideas you
wish him to carry out. Everything now seems plain, and although doubts
will flash through your brain, you dismiss them at once as unreasonable,
and you look with certainty to the contract being carried out.
The day arrives and you proceed to the spot, expecting to see a hive of
busy workmen, but not a soul turns up. You send for the builder, and you
ask him how it is that he has broken his agreement with you. He smiles and
looks amused that you should be in such a hurry. He cannot understand it,
for the difference of a day or two, or a week even, is such a trivial
matter in this land, that the Chinese are constantly wondering why a
foreigner gets excited if a thing is not done at the precise time that has
been agreed upon.
The fact is the great Eastern Sun is in his eyes, and his rays have
entered into his blood, and the languor of the Orient is upon him, so that
time marches by and he feels that he dare not attempt to keep step with
it. To be efficient and thorough means intensity, but that the Chinese
race will not attempt. Some writers have predicted that a day may come
when, inspired by a spirit of war, they will flash their swords in a wild
conquest of the West. This is a dream that will never be realized. Both by
instinct and by ages of training, the Chinese are essentially a
peace-loving people. The glory of war is something that does not appeal to
them. Trade, and commerce, and money-making, and peaceful lives are the
ideals of the race. No sooner is a clan fight begun, or a war with another
nation, than the air at once resounds with the cry, "Mediate," "Mediate."
Mediation is in the very blood of the nation, and the man who is a
successful mediator is one that wins a golden reputation for himself.
What the West has to fear is not the warlike spirit of the Chinese, which
has never been a very important factor in their past history, but their
numbers. They are a people that multiply rapidly, but through the
operation of Fung-Shuy and other endless superstitions, the resources of
China have never been allowed to be developed so as to support the huge
population. Large numbers of people have consequently been compelled to go
abroad to earn a living.
These, as far as the native populations have been concerned, have rarely
been desirable immigrants, but this is especially the case with the great
nations of the West. The Chinese are a strong race, and can live in
comfort, and even luxury, on incomes that would mean starvation to
American or Australian workmen. The battle of the future with the Yellow
race will not be fought on any battlefield, but in the labour markets of
the nations that they would invade.
[Illustration: SOME CHINESE BOYS.
_To face p. 21._]
CHAPTER II
FAMILY LIFE
Chinese character studied in the home--How marriages are arranged in
China--Love of husband and wife must be concealed--Daughters go out of
clan, sons remain--Story of a famous community in former
days--Solidarity of family--Story of general accused of
treason--Disposal of sons--Occupation of women in
homes--Wife-beating--Suicides of wives--Women treated as
inferior--Filial piety, views on--The famous book describing the
twenty filial sons--Filial piety not extensively carried out by the
Chinese.
If one desires to understand the Chinese, he must study the family life,
for there we find the secret for much that is amusing and perplexing in
their character. In all the long years of Chinese history, the ideal of
the family has been an exalted one. Ancient sages have dealt with much
eloquence upon it, and it has been made the model upon which the State has
been built up. It is declared in books written on China that the Chinese
Government is a patriarchal one, the meaning of which, put into simpler
language, is that the system by which this vast and ancient Empire is
ruled has been borrowed from any one of the countless homes that exist
throughout the land. It has been plainly stated by Confucius, more than
two thousand years ago, that a man that did not know how to rule his home
was quite unfit to govern a kingdom.
That the family ideal is held in the highest honour by every class of
society is evident from the fact that every one that can by any
possibility scrape together the amount required to be paid to the parents
of the young girl, gets married; whilst for every woman, without any
regard for her personal appearance or even for her infirmities, when the
marriageable age comes round, a marriage is arranged, and she is carried
to her husband's home with as much ceremony as though she were the most
beautiful woman in the land. If a woman does not get married it is her own
fault or that of her family, who for selfish or other reasons fail to make
the necessary arrangements for her, and never because her features are
uncomely or her complexion bad, or because she has some bodily infirmity
that in England would condemn her to a spinster's life, though she lived
to the age of Methuselah.
Let us now take the case of a family, such as one may see anywhere, and
look at the peculiar way in which it is built up and developed in
accordance with the antique methods that seem dear to the Yellow brain in
this land. A young man is going to be married. The parents have decided
that question for him, and they have called in a middle-woman, who does
all the selecting and all the courting that is possible in China, and by
her intrigues and falsehoods, the girl that is to be his bride is settled
for him absolutely, without any power of appeal from the sons or the
parents should they discover by and by that the young lady would be an
undesirable acquisition when she came into their home.
With us it is an accepted axiom that to secure the happiness of the
married couple, there must be love and there must be a thorough
acquaintance with each other. The Chinese hold that all that is Platonic
nonsense, and is the reasoning of a barbaric mind that has never come
under the benign influence of the sages and teachers of the Celestial
Empire. They declare that neither of those two things are requisite, and
they point to China, where marriage is the rule in social life, and where
a Divorce Court does not exist in all the length and breadth of the land,
as a convincing evidence that love at least is not at all a requisite for
marriage. The young man and his wife then begin their married life without
any knowledge of each other. They have never seen each other, and they
have never dared to inquire from their parents what their future partners
were like. To have done so would have filled the hearts of their fathers
and mothers with a shame so intense as to be absolutely unspeakable.
Their first look into the faces of each other, after the bride has been
carried with noise of music and firing of crackers in the crimson chair
into the home of her husband, must be one in which is concentrated the
agony and passion of two hearts, trying to read their fate for the years
that are to come, from what a bashful glance at each other's faces can
tell them. If either of them is disappointed, the wave of despair that
flashes through the heart is hidden behind those sphinx-like faces, and no
quivering of the lips and no glance of the coal-black eyes betrays the
secret that has sprung up within them.
They are both conscious that their marriage is a settled fact and that
there is no possibility of its ever being annulled, and so with the heroic
patience that the Chinese often show in ordinary life, they both determine
to make the best of things, knowing that in time love will grow, and
tender affection for each other will ripen amid the trials and disciplines
of life through which they will have to pass together.
The years go by, and without daring to show by word or look to the rest of
the world that they love each other, the deepest and the purest affection
has sprung up in their hearts. The Chinese language is full of tender
epithets and phrases full of poetry to express the emotions of love, but
the husband and wife may never use any of these excepting behind closed
doors where none can hear them but themselves.
In the course of time the family grows in numbers, and three sons and as
many daughters are born. There was indeed another girl, but as it was
considered that there were enough of them in the family, she was put to
death immediately after her birth, so she was never counted. As the years
rolled by, the children grew up and the boys were sent to school, whilst
the sisters were taught household work, such as cooking, mending and
embroidery. At last, when these latter arrived at the age of eighteen, the
services of middle-women were called into requisition, and they were
severally carried into other clans, for no person may marry a member of
his own, even though these may be counted by the thousands.
After a few years more, the same process was pursued with regard to the
sons, and three young brides were brought into the family circle to add to
its members and to increase its dignity and importance. And here it is
that we see the wide difference in the Oriental and Western conception of
the family. The latter believes in the hiving off of the children and the
formation of new homes, until finally very often only the old father and
mother are left solitary and alone in a house that used to resound the
livelong day with the sounds of laughter and merry voices.
The ideal of the former is to keep the sons in the home. They seldom if
ever leave that to start housekeeping for themselves. The daughters go out
and are lost to the clan, and are no longer looked upon as belonging to
it; but, on the other hand, their places are taken by the brides that come
from other clans, and so the balance is preserved. It is no uncommon thing
to meet with homes where fifty to a hundred people are housed in one
spacious compound, and where four generations of men, with their sons and
grandsons, a motley group where the sires of the home, with their hoary
flowing beards, and the infants in arms live in the common home.
It is recorded in Chinese history, that in early days there was a famous
branch of a well-known clan that numbered several thousand people, the
descendants of nine generations, that were all under the control of the
chieftain of the clan, and lived together in a series of large compounds,
that resembled a miniature walled city. The story went abroad that the
whole of this community lived in the most complete harmony. The men never
had any disagreements and the voices of the women and children were never
known to be raised in angry dispute. The very dogs even, touched by the
general atmosphere of peace that reigned over the miscellaneous crowds
that swarmed in this miniature town, seemed to lay aside their natural
ferocity, and all quarrelling and fighting had disappeared, and they lived
in the utmost harmony and contentment.
