RETURN TO CHINA
In entering upon my life’s work which to me was so full of meaning and
earnestness, the first episode was a voyage back to the old country,
which I had not seen for nearly ten years, but which had never escaped
my mind’s eye nor my heart’s yearning for her welfare. I wanted very
much to stay a few years longer in order to take a scientific course. I
had taken up surveying in the Sheffield Scientific School just as that
department was starting into existence under Professor Norton. Had I had
the means to prosecute a practical profession, that might have helped to
shorten and facilitate the way to the goal I had in view; but as I was
poor and my friends thought that a longer stay in this country might
keep me here for good, and China would lose me altogether, I was for
this and other reasons induced to return. The scientific course was
accordingly abandoned. The persons who were most interested in my return
to China were Pelatiah Perit of Messrs. Goodhue & Co., merchants in the
China trade, and the Olyphant Brothers, who had taken such a lively
interest eight years before in helping me to come over in their ship,
the “Huntress.” These gentlemen had no other motive in desiring me to
return to China than that of hoping to see me useful in Christianizing
the Chinese, which was in harmony with their well-known broad and
benevolent characters.
On the 13th of November, 1854, the Rev. William Allen Macy, who went out
to Hong Kong to take the place of the Rev. Dr. Brown, as teacher in the
Morrison Education Society School in 1845, went back to China as a
missionary under the American Board, and we were fellow-passengers on
board the sailing clipper ship “Eureka,” under Captain Whipple, of
Messrs. Chamber, Heisser & Co., of New York.
Winter is the worst season of the year to go on an eastern voyage in a
sailing vessel, via the Cape of Good Hope. The northeast trade winds
prevail then and one is sure to have head winds all the way. The
“Eureka,” in which Macy and myself were the only passengers, took that
route to Hong Kong. We embarked on board of her as she rode in midstream
of the East River. The day was bleak and bitingly cold. No
handkerchiefs were fluttering in the air, waving a good voyage; no
sound from the shore cheered us as the anchor was weighed, and as the
tug towed us out as far as Sandy Hook. There we were left to our own
resources. The sails were not furled to their full extent, but were
reefed for tacking, as the wind was nearly dead ahead and quite strong.
We found the “Eureka” to be empty of cargo, and empty even of ballast of
any kind; for that reason she acted like a sailor who had just had his
nip before he went out to sea. She tossed up and down and twisted from
right to left, just as though she had a little too much to keep her
balance. It was in such a fashion that she reeled her way from Sandy
Hook to Hong Kong--a distance of nearly 13,000 nautical miles, which
took her 154 days to accomplish. It was decidedly the most uninteresting
and wearisome voyage I ever took in my life. The skipper was a
Philadelphian. He had the unfortunate habit of stuttering badly, which
tended to irritate a temper naturally quick and fiery. He was certainly
a ludicrous object to look at. It was particularly in the morning that
he might be seen pacing the quarter deck, scanning the sky. This, by the
spectator, was deemed necessary for the skipper to work himself up to
the right pitch, preliminary to his pantomimic performances in his
battle with the head wind. All at once, he halted, stared at the quarter
of the sky from whence the malicious head wind came. With a face all
bloated and reddened by intense excitement, his eyes almost standing out
of their sockets, and all ablaze with uncontrollable rage, with arms
uplifted, he would clutch his hair as if plucking it out by the roots,
gnash his teeth, and simultaneously he would jump up and down, stamping
on the deck, and swear at the Almighty for sending him head winds. The
air for the moment was split with his revolting imprecations and
blasphemous oaths that were ejaculated through the laborious process of
stammering and stuttering, which made him a most pitiable object to
behold. In the early part of the voyage it was a painful sight to see
him working himself up to that pitch of contortion and paroxysm of rage
which made him appear more like an insane than a sane man, but as these
exhibitions were of daily occurrence for the greater part of the voyage,
we came to regard him as no longer deserving of sympathy and pity, but
rather with contempt. After his passion had spent its force, and he
subsided into his calmer and normal mood, he would drop limply into a
cane chair, where he would sit for hours all by himself. For the sake of
diversion, he would rub his hands together, and soliloquize quietly to
himself, an occasional smile breaking over his face, which made him look
like an innocent idiot. Before the voyage was half through, the skipper
had made such a fool of himself through his silly and insane conduct
about the wind, that he became the laughing stock of the whole crew,
who, of course, did not dare to show any outward signs of
insubordination. The sailing of the vessel was entirely in the hands of
the first mate, who was literally a sea-tyrant. The crew was composed of
Swedes and Norwegians. If it had been made up of Americans, the inhuman
treatment by the officers might have driven them to desperate
extremities, because the men were over-worked night and day in incessant
tacking. The only time that they found a resting spell was when the ship
was becalmed in the tropics when not a breath of wind was to be had for
several days at a time. Referring to my diary kept in that memorable
voyage,--it took us nearly two weeks to beat up the Macassar straits.
