THE ADAPTABILITY AND TENACITY OF PURPOSE OF THE CHINESE
Can live and thrive in any climate--Absence of nerves--Bear pain
heroically--Great staying power--A long ride through the
country--Dogged inflexibility of ordinary Chinese--Contempt for other
countries.
The strength of the Chinaman lies in his power to adapt himself to the
circumstances in which he may be situated. Place him in a northern climate
where the sun's rays have lost their fire, and where the snow falls
thickly and the ice lays its wintry hand upon the forces of nature, and he
will thrive as though he had descended from an ancestry that had always
lived in a frozen region. Transport him to the torrid zone, where the sun
is a great ball of molten flame, where the air is as hot as though it had
crossed a volcano, and where the one thought is how to get cool in this
intolerable maddening heat, and he will move about with an ease and a
comfort just as if a sultry climate was the very thing that his system
demanded.
He is so cosmopolitan in his nature that it seems to be a matter of
indifference where he may be or what his environment. He will travel along
lofty peaks, where the snows of successive winters lie unmelted, or he
will sleep in a grass hut where the fever-bearing mosquitoes will feast
upon him the livelong night to the sound of their own music, and he will
emerge from it next morning with a face that shows that the clouds of
anopheles have left him a victor on the field. He will descend into the
sultry tin mines of Siam, and at night he will stretch himself on the
hard, uneven ground, with a clod for his pillow, and he will rise as
refreshed as though he had slept on a bed of down.
[Illustration: JUNKS (ON THE YANG-TSE RIVER).]
You meet the Chinaman everywhere under the most varied circumstances, and
he seems natural in every one of them. He walks about in an easy,
unsurprised way, a first-class passenger in a crack mail steamer, or he
curls himself up in a native river boat, in a space where no human being
but himself could live an hour, and he sleeps a dreamless sleep the
livelong night in a fetid atmosphere that would give an Occidental
typhoid, from which he would perhaps never recover. Whatever the social
condition of the Chinaman may be, whether merchant, or coolie, or artisan,
one becomes conscious that behind those harsh and unaesthetic features
there is a strength of physique and a latent power of endurance that seems
to make him independent of climate, and impervious to microbes, germs,
bacteria, and all the other scientific scourges that seem to exist for the
destruction of all human life excepting the Chinese.
One advantage the Celestial has over the Occidental is what may be called
his absence of nerves. The rush and race and competition of the West have
never yet touched the East. The Orient is sober and measured, and never in
a hurry. An Englishman, were all other signs wanting, could easily be
distinguished, as he walks along the road, by his rapid stride, the jerky
movements of his arms, and the nervous poise of his head, all so different
from the unemotional crowd around him, who seem to think that they have an
eternity before them in which to finish their walk, and so they need not
hurry.
There is no doubt but that this absence of nerves is a very important
factor in enabling the Chinaman to adapt himself so readily to the
circumstances in which he may be placed. Take the matter of pain. He bears
it with the composure of a saint. The heroic never seems to come out so
grandly in him, as when he is bearing some awful suffering that only a
martyr could endure. I have seen a man come into a hospital with an
abscess that must have been giving him torture. His face was drawn, and
its yellow hue had turned to a slightly livid colour, but there were no
other signs that he was in agony. The surgeon drove his knife deep into
the inflamed mass, but only the word "ai Ya," uttered with a prolonged
emphasis, and the twisting up of the muscles of one side of his face,
showed that he was conscious of any pain. An Occidental of the same class
would most probably have howled, and perhaps a couple of assistants would
have been required to hold him whilst the doctor was operating.
It is this same absence of nerves that enables the Chinese to bear
suffering of any kind with a patience and fortitude that is perfectly
Spartan. He will live from one year's end to another on food that seems
utterly inadequate for human use; he will slave at the severest toil, with
no Sunday to break its wearisome monotony, and no change to give the mind
rest; and he will go on with the duties of life with a sturdy tread and
with a meditative mystic look on his face, that reminds one of those
images of Buddha that one sees so frequently in the Chinese monasteries or
temples.
