A RAMBLE THROUGH A CHINESE CITY
Peculiarities of a Chinese town--Narrow streets--Smells--Mean-looking
buildings--One storey--Description of a silk shop--Uncleanness the
rule--Sights on the streets--Itinerant kitchen--Crowds on the
streets--No rows--A mandarin and his retinue--Beggars--Fish
market--Shoe street--No public-houses--An opium den.
The sight of a Chinese city is something that one never forgets, for there
are so many features about it that are absolutely new, that our minds are
so impressed by what we see that a photograph of them is engraven upon our
memories that will never be erased. Our conceptions of a city are those
that we have gathered from those that we have seen in England, and we
picture to ourselves wide streets with pavements on each side, where the
foot passengers walk in comfort without having to jostle each other. We
see, too, in imagination lofty houses, built with a certain degree of
regularity and with taste about them. Cleanliness, too, is one of the
things that we remember as being associated with it, whilst policemen day
and night patrol the streets and preserve order amongst the people that
travel along them. Cabs, and trams, and omnibuses crowded with passengers
are the conspicuous objects that are to be met with in any moderate-sized
towns in the homeland.
Now, all the above things are absent from any part of a Chinese city that
one may happen to visit in any portion of the Empire. This statement is
made with a good deal of confidence, for, unlike the cities of the West,
which all vary more or less one from another, the Chinese towns are very
much facsimiles of each other, and when you have seen one, you may
confidently assert you have a very true conception of what all the rest
are like.
The ideal city was drawn in the brain of the designers and builders of the
first one in the remote and misty past of Chinese History, and the
spectacle evidently has seemed so sublime and overpowering to the
succeeding generations of Chinese that no original genius has appeared
since then to dare to suggest anything better. And so every city is built
upon the same model throughout the length and breadth of the land, and
whilst some are larger and more imposing than others, the plan of the
walls and the configuration of the streets, and the architecture of the
houses are pretty much the same everywhere.
But here is a town close at hand, and so, without waiting to discuss the
theory of a Chinese city, let us boldly enter in and see with our own eyes
exactly what it is like.
The first street we travel along gives us a shock.
Instead of the broad and spacious roadway along which the traffic is
carried, we come into a narrow, dingy-looking artery which at its extreme
breadth is not wider than twelve feet, and even that is not all available
for the use of those that have to pass up and down it. The shopkeepers on
both sides have put out their counters, on which they expose their goods,
so that only five or six feet are left free for the use of the public.
This particular street which we are now in is not an exceptional one, in
fact it is one of the principal ones in the town, and therefore is a very
fair sample of what the business quarter is like. If we were to diverge
down the side streets that run into it we should find them all much
narrower, more forbidding, more dingy and very much dirtier.
We have not advanced far in our walk before we begin to be conscious of
peculiar odours that seem to be the heritage of the East. The air is never
fresh, but at corners of the street and indentations in the houses, and
on the spots not actually in use, there are always accumulations of refuse
and garbage that fester in the sun and send out the most abominable
smells. But these are healthy and playful when compared with others that
now and again seem to strike one as if with a sledge-hammer and paralyze
one for the moment.
These are caused by the foulness of the drain that lies underneath the
centre of the street. As the roads are so narrow and are occupied by
houses on both sides, the only available place for the drainage of the
city is right through the middle of the roadway.
There is no Public Board of Works to superintend the construction of
these, and as the Chinese as a race have very hazy and elementary ideas as
to the necessity for drains of any kind, it may easily be imagined how
badly they make them. The result is that gases generate and evil smells
collect for which there is no escape excepting through the cracks of the
stone slabs that pave the streets. Never has there yet been a writer with
the genius to describe these. It is simply enough to say that they have
the concentrated essence of the ages in them. They trace back their
ancestry to the times that are lost in myth and fairy tales, and they
would look with disdain upon any of the modern smells, just as an
aristocrat that holds his title from the times of the Conqueror would gaze
with scorn upon some upstart, whose father sold soap and was knighted for
the wealth he had amassed.
