To return, after a long digression. The age of manly sport, as above
described, has long passed away; and the only hope is for a revival
under the changing conditions of modern China. Some few athletic
exercises have survived; and until recently, archery, in which the
Tartars have always excelled, was regarded almost as a semi-divine
accomplishment. Kite-flying has reached a high level of skill. Clever
little "messengers" have been devised, which run up the string, carrying
fire-crackers which explode at a great height. There is a game of
shuttlecock, without the battledore, for which the feet are used as
a substitute; and "diavolo," recently introduced into Europe, is an
ancient Chinese pastime. A few Manchus, too, may be seen skating during
the long northern winter, but the modern inhabitant of the Flowery Land,
be he Manchu or Chinese, much prefers an indoor game to anything
else, especially when, as is universally the case, a stake of money is
involved.
Gambling is indeed a very marked feature of Chinese life. A child buying
a cake will often go double or quits with the stall-keeper, to see if he
is to have two cakes or nothing, the question being settled by a throw
of dice in a bowl. Of the interval allowed for meals, a gang of coolies
will devote a portion to a game of cards. The cards used are smaller
than the European pack, and of course differently marked; they were the
invention of a lady of the Palace in the tenth century, who substituted
imitation leaves of gilt paper for real leaves, which had previously
been adopted for playing some kind of game. There are also various games
played with chequers, some of great antiquity; and there is chess, that
is to say, a game so little differing from our chess as to leave no
doubt as to the common origin of both. In all of these the money element
comes in; and it is not too much to say that more homes are broken
up, and more misery caused by this truly national vice than can be
attributed to any other cause.
For pleasure pure and simple, independent of gains and losses, the
theatre occupies the warmest place in every Chinaman's heart. If
gambling is a national vice in China, the drama must be set off as the
national recreation. Life would be unthinkable to the vast majority
if its monotony were not broken by the periodical performance of
stage-plays. It is from this source that a certain familiarity with the
great historical episodes of the past may be pleasantly picked up over
a pipe and a cup of tea; while the farce, occasionally perhaps erring on
the side of breadth, affords plenty of merriment to the laughter-loving
crowd.
Ability to make Chinamen laugh is a great asset; and a foreigner who
carries this about with him will find it stand him in much better stead
than a revolver. When, many years ago, a vessel was wrecked on the coast
of Formosa, the crew and passengers were at once seized, and confined
for some time in a building, where traces of their inscriptions could be
seen up to quite a recent date. At length, they were all taken out for
execution; but before the ghastly order was carried out, one of the
number so amused everybody by cutting capers and turning head over
heels, that the presiding mandarin said he was a funny fellow, and
positively allowed him to escape.
With regard to the farce itself, it is not so much the actual wit of
the dialogue which carries away the audience as the refined skill of the
actor, who has to pass through many trials before he is considered to be
fit for the stage. Beginning as quite a boy, in addition to committing
to memory a large number of plays--not merely his own part, but the
whole play--he has to undergo a severe physical training, part of which
consists in standing for an hour every day with his mouth wide open, to
inhale the morning air. He is taught to sing, to walk, to strut, and to
perform a variety of gymnastic exercises, such as standing on his head,
or turning somersaults. His first classification is as male or female
actor, no women having been allowed to perform since the days of the
Emperor Ch'ien Lung (A.D. 1736-1796), whose mother was an actress, just
as in Shakespeare's time the parts for women were always taken by young
men or boys. When once this is settled, it only remains to enrol him as
tragedian, comedian, low-comedy actor, walking gentleman or lady, and
similar parts, according to his capabilities.
It is not too much to say that women are very little missed on the
Chinese stage. The make-up of the actor is so perfect, and his imitation
of the feminine voice and manner, down to the smallest detail, even to
the small feet, is so exact in every point, that he would be a clever
observer who could positively detect impersonation by a man.