The staying power of the Chinese seems unlimited. The strong, square
frames with which nature has endowed them are models of strength. They are
not graceful, neither are the lines of beauty conspicuous either in face
or form, but for endurance there is nothing to surpass them anywhere
throughout the world.
On one occasion, I had to make a journey to a large city some twenty miles
or more distant. It was in the hottest days in summer, when the
temperature was over ninety in the shade. I engaged two chair-bearers to
carry me, who were taken at random from the nearest chair shop, where such
men wait to be hired. There was nothing to distinguish them from the
ordinary men who get their living by carrying chairs. They had the look of
the farmer class from which they were taken, and were as dull and as
uninteresting as shabby clothes and tanned and bronzed faces could make
them. They had a mean and insignificant appearance, being not more than
five feet and a half in height, and the blue colour in their garments,
which is so popular with the Chinese, gave them a commonplace look that
did not raise one's opinion of them.
We started very early in the morning, just before the light of the dawn
had touched the darkness that covered the land with its shadows. We had
not gone far before the men began to show their mettle. With the heavy
chair upon their shoulders, they kept on at a steady swing of over three
miles an hour, in spite of the fact that the roads were simply footpaths,
that had been worn into ruts and hollows by the feet of countless
travellers and by the wear and tear of storm and rain.
The first hour's travelling was comparatively cool, for the sun had not
risen above the mountain tops to flash his fiery rays upon the world
around us. The scene at this time was full of beauty. The earth lay
clothed in a dim, subdued, cloisterlike light that gave it an air of
mystery. The rice in the fields looked shy and modest as it appeared to be
hiding itself amid the shadows that still rested upon the earth. The
clumps of trees took fantastic and grotesque shapes, and seemed like
spectres that had come out to travel during the uncanny hours of night and
had dallied too long by the way. But most beautiful of all were the hills
in a blue thin haze that clung to them, and turned the rocks and boulders
into seeming fortresses and castles, behind which one could fancy gallant
knights and armed soldiers kept watch and ward.
After a time, the sun rose with fire in his face and flashed his molten
rays across the land, till everything glowed beneath their touch, and made
life a misery. My men, however, strode on through the scorching air, with
as firm a step as though they were on a Highland range with the purple
heather at their feet. The sun blazed down upon their bare shaven heads
till it seemed as though I should have a sunstroke out of sheer sympathy
from looking at the glare that flashed about them; but on they went, their
bodies steaming with perspiration, but with overflowing spirits that made
them catch the humours they met by the way, which now and again sent them
into uproarious fits of laughter.
The hours went by, and with a tread like fate they marched on along the
burning roads, through villages and across flooded plains, till at last we
reached the great city. It was a little after midday when we passed
through the great gates that gave us entrance into the narrow streets,
where the crowds jostled each other, and where the tide of human life
flowed in a perpetual stream.
After transacting our business, I spoke to the men about returning. This
was a most unusual proceeding, for one such journey was universally
considered to be enough for one day. The day, however, was young, and the
heat in the city, where the crowded houses kept away the breeze, made it a
perfect oven where men could scarcely breathe, and where the mosquitoes
revelled in the luxuries that the half-dressed people afforded them.
I asked them whether they could engage fresh men to carry me back, for I
never dreamed of suggesting that they might be able to do so. "What need
is there," they replied, "to search for other bearers, when you have us,
who are perfectly willing to make the return journey with you?" As they
said this, their eyes perfectly danced with delight at the prospect of
earning two days' wages in one.
[Illustration: A SEDAN CHAIR.
_To face p. 117._]
I was perfectly delighted at this, for I knew the men by this time to be
pleasant, good-tempered fellows, who would play me no tricks by the way,
and then they were going home, and would not dally by the journey as
strangers might be tempted to do. Preparations were at once made to start
back immediately. The chair was brought round to the door, and the men
with beaming faces and as fresh-looking as though they had done nothing
all day, started back on the long weary journey of fully twenty miles.