[Illustration: A WOMAN CARRYING BABY ON HER BACK.]
[Illustration: A WOMAN CARRYING BABY ON HER BACK.
_To face p. 24._]
Rumours of this wonderful settlement had spread throughout the province,
and had been carried by travellers to the palace of the Emperor. Being
somewhat concerned as to the truth of these, he determined to visit the
place, and see for himself if the facts were really as they were stated.
Accordingly on his next tour to the great mountain Tai-Shan, to worship
God from its summit, which the kings in those days were accustomed to do,
he called at this famous establishment. Never had such a gorgeous retinue
stopped in front of its doors. There was the Emperor in his vermilion
chair, carried by bearers dressed in the royal livery of the same colour.
In front marched a detachment of the Household Guards, great stalwart men,
that had been selected from the bravest that the fighting province of
Hunan could supply. Behind, in a long and splendid train, were the highest
nobles in the land, who were there to attend to the wants of their Lord
and Master, and to see that every strain of anxiety should be removed from
the royal mind. Further in the rear was a small army of servants of every
description, and cooks in abundance prepared to serve upon the imperial
table every delicacy and luxury that China itself could provide, or that
could be procured from other countries.
The prince of the clan received the Emperor on bended knees, and then he
was graciously allowed to stand up and conduct him over his little
kingdom. His Majesty, who had a keen common-sense mind, examined very
minutely into every detail of the life of this unique community.
He was perfectly satisfied with everything that he saw, and just before
leaving, whilst he was having some refreshment, he asked the chief what
system he employed to ensure such perfect order and harmony in such a
large and varied establishment, where even the very dogs seemed to have
caught the infection, and to have lost the quarrelsome disposition natural
to them.
He at once sat down, and taking up a pen he proceeded to fill a page with
Chinese hieroglyphics. Handing it to the Emperor on bended knees, he told
him that he would find there the secret of the source from whence the love
and unity that prevailed was to be found. With a good deal of curiosity
his Majesty glanced over the document. To his astonishment he discovered
that the writing was composed of one hundred identical words, whose
meaning was "Forbearance." "It is by forbearance in a hundred different
ways that this great company of people have arrived at its present
harmony," explained the prince. "Forbearance has been a mighty force with
us, and has helped us all to subdue our passions so that we have been able
to bear with the infirmities of one another."
The Emperor was so pleased that he took his pen and wrote out a sentence
expressive of his admiration for the masterly and statesmanlike manner in
which so large and varied a community had been ruled with such splendid
results to the country, and ordered it to be affixed over the main
entrance, so that every one should know that this great and harmonious
establishment possessed the royal approbation and protection.
It will be thus seen that a family in China has a much larger meaning
than it has with us. It is by no means the narrow thing it is in the West,
but spreads beyond the limits that are tolerated there. It in reality
includes the members of the collateral branches of either the father or
the mother, and these are often spoken of as though they were members of
the same home. A young fellow with whom you are acquainted introduces
another about the same age. You ask him who he is, and without a moment's
hesitation he says that he is his younger brother. For the moment you feel
perplexed, for you know as a fact that he never had a brother. After a
little further probing of the matter, you discover that he is the son of
his father's younger brother, in fact his cousin. You ask him why he did
not say so at the beginning, and thus save all misunderstanding. "But he
is my brother," the man repeats, with an amused stare on his face at the
density of the foreigner.
The intimate union that exists between the family so-called and those
nearest of kin makes a perfect tangle in Chinese relationships, and leads
to some very amusing and ludicrous developments. This is rendered all the
more easy because the Chinese marry young, oftentimes repeatedly, and not
uncommonly late in life, and so it happens that one occasionally meets an
elderly man who addresses as his grandfather a young fellow who is not
half his grandson's age.
The family basis that is thus broadened to include the nearest collateral
branches is real and effective. The tie that binds the various members
together is no merely sentimental bond. A particular member of the family,
for example, becomes wealthy. He has perhaps gone abroad and amassed a
considerable fortune, and he returns to his old home to enjoy it amidst
his kindred. In one sense it is his own to dispose of as he thinks best,
and yet every member of the extended family feels that he has a
proprietary right to the blessings that it brings with it. They gather
round him to give him a hearty welcome, and whilst they do so every heart
throbs with the expectation that any pecuniary difficulties from which
they may have been suffering will be removed as soon as their cases have
been made known to their wealthy relative.
But it is not simply in cases of good fortune that the solidarity of the
family is proved. It is seen most conspicuously when any misfortune comes
on any individual in it. Then all the rest are more or less affected by
it. A man, for instance, breaks the law, and in order to avoid being
arrested, flies from his home. When the officers come to take him they can
find no trace of him. One would naturally suppose that these men would
return and report to the mandarin that the criminal had fled, and that the
whole process of law would be stayed until the culprit himself could be
apprehended, but that is not so. They proceed to arrest any male member of
the family that they can lay their hands upon, whether it be a brother or
a cousin or a son, and carry him to the mandarin, who keeps him in prison
until the real offender has been caught.
An Englishman would say that is unjust, and if he were present when the
policeman made his capture he might possibly protest against the
illegality of the seizure. They would simply assure him that they were
quite within their rights. The man they had arrested, they would say, was
a member of the offender's family, and as they were all in the eye of the
Chinese law responsible for each other, they were quite justified in
arresting any one in it, and keeping him in prison until their relative
who had broken the law was either captured or had delivered himself up to
justice.
The laws of China are all based upon the assumption of the solidarity of
the family, and that in its prosperity or adversity all members of it must
take their share. Chinese history abounds with the most terrible
instances of the operation of this law.
On one occasion, a general in command of a division of the army, fancying
that he had been slighted by the Emperor because he had not been rewarded
as he thought his services deserved, began to intrigue against the dynasty
and to plot for its overthrow. As he was a famous man and had rendered
signal services to the State in many a brilliant campaign, it was some
time before any suspicion of his treasonable designs were at all
entertained by any one. At length, rumours faint and uncertain began to be
whispered about. These grew in intensity, until ere long the proofs of the
terrible conspiracy were so clear and definite that there could be no
question as to the man's guilt. He had been betrayed by a confederate who
was deep in his confidence, and who was terrified at the fearful
consequences that would happen to him were his guilt discovered. He
consequently determined to save himself by the sacrifice of his friend. In
the small hours of a dark and stormy night a small body of chosen troops
surrounded the house of the general, who was seized and hurried off to the
execution ground, where by torchlight his cries and his sorrows, as far as
this world was concerned, were speedily put an end to.
But the tragedy had only begun with the death of the unfortunate
conspirator. Revolution is a word of such a dread import in China, that it
can be expiated only by the death of the offender and by every member of
his family. As the general was a noted man, the Emperor decided that four
generations on the father's side and four on the mother's, in all eight
generations of absolutely innocent people, should be slaughtered without
any trial and without any opportunity of defending themselves.
The murderous edict was at once drawn up and signed by the vermilion pen,
and soldiers were sent out post haste to execute the decree, lest any of
the unfortunate victims should escape. And so it came to pass that eight
generations of people, without distinction of age or sex, were set upon
and ruthlessly murdered. The old man whose footsteps were tottering to the
grave, and the baby still in its mother's arms; the matron in the midst of
her family, and the young girls full of spirits and with the expectation
of many happy years before them, without a moment's warning were hacked
and stabbed to death, until not a single member of the clan was left alive
to tell the tale.
A Chinese family is in some respects a very interesting sight. The parents
in this land are passionately fond of their children, especially the boys,
and deny themselves for their sakes, and indulge them to such an extent
that many of the lads when they grow up become anything but a credit to
their homes. In the well-to-do families, the sons go to school from the
time they are seven or eight till they are fifteen or sixteen, when, if
they are not planning to be scholars, arrangements are made for them to go
into business, and they become clerks or book-keepers or assistants in
shops.
When the home is a poor one, the lads begin their life at a very early
age; there is no schooling planned for them. As soon as they can handle a
rake, they are sent out to collect firewood for the home. By and by, as
they grow in strength, a pair of baskets and a bamboo carrying-pole are
given them, and their life as coolies may be now said to have begun. The
coolie in China may be said to be the unbought slave that does the rough
and menial work of the Empire, and in large numbers of cases performs the
labours that the beasts of burden do in our home lands.