Generally speaking, a Chinese actor has many more difficulties to face
than his colleague in the West. In addition to the expression of all
shades of feeling, from mirth to melancholy, the former has to keep up
a perpetual make-believe in another sense, which is further great
strain upon his nerves. There being no scenery, no furniture, and no
appointments of any except the slenderest kind upon the stage, he has
to create in the minds of his audience a belief that all these missing
accessories are nevertheless before their eyes. A general comes upon the
scene, with a whip in his hand, and a studied movement not only suggests
that he is dismounting from a horse, but outlines the animal itself. In
the same manner, he remounts and rides off again; while some other actor
speaks from the top of a small table, which is forthwith transfigured,
and becomes to all intents and purposes a castle.
Many of those who might be apt to smile at the simple Chinese mind which
can tolerate such absurdities in the way of make-believe, require to
be reminded that the stage in the days of Queen Elizabeth was worked on
very much the same lines. Sir Philip Sidney tells us that the scene of
an imagined garden with imagined flowers had to do duty at one time for
an imagined shipwreck, and at another for an imagined battlefield, the
spectator in the latter case being helped out by two opposing soldiers
armed with swords and bucklers. Even Shakespeare, in the Prologue to
his play of _Henry V_, speaks of imagining one man to be an army of a
thousand, and says:--
Think, when we talk of horses that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth;
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings.
Here, then, is good authority for the quaint system that still prevails
in China.
Hundreds of Chinese pilgrims annually went their weary way to the top of
Mount Omi in the province of Ssuch'uan, and gaze downward from a sheer
and lofty precipice to view a huge circular belt of light, which is
called the Glory of Buddha. Some see it, some do not; the Chinese say
that the whole thing is a question of faith. In a somewhat similar
sense, the dramatic enthusiast sees before him such beings of the mind
as the genuine actor is able to call up. The Philistine cannot reach
this pitch; but he is sharp enough to see other things which to the eye
of the sympathetic spectator are absolutely non-existent. Some of the
latter will be enumerated below.
The Chinese stage has no curtain; and the orchestra is on the stage
itself, behind the actors. There is no prompter and no call-boy. Stage
footmen wait at the sides to carry in screens, small tables, and an odd
chair or two, to represent houses, city walls, and so on, or hand cups
of tea to the actors when their throats become dry from vociferous
singing, which is always in falsetto. All this in the face of the
audience. Dead people get up and walk off the stage; or while lying
dead, contrive to alter their facial expression, and then get up and
carry themselves off. There is no interval between one play and the
next following, which probably gives rise to the erroneous belief
that Chinese plays are long, the fact being that they are very short.
According to the Penal Code, there may be no impersonation of emperors
and empresses of past ages, but this clause is now held to refer solely
to the present dynasty.
For the man in the street and his children, there are to be seen
everywhere in China where a sufficient number of people gather together,
Punch-and-Judy shows of quite a high class in point of skill and general
attractiveness. These shows are variously traced back to the eighth and
second centuries B.C., and to the seventh century A.D., even the
latest of which periods would considerably antedate the appearance of
performing marionettes in this country or on the Continent. Associated
with the second century B.C., the story runs that the Emperor of the day
was closely besieged by a terrible Hun chieftain, who was accompanied
by his wife. It occurred to one of his Majesty's staff to exhibit on
the walls of the town, in full view of the enemy, a number of manikins,
dressed up to a deceptive resemblance to beautiful girls. The wife of
the Hun chieftain then persuaded her husband to draw off his forces, and
the Emperor escaped.
By the Chinese marionettes, little plays on familiar subjects are
performed; many are of a more serious turn than the loves of Mr. Punch,
while others again are of the knock-about style so dear to the ordinary
boy and girl. Besides such entertainments as these, the streets of a
Chinese city offer other shows to those who desire to be amused. An
acrobat, a rope-dancer or a conjurer will take up a pitch right in the
middle of the roadway, and the traffic has to get on as best it can.
