Concerning a pressing invitation from an ever benevolently-
disposed father to a prosaic but dutifully-inclined son. The
recording of certain matters of no particular moment.
Concerning that ultimate end which is symbolic of the
inexorable wheels of a larger Destiny.
Venerated Sire,--It is not for the earthworm to say when and in what
exact position the iron-shod boot shall descend, and this person, being
an even inferior creature for the purpose of the comparison, bows an
acquiescent neck to your very explicit command that he shall return to
Yuen-ping without delay. He cannot put away from his mind a clinging
suspicion that this arising is the result of some imperfection in
his deplorable style of correspondence, whereby you have formed an
impression quite opposed to that which it had been the intention to
convey, and that, perchance, you even have a secret doubt whether upon
some specified occasion he may not have conducted the enterprise to an
ignoble, or at least not markedly successful, end. However, the saying
runs, “The stone-cutter always has the last word,” and you equally, by
intimating with your usual unanswerable and clear-sighted gift of
logic that no further allowance of taels will be sent for this one’s
dispersal, diplomatically impose upon an ever-yearning son the most
feverish anxiety once more to behold your large and open-handed face.
Standing thus poised, as it may be said, for a returning flight across
the elements of separation, it is not inopportune for this person to let
himself dwell gracefully upon those lighter points of recollection which
have engraved themselves from time to time upon his mind without leading
to any more substantial adventure worthy to record. Many of the things
which seemed strange and incomprehensible when he first came among
this powerful though admittedly barbarian people, are now revealed at
a proper angle; others, to which he formerly imagined he had found the
disclosing key, are, on the other hand, plunged into a distorting haze;
while between these lie a multitude of details in every possible stage
of disentanglement and doubt. As a final and painstaking pronouncement,
this person has no hesitation in declaring that this country is
not--as practically all our former travellers have declared--completely
down-side-up as compared with our own manners and customs, but at the
same time it is very materially sideways.
Thus, instead of white, black robes are the indication of mourning; but
as, for the generality, the same colour is also used for occasions of
commerce, ceremony, religion, and the ordinary affairs of life, the
matter remains exactly as it was before. Yet with obtuse inconsistency
the garments usually white--in which a change would be really
noticeable--remain white throughout the most poignant grief. How much
more markedly expressed would be the symbolism if during such a period
they wore white outer robes and black body garments. Nevertheless it
cannot be said that they are unmindful of the emblematic influence of
colour, for, unlike the reasonable conviction that red is red and blue
is blue, which has satisfied our great nation from the days of the
legendary Shun, these pale-eyed foreigners have diverged into countless
trifling imaginings, so that when the one who is now expressing his
contempt for the development required a robe of a certain hue, he had to
bend his mouth, before he could be exactly understood, to the degrading
necessity of asking for “Drowned-rat brown,” “Sunstroke magenta,”
“Billingsgate purple,” “London milk azure,” “Settling-day green,” or the
like. In the other signs of mourning they do not come within measurable
distance of our pure and uncomfortable standard. “If you are really
sincere in your regret for the one who has Passed Beyond, why do you not
sit upon the floor for seven days and nights, take up all food with your
fingers, and allow your nails to grow untrimmed for three years?” was
a question which I at first instinctively put to lesser ones in their
affliction. In every case save one I received answers of evasive
purport, and even the one stated reason, “Because although I am a poor
widder I ain’t a pig,” I deemed shallow.
I have already dipped a revealing brush into the subject of names.
Were the practice of applying names in a wrong and illogical sequence
maintained throughout it might indeed raise a dignified smile, but
it would not appear contemptible; but what can be urged when upon an
occasion one name appears first, upon another occasion last? A dignity
is conferred in old age, and it is placed before the family designation
borne by an honoured father and a direct line of seventeen revered
ancestors. Another title is bestowed, and eats up the former like a
revengeful dragon. New distinctions follow, some at one end, others at
another, until a very successful person may be suitably compared to
the ringed oleander snake, which has the power of growing equally
from either the head or the tail. To express the matter by a definite
allusion, how much more graceful and orchideous, even in a condensed
fashion, would appear the designation of this selected one, if instead
of the usual form of the country it was habitually set forth in the
following logical and thoroughly Chinese style:--Chamberlain Joseph,
Master, Mr., Thrice Wearer of the Robes and Golden Collar, One of the
Just Peacemakers, Esquire, Member of the House of Law-givers, Leader
in the Council of Commerce, Presider over the Tables of Provincial
Government, Uprightly Honourable Secretary of the Outlying Parts.