The girls until they are five or six are allowed to run about the house
and amuse themselves with the simple enjoyments that childhood is so
ingenious in inventing. After that comes the serious business of
foot-binding, when for several years they have to endure the most
agonizing pains during the hideous process of maiming and distorting the
feet, a procedure that nature never ceases for a single day to protest
against. There is no question but that whilst this cruel custom is so
dreadful that there is no language strong enough to condemn it, it has
undoubtedly had the effect of developing in the woman's character a heroic
fortitude, and a power of endurance that enables her to bear up against
many of the ills and trials that women are called upon to suffer during
the course of their lives.
From the standpoint of the West, a girl's life in China is a very
monotonous one. She has no dolls to while away her idle moments. She never
goes out to school, where she might meet other girls and give free play to
her exuberant spirits on the playground, or enjoy the fun and jollity that
girlhood knows so well how to appreciate. She may never take a walk, or
stroll out in the moonlight, or ramble along the seashore, or race up and
down the hillside. Her place is in the home, in the stuffy, ill-ventilated
rooms, where she eats out her heart in the dreary monotonous life to which
custom condemns her, and where her sole view of the great world outside is
through the narrow doors through which, when no one is looking, she may
catch a glimpse of the moving panorama that passes by them.
No wonder that the one day that to her is full of romance and poetry is
that on which the troupe of actors erect their boards right in front of
her house, and perform some comedy that fills every one with fits of
laughter, and lets her see a phase of life that she never dreamt existed
until these merry rogues acted it with such realistic power before her.
The passion for theatricals in China is a symptom of the unrest and
absolute weariness at the intolerable sameness that characterizes heathen
life in this land.
After a careful study of the family life of this great people, one
reluctantly comes to the conclusion that it is anything but a happy one.
The main cause for this is the absence of mutual love when the married
life begins, and the lower position that the woman occupies in the
estimation of the men everywhere. That there are happy homes where hearts
are knit to each other by true devotion and affection is undoubtedly the
case, but they are the exception and by no means the rule.
One very unpleasant evidence of this is the frequency with which
wife-beating is carried on by all classes. The Chinese, who adopt ten when
they wish to give any idea of comparative numbers, declare that in six or
seven families out of ten the husbands regularly beat their wives. Sixty
or seventy per cent of the husbands treating their wives in this rough and
brutal manner is a terrible commentary upon the home life of the Chinese,
and yet no one, as far as my observation goes, ever expresses any
condemnation of the custom. It seems to be considered as an inalienable
right that has come down from the ancient past, before the civilization of
the sages had begun to touch their forefathers with their humane
teachings, and with the intense conservatism of the Chinese, the husbands
continue to exercise it, whilst the great public looks on and takes no
step to stop the barbarous custom.
That the wives have never consented to this unwomanly and savage treatment
is evident from the fact of the large numbers of suicides amongst them
that occur annually in any given area that one may select at random. A
village is startled with the report that a woman has thrown herself into a
well. Some one happening to pass by at the moment observed the poor
creature with flushed face and flaming eyes throw herself headlong into
it. At once every one is mad with excitement. The women run shouting and
screaming to each other, expressing their loud commiseration; the men move
along with sphinx-like faces to see if help can be rendered, and the dogs
tear about yelping and barking and having free fights with each other.
The unfortunate woman is hauled out of the well with her long hair
dishevelled and streaming with water, and with a look of terror on her
face, as though death, when she came face to face with it, had filled her
with an unspeakable horror. She is quite dead, and so amid noise and
uproar and the wailing of her children, who have heard the terrible news,
she is carried to her home. It seems that she had had a few words with her
husband, and being high-spirited and independent, she had answered him in
a way that had been hurtful to his dignity as a man, and seizing a heavy
piece of wood, he had beaten her most unmercifully, without any thought as
to where the blows fell. With her body bruised and with her heart
breaking, and with her sense of womanhood utterly crushed out of her, she
determined that she would hide her disgrace in the well, and in doing so
would avenge herself most thoroughly on the man who had so injured her.
Her husband in his desolate home, though he might feel no sorrow for the
woman he had wronged, would be made to realize what a grievous mistake he
had made when he found that he had to attend to the details of the home
management that had hitherto been left to her care.
It must not be supposed that the Chinese husbands because they beat their
wives do not love them, for that is not the case. Looking at the Chinese
home in a rough and general way, one is struck with the fact that there is
really a great deal of mutual affection shown both by the husband and the
wife for one another. It is less demonstrative than with the peoples of
the West. Oriental thought and tradition are against the open
demonstration of the love that they feel for each other, still it is
unquestionably the fact that the great majority of the homes in this land
are bound together by a true and a solid affection.
The Chinaman, stolid and unemotional looking, has within him a world of
passion waiting till something rouses it, and then it breaks forth like
one of his own typhoons, reckless of what it may destroy. But beside this
fiery volcanic nature, that leads men who are accustomed to beat their
wives into the most cruel treatment of them, he is moved by forces that
would never influence us; so much so that the forty per cent. that treat
their wives with courtesy and respect are occasionally influenced to join
the ranks of the wife-beaters, simply to avoid the imputation that they
are afraid of them and dare not use the stick to them.
In that most charming and humorous book, _The Chinese Empire_, written by
Abbe Huc, he describes a scene that seems incredible, but which is a true
portrait of what frequently takes place throughout the country. He tells
of a man who was really fond of his wife and who for two or three years
lived on the most affectionate terms with her. He noticed that smiles
passed over the yellow visages of some of the young fellows that he was
acquainted with whenever they passed each other on the street. Flashes of
fun, too, made the black eyes of others gleam, as though the laughter
within them was too great to be suppressed. Furtive glances, too, were
cast upon him by men who seemed anxious not to catch his eye.
He was perplexed at these cryptic signs and tried to get an explanation.
At last one day, a kind friend enlightened him, and explained to him the
mysterious conduct of his neighbours, who, he said, were exceedingly
amused because he had never beaten his wife, and the only reason they
could think of was because he was afraid of her.
There is nothing in the world that a Chinaman dreads so much as being
laughed at. He can stand a great deal, but that stirs his soul in a way
that transforms the solemn, staid-looking Celestial into a raging wild
beast. "If that is all my neighbours have to be amused at," he said,
whilst passion was tearing his soul with a perfect storm of fury, "I can
soon prove to them that they are utterly mistaken, and I will show them in
a most convincing manner that they have been so."
Without a moment's delay he hastened home, and seizing the first heavy
implement that lay handy, he began to belabour his wife with it, with such
terrible effect that soon the air resounded with the shrieks and cries of
the unhappy woman. When the passion had died down, he confessed that he
had done wrong, but nothing could save his wife, for the injuries he had
inflicted on her had been so severe that in two or three days she died in
the greatest agony.
Chinese law in many respects is as curious as the Chinese mind. In civil
offences, it refuses to take the initiative, and if no complaints are put
before the mandarin, the most outrageous crimes, that in England would at
once set in motion the whole machinery of the law until ample justice had
been done upon the criminal, are left without any punishment. In this case
there was no one to bring any complaint before the authorities; for what
was the crime? A man had beaten his wife, but sixty per cent. of the
husbands throughout the Empire do that habitually. Public opinion had
nothing to say against him excepting that he had carried his beating a
little too far, for which he was a fool, for he would be simply so much
out of pocket when he came to purchase another wife.
The poor woman was dead, dead of a broken heart, dead from the awful
injuries that she had sustained, simply that her husband's face might be
preserved in the estimation of his neighbours; and now not a word of
sympathy for her, not a tear was shed, and scarcely a shadow passed over
the face of any one, as she travelled through unutterable sorrow into the
unknown land.
The inferior position that a woman holds in the estimation of the men is
shown in their absolute indifference to her when she happens to fall
sick. She is allowed to drag on in pain and weariness for weeks and
months, and the expense of a doctor and the medicines he might prescribe
are not entertained until she gets so seriously ill that without medical
aid she would inevitably die. A doctor is then called in to diagnose her
case, but one has a grim suspicion that the main factor in the husband's
willingness to sacrifice a few cash for his wife, was not any inordinate
love for her, but dread lest she should die and he would have to be out of
pocket in providing himself with another.