Once more we were retracing our way through the long, winding streets of
the city, and then we emerged through the gates into the open country
beyond. A haze of heat lay upon the fields and on the hills. The afternoon
sun, still breathing out fire, glared into the chair and shone upon my
face and played upon the bare skulls of the bearers. Surely that fierce
heat would break their spirit, for I began to feel limp and fagged, though
the only exertion I had to make was to try and keep cool by fanning
myself.
As the afternoon went on, the steps of the bearers became less elastic,
and when we rested at the regular stopping-places, they were less eager in
resuming their journey. Beyond this, they seemed as vigorous as ever, and
forged their way through villages, and past market towns, and round the
foot of hills glowing with amber colours that were flung there with the
lavish hand of the fast-descending sun.
We reached home long after darkness had settled on the landscape, and had
blotted out the hills around which the clouds had gathered to let the sun
paint his evening pictures. We could hear the rustling of the rice, as the
night wind sighed amongst it, and sometimes we would be startled by the
sudden looming up of trees like huge fantastic spectres that had escaped
from the land of darkness to terrify men by their presence.
Travelling in the dark was not an easy matter, for we had to pick our way
over narrow uneven pathways, and across broken dilapidated bridges, and
over stepping-stones in a mountain brook, till finally, worn out and
wearied to death, we stumbled down the dark street that led to our home,
and there I threw myself into the first chair I could find, utterly
exhausted by a journey that few men would undertake even in the coldest
days in winter.
The chair-bearers, after a few whiffs at their bamboo pipes, started to
light the furnace and cook their supper. All the weariness they had shown
during the last hour or two seemed to have vanished, and they laughed and
chatted about the incidents on the road and the funny sights they had
seen. One chopped the wood, whilst the other washed the rice and poured it
into the cauldron, and prepared the vegetables they were to eat with it.
No one looking in casually upon the scene and listening to the merry
voices and to the animated conversation of these men would ever have
dreamed that they had travelled fully fifty miles, carrying two hundred
pounds' weight upon their shoulders, through the blazing heat of an
Eastern summer day.
In one's dealing with the Chinese one is continually being reminded of the
strain of dogged inflexibility that runs throughout the character of
nearly every individual that one comes in contact with. It is not simply
occasional instances that one runs up against. It is in the race, and
there is no doubt but that it is this force that has given it such a
strength that it has been able to stand the wear and tear of ages and to
be as strong physically as it was a thousand years ago.
Of course there are differences. There are strong men and there are weak
men. There are those whose wills are as firm and unbending as the granite
hills around. There are others, again, whose temperaments are of an easy,
yielding description, and one is apt to imagine that they can be moulded
this way or that at the will of another. Up to a certain extent this is
true, and yet one soon discovers that even with them, when the true temper
of the man is tested, there is a tenacity of will that nothing seems to be
able to shake.
A man, for example, comes in to see you. He is common looking, with a face
hardened and battered by toil. His clothes, which are shabby and well
worn, consist of the ordinary blue cotton cloth that in its dull and dingy
colour helps to give a mean and uninteresting look to the wearer. If the
nation would but depart from the eternal tradition that has come steadily
down the ages in regard to its clothing and would take some hints from
nature, whose varied moods make her look so charming, how different would
these unaesthetic people appear from what they do now!
His face is a weak one, and there are lines about his mouth that in an
Englishman would indicate a want of will. Your idea of the man is a very
low one, and you ask him with as much politeness as your poor opinion of
him will permit you, what he wants with you.
In a hesitating, nervous kind of way, he informs you that he has ventured
to come and ask a favour of you. It is a very important one, he says, and
as he knows no one that is so kind as you are or who has so much influence
as you have, he has taken the liberty to address himself to you and he
hopes that you will not refuse his request.