Among the notes which at various times I have inscribed in a book
for future guidance I find it written on an early page, “They do not
hesitate to express their fathers’ names openly,” but to this assertion
there stands a warning sign which was added after the following
incident. “Is it true, Mr. Kong,” asked a lesser one, who is spoken of
as vastly rich but discontented with her previous lot, of this person
upon an occasion, “is it really true that your countrymen to not
consider it right to speak of their fathers’ names, even in this
enlightened age?” To this I replied that the matter was as she had
eloquently expressed it, and, encouraged by her amiable condescension,
I asked after the memory of her paternal grandsire, whose name I had
frequently heard whispered in connection with her own. To my inelegant
confusion she regarded me for a period as though I had the virtue of
having become transparent, and then passed on in a most overwhelming
excess of disconcertingly-arranged silence.
“You’ve done it now, Kong,” said one who stood by (or, as we would
express the same thought, “You have succeeded in accomplishing the
undesirable”); “don’t you know that the old man was in the tripe and
trotter line?”
“To no degree,” I replied truly. “Yet,” I continued, matching his idiom
with another equally facile, “wherein was this person’s screw loose? Are
they not openly referred to--those of the Line of Tripe and Trotter--by
their descendants?”
“Not in most cases,” he said, with a concentration that indicated
a lurking sting among his words. “Generally speaking, they aren’t
mentioned or taken into any account whatever. While they are alive they
are kept in the background and invited to treat themselves to the Tower
when nice people are expected; when dead they are fastened up in the
family back cupboard by a score of ten-inch nails and three-trick Yale
locks, so to speak. And in the meantime all the splash is being made on
their muddy oof. See?”
I nodded agreeably, though, had the opportunity been more favourable, I
would have made the feint to learn somewhat more of this secret practice
of burying in the enclosed space beneath the stairs. Thus is it set
forth why, after the statement, “They do not hesitate to express their
fathers’ names openly,” it is further written, “Walk slowly! Engrave
well upon your discreet remembrance the unmentionable Line of Tripe and
Trotter.”
Another point of comparison which the superficial have failed to record
is to be found in the frequent encouragements to regard The Virtues
which are to be seen, like our own Confucian extracts, freely inscribed
on every wall and suitable place about the city. These for the most part
counsel moderation in taking false oaths, in stepping heedlessly upon
the unknown ground, in following paths which lead to doubtful ends, and
other timely warnings. “Beware a smoke-breathing demon,” is frequently
cast across one’s path upon a barrier, and this person has never failed
to accept the omen and to retrace his steps hastily without looking to
the right or the left. Even our own national caution is not forgotten,
although to conform to barbarian indolence it is written, “Slowly,
slowly; drive slowly.” “Keep to the Right” (or, “Abandon that which is
evil,” as the analogy holds,) is perhaps the most frequently displayed
of all, and doubtless many charitable persons obtain an ever-accruing
merit by hanging the sign bearing these words upon every available post.
Others are of a stern and threatening nature, designed to make the most
hardened ill-doer pause, as--in their own tongue--“Rubbish may be shot
here”; which we should render, “At any moment, and in such a place
as this, a just doom and extinction may overtake the worthless.” This
inscription is never to be seen except in waste expanses, where it
points its significance with a multiplied force. There is another
definite threat which is lavishly set out, and so thoroughly that it may
be encountered in the least frequented and almost inaccessible spots.