A Chinese doctor whose opinion I was one day asking with regard to this
very question, assured me that in his medical practice he had found the
men invariably opposed to the spending of money on their wives when they
were ill. "I was on one occasion," he said, "attending a country-woman for
some complaint. It was not a serious case, but it was such that if no
remedy had been applied, it might have grown into one that would have
caused her considerable inconvenience. I sent in my bill to the husband
for my attendance and for the medicines I had supplied, but he refused to
pay. It only came to forty cash (about a penny), but he declared that he
had not called me in, and therefore he would not accept my account. The
woman I knew had no money, and so I told her I would not charge her."
The Chinese family is supposed to be bound together by a virtue that is
unique in China, and which has never been looked upon with the same
reverence by any other country in the world as in it. I refer to filial
piety. There is no question but that this as an ideal virtue has been held
up before the nation during the whole length of its existence. Confucius
immortalized the subject by writing a book on it, and though it is wanting
in the nerve and vigour of his other classical works, because it is from
his pen it has through successive generations exercised a marvellous
influence in keeping up the national belief in this virtue amongst all
classes of society, from the Emperor on the throne down to the poorest
beggar that sits with sore legs and tattered garments by the roadside,
though his own parents perhaps years ago drove him on to the streets, and
because of his badness refused to recognize him as their son.
The utterance of the word "Hsiau," has an electrical effect upon any
Chinaman in whose hearing it is mentioned. The ordinary citizen will
discourse with you by the hour upon its beauties, and he will enlarge upon
the excellence and nobility of the children that carry it out in ordinary
life, especially when great obstacles exist in the performance of it. The
man upon whose face profligate is plainly written with the pen of whisky
and opium hears the word "Hsiau," and a softened look passes over it, and
his eyes lose their hardness, and any goodness that lay in his heart is
for the moment supreme. In fact, I have never yet met any one, scoundrel
or honest man, who has not been moved more or less by the mention of this
universally reverenced virtue.
Next in importance to the brochure of Confucius on filial piety is a book
quite as widely known, which is entitled _The Twenty-four Examples of
Filial Piety_. A brief account of twenty-four famous instances of devotion
to parents under various trying circumstances are given, and these are
printed age after age, and read eagerly by the people.
They are certainly most amusing reading, and they give the impression that
whatever other qualities the Chinaman may possess, he is endowed with a
strain of romance and poetry that explains how popular he can be when he
lets himself go. One story tells of a man who was looked upon as a model
for filial piety. His family consisted of his mother, himself and wife,
and a little infant son. Quite unexpectedly his mother falls dangerously
ill and is unable to eat any food. Distressed beyond measure at this, and
fearing lest she should die, he kills his child, and the milk that his
wife used to give to the little one is now absorbed by the sick mother.
This deed is evidently so pleasing to Heaven, that whilst he is digging a
grave in which to bury his murdered child, he suddenly comes upon a bar of
gold, which he at once accepts as a special present to himself for his
filial piety. Whilst he is congratulating himself on the good fortune that
has befallen him, he hears a cry from the mat in which he had wrapped his
son, and to his delight he finds that he has come to life again, without
any of the marks upon him to show the brutal treatment he had received
from his father. Returning home with the gold and the baby in his arms, a
fresh delightful surprise awaits him, for his mother comes to the door to
meet him, perfectly restored to health--another special favour from Heaven
to reward him for his devotion to her.
Another of these twenty-four is a young lad, who acts in such a way as to
excite the admiration of all who read his story. His mother had died and
his father married a second wife, who was exceedingly unkind to him. She
had a son of her own by a previous marriage, upon whom she lavished all
the love of her heart. After years of ill-treatment, his father one day
quite unexpectedly discovers the true state of the case, when he is so
enraged that he drives his wife and her beloved son from his home, and he
declares that he will never have anything more to do with them.
It is at this juncture that the filial piety that has immortalized the
young fellow's name is conspicuously manifested. He so pleads with his
father to forgive his stepmother that he is permitted to go and bring her
home again, though he is quite conscious that her return means sorrow to
himself.
[Illustration: AN OLD LADY.
_To face p. 39._]
He has successfully performed his mission, when lingering on the road he
is seized by a band of robbers, who decide, for reasons not stated, to
murder him. The stepmother hears of this, and filled with remorse and with
gratitude too, she takes her own son to the robbers' camp and offers them
him in exchange for the other, to be killed in his stead. The thieves are
so impressed with the noble self-denial of both stepmother and stepson,
that they all agree to abandon their evil lives and to become honest
citizens of the Empire, which they proceed to do at once, and the band is
broken up.
One of the most famous amongst the twenty-four heroes, however, is one
whose name it would seem to any one but a Chinaman ought to be covered
with infamy, instead of being inscribed on the roll of fame, and held up
for the admiration of the whole Empire. His name is Ting-lan, and it is
told of him that for many years he cruelly beat and ill-treated his
mother. One day he happened to be on the hillside caring for his flock of
goats, when he saw a young kid kneel down by its mothers side to drink. He
was so struck with this beautifully submissive action of the animal, that
he was led to think of how different had been his own conduct to his
mother. A wave of repentance swept over his heart, and he determined that
his whole future life should be an atonement for the wrongs he had done
her.
Just at this moment the old lady appeared coming over the hill towards
him, when Ting-lan, his heart filled with his good resolutions, ran
eagerly in her direction, to kneel down before her to confess his sins and
to tell her how he had determined to be a dutiful son in the future. The
mother, knowing nothing of the change of heart that had come over him, and
thinking that he was rushing at her to beat her, turned and fled in hot
haste, and threw herself into a deep and rapid river that flowed near by.
Her son, terrified and distressed beyond measure, jumped in after her in
his endeavour to save her, but all in vain. The fast-flowing stream had
claimed her as its victim, and no trace of the unhappy mother could be
found in the turbid waters that hid her from the gaze of her weeping son.
By and by there seemed to rise from the very spot where his mother had
disappeared a flat oblong piece of wood, which he seized upon eagerly as
the only memento that remained of her, and on this he had engraved her
name and the date of her death. Popular tradition holds that the first use
of the Ancestral Tablets, which are believed to contain the spirits of the
dead and which are worshipped twice a year by the living descendants,
began from this time and from this circumstance. If this is so, which is
extremely doubtful, then it may be said that Ting-lan was the originator
of a form of worship that is more powerful and more deep-seated than any
other in the whole of the Empire.
When the Chinese are asked how it is that such an unworthy character as
Ting-lan could be admitted into such a renowned gallery of national
worthies, the only reply you get is, "Oh, he repented, you know," as if
that were enough to condone years of cruel treatment of his mother, and
quite sufficient to entitle him to a more than common place amongst the
great moral teachers of his country. One cannot conceive of any other
nation in the world but the Chinese being willing to canonize such a very
doubtful character as Ting-lan.
The mere fact that there has been such a high ideal of filial piety
maintained from the very earliest days of Chinese history has been of
incalculable service to the Empire. It is an ideal that every one accepts,
and it must be admitted that but for it society in general and the home in
particular would have degenerated more than they have done in the passage
of the centuries. That there are as fine examples of filial piety to-day
as any of those recorded in the popular book that has been quoted is
unquestionable, but they are rare. A boy to be filial must be dutiful and
submissive, he must neither gamble nor smoke opium; whatever wages he
earns he must hand over to his parents; he must support them in old age,
and when they die he must perform the regular services to the spirits in
the grave and in the Ancestral Tablet, and in the Ancestral Hall.
From examination that I have made, the prevailing testimony is that not
more than one or two per cent, of the sons of the present day are in any
true sense filial. You speak to a young man about filial piety. His face
is leaden-hued, and has all the marks of the dissipated opium smoker. His
face lights up and he becomes eloquent as he expatiates on the virtue. You
examine into his home life, and you find that he is leaving his old
parents upon the very verge of destitution. He has borrowed money on the
farm, and he has carried off the best of the goods in the home and pawned
them. This man represents a large class who are all enthusiastic, in the
abstract, about filial piety, but who look on whilst the old father is
slaving himself to death, but who will not lift a finger to keep the wolf
away from the door.
You meet another young fellow who is not an opium smoker. He has the
appearance of robust health. He lives well and generously, for his salary
is an ample one. The ruddy hue on his face becomes tinged with a brighter
colour, as you talk with him about the duty of sons towards their parents,
and you feel now that you have a genuine case of filial piety such as
might be enrolled amongst the famous twenty-four. You ask him casually how
much he sends home regularly to the old folks in their country home. A
shadow falls over his face, he stammers and hesitates, and mumbles out
something about his expenses being so heavy that he has not been able to
spare anything out of his salary; but he says, and his face brightens up
as he does so, "I am going to send some as soon as I draw my next money."