It is astonishing that the people that live in the houses near by are not
carried off by typhoid or other deadly fevers, but they are not. They
have, on the other hand, a lively, healthy look about them as though they
lived in some country place, where the air comes fresh from the mountain
near by and where they breathe a wholesome stock of ozone all the year
round.
The fact of the matter is the Chinese have no belief in the word
infection. There is nothing in this huge cumbrous language to express the
idea of germ, bacillus and such like, and so when some terrible odour from
a drain that is seething and frothing in the sun, such as would knock off
the head of a water buffalo, the Chinese puckers up his nose for an
instant and then puts on that childlike smile with which he so often
adorns his countenance, and attends to his business without any more fuss.
Now, this is one of the best streets in the town, and contains goods to
the value of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some of the wealthiest
merchants in the town have their places of business in it, and yet there
is not one to be compared with any ordinary shop that one meets with in
any of the ordinary streets that abound in our cities in the West.
They have all a comparatively mean-looking appearance. They are only one
storey high and have no fronts in them. When the shutters are taken down
in the morning, the whole of the interior is at once laid bare to the
public gaze, and as only the poorer shops attempt to display the goods
they have for sale, one can see nothing but rolls on the shelves, and
drawers tightly closed, and a number of Chinamen lounging about in a free
and easy way, who are really clerks, but who act with a freedom that would
ensure them being packed off at a moment's notice by any vigilant
shop-walker in a good business house in England.
But here is a silk shop that it will be interesting to visit. It is one of
the best in the whole town, and it is said to contain specimens from all
the famous silk-producing districts in the Empire. It does not seem to
have anything in it, beyond what one sees lying on the shelves, carefully
wrapped up in paper as though the great purpose was to conceal
everything from the gaze of the public. We find our progress impeded by a
large counter within which the clerks lounge about, and as purchasers are
never supposed to sit down, we have to stand on the outside of this, as no
chairs of any kind have been provided, not even for the women, when they
come to buy. Ladies of course never by any chance come out shopping, so
the great majority of the customers are men, and occasionally elderly
women of the middle class, who are not supposed to need to sit down.
[Illustration: A BARBER AND HIS CUSTOMER.
_To face p. 178._]
The appearance of a foreigner causes a commotion, and a
responsible-looking man steps forward with a hesitating manner, evidently
questioning with himself how he is to address you, since he knows nothing
but his own mother-tongue. You inform him, however, in Chinese, that you
have come to look at his silks, and at once his countenance clears, and a
look of pleasure flashes into his eyes and across the wide and expansive
area of his Mongolian features.
The clerks, too, without any apparent restraint from their master's
presence, crowd around and make remarks about your personal appearance,
and criticize your dress, and give their opinion about the way in which
you pronounce Chinese. In the meanwhile two or three have been dispatched
to an inner room, where the precious silks are kept, and they soon appear
with a dozen rolls or so carefully wrapped in paper, and tied with string
to keep the dust and the sunlight from getting to them.
As each one is unrolled, you gaze with absolute delight upon the exquisite
colours that flash upon your sight. Here you have one piece of a delicate
creamy white, that seems too pure to be touched without being defiled.
Next to it is another of a beautiful rose pink, a colour that the
designers must have caught from some rose that had just opened its petals
to the sun, and so as the men deftly unwind the various rolls you have
displayed before you the whole array of colours that the Chinese weavers
have woven into their fabrics, and for the moment the unaesthetic-looking
Chinaman becomes sublimed in your imagination, because of the marvellous
power with which he has reproduced the various hues of nature in the rolls
of silk that are deftly unfolded before you.