This event tried our patience sorely. After it was passed, the skipper
made the remark within the hearing of the Rev. Macy that the reason he
had bad luck was because he had a Jonah on board. My friend Macy took
the remark in a good-natured way and gave me a significant smile. We
were just then discussing the feat of going through the Macassar straits
and I remarked in a tone just loud enough to be heard by the old skipper
that if I had charge of the vessel, I could take her through in less
than ten days. This was meant as a direct reflection on the poor
seamanship of the old fellow (for he really was a miserable sailor), as
well as to serve as a retaliation for what he said a few minutes before,
that there was a Jonah on board.
In the dead of winter, the passage to the East should have been taken
around Cape Horn instead of the Cape of Good Hope, in which case we
would no doubt have had strong and fair wind all the way from New York
to Hong Kong, which would not only have shortened the voyage but also
saved the captain a world of swearing and an incalculable amount of wear
and tear on his nervous system. But as a passenger only, I had no idea
of the financial motive back of the move to send the ship off perfectly
empty and unballasted, right in the teeth of the northeast monsoon. I
would have been glad to go around Cape Horn, as that would have added a
new route to my journeying around the world, and furnished me with new
incidents as well.
As we approached Hong Kong, a Chinese pilot boarded us. The captain
wanted me to ask him whether there were any dangerous rocks and shoals
nearby. I could not for the life of me recall my Chinese in order to
interpret for him; the pilot himself understood English, and he was the
first Chinese teacher to give me the terms in Chinese for dangerous
rocks and shoals. So the skipper and Macy, and a few other persons who
were present at the time, had the laugh on me, who, being a Chinese, yet
was not able to speak the language.
My first thought upon landing was to walk up to the office of the “China
Mail,” to pay my respects to Andrew Shortrede, the proprietor and editor
of the paper, and the friend who supported me for over a year, while I
was in Monson Academy. After seeing him and accepting his hospitality by
way of an invitation to take up my quarters in his house, I lost no time
in hastening over to Macao to see my aged and beloved mother, who, I
knew, yearned to see her long-absent boy. Our meeting was arranged a day
beforehand. I was in citizen’s dress and could not conveniently change
the same for my Chinese costume. I had also allowed a pair of mustaches
to grow, which, according to Chinese custom, was not becoming for an
unmarried young man to do. We met with tears of joy, gratitude and
thanksgiving. Our hearts were too full even to speak at first. We gave
way to our emotions. As soon as we were fairly composed, she began to
stroke me all over, as expressive of her maternal endearment which had
been held in patient suspense for at least ten years. As we sat close to
each other, I gave her a brief recital of my life in America, for I knew
she would be deeply interested in the account. I told her that I had
just finished a long and wearisome voyage of five months’ duration, but
had met with no danger of any kind; that during my eight years of
sojourn in the United States, I was very kindly treated by the good
people everywhere; that I had had good health and never been seriously
sick, and that my chief object during the eight years was to study and
prepare myself for my life work in China. I explained to her that I had
to go through a preparatory school before entering college; that the
college I entered was Yale--one of the leading colleges of the United
States, and that the course was four years, which accounted for my long
stay and delayed my return to China. I told her that at the end of four
years I had graduated with the degree of A.B.,--analogous to the Chinese
title of Siu Tsai, which is interpreted “Elegant Talent;” that it was
inscribed on a parchment of sheep skin and that to graduate from Yale
College was considered a great honor, even to a native American, and
much more so to a Chinese. She asked me näively how much money it
conferred. I said it did not confer any money at once, but it enabled
one to make money quicker and easier than one can who has not been
educated; that it gave one greater influence and power among men and if
he built on his college education, he would be more likely to become the
leader of men, especially if he had a well-established character. I told
her my college education was worth more to me than money, and that I was
confident of making plenty of money.
“Knowledge,” I said, “is power, and power is greater than riches. I am
the first Chinese to graduate from Yale College, and that being the
case, you have the honor of being the first and only mother out of the
countless millions of mothers in China at this time, who can claim the
honor of having a son who is the first Chinese graduate of a
first-class American college. Such an honor is a rare thing to possess.”
I also assured her that as long as I lived all her comforts and wants
would be scrupulously and sedulously looked after, and that nothing
would be neglected to make her contented and happy. This interview
seemed to give her great comfort and satisfaction. She seemed very happy
over it. After it was ended, she looked at me with a significant smile
and said, “I see you have already raised your mustaches. You know you
have a brother who is much older than you are; he hasn’t grown his
mustaches yet. You must have yours off.” I promptly obeyed her mandate,
and as I entered the room with a clean face, she smiled with intense
satisfaction, evidently thinking that with all my foreign education, I
had not lost my early training of being obedient to my mother. And if
she could only have read my heart, she would have found how every throb
palpitated with the most tender love for her. During the remaining years
of her life, I had the rare privilege of seeing her often and ministered
to her every comfort that it was in my power to bestow. She passed away
in 1858, at the age of sixty-four, twenty-four years after the death of
my father. I was in Shanghai at the time of her death. I returned to my
native village in time to attend her funeral.
In the summer of 1855, I took up my residence in Canton, with the Rev.