For the moment he means to do this, but he never does.
That filial piety exists in China, in the books of its sages, in its light
literature, and in a deep sentiment imbedded in the hearts of all classes
of society, is a fact that no one who knows anything of this strange and
perplexing land can dispute. It is just as true, however, that in actual
practice it is no more prevalent here than it is in England or America, if
quite so much, and that the reputation that China has obtained for the
carrying out of this virtue is one that she does not deserve.
CHAPTER III
CHILD LIFE
Passion amongst the Chinese for sons--Rejoicings at the birth of a
son--Sorrow at the birth of a girl--Birth of an heir to the
throne--The Great Forgiveness--Polite phrase for a girl--Amusements of
childhood--Home training to lie and swear--Going to school of the
boys--Books they read--Binding of girls' feet--Origin of this
custom--Evils connected with it--Chinese love for home.
There is no nation that is fonder of children than the Chinese. They have
a perfect passion for them, and it is, very rarely that a family can be
found without one or more of them in it. If there are none born into it,
arrangements are made to supply that deficiency by buying some, for the
Chinese seem to have a perfect dread of a childless home. If a man has the
means, he will buy several sons, who are treated as though they were his
own, and, when they grow up, they will inherit his property, and have all
the privileges that are given to those that were born in the family.
It is this passion for children that makes a man marry more than one wife.
He desires to surround himself with those who will perpetuate his name,
and who when he is dead will come to the tomb and make offerings to his
spirit, that shall in some mysterious way reach him in the dark world, and
which shall be a source of comfort to him in the gloom and shadow that
surround him there.
A childless wife in China is a person to be profoundly pitied. She is
looked down upon by her mother-in-law, who is anxious to have the dignity
and the reputation of the home maintained by the birth of a grandson, who
some day in the future, dressed in sackcloth, will act as chief mourner,
when his father shall be carried to his long home and laid to rest amongst
the hills. The neighbours, too, have an undisguised contempt for her,
which they show in only too brutal a manner, when some row takes place and
they have a chance of telling each other what their private opinion is
with regard to one another.
The worst is, her own husband begins to treat her with coldness and
neglect, when the time goes by and the home still remains without a son.
If he is very sympathetic he will buy one and make her a present of him,
though she will never occupy the place in his affections that she would if
the child were her own. If his nature is of a coarser grain, he will bring
in a second wife, who will usurp her position in the home, and make her
life one long-continued misery.
When a son is born into the family there are great rejoicings amongst
every member of it. The one most concerned in the matter, the mother, has
had her fears and anxieties for many a day, and her heart has throbbed
with doubt and fear as she has asked whether the little one is a boy or a
girl, and when she has been told it is a son, the terror has gone out of
her heart, and a sense of supreme joy has filled her with immense content.
Her position in the home and in the street or village in which she lives
is now an established one. Her husband's affections are bound to her, the
hectoring, domineering tone of the mother-in-law is softened down, and she
has a recognized place in the home that will never be questioned, whilst
she can now look into the faces of the wives and mothers of the
neighbourhood with a consciousness that no thrill of contempt will ever
taint their thought of her.
As for the father, he walks about as proud as a turkey-cock, although
according to Chinese etiquette he assumes an air of indifference as though
nothing special had happened, whilst all the time under those stolid
features that are as undemonstrative as a tombstone, a world of passion
and joyous feeling and romantic thoughts are playing their sweet music
around his heart.
And now, congratulations pour in from every quarter upon this most happy
event of the arrival of a son. It would indeed for the moment appear as
though such a thing had not happened for years, and that the coming of a
baby boy was something so rare as to transport the family and all the
numerous relatives, and even the nearest neighbours, with such feelings of
gladness, that these could only be expressed by the most exaggerated
expressions of joy at the wonderful event.
The little mite is but a speck in the great ocean of babyhood that fills
this land with its swarms of children, and yet, happily for it, it is
welcomed as though it were the only one in the Empire, and faces are
wreathed in smiles, and the choicest phrases are culled out of the
language of poetry, and minds are set to work to invent new phrases by
which to express the gladness of soul that men feel at the coming of the
little one into the world.
Let us peep for a moment into the home; it is a middle-class one, and
presents the usual untidy, slovenly and unswept appearance that is
characteristic of every such one in the country. But to-day an air of
peculiar happiness seems to pervade the house that makes one forget the
dust, and the litter, and the atmosphere of discomfort that makes a
foreigner feel as though he dare not sit down, whenever he enters any
ordinary dwelling-house. The faces are all lighted up with smiles, and
every one is prepared to say something pleasant. By and by an elderly
woman comes in with a strapping black-haired girl, her daughter, by her
side. They have come to see the baby, and they have brought with them a
fowl, a special gift for the young mother, who for the next month will
need some nourishing food. Shortly after two or three more drop in with
presents of pigs' feet, and vermicelli, and hemp oil in which the dainties
are to be fried. All these articles are supposed to be exceedingly
nutritious and exactly suited to one in the condition of the mother.
It is a pleasant picture to look upon. The great Eastern sun outside is
doing his best to flood the world with his beams, and he sends his rays
flashing into the home, and he lights the faces of the women as with
animated conversation they discuss how babies should be treated and how
the mother should be nursed to keep off the evil spirits that at this
particular crisis are roaming out seeking to find a chance of bringing
disaster upon the family, and of carrying off the infant son that has
brought happiness to the parents.
The scene presented to us on a similar occasion in the homes of the very
poor is of a very different character from the one just described. Whilst
the father and the mother have a joy as deep and as profound as that
experienced by those who are better off, they have no visits from friends
that troop in with presents and with loving greetings, and no anxiety is
shown as to whether the baby shall ever grow up to be a great man, or
whether the mother shall be so cared for that no mishap may befall her.
The poor have no time for such luxuries, and so the arrival of a son and
heir to the toils and sorrows of his parents usually makes little
difference in the daily routine of the home. A tiny stranger has arrived
with his pathetic appeal for the loving care and support of his mother,
but the poor mother has to carry on her daily duties just the same as
before, and no surprise is excited when she appears in the fields on the
very same day and performs some of the heavy duties connected with the
cultivation of their little farm.
[Illustration: LITTLE LADS.]
[Illustration: LITTLE URCHINS.
_To face p. 46._]
The birth of a son is hailed with delight in every home in China, from the
highest to the lowest. In the palace of the Emperor, when the heir to
the throne is born, there are rejoicings that extend from the capital to
the furthest extent of the Empire, and every mother's heart goes out in
sympathy and gladness for the queen who has given a ruler to sit on the
Dragon Throne. The birth of this Royal Son has brought such happiness to
the Imperial Home that it is felt that it ought to be commemorated by a
special act of grace that would bring freedom and deliverance to large
numbers of the most unhappy of the Emperor's subjects.
This is called the "Great Forgiveness," because no sooner is it known that
the Empress has borne a son, than an edict is issued, stamped with the
vermilion seal, and dispatched to the viceroys and great mandarins in
every province and department of the Empire, ordering them to at once
release certain classes of prisoners who are confined in prison, and who
without this royal clemency might lie confined within their dingy cells
for years to come without any hope of release. This is a noble act, and
all connected with the coming of a little son, who has only just opened
his eyes to the light of heaven, and who yet has had the happiness of
flinging wide the prison doors and of setting free countless numbers of
men and women, who otherwise would have pined and fretted within their
dungeons till hope had died out of their hearts, and, filled with despair,
they had closed their eyes upon life.
Let us now try and picture another scene. The little one, long expected
and long speculated about, that has filled the fancy of the mother, and
that has helped to weave a story of romance in the mind of the father,
turns out after all to be not a boy, but a girl--only a girl. The visions
die away, and the poetry loses its romance, and becomes the commonest
prose, when it is found that the stranger is a girl. It is quite safe to
make the assertion that in all the countless homes that exist in the huge
population of China not one of them is prepared to welcome a girl or to
feel that she could ever take the place of a boy.
We become convinced of this when we look upon the scene that I am
endeavouring to picture, for it is a typical one, and the ages have
stereotyped it, as one of the correct photographs of social life in this
land.