You find as he tells his story that he wants you to use your good offices
to get his son into employment in a responsible firm in the town. You are
startled, for you do not know any one in the said firm, and moreover you
have no knowledge of the young man either as to his character or
abilities. You try and impress upon the father that it is impossible for
you to help him in the matter, because you really have no influence with
any one responsible in the house of business to which he refers, and that
therefore he had better apply to some one else who has the ability to help
him.
The man in a weak kind of way appears to agree with you, expresses his
appreciation of your kindness in so pleasantly listening to him, and bids
you good-bye, and any one not acquainted with the Chinese character would
certainly come to the conclusion that the whole incident was at an end and
nothing more would be heard of it.
To-morrow morning you are engaged, say, in writing when the same man is
ushered into your room by your "boy," and he in a timid, hesitating way
expresses a wish to say a few words to you. In his hand he carries a fowl,
with its legs tied and its head hanging down, and as this is the usual way
in which such animals are carried in China, it seems to recognize the
universal custom and to utter no protest against the indignity to which it
is exposed.
Without referring to it, he lays it down in a corner of the room, and
proceeds to make his request for his son in precisely the same language
that he had done the previous day. Your statement then that you had no
influence in the firm mentioned was considered by him to be a pleasant and
refined way of showing your displeasure that a present had not been made
you, and so to-day he is atoning for this by bringing you the fowl that
lies fluttering on the ground.
You try and make him understand that you really cannot help him, that you
would do so if you could, and you insist upon his taking away his present,
as you absolutely refuse to accept it. He agrees with all you say,
expresses his admiration at your disinterested and generous conduct, is
quite sure that you cannot help him, and finally leaves you holding the
fowl which you have forced upon him in his hand, and declaring that he is
afraid you are angry with him since you refuse his gift, which he declares
he knows is too small to be accepted by a person of your position and
character. You happen to go out half-an-hour after and you see the
identical fowl lying in the yard struggling to get free, and with a look
of pain and misery in consequence of its legs having been tied so tight
and because of the cramped position in which it has been compelled to lie
so long.
You call the "boy" and you ask him why the man has not taken the fowl
away, as you had positively refused to accept it. "Oh! it would never do,"
he replies with an anxious look that pushes its way through its permanent
sphinx-like veneer, "for the man to take back the trifling present that he
has made you. He would have lost 'face,' for people would say that you
were angry with him for making you such an insignificant gift that you
could not possibly receive it."
Next morning the man once more appears, but this time accompanied by a
person well known to you. After a few complimentary remarks, the newcomer
introduces the man, and begs of you to use your influence to get his son
the employment about which he has already spoken to you. You state the
case fully to him and explain that it is quite a mistake to imagine that
you can assist him in the way he wishes. Both men listen with the most
wrapt attention to what you say, and by smiles and vigorous nods of the
head seem to believe in every word you speak. By and by they leave, and
you feel convinced that the incident is at an end, and that you will hear
nothing more of it.
In the afternoon of the same day, the man turns up once more, with a
smiling countenance and a look of supreme satisfaction upon it. He holds a
letter in his hand which he delivers to you with the air of a man who is
delivering a pleasant ultimatum that will settle the whole question in a
manner satisfactory to all. It is from an Englishman who has been
approached on the subject, and he asks me to do what I can to get the old
fellow's son into a firm where he has been told I have some influence.
You are getting annoyed by this time, not simply because all your
protestations have not been believed, but because you see that the dogged
persistence that lies rooted in the Chinese character will not allow the
matter to drop until you have either given him a piece of your mind, more
forcible than polite, or taken some plan to carry out his wishes. After a
few minutes' consideration, you remember that an acquaintance of your own
has business relationships with the firm in question, so you at once write
a note to him and request him as a great favour to exert himself to
introduce the son of the bearer to the manager of a certain business house
with which he is intimately concerned. Having sealed it up, you hand it
over to the man, and direct him to take it to your friend, who may
possibly be able to assist him in procuring the employment he wishes for
his son.