The silk you have been examining is of an inferior quality and will not
cost more than sixpence a foot, the standard measure with the Chinese, as
they know nothing of yards in any of their measurements. You ask to see
some of their more expensive articles, and soon the clerks return with
specimens from the looms of Canton, Hangchow, and Soochow, each with its
own distinctive characteristics, and so exquisitely beautiful that you
stand gazing upon them all with admiring looks, and with words that are
quite inadequate to express your high sense of the workmanship displayed
upon them. The amazing thing is to understand how the weavers, in their
poor tumble-down cottages, and with looms so cumbersome and antiquated
that they might have come out of the Ark, could have produced such
exquisite specimens of art as these rolls of silk undoubtedly are.
We pass along this narrow unsavoury street, when we turn into one of the
smaller ones that run into it. The shops here are of a decidedly meaner
character, being inhabited by a much poorer class of people. In plan,
however, they are very similar to the ones in the street we have already
described. There are no fronts to them, and everything that goes on in
them can be distinctly seen and heard by the passers-by. There is this
decided difference in them, that the back part of the shop is the home of
the family that are carrying on the business, which is never the case with
the better ones.
Fortunately the Chinese do not believe in the privacy of the home as we
do. They do not mind having the whole details of their daily experiences
seen by every one that cares to look. How they live, what they eat, and
even the family jars that we try and hush up from the public are things
that seem to be common property, and not to belong exclusively to this
particular family who are most concerned.
The impression one gets from a look into these miserable homes is that the
Chinese idea of comfort differs essentially from our own, and that they
can put up with a vast amount of discomfort such as would drive an
Englishman mad. Their houses are filthily dirty and untidy. The wife after
a few weeks of married life loses the trim, neat appearance she had as a
young girl. She drops naturally into the slattern ways of the women who
are her neighbours, and ere long dust and dirt and cobwebs, and frowsy and
untidy garments, are the leading features of the home.
It would be unwise to infer from this state of things that the Chinese are
unhappy, or that they are conscious that their surroundings have something
in them to induce melancholy or discontent. The ideal of the West is
cleanliness, a thing that the East never seems to aim at, or to even dream
of. This great city through which we are walking is an example of this
latter statement. Its streets are unswept from one year's end to the
other. Heaps of rubbish festering and fermenting in the sun and exhaling
the most unpleasant odours meet you at every turn. The drains are badly
made and left absolutely to themselves until, choked up, they are opened
up for repairs, when the hidden compressed effluvia send their noxious
vapours into the homes around.
The people are highly uncleanly in their persons. They never bathe, and
even in the homes of the rich the bath tub is an unknown luxury. The face
and hands are about the only parts of the body that on ordinary occasions
ever make the acquaintance of water. Their clothes, too, from a Western
standpoint, are anything but satisfactory. They are frowsy and wanting in
the crisp cleanliness that a liberal supply of soap and water impart to
them. There are always certain garments that are worn day after day and
week after week, that men never dream of cleansing in any way whatever.
The lower you go down in the scale of life, the more conspicuous is this
disregard of cleanliness, and yet it does not seem to affect either the
general health or spirits of the people. They are a laughter-loving race,
and jokes and funny stories and everything that would raise a smile to the
face find a ready echo in their hearts. The fact that they are surrounded
by dust and dirt and untidiness such as would put the shivers into any
ordinary Englishman, and dim for the time being the very light of life,
have no seeming effect upon this long-lived race.
The people of this town appear to be endowed either with very good
appetites, or to have very defective arrangements at home for supplying
the wants of the inner man, for there seems to be an altogether
extravagant number of itinerant kitchens with food already cooked
stationed at various corners where the traffic is the greatest, to cater
at once to the public appetite.
Here is one close at hand, and as we have a few minutes to spare let us
draw near and see what it is like. It consists of two wooden stands which
can be slung on to the ends of a stout bamboo pole and carried at a
moment's notice in any direction that suits the owner. Where trade is
brisk at any particular spot, he remains there until his customers desert
him, and then, shouldering his miniature eating-house, he goes off at a
quick trot to the localities where the hungry are most likely to
congregate.