No sooner is it announced that the child is a girl than a kind of dismay
falls upon the household. The father's face becomes darkened with a scowl
that shows the passion that is raging in his heart. His very love for his
wife is for the moment turned into bitterness, for he considers that she
has wronged him and brought disgrace upon the home.
The mother, instead of being loyal to her sex and gathering the little one
to her bosom, as she would have done had it been a boy, thrusts it
indignantly from her and refuses even to look at it. She now begins to
weep and sob out her sorrow in tears and bitter expressions at the bad
fate that is clouding her life. The baby has been wrapped up hastily and
thrown with contempt upon a bench in the room, where, uncared for and
despised, as something that has brought bad luck into the home, she sends
forth her wailing cry without its once touching the mother near by.
It is at this particular period in the little girl's history that the
greatest peril to her life arises, for it is just at this point that so
many take their last look at the world and vanish into darkness. With a
mad passion of disappointment in the hearts of both parents, it is so easy
to snap the thread of the little life, and sweep away the sorrow and the
shame from their home.
On one occasion we had a nurse in our family. She was a woman of a great
deal of character, modest in her demeanour and a willing and untiring
worker. Her name was the one thing about her that was peculiar, and that
in Chinese meant "Picked up." It was a most unusual one, and I felt that
there was a history connected with it that would reveal some incident in
her early life. Anxious to learn what that was, I said to her one day,
"What an extraordinary name you have. How did it come about that your
mother gave it you?"
A smile lighted up her plain features, whilst she exclaimed, "I can easily
explain that. The name was given me very soon after my birth, in
remembrance of a rather tragic affair in which, as my mother believed,
Heaven interfered to preserve my life. The evening I was born, both my
father and mother were so distressed at my being a girl, that in a fit of
anger the former seized hold upon me and threw me out into the open
courtyard in front of our house. Fortunately it was the height of summer,
and the night air was hot and scorching, and so as I lay there all night
long, I received no injury from the wind that blew over me.
"At dawn next morning, my father came out for something, and was
astonished to find that I was still alive. He had expected that the fall
on the hard stone slabs that paved the courtyard and the long exposure
would have killed me. He was a very superstitious man, and so he believed
that my escape from death had been due to the intervention of Heaven, and
that it was designed by it that my life should be preserved. Impressed
with this idea, he picked me up and carried me to my mother, who took me
to her heart and decided that I should not be destroyed. In memory of that
eventful night, and my father's rescue of me next morning, I was called,
'Picked up.'"
There is no doubt but that countless baby girls have thus disappeared
within the first two or three hours of their birth, when the unnatural
passion of the parents has been excited by anger and disappointment. If
they are spared long enough to let that cool down, and the child still
lives, the voice of nature begins to be heard, and the mother will ask
for the little one to be given her, and from that moment there will be no
more talk of putting it to death.
Under the most favourable circumstances, and where it has been decided to
rear the child, no congratulations are ever uttered by any one on her
birth. To do so would be considered so grim a joke that it would be looked
upon as an insult so marked and so offensive that a perpetual feud would
be engendered that would never be dissolved as long as life lasted.
The neighbours who have been on the alert with their congratulations all
ready to offer to the happy parents in the event of a son being born, are
placed in the most awkward position, and they get out of it as deftly as
they can by the use of polite phrases and airy nothings of which the
Chinese language has such an abundance. In these attempts no one would
ever dream of using the common word "Girl." That would grate harshly on
the ears of those whose sensitive feelings are only too ready to think
that some reflection is intended by a reference to their daughter. A
polite phrase is used instead, which means "A thousand pieces of gold," a
title which by a subtle species of legerdemain lifts the poor forlorn
little mite, who has barely escaped drowning or suffocating, into the
region of an heiress with a large fortune with which to begin her life.
The early years of a child seem on the whole to be happy ones. In the
swarms of children that one sees almost anywhere, one gets the impression
that on the whole they thoroughly enjoy themselves. They run about and
romp and dance and gambol very much as a similar number of English
children would do on the village green, or in the streets and lanes of a
home city.
The Chinese are far from being a gloomy race of people. Their hearts are
full of fun and vigorous life, and this is seen in the sturdy urchins that
race about with each other and that fill the air with their merry sounds
of childish laughter.
[Illustration: STUDIES OF CHINESE BOYS.
_To face p. 51._]
With very young children this is all the more remarkable since so little
is provided for their amusement. Such things as pictures or story-books or
toys in the large and profuse sense with which our nurseries are supplied
in England, do not exist in this land. Childhood is left very much to its
own resources to find out the means of passing the time pleasantly. It is
pathetic to watch how, with the fewest and simplest materials, the little
ones will pass the day, with apparently perfect contentment. The method
most popular, because it involves no expense, is the making of mud pies,
and the building of miniature houses with broken pieces of tiles that can
be picked up from the streets.
The parents never seem to consider it a part of their duty to suggest
means of recreation for their children. The mothers are intensely ignorant
and slovenly, and are too occupied with their household duties to have any
time to devote to the education or amusement of their little ones, and so
they are allowed to grow up very much as nature or their surroundings
mould them, until the time has arrived, for the boys at least, when they
must enter school, and come under the discipline of a school-master.
It is interesting at this point to consider what are the moral restraints
that are at the command of the parents to train up their children to be
good and honest citizens of the Empire. Apart from the natural conscience
which no amount of heathenism can entirely eradicate, and the lofty ideals
which their sages and teachers in olden times sent forth as beautiful
spirits to permeate and wander through succeeding generations, the family
has no influence whatsoever in guiding the little ones into a noble and
virtuous life.
How could one expect that it should? There is absolutely no religion in
it, for the occasional worship of the idols, when some favour is requested
from them or some sorrow to be averted, has no moral effect upon a single
member of the home. The idols are supposed to be mysterious forces that
have great power in the supernatural world, who have to be bribed and
coaxed not to send down evil upon men, for whom in their inmost hearts it
is believed that they have a natural antipathy. They are never appealed to
as loving or caring for men. There is nothing that will bring a smile over
the yellow face sooner than to ask a man if the idols love men. It is a
question that is so brimming over with fun to a Chinaman that it is
irresistible in its effects, and the soberest face will be wreathed with
smiles whenever it is put.
There is no Bible, of course, and not a single book in the home, and if
there were the mothers could not read them. It will be seen, then, that
the machinery in the West for the training of the children does not exist
out here. There is no God, no churches, no Sunday or Sunday schools, no
pictures, and no special literature to influence the minds of the young to
withstand the evil forces that grow rank and wild all around them in
whatever grade of society they may happen to be.
It may be said without any exaggeration that it is in the home that the
children learn the evils that cling to them all their lives, and that it
is the mothers that are the principal teachers of them. Lying, for
example, as a fine art is one that is indoctrinated by the mothers'
example. It is upon it that they mainly depend for the governing of their
children. As a rule there is no proper discipline in the home, and no
attempt made to make the children obey promptly any order that is given.
The result is that the mother, who has most to do with them, depends
largely upon loud-voiced threatenings and an occasional beating when her
passion gets the control over her, though this latter is rare, since the
Chinese parents really love their children, and seldom resort to this
severe method of curbing the unruly or high spirits of their offspring.
The great weapon in her armoury in the earlier days of her children's
lives is a technical expression that is known in every family of
"Deceiving the Children." One day a visitor called upon a family with
which he was acquainted. The lady of the house was in and so also was her
little son of four or five years of age, a bright, interesting child, with
snapping black eyes, and as full of life as a healthy child could be.
During the conversation the child got restless and was inclined to get
into mischief. He was approaching a corner of the room, when his mother
called out in a loud, excited voice, "Don't go there, there is a huge rat
waiting for you, that will pounce out upon you, and tear out your eyes."
The little fellow, with terror depicted upon his face and with an agonized
cry, made a bee-line to the opposite side of the room, and crouched near
his mother in the most abject terror.
After a while, having nothing to do, he began to move about in what his
mother considered forbidden paths, when once more, with a shriek that had
assumed a natural look of alarm, she shouted in her loudest tones, "Come
away quickly, don't go there; there is a black snake hiding in the corner.