The very next day, he once more appears, but this time with two fowls, a
small basket of oranges and a tiny box of tea, and also with the most
profuse thanks for getting his son that situation. You tell him that you
have had nothing to do with that, and that if he is inclined to make
presents, he had better take them to the friend who has really engineered
the business. If the Chinese could only see the humour there is in a wink,
there is no doubt but that he would express his feelings by one just now,
but as he has never been taught the subtle part that the eye can take in
conveying a joke, he simply smiles prodigiously, clasps his own hands
instead of yours and leaves you with a profusion of the most elegant and
polite phrases, such as the great Sage of China penned more than two
thousand years ago for the guidance of people in contingencies such as
this.
It must be perfectly understood that the man never believed from the very
first that you could not have got that situation for his son, if you had
been so disposed, and the fact that you procured it for him at last proved
that. Your writing the letter and sending it to a friend were but little
subtle by-plays to save your "face." Acting like that is something
inexpressibly dear to the Chinese, who are always posing before each
other, and exhausting their histrionic powers to produce certain effects
that shall redound to their credit. The one thing that was really to be
admired in this Chinaman was the tenacity of purpose that caused him never
to falter until he had gained the object that he had in his mind.
This distinguishing virtue in the Chinaman has unquestionably been a very
large factor in the building up of their Empire, and yet on the other hand
it is just as true that it has been one of the most powerful forces in
preventing its progress and development.
The very persistence of character that made the Yellow race build the
Great Wall of China and extend their conquests from their original home on
the banks of the Yellow River, until the whole of the vast extent of
territory embraced within the eighteen provinces has been subdued by them,
has made them cling to old traditions and customs with a tenacity that has
stayed the progress of new ideas, and has prevented them from adopting new
methods that would have benefited both the people and the Empire.
The Chinese within certain limits are practical common-sense people and
keenly alive to anything that will improve their worldly condition, but
the moment they scent an innovation they recoil from it as though it were
an enemy that was going to destroy them.
Illustrations of this abound everywhere. Take the farmer, for example. He
has been accustomed to plough his fields with an old-fashioned implement
that was devised ages before the Christian era. It is of the exact pattern
that it was when it issued from the brain of the man who is credited with
having thought it out. Through countless ages it has done the work of the
Empire, but time has left it absolutely untouched, and if the inventor
could come to life to-day he would see that the old clumsy thing that he
had hastily thought out when the fathers of the race, tired of their
wanderings, settled down on the banks of the mighty river that met them as
they wandered eastwards, had never changed with the advancing fortunes of
their children, but was identical in every detail with the one with which
they began their first ploughing in the far-off misty ages of the past.
You talk to a Chinese farmer about the wonderful ploughs of the West, and
how sometimes they were driven by steam, and in a few hours acres of land
would be ready for the harrow. His eyes flash, for he is a farmer to the
very tips of his fingers, and he thinks of the days of toil that it takes
him to accomplish the very same thing, and for the moment he would like to
have some of those ploughs to upturn the hard and rugged soil that his own
antiquated implement seems so helpless to break through. He has a vision
for a moment of how the monotony and drudgery of labour might be exchanged
for a time of comparative rest, when nature in response to a new impulse
should yield the fruits of the soil with a more generous hand. But the
vision quickly dies out of his imagination, and the old conservative
instinct flashes once more through his brain, and so the old plough and
the hoe that have done the work of the centuries are more firmly fixed in
his imagination than ever they were before.
[Illustration: PLOUGHING WITH A WATER BUFFALO.