On one of the stands there is a large rice pan which is filled with rice
that is kept just on the boil by a fire that burns underneath. The heat
must be so modulated that it will never blaze into a flame, for to allow
it to do that would be fatal to the success of the enterprise. The
Chinese, who are connoisseurs in the art of cooking rice, can never
tolerate it being boiled to a pulp. The grains must to a certain extent
retain their individuality, and though boiled to the very heart, there
must be no loss of that. The man who would wish to be popular must have
learned the secret of how to please the taste of the most critical. The
other stand is a kind of rough dresser, where the condiments that are to
allure a pleasant passage to the rice are tastefully set out. These are
salted turnips of a brown, leathery look, and the most popular, because
very cheap, of all the various articles that the Chinese eat with their
rice. There are also bean curds and cucumbers pickled crisp and juicy, and
celery and lettuce, and salted beans and plates of various kinds of fish,
and different kinds of soy, which are sprinkled with a sparing hand over
the bowl of rice to give it a flavour in order to induce an appetite with
the first sip that the customer takes of the savoury compound.
It is interesting to watch the deft way with which the man fulfils the
orders that are given him. He first of all ladles out enough rice from the
pan to nearly fill one of the bowls that lies turned upside down on the
dresser. He then selects with his chopsticks a bit of salted turnip and
drops it into the very centre of the steaming rice. Then once more, with
the eye of a connoisseur, he picks up a bit of crisp pickled cucumber
about the size of a bean and drops it on the top. If his customer is
extravagant and is going in for luxuries, he selects a tiny sprat that
lies cooked and ready for use, and places it in a tempting position just
within the lip of the basin, and resting on the rice as though it were in
its native element. A little savoury soy is then sprinkled over the whole,
a pair of chopsticks are daintily laid crosswise over the steaming
compound, and the man whose mouth has been watering all the time this
process has been going on takes it with eager hands, and without any delay
proceeds to satisfy his appetite, and all for the modest sum of a little
over a halfpenny.
Several men are seated on their heels round this peripatetic kitchen,
shovelling down with their chopsticks the good things contained in their
bowls. It does not seem at all strange to any one that they should thus in
the sight of all the passers-by and without tables or chairs be willing to
be seen eating on the public streets. The free-and-easy methods of Eastern
life, as well as the intensely sociable character of the Chinese mind,
make many things possible here that would be considered highly improper in
the West.
The scene before us is a thoroughly Oriental one and in some respects a
very picturesque one. The narrow street only six feet wide, packed as it
were with human life, is a splendid place from which to view the various
items of which the life of the city is composed. Here is a scholar in his
long gown, threadbare and showing signs of decay. Amidst the crowd of
passers-by we should never mistake him for anything but what he is. His
face has that keen intellectual look that the students of this Empire
usually have. Though poor, he has a proud and haughty air, as though he
felt himself higher than any of the crowd that brushes up against him.
Coming close behind him is a farmer, rough and unsophisticated, with the
sun burnt into his face, and with the air of a man who never opened a book
in his life except the ancient one of nature which he has studied to such
a purpose that he can read her secrets and can extract such crops from her
as make his fields laugh for very gladness. Following on is a countryman
whose home lies at the foot of the hills in the near distance. He is
carrying a huge load of brushwood balanced on the ends of a bamboo pole
slung across his shoulders, which he is carrying to the market to be sold
as firewood. He occupies more than half the roadway, and when he swings
his burden from one tired shoulder to the other, the width of the street
is only just enough to contain it. He passes along, however, at a steady
trot as though the town belonged to him. His loud cries, "Clear the way,"
"Get to the side," "I'll bump against you," are uttered with an air of
authority as though some royal edict had given him the authority to take
possession of the road in this masterful manner.
[Illustration: A REFRESHMENT STALL.
_To face p. 184._]
It is amusing to watch the good-natured way in which the ebbing and
flowing crowds yield to this man from the hills. Every one gets out of his
way, and even the scholar, with pride and contempt in his heart for the
unlearned masses, stands meekly at the side of the road and crushes
himself up against a counter to let the imperious seller of firewood pass
by. No thanks are given and none are asked, and as the tide of men close
up behind him, we can hear coming down the air, "I'll bump you," "I'll
bump you," "Go to the side," "Fly, fly," until the sounds so masterfully
given and so meekly obeyed are lost in the distance.