It will bite you, and you will die in a few minutes." Again a wild look of
horror on the little fellow's face, and a sudden rush to his mother's side
to escape the deadly serpent that was lying in wait for him, and sobs of
agony broke from him as he clung to her for protection.
After a while he once more, with the restlessness of childhood, began to
move about in search of something to amuse himself with, and was once more
getting on ground that his mother considered unsafe, when again, with red,
excited face and shrill tones she yelled out, "Why do you go there? Don't
you know there is a devil hiding round the corner that has a great love
for the flesh of a young boy, and he will seize you and devour you, and
crunch your bones with his great teeth?"
At this juncture the gentleman said to the mother, "How is it that you
have in a very short time deceived your son three times by telling him
that something will happen that you know cannot possibly occur? Are you
not afraid of teaching him to be a liar? He will find out in time that
what you say cannot be relied upon, and then he will lose faith in you and
learn to regard lying as a thing of no importance."
The woman's face became suffused with smiles, and then she broke out into
laughter, which for some time she could not suppress. "Oh," she said, "I
did not think of all the terrible things that you talk of so seriously. I
merely wanted to keep the little fellow quiet. I knew that he would not
obey me if I simply asked him to be a good boy, and so I thought I would
frighten him. Everybody uses this plan in China, and I don't see that
there is any harm in it."
Another exceedingly injurious habit that is learned in the home is
swearing. It seems an incredible thing, but it is no doubt a fact that
every one swears in China, without distinction of sex or position in
society. The rough coolies that one meets with on the roads interlard
their ordinary conversation with the foulest expressions, but only let two
of them fall out with each other, and there will be such a torrent of
obscenity and such a bombardment of one another by filthy epithets that
one recoils with disgust at the degrading terms that flow from their lips.
You are standing talking to a fine, scholarly gentleman. His home near by
is a perfect mansion as compared with the hovels that press up against the
wall that surrounds his property. You are charmed with his manner, so
elegant and refined is he in his conversation with you. His talk, too, is
high toned, and shows that he has been imbued with the ethics of the great
sage Confucius, who drew a wonderful picture of the ideal man, that he
called "The son of a King," and that he has been studying his lineaments
so that he might copy him in his own life.
All at once two coolies come along with a steady run, bearing between them
a great heavy pig, that squeals and grunts with pain from the ropes that
cut into its feet. The road is rough and uneven, and they make a false
step and bump heavily against the scholar, who falls to the ground. The
transformation that takes place in this refined and gentlemanly person is
instantaneous and amazing. His company manners have fled, the picture of
the ideal man has vanished from his brain, and he now stands on the level
of the most profane coolie, that has never read Confucius, and has never
studied etiquette of any kind. The language that flows from him is obscene
and so filthy, and of such a Sodom and Gomorrah character that you turn
away from him in absolute loathing as a man that would pollute and
contaminate you by his very presence.
Two women have a difference, and, like all Chinese quarrels, it has to be
fought out in the open street, where every one can hear and decide for
himself the merits of the case. They begin with a few desultory remarks,
not very highly complimentary, and with just sufficient edge in them to
show that each of them means war to the knife, and that they are now
fleshing their swords for the real encounter that is imminent. By and by a
single word is shot like a poisoned arrow by one of them that inflames the
other to madness. The flood-gates are now open, and there pour from the
lips of each a perfect cataract of foul and obscene language, that makes
many of the bystanders, whose minds are stored with these very terms,
actually shudder with a vague sense of abhorrence.
Now all this is learned in the home. The first notes of this terrible
language were first heard from father and mother, but mainly from the
latter. In her anger and passion she will hurl epithets at her daughter
that will describe her as one of the vilest of her sex, whilst the boys,
from the awful terms she uses about them, might be the very refuse and
offscourings of the earth. The little ones can say nothing, but they store
up in the innermost recesses of their minds these awful phrases, to be
used as the years go by when passion stirs up the fiercest elements of the
heart into wild bursts of fury.
And thus the years go by for both boys and girls, with nothing very
eventful in the lives of either, until they are about eight. The Chinese
are not an idle race of people, and as soon as the little ones can put
their hands to anything, their small services are utilized for the general
benefit of the home. If they are poor, the boys go out and gather grass
and fallen twigs to be used as firewood, whilst the girls help as far as
they can in the ordinary duties of the household.
Their main occupation, however, is play, and the most of their hours are
devoted to that. Chinese children develop slowly. Neither in intelligence
nor in physical development are they at all equal to the boys and girls in
England, so up till they are ten years of age it is considered that their
services are of no material value to the family, and that their time is
best spent by doing nothing but running wild.
At about eight preparations are made for the lad to go to school. Terms
are made with the school-master of the nearest school, a certain number of
books splashed and dotted over with mysterious-looking hieroglyphics are
bought, and one morning at early dawn, just as the pale grey light begins
to colour the landscape, the little fellow finds his way along the silent
road to the school-house. Here for six or seven years he will spend the
best part of his days in the study of books that contain the ideals of the
nation.
[Illustration: A BOY CARRYING BASKETS.
_To face p. 56._]
They are the driest of dry books, and were really written for scholarly
men, and for men of thought, whose thinking powers were considerably
developed. There is not a single story in their pages. No child or woman's
voice is heard from beginning to end, and no laughter, and no sob of pain,
or any touch of the finer qualities of the human heart.
The boy begins at eight not with "Jack and Jill," or the "House that Jack
built," or with any nursery rhyme that would appeal to a child's
imagination, but with the solemn statements on high ethical questions that
some of the greatest thinkers and teachers of China have produced. Some
idea of the style of the books that these little urchins have to grind at,
may be gathered from the fact that the first book that is put into the
hands of that eight-year-old scholar is called _The Three Words Classic_,
from the fact that each sentence is made up of three words rhythmically
set. It is about as crabbed and as profound a piece of writing as exists
in the whole language. Its first sentence makes a dogmatic statement which
has not been generally accepted in China, viz. "Man by nature is
originally good." Just imagine a boy of ten, accustomed till to-day to run
as wild as a climbing plant, that creeps up trees, or over ruined walls,
or down the side of a precipice, brought face to face with a statement
like this, instead of the conventional one, "My dog," or "His cat," that
confronts the English lad as he first enters the domain of learning.
Try and conceive the wear and tear upon a child's spirit in having for
years to shout and scream out at the top of his voice, as Chinese scholars
do, such profound teaching as the above, and you will then have caught a
glimpse of the steep and precipitous way along which these eight-year
scholars have to travel in their pursuit after knowledge. A more dreary
system of education, where imagination and humour, and poetry and romance,
and all the finer emotions of the soul are rigorously excluded, it would
be impossible to conceive than that which every Chinese scholar has to go
through in every school throughout the Empire to-day.
And so the years go by, childhood is being slowly left behind, and young
manhood comes with its own responsibilities and its own ambitions. It is a
dreary road along which the young scholar travels. He gets no knowledge of
life that will make him tender and sympathetic with his fellow-men in
their sins or their sorrows. He acquires a profound contempt for every
other country but his own. His natural hardness and selfishness of heart
are intensified by a pride that nothing can soften, whilst his antipathy
to any change or progress either in his own village or in his country is
deeply rooted and the adoption of new ideas or liberal thoughts is
considered a heresy so abominable as to brand any one that adopts it with
the terrible name of "Barbarian," a term from which every self-respecting
Chinaman shrinks as from a plague.
With the leaving of school, childhood has passed away, and now the lads
will have to select the occupations they are going to pursue in the
future. Some elect to be scholars, especially if they have shown
proficiency in their studies, and they finally join the great army of
school-masters that are required for the countless schools throughout the
country. Others become clerks in business houses, but as arithmetic is not
a branch of school education, they are obliged to pay a small premium and
learn the use of the abacus or counting boards, in one of the cash shops
in the town. Others, again, engage themselves as book-keepers or shop
assistants, or in some of the many employments that are open to young men
who can read and write.
Not a few of them drift into evil habits and finally become opium-smokers
and gamblers. If they are clever scamps, which this class usually are,
they turn their attention to medicine, and gathering together a few herbs
they travel through the country as strolling doctors, professing to cure
every disease to which the human frame is heir, and living a most
precarious and, on the whole, a very wretched life.
About the same time that the great change takes place in the experience of
the boy, the girl too comes to a point where the easy conditions under
which she has hitherto lived suddenly stop and the great trial of her life
begins. I refer to foot-binding.