_To face p. 124._]
One of the great results of the intense tenacity of purpose that
characterizes the Chinese is to repress original thought. From their very
loyalty to the discoveries and inventions of past ages, they have
become merely imitators, and any one who should dare to deviate from
well-established lines on any subject would be looked upon as a man
dangerous to the well-being of the Empire. It may be confidently asserted
that for a thousand years no new thought or original ideas that have
quickened the pulse in this old country have been propounded by any one of
its vast or varied population. Whilst the West has been seething with
excitement and new continents have been discovered and society has been
upheaved by vast discoveries, this great nation has been going on in its
easy-going, sleepy way, content with the half-dozen or so of meagre ideas
with which it started its career ages ago.
The Chinese are a proud people, and look down with supreme contempt upon
every country outside of their own. They are very impartial in this and
make no exceptions, for they call them all by a term that has been
generally translated "Barbarian," and which really means uncivilized,
untaught, idiotic, and wanting in refinement; and yet after one has got
over the first excitement caused by the odd and grotesque sights that
Chinese life and scenes afford to the Westerner, there comes a sense of
oppression at the absolute monotony that prevails in every department of
life, and all as the result of the one idea of being true to established
ideals. A man, for example, builds a house. There is no use asking him
what is the plan he is going to adopt. That was settled for him a good
many centuries ago, and though slight variations are allowed to meet the
peculiar requirements of the land, the essential idea is scrupulously
retained by every builder throughout the eighteen provinces. It is for
this reason that the profession of architect is unknown in this land, and
the sacred plan upon which every house is built is conserved with as much
fidelity by the people of this Empire as though it were a great moral
principle that lay at the root of all noble action and that had been
specially revealed from Heaven for the guidance of the nation.
You travel up a river and you expect to find great diversities in the
population, that has deserted the land and taken up its permanent
habitation on the water, but the same inflexible devotion to ancient
ideals is just as marked as it is on shore.
Here is a typical boat that belongs to the fisher class. Let us examine it
for a moment, for I can promise that we shall get a glimpse into the
mysteries of Chinese life and see how men and women can lead what seems to
be a merry, happy existence in the closest possible quarters. It is twelve
feet long and five feet wide in the centre, and tapers slightly as you
approach the bows. It is divided into three distinct divisions, the front
part being the open space from which the nets are cast when they are
fishing. In one sense it might be called the workshop of the family, for
besides the manoeuvring with the nets, any odd jobs that are required to
be done in connection with their mode of life are performed on this part
of the boat. The centre is the family residence, and performs the part of
sitting-room, dining-room, and bedroom, and is covered in with thick
bamboo matting that is capable of resisting the heaviest rain. The hinder
section is the family kitchen, where all the meals are cooked, and where,
too, the steerer stands when he is guiding the boat.
The family in this particular craft consists of an elderly fisherman and
his wife, a grown-up son with his wife and two little ones, six people in
all, and as though the space were too ample for these, they have
improvised at the extreme bows a small pigsty, where a pig that will add
to the comforts of the home when it is ready for the market, lies
apparently contented with its narrow and confined surroundings. It will
never move from its home till it is carried to the butcher. The old couple
are weather-beaten and their faces are covered with the wrinkles that
advancing age has put into them, but they are perfectly content with their
life, and though they take a ramble now and again on shore when they wish
to buy anything or when they want to look at some theatricals, they return
to their home with as much zest as though it were a spacious house in
which every accommodation was provided for their comfort.
[Illustration: A BOAT CARRYING A SEDAN CHAIR.]
[Illustration: A PASSENGER BOAT.
_To face p. 126._]
There is really, after all, no mystery in this. Fifty or sixty years ago
they were both born upon a boat of the precise size and shape of the one
they are now living in. The old lady with the wrinkled features, and the
eyes of which the flash and the sparkle have died out, and with the raven
locks that have turned to grey, came here forty years ago as a bride, from
a neighbouring boat, amid the sounds of fire-crackers and the chorus of
congratulations that the Chinese are always prepared to give the
newly-made wife.