This, as it may be translated, reads, “Trespass not the forbidden. The
profligate may flourish like the gourd for a season, but in the
end assuredly they will be detected, and justice meted out with the
relentless fury of the written law.”
In a converse position, the wide difference in the ceremonial forms of
retaliatory invective has practically disarmed this usually eloquent
person, and he long since abandoned every hope of expressing himself
with any satisfaction in encounters of however acrimonious a trend.
At first, with an urbane smile and gestures of dignified contempt, he
impugned the authenticity of the Ancestral Tablets of those with whom
he strove, in an unbroken stream of most bitter contumely. Finding them
silent under this reproach, he next lightly traced their origin back
through generations of afflicted lepers, deformed ape-beings, and
Nameless Things, to a race of primitive ghouls, and then went on in
relentless fluency to predict an early return in their descendants to
the condition of a similar state. For some time he had a well-gratified
assurance that those whom he assailed were so overwhelmed as to be
incapable of retort, and in this belief he never failed to call upon
passers-by to witness his triumph; but on the fourth occasion a young
man whom I had thus publicly denounced for a sufficient though forgotten
reason, after listening courteously to my venomous accusations, bestowed
a two-cash piece upon me and passed on, remarking that it was hard,
and those around, also, would have added from their stores had it
been permitted. From this time onward I did not attempt to make myself
disagreeable either in public or to those whom I esteemed privately. On
the other hand, the barbarian manner of retort did not find me endowed
by nature to parry it successfully. Quite lacking in measured periods,
it aims, by an extreme rapidity of thrust and an insincerity of
sequence, to entangle the one who is assailed in a complication of
arising doubts and emotions. “Who are you,--no one but yourself,”
exclaimed a hireling of hung-dog expression who claimed to have
exchanged pledging gifts with a certain maiden who stood, as it were,
between us, and falling into the snare, I protested warmly against the
insult, and strove to disprove the inference before the paralogism lay
revealed. Throughout the whole range of the Odes, the Histories, the
Analects, and the Rites what recognised formula of rejoinder is there to
the taunt, “Oh, go and put your feet in mustard and cress”; or how
can one, however skilled in the highest Classics, parry the subtle
inconsistencies of the reproach, “You’re a nice bit of orl right, aren’t
you? Not arf, I don’t think.”
Among the arts of this country that of painting upon canvas is held in
repute, but to a person associated with the masterpieces of the Ma epoch
these native attempts would be gravity-dispelling if they were not too
reminiscent of the torture chamber. It is rarely, indeed, that even the
most highly-esteemed picture-makers succeed in depicting every portion
of a human body submitted to their brush, and not infrequently half
of the face is left out. Once, when asked by a paint-applier who was
entitled to append two signs of exceptional distinction behind his name,
to express an opinion upon a finished work, I diffidently called his
attention to the fact that he had forgotten to introduce a certain
exalted one’s left ear. “Not at all, Mr. Kong,” he replied, with an
expression of ill-merited self-satisfaction, “but it is hidden by the
face.” “Yet it exists,” I contended; “why not, therefore, press it to
the front at all hazard, rather than send so great a statesman down
into the annals of posterity as deformed to that extent?” “It certainly
exists,” he admitted, “and one takes that for granted; but in my picture
it cannot be seen.” I bowed complaisantly, content to let so damaging
an admission point its own despair. A moment later I continued, “In the
great Circular Hall of the Palace of Envoys there is a picture of
two camels, foot-tethered, as it fortunately chanced, to iron rings.
Formerly there were a drove of eight--the others being free--so
exquisitely outlined in all their parts that one night, when the door
had been left incautiously open, they stepped down from the wall and
escaped to the woods. How deplorable would have been the plight of these
unfortunate beings, if upon passing into the state of a living existence
they had found that as a result of the limited vision of their creator
they only possessed twelve legs and three whole bodies among them.”