Mr. Vrooman, a missionary under the American Board. His headquarters
were in Ham Ha Lan, in the vicinity of the government execution ground,
which is in the southwestern outskirts of the city, close to the bank of
the Pearl River. While there, I began my Chinese studies and commenced
to regain the dialect of Canton, which I had forgotten during my stay in
the United States. In less than six months, the language came back to me
readily, although I was still a little rusty in it. I was also making
slow progress in recovering the written language, in which I was not
well-grounded before leaving China, in 1846. I had studied it only four
years, which was considered a short time in which to master the written
language. There is a greater difference between the written and the
spoken language of China than there is between the written and spoken
English language. The Chinese written language is stilted and full of
conventional forms. It is understood throughout the whole empire, but
differently pronounced in different provinces and localities. The
spoken language is cut up into endless dialects and in certain provinces
like Fuhkien, Anhui and Kiangsu, the people are as foreigners to each
other in the matter of dialects. Such are the peculiar characteristics
of the ideographic and spoken languages of China.
During the six months of my residence in Canton, while trying to recover
both the written and spoken languages, Kwang Tung province was thrown
into a somewhat disorganized condition. The people of Canton attempted
to raise a provincial insurrection or rebellion entirely distinct from
the Taiping rebellion which was being carried on in the interior of
China with marked success. To suppress and nip it in the bud, drastic
measures were resorted to by Viceroy Yeh Ming Hsin, who, in the summer
of 1855, decapitated seventy-five thousand people, most of whom, I was
told, were innocent. My residence was within half a mile of the
execution ground, as stated above, and one day, out of curiosity, I
ventured to walk over to the place. But, oh! what a sight. The ground
was perfectly drenched with human blood. On both sides of the driveway
were to be seen headless human trunks, piled up in heaps, waiting to be
taken away for burial. But no provision had been made to facilitate
their removal.
The execution was carried on on a larger scale than had been expected,
and no provision had been made to find a place large enough to bury all
the bodies. There they were, left exposed to a burning sun. The
temperature stood from morning to night in midsummer steadily at 90°
Fahrenheit, and sometimes higher. The atmosphere within a radius of two
thousand yards of the execution ground was heavily charged with the
poisonous and pestilential vapor that was reeking from the ground
already over-saturated with blood and from the heaps of corpses which
had been left behind for at least two days, and which showed signs of
rapid decomposition. It was a wonder to me that no virulent epidemic had
sprung up from such an infectious spot to decimate the compact
population of the city of Canton. It was a fortunate circumstance that
at last a deep and extensive ravine, located in the far-off outskirts of
the western part of the city, was found, which was at once converted
into a sepulchral receptacle into which this vast human hecatomb was
dumped. It was said that no earth was needed to be thrown over these
corpses to cover them up; the work was accomplished by countless swarms
of worms of a reddish hue and of an appearance that was perfectly
hideous and revolting.
I was told that during the months of June, July and August, of 1855,
seventy-five thousand people had been decapitated; that more than half
of that number were declared to be innocent of the charge of rebellion,
but that the accusation was made as a pretext to exact money from them.
This wholesale slaughter, unparalleled in the annals of modern
civilization, eclipsing even the enormities and blood-thirstiness of
Caligula and Nero, or even the French Revolution, was perpetrated by Yeh
Ming Hsin, who was appointed viceroy of Kwang Tung and Kwangsi in 1854.
Yeh Ming Hsin was a native of Han-Yang. Han-Yang is a part of the port
of Hankau, and was destroyed with it when the Taiping rebels took
possession of it. It was said that Yeh Ming Hsin had immense estates in
Han-Yang, which were completely destroyed by fire. This circumstance
embittered him towards the Taiping rebels and as the Taiping leaders
hailed from Kwang Tung and Kwangsi, he naturally transferred his hatred
to the people of those two provinces. It was in the lofty position of a
viceroy that he found his opportunity to wreak his private and personal
vengeance upon the Canton people. This accounts for his indiscriminate
slaughter of them, and for the fact that he did not deign to give them
even the semblance of a trial, but hurried them from life to death like
packs of cattle to the shambles.
But this human monster did not dream that his day of reckoning was fast
approaching. Several years after this appalling sacrifice of human life,
in 1855, he got into trouble with the British government. He was
captured by the British forces and banished to some obscure and remote
corner in India where he led a most ignominious life, hated by the whole
Chinese nation, and despised by the world at large.
On my return to headquarters, after my visit to the execution ground, I
felt faint-hearted and depressed in spirit. I had no appetite for food,
and when night came, I was too nervous for sleep. The scene I had looked
upon during the day had stirred me up. I thought then that the Taiping
rebels had ample grounds to justify their attempt to overthrow the
Manchu régime. My sympathies were thoroughly enlisted in their favor and
I thought seriously of making preparations to join the Taiping rebels,
but upon a calmer reflection, I fell back on the original plan of doing
my best to recover the Chinese language as fast as I possibly could and
of following the logical course of things, in order to accomplish the
object I had at heart.