A theatrical stage will sometimes completely block a street, and even
foot-passengers will have to find their way round. There is also the
public story-reader, who for his own sake will choose a convenient spot
near to some busy thoroughfare; and there, to an assembled crowd, he
will read out, not in the difficult book-language, but in the colloquial
dialect of the place, stories of war and heroism, soldiers led to
night-attacks with wooden bits in their mouths to prevent them from
talking in the ranks, the victory of the loyal and the rout and
slaughter of the rebel. Or it may be a tale of giants, goblins and
wizards; the bewitching of promising young men by lovely maidens who
turn out to be really foxes in disguise, ending as usual in the triumph
of virtue and the discomfiture of vice. The fixed eyes and open mouths
of the crowd, listening with rapt attention, is a sight which, once
seen, is not easily forgotten.
For the ordinary man, China is simply peopled with bogies and devils,
the spirits of the wicked or of those unfortunate enough not to secure
decent burial with all its accompanying worship and rites. These
creatures, whose bodies cast no shadow, lurk in dark corners, ready to
pounce on some unwary passer-by and possibly tear out his heart. Many a
Confucianist, sturdy in his faith that "devils only exist for those who
believe in them," will hesitate to visit by night a lonely spot, or even
to enter a disused tumbledown building by day. Some of the stories
told are certainly well fitted to make a deep impression upon young
and highly-strung nerves. For instance, one man who was too fond of
the bottle placed some liquor alongside his bed, to be drunk during the
night. On stretching out his hand to reach the flask, he was seized by a
demon, and dragged gradually into the earth. In response to his shrieks,
his relatives and neighbours only arrived in time to see the ground
close over his head, just as though he had fallen into water.
From this story it will be rightly gathered that the Chinese mostly
sleep on the ground floor. In Peking, houses of more than one storey
are absolutely barred; the reason being that each house is built round a
courtyard, which usually has trees in it, and in which the ladies of
the establishment delight to sit and sew, and take the air and all the
exercise they can manage to get.
Another blood-curdling story is that of four travellers who arrived by
night at an inn, but could obtain no other accommodation than a room in
which was lying the corpse of the landlord's daughter-in-law. Three of
the four were soon snoring; the fourth, however, remained awake, and
very soon heard a creaking of the trestles on which was the dead body
dressed out in paper robes, ready for burial. To his horror he saw the
girl get up, and go and breathe on his companions; so by the time she
came to him he had his head tucked well under the bedclothes. After a
little while he kicked one of the others; but finding that his friend
did not move, he suddenly grabbed his own trousers and made a bolt for
the door. In a moment the corpse was up and after him, following him
down the street, and gaining gradually on him, no one coming to the
rescue in spite of his loud shrieks as he ran. So he slipped behind
a tree, and dodged right and left, the infuriated corpse also dodging
right and left, and making violent efforts to get him. At length, the
girl made a rush forward with one arm on each side, in the hope of thus
grabbing her victim. The traveller, however, fell backwards and escaped
her clutch, while she remained rigidly embracing the tree. By and by he
was found senseless on the ground; and the corpse was removed from the
tree, but with great difficulty, as the fingers were buried in the bark
so deep that the nails were not even visible. The other three travellers
were found dead in their beds.