In every home that professes to any respectability, foot-binding is an
absolutely essential thing for the girls in it. To neglect this would be
to confound them with slave girls, whose feet are never bound, and with
the children of the very lowest classes whose poverty would not admit of
their adopting this polite custom. It has been found by a very large
experience that a girl must be eight years old before her feet will bear
the tremendous strain that is put upon them, in the effort to destroy the
handiwork of nature.
It is true that in some of the more wealthy homes, where a very small foot
is a sign of blue blood, they begin as soon as the girl is six to put her
to the torture, but this is not the general rule. By the time the girl is
eight, the bones of the feet have become sufficiently hardened to bear the
incessant pressure that is put upon them to contract the feet into such a
small compass that they will go into a shoe of two or three inches in
length.
The process begins by turning all the toes, except the large one, on to
the sole of the foot. This of course is a slow but an exceedingly painful
one. It is continued week after week and month after month for several
years until the toes have been thrown back, at the expense of the instep,
which is made to bulge out by the pressure of the bandages; until finally
the "Golden lilies," as these unsightly objects are called, are complete,
and the poor girl is a veritable cripple for life.
The cruelty that is practised upon these poor children during the initial
operation of binding is very severe. The first few weeks are so very
trying that attempts are made by the girls to tear the bandages from their
aching, tortured feet. This is resisted by their mothers, who have to
resort to brutal methods to keep the little hands from endeavouring to
relieve themselves of the pain that has become intolerable.
Tears and shrieks and groans that last all day long, and are heard through
the sobs of the poor things, as sleep, restless and disturbed, comes to
try and make them forget the agony they are enduring, are the constant
experiences in that unhappy home.
The girl begs and entreats the mother to loosen the bandages a little so
that the agonizing pain may be diminished, and life may become somewhat
more tolerable. The only reply is a tighter wrench upon them, and a
strain, that were not nature so elastic, would send the poor thing mad.
The morrow comes and the rebandaging takes place. For an instant, as the
feet are relieved of the old bandages, and they are shown inflamed and
discoloured, a momentary relief is felt by the poor girl who has slept in
fitful dozes during the past night, but the moment they are rebound by the
new ones, a cry of horror proceeds from her as though a raw sore had been
touched, and the house resounds with her screams, whilst the mother,
apparently untouched by the agony of her daughter, proceeds with her
revolting task, as though she had no heart and no feeling left in her
heathen soul.
This terrible martyrdom goes on with scarcely any alleviation for three or
four years, the poor victim to fashion suffering acutely all the time.
There are moments often repeated when the poor child actually quivers all
over from excruciating pain, and it would seem as though flesh and blood
could no longer endure the frightful strain put upon her, but must
dissolve in tears and groans and unutterable agony.
Foot-binding is one of the most senseless and cruel customs it is possible
to imagine. Its origin is dimly hidden in the maze and mist of the past,
and no one can say positively how it originated. Tradition holds that it
arose in the palace of an Emperor, who had a most beautiful concubine, but
whose feet were deformed. To hide their defect they were so manipulated
that their glaring deformity was concealed, and the ladies of the court in
order to gain her favour bandaged their own in such a manner as to be an
exact imitation of those of the royal favourite. From that time, it is
said, the insane and hideous custom began to spread from the court into
the capital, and from there it began to be copied by the women of the
Empire.
The popular legend makes this woman to be T'a Ki, the famous concubine of
Show Sin, the last ruler of the famous Chow Dynasty (B.C. 1146). She is
said to have been the most beautiful woman that ever lived, but to have
been inhuman and vicious beyond anything that human language can express.
She was the cause of the fall of the dynasty, a dynasty in which was
enshrined the great names of Confucius, Mencius, Tau-tze the founder of
Tauism, and Wu Wang.
To account for the fatal influence of this famous beauty, it is declared
that she was a fox fairy, who had assumed the form of a woman in order to
be able to hurry on the ruin of China. In the transformation everything
was changed but her feet, and in order to disguise these she had to resort
to the most ingenious methods. To curry favour with her the
ladies-in-waiting in the palace bound theirs to imitate the appearance of
hers, and so the custom of foot-binding was commenced that has lasted all
these ages.
This legend has become part of the national faith and is firmly believed
in by every one. Of course it is absurd, and one that originated in an
after age, but with the innate love of the Chinese for the mysterious and
the supernatural, it is transmitted age after age as though it were part
of authentic history.[1]
Foot-binding is a lifelong misery even after the first few years during
which the feet are being tortured into such a hideous mass of deformity
that no women will willingly show them to any one. Nature never becomes
reconciled to the cruel caricature they present. She continues to make a
vigorous protest by pains and suffering that more or less last as long as
life itself. The bandages may never be loosed even for a single day, for
nature, as if on the eternal watch, would at once begin to revert to the
original size and shape with which she was born, and the feet would
gradually return to their original shape, though with marks of the cruel
treatment to which they have been exposed, and which can never be entirely
effaced, no matter how long the owner may live.
The girls are employed in household duties, in learning to embroider, to
weave cotton cloth, to make their own shoes, and to learn all kinds of
sewing. The years pass on, and when they reach the age of sixteen their
childhood begins to vanish, and womanhood, with its responsibilities and
its stern demand that the girls shall leave their own clan and become
members of others, looms up before them. The transition stage may be
delayed for a year or two, but when a girl gets to be eighteen it is
considered ample time for her to open her wings and to fly for ever from
the parent home.
We have thus taken a very rough and bird's-eye view of Child Life in
China. There are countless details that might have been gone into, but
they would have required an entire book for themselves. The main outline
that has been given will suffice to convey a very general idea of the
kind of life that the black-eyed children of the Empire have to go
through.
There is one thing about which there can be no manner of doubt, and that
is that the children never forget the home in which they were reared. The
home is to the Chinese what the country is to the most devoted patriot of
other nationalities. The home is larger and dearer than the nation. It is
the one thought that is always enshrined in his inmost heart, and which
never dies out. A Chinaman went abroad and lived for a quarter of a
century in Australia. He married an Irish woman, had several almond-eyed
daughters, who had caught the brogue of their mother and might have been
emigrants from Cork or Kerry. He had a thriving money-making business, he
possessed a vote, and he was a man of substance in the community.
One day the home hunger came upon him. He handed over his business to his
wife and daughters, took his balance out of the bank and returned to his
home in China. This was situated by the edge of the sea on a sand dune,
the most forlorn and mouldy-looking place one could possibly imagine. He
regained his spirits as soon as his feet touched the desolate spot that
lay within a few yards of the home where his childhood was spent, and
nothing could induce him ever to think of returning to the far-off land
where the family he had left behind him were living.
A strong and vigorous coolie showed symptoms of being far from well.
Physically there seemed nothing the matter with him. Gradually he lost his
appetite and his spirits. He occasionally acted as though his mind was
affected. One day he said to his master, "I must go home. I feel very ill,
but I am convinced that no medicine that I can take will cure me. Let me
go home." The _mal du pays_ of the Switzer was upon him, and when
permission was given him, his eye brightened and his step became elastic,
and by the time he reached the old homestead every trace of disease had
entirely vanished.
A man becomes a mandarin and is sent to another part of the Empire. He is
gradually advanced in rank until he becomes a Viceroy of two Provinces,
and rules over thirty millions of people. He marries, and has sons and
daughters, and he amasses property in the place where his greatest honours
have come to him.
He never has time to get away to his ancestral home, which is more than a
thousand miles distant, but it is never out of his thoughts, and when he
dies full of honours and wealth, his coffin is carried to his far-off
village where he was born, and he is laid to his final rest almost in
sight of the house in which his boyhood was passed.
The Americans are greatly distressed because when the Chinese come to
their country they do not bring their wives and families with them. The
fact is to do so would be opposed to the spirit and genius of their race.
It would tend to alienate them from their home, which they intend to
revisit as soon as ever they can, and to finally lay their bones amongst
their kindred there. Every merchant and scholar, every coolie that lands
with but the clothes he has on his back, every spendthrift and
opium-smoker and gambler, and every millionaire of the Yellow race in the
United States has one dream that never dies out of his brain, and that is
the picture of his home, which either in life or in death it is his
unalterable purpose to visit. To move their families and become denizens
of their adopted country would be to run counter to one of the strongest
instincts of their race.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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
househol
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