The young fellow that received her then as his future wife was the pick
out of all the fisher lads in the fishing fleet of that time, but he, too,
is old now. Yet both husband and wife are content, for their home is a
happy one. Have they not their own son to care for them in their declining
years, and to save them from sorrow and hunger now that their strength is
not what it used to be?
The son is indeed a man to be proud of by a Chinese father. He has the
look of a man who can hold his own in the world, and though utterly
uneducated, his face has a semi-refined appearance, that speaks of a
tender heart and of a mind that would easily be influenced for good. His
young wife has a face that it is a pleasure to look upon. It is not by any
means a beautiful one, for there is not a single feature in it that could
by the widest charity be called pretty, and yet it is just such a one that
has an attraction about it, that it wins men's homage though every canon
of beauty is defied by it. She has high cheek-bones and a large mouth, and
a nose that is as far removed from the Grecian as it is possible to be
conceived, but her eyes are bright and sparkling, and it seems as though
the spirit of fun lay close behind them, for there is a perpetual
suggestion of laughter in them. Her face, too, browned with the great
Eastern sun, is a most kindly and pleasing one, and smiles at the least
provocation ripple over it, and fill it with sunshine or shadows, as the
mood happens to take her.
She and her young husband are busy hoisting the nets high up on a bamboo
pole to have them aired and dried in the sun. The youngest child, which is
but a baby, is strapped on her back, where he is sound asleep, the motions
of the mother acting as a cradle would do in lulling him into
forgetfulness of everything around him. The other child is a little over
two, with a round, chubby face and large, staring black eyes, that look
upon you with wonder as you make various signs of friendliness to him. He
is stationed in the "sitting-room," to be out of the way of the workers,
and to guard against his moving beyond certain limits and tumbling
overboard, a good strong string has been tied to one of his legs, which
effectually prevents any such accidents happening to him.
The old father, calm and placid looking, is sitting on his heels near the
tiller smoking a long bamboo pipe. This mode of resting is a most popular
one amongst the middle and lower classes of the Chinese, but one which an
Englishman could not endure for five minutes without considerable
discomfort. His wife is fussing about the diminutive kitchen, getting
ready the meal for the family, and deftly cooking the rice and the salted
turnips and the pickled cabbage that are the principal features in the
daily meal of vast numbers of the Chinese.
[Illustration: NETTING FISH FROM THE SHORE.]
The above is an attempt to describe the kind of boat that a certain class
of people who get their living by fishing in inland waters everywhere use.
They are absolute facsimiles of each other. The question often arises, how
is it they are all so identical? Why should not some of them be, say, a
foot or two longer, and a few inches wider, so as to anticipate the needs
of a growing family?
Such a thought never occurs to a Chinaman, or if it does, it is at once
rejected as heterodox, or as treason to the original designer. A profound
sense of the benefits conferred upon them by the man who had the brain to
devise such a boat, though an Englishman would have the daring to think
that any idiot could devise a much better one in five minutes, will
prevent this nation from ever venturing to think it possible that any
change could be made in it that would improve it in one single respect.
The fishermen are absolutely content. They spend their lives on these
boats. Men are married upon them, and children are born upon them and grow
up to be men and women, and men lie down and die upon them, and from them
they are carried to their long homes on the shore, which during their
lifetime they have looked upon as a place where they had no inheritance,
but which perforce would have to give them a narrow space when they had
finished with life, in which to hide them away from the world.
The boats I have described are but a sample of the multitude of ways in
which the Chinese are circumscribed and prevented by forces greater than
the enactment of special laws from making progress in their national life.
There are signs at the present moment that China is awakening and that the
dead hand of the past is being lifted. It will be long, however, before
the new movement will permeate into the villages and into the more
retired and out-of-the-way places of the Empire, where under the shadow
of lofty mountains, and out of the lines where human thought and human
traffic are most vigorous, men cling to the traditions of the past. But
that the movement will spread and finally change the whole character of
the country, there is not the least shadow of a doubt.
[Illustration: A STREET SCENE.
_To face p. 131._]