Periodical feasting may be regarded as another form of amusement by
which the Chinese seek to relieve the monotony of life. They have
never reserved one day in seven for absolute rest, though of late years
Chinese merchants connected with foreign trade have to some extent
fallen in with the observance of Sunday. Quite a number of days during
the year are set apart as public holidays, but no one is obliged to
keep them as such, unless he likes, with one important exception. The
festival of the New Year cannot be ignored by any one. For about ten
days before this date, and twenty days after it, the public offices
are closed and no business is transacted, the seal of each official is
handed over for safe keeping to the official's wife, a fact which
helps to dispose of the libel that women in China are the down-trodden
creatures they are often represented to be. All debts have to be paid
and accounts squared by midnight on the last day of the old year. A few
nights previously, offerings of an excessively sticky sweetmeat are
made to the Spirit of the Hearth, one of whose functions is that of
an accusing angel. The Spirit is then on the point of starting for his
annual visit to heaven, and lest any of the disclosures he might make
should entail unpleasant consequences, it is adjudged best that he shall
be rendered incapable of making any disclosures at all. The unwary god
finds his lips tightly glued together, and is unable to utter a single
word. Meanwhile, fire-crackers are being everywhere let off on a
colossal scale, the object being to frighten away the evil spirits which
have collected during the past twelve months, and to begin the year
afresh. The day itself is devoted to calling, in one's best clothes,
on relatives, friends and official superiors, for all of whom it is
customary to leave a present. The relatives and friends receive "wet"
gifts, such as fruit or cakes; officials also receive wet gifts, but
underneath the top layer will be found something "dry," in the shape of
silver or bank-notes. Everybody salutes everybody with the conventional
saying, "New joy, new joy; get rich, get rich!" Yet here again, as in
all things Chinese, we find a striking exception to this good-natured
rule. No one says "Get rich, get rich!" to the undertaker.
A high authority (on other matters) has recently stated that the Chinese
calendar "begins just when the Emperor chooses to say it shall. He is
like the captain of a ship, who says of the hour, 'Make it so,' and
it is so." The truth is that New Year's Day is determined by the
Astronomical Board, according to fixed rules, just as Easter is
determined; and it may fall on any day between the 21st of January and
the 20th of February, but neither before the former date nor after
the latter date, in spite even of the most threatening orders from the
Palace. This book will indeed have been written in vain if the reader
lays it down without having realized that no such wanton interference on
the part of their rulers would be tolerated by the Chinese people. But
we are wandering away from merry-making and festivity.
In their daily life the Chinese are extremely moderate eaters and mostly
tea-drinkers, even the wealthy confining themselves to few and simple
dishes of pork, fowl, or fish, with the ever-present accompaniment of
rice. The puppy-dog, on which the people are popularly believed to live,
as the French on frogs, is a stall-fed animal, and has always been, and
still is, an article of food; but the consumption of dog-flesh is really
very restricted, and many thousands of Chinamen have never tasted dog in
their lives. According to the popular classification of foods, those
who live on vegetables get strong, those who live on meat become brave,
those who live on grain acquire wisdom, and those who live on air become
divine.
At banquets the scene changes, and course after course of curiously
compounded and highly spiced dishes, cooked as only Chinese cooks know
how, are placed before the guests. The wine, too, goes merrily round;
bumpers are drunk at short intervals, and the wine-cups are held upside
down, to show that there are no heel-taps. Forfeits are exacted over the
game of "guess-fingers," for failure to cap a verse, or for any other
equally sufficient (or insufficient) reason; and the penalty is an extra
bumper for the loser.
This lively picture requires, perhaps, a little further explanation.
Chinese "wine" is an ardent spirit distilled from rice, and is modified
in various ways so as to produce certain brands, some of which are of
quite moderate strength, and really may be classed as wine. It is always
drunk hot, the heat being supplied by vessels of boiling water, in which
the pewter wine-flasks are kept standing. The wine-cups are small, and
it is possible to drink a good many of them without feeling in the least
overcome. Even so, many diners now refuse to touch wine at all, the
excuse always being that it flushes the face uncomfortably. Perhaps
they fear an undeserved imputation of drunkenness, remembering their own
cynical saying: "A bottle-nosed man may be a tee-totaller, but no one
will believe it." To judge from their histories and their poetry, the
Chinese seem once upon a time to have been a fairly tipsy nation:
now-a-days, the truth lies the other way. An official who died A.D.
639, and was the originator of epitaphs in China, wrote his own, as
follows:--
Fu I loved the green hills and white clouds . . .
Alas! he died of drink!