Perchance this tactfully-related story, so applicable to his own
deficiencies, may sink into the imagination of the one for whom it was
inoffensively unfolded. Yet doubt remains. Our own picture-judgers
take up a position at the side of work when they with to examine its
qualities, retiring to an ever-diminishing angle in order to bring out
the more delicate effects, until a very expert and conscientious critic
will not infrequently stand really behind the picture he is considering
before he delivers a final pronouncement. Not until these native artists
are able to regard their crude attempts from the other side of the
canvas can they hope to become equally proficient. To this fatal
shortcoming must be added that of insatiable ambition, which prompts
the young to the portrayal of widely differing subjects. Into the
picture-room of one who might thus be described this person was recently
conducted, to pass an opinion upon a scene in which were depicted
seven men of varying nationalities and appropriately garbed, one of the
opposing sex carrying a lighted torch, an elephant reclining beneath a
fruitful vine, and the President of a Republic. For a period this person
resisted the efforts of those who would have questioned him, withdrawing
their attention to the harmonious lights upon the river mist floating
far below, but presently, being definitely called upon, he replied as
follows: “Mih Ying, who was perhaps the greatest of his time, spent his
whole life in painting green and yellow beetles in the act of concealing
themselves beneath dead maple leaves upon the approach of day. At the
age of seventy-five he burst into tears, and upon being approached for
a cause he exclaimed, ‘Alas, if only this person had resisted the
temptation to be diffuse, and had confined himself to green beetles
alone, he might now, instead of contemplating a misspent career, have
been really great.’ How much less,” I continued, “can a person of
immature moustaches hope to depict two such conflicting objects as a
recumbent elephant and the President of a Republic standing beneath a
banner?”
Upon the temptation to deal critically with the religious instincts of
the islanders this person draws an obliterating brush. As practically
every traveller who has honoured our unattractive land with his
effusive presence has subsequently left it in a printed record that
our ceremonies are grotesque, our priesthood ignorant and depraved,
our monasteries and sacred places spots of plague upon an otherwise
flower-adorned landscape, and our beliefs and sacrifices only worthy to
exist for the purpose of being made into jest-origins by more refined
communities, the omission on this one’s part may appear uncivil and
perhaps even intentionally discourteous. To this, as a burner of
joss-sticks and an irregular person, he can only reply by a deprecatory
waving of both hands and a reassuring smile.
With the two-sided memories of many other details hanging thickly around
his brush, it would not be an achievement to continue to a practically
inexhaustible amount. As of the set days when certain things are
observed, among which fall the first of the fourth month (but that would
disclose another involvement), another when flat cakes are partaken
of without due caution, another when rounder cakes are even more
incautiously consumed, and that most brightly-illuminated of all when it
is permissible to embrace maidens openly, and if discreetly accomplished
with no overhanging fear of ensuing forms of law, beneath the emblem of
a suspended branch, in memory of the wisdom of certain venerable sages
who were doubtless expert in the practice. As of the inconvenient
custom when two persons are walking together that they should arrange
themselves side by side, to the obvious discomfort of others, the
sweeping away of all opportunities for agreeable politeness, and
the utter disregard of the time-honoured example of the sagacious
water-fowl. As of the inconsistency of refusing, even with contempt, to
receive our most intimate form of regard and use this person’s lip-cloth
after a feast, yet the mulish eagerness in that same youth to drink from
a cup previously used by a lesser one. As of the precision (which still
remains a cloud of doubt,) with which creatures so intractable as the
bull are successfully trained to roar aloud at certain gong-strokes of
the day as an agreed signal. As of the streets in movement, the lights
at evening, and the voices of those unseen. As of these and as of other
matters, so multitudinous that they crowd about this person’s mind
like the assembling swallows, circling above the deserted millet
fields before they turn their beaks to the sea, and dropping his brush
(perchance with an acquiescent sigh), he, also, kow-tows submissively
to a blind but appointed destiny, and prepares to seek a passage from an
alien land of sojourning.
With the impetuous craving of an affectionate son to behold a revered
sire, intensified by the fact that he has reached the innermost lining
of his sleeve; with affectionate greetings towards Ning, Hia-Fa, and
T’ian Yen, and an assurance that they have never been really absent from
his thoughts.