There are exceptions, no doubt, as to every rule in every country;
but such sights as drunken men tumbling about the streets, or lying
senseless by the roadside, are not to be seen in China. "It is not
wine," says the proverb, "which makes a man drunk; it is the man
himself."
Even at banquets, which are often very rich and costly, unnecessary
expense is by no means encouraged. Dishes of fruit, of a kind which no
one would wish to eat, and which are placed on the table for show or
ornament, are simply clever imitations in painted wood, and pass from
banquet to banquet as part of the ordinary paraphernalia of a feast; no
one is deceived. The same form of open and above-board deception appears
in many other ways. There are societies organized for visiting in
a comfortable style of pilgrimage some famous mountain of historic
interest. Names are put down, and money is collected; and then the party
starts off by boat or in sedan-chairs, as the case may be. On arriving
at the mountain, there is a grand feast, and after the picnic, for such
it is, every one goes home again. That is the real thing; now for the
imitation. Names are put down, and money is collected, as before; but
the funds are spent over a feast at home, alongside of a paper mountain.
Another of these deceptions, which deceive nobody, is one which might be
usefully adapted to life in other countries. A Chinaman meeting in the
street a friend, and having no leisure to stop and talk, or perhaps
meeting some one with whom he may be unwilling to talk, will promptly
put up his open fan to screen his face, and pass on. The suggestion
is that, wishing to pass without notice, he fails to see the person in
question, and it would be a serious breach of decorum on the part of the
latter to ignore the hint thus conveyed.
Japan, who may be said to have borrowed the civilization of China,
lock, stock and barrel--her literature, her moral code, her arts, her
sciences, her manners and customs, her ceremonial, and even her
national dress--invented the folding fan, which in the early part of the
fifteenth century formed part of the tribute sent from Korea to Peking,
and even later was looked upon by the Chinese as quite a curiosity. In
the early ages, fans were made of feathers, as still at the present day;
but the more modern fan of native origin is a light frame of bamboo,
wood or ivory, round or otherwise, over which silk is stretched,
offering a convenient medium for the inscription of poems, or for
paintings, as exchanged between friend and friend.
The same innocent form of deception, which deceives nobody, is carried
out when two officials, seated in sedan-chairs, have to pass one
another. If they are of about equal rank, etiquette demands that they
should alight from their chairs, and perform mutual salutations. To
obviate the extreme inconvenience of this rule, large wooden fans are
carried in all processions of the kind, and these are hastily thrust
between the passing officials, so that neither becomes aware of the
other's existence on the scene. The case is different when one of the
two is of higher rank. The official of inferior grade is bound to stop
and get out of his chair while his superior passes by, though even now
he has a chance of escape; he hears the gong beaten to clear the way
for the great man, whose rank he can tell from the number of consecutive
blows given; and hurriedly turns off down a side street.
An historical instance of substituting the shadow for the reality is
that of the great general Ts'ao Ts'ao, third century A.D., who for some
breach of the law sentenced himself to death, but satisfied his sense
of justice by cutting off his hair. An emperor of the sixth century,
who was a devout Buddhist, and therefore unable to countenance any
destruction of life, had all the sacrificial animals made of dough.
The opium question, which will claim a few words later on, has been
exhaustively threshed out; and in view of the contradictory statements
for and against the habit of opium smoking, it is recognized that any
conclusion, satisfactory to both parties, is a very remote possibility.
The Chinese themselves, who are chiefly interested in the argument, have
lately come to a very definite conclusion, which is that opium has
to go; and it seems that in spite of almost invincible obstacles, the
sincerity and patriotism which are being infused into the movement will
certainly, sooner or later, achieve the desired end. It is perhaps worth
noting that in the Decree of 1906, which ordered the abolition of opium
smoking, the old Empress Dowager, who was herself over sixty and a
moderate smoker, inserted a clause excusing from the operation of the
new law all persons already more than sixty years of age.