In looking at this moving panorama there is one thing that is strikingly
conspicuous, and that is the good-natured, easy, tolerant way with which
they treat each other on the street. It would seem as though every man,
the moment he got on it, had determined that forbearance shall be the word
that should guide his conduct in his treatment of every one that he meets.
Just think of it: a roadway of five or six feet wide, along which constant
cross currents of people, of all kinds and conditions, are travelling, and
yet no collisions, or at least so rarely that they are not enough to be
quoted. Business men, clerks, coolies, opium-smokers, thieves and
vagabonds, country bumpkins and elegant and refined scholars, all with an
instinctive sense of the rights of others, yield to the necessities of the
road, and bear with infinite good nature whatever inconveniences may
arise, and treat each other with patience and courtesy.
As we have been watching the motley crowds passing and repassing before
us, the man with the kitchen has been doing a roaring business. Customers
have come and gone with most pleasing succession, and the heap of cash
that he has received in payment for the savoury bowls of rice has grown
into a little mound, and as he looks at it his eyes glisten with pleasure.
All at once there is a sudden and mysterious change in his attitude.
Instead of standing with a benevolent look upon the group sitting on their
haunches round his eating-house, he becomes agitated, and hastily bidding
his customers to hurry up, he begins to make preparations for an immediate
move. The men gulp down their rice, the bowls are hurriedly piled up on
the dresser, and before one can hardly realize what is taking place the
kitchen has been shouldered, and he has disappeared at a jog-trot amid a
stream of people that have engulfed him and his belongings.
Whilst we are wondering what it is that has caused this sudden panic and
collapse in a business that was so prosperous, we hear the clang of the
slow and measured beatings of gongs. Higher, too, than the voices around
us there comes trailing on the air, as though unwilling to leave the
locality from which it started, the sound of the word I-O in a crescendo
note, but which finally dies away in a slowly decreasing volume till it
finally vanishes in silence. There is now an agitated movement amongst the
crowds in the street before us. Some seem full of hesitation, as though
undecided what to do; others assume a perplexed air and look about for
some opening into which they may escape. A sedan chair, that comes
lumbering up with the shouts that the bearers usually indulge in to get
the people to make way for them, comes up, but no sooner is the sound of
I-O heard than the men hastily retrace their steps and disappear in the
opposite direction from which they were coming.
The beating of the gongs, and the prolonged wailing sound I-O, in the
meanwhile advance rapidly in our direction, when all at once, all
indecision on the part of the passers-by vanishes, and every man flattens
himself up against the outstanding shop counters, drops his queue that has
been twisted round his head, lets fall his hands by his side and assumes a
look of humility and respect. The centre of the street is in a moment
deserted, and there bursts into view a mandarin with his retinue.
The first members of it who come swaggering down the empty lane are the
men that fill the air with the sound of I-O, in order to warn the crowds
ahead of the coming of the great man. They are a most villainous-looking
set of men, and seem as though they might have been picked up out of the
slums and gutters for the special duty of to-day. At first sight one is
inclined to burst into a loud fit of laughter, for to a Westerner they
have a most comical and ludicrous appearance. Each one has a tall hat on
his head, shaped very much like a fool's cap, but set on awry to meet the
contingencies of their tails that are twisted round their heads. This
makes them look like clowns that have come on to the street from some
neighbouring circus to amuse the populace. A closer look at them, however,
soon dispels that idea, for in their hands they carry long rattans, which
they wield menacingly as though waiting for a chance to let them fall
heavily on the shoulders of some unwary one who is transgressing the rules
of the road and thus showing disrespect to his Excellency. They have a
truculent look as they furtively glance over the silent walls of human
beings that line the roadway, and a discontented, sullen frown overcasts
their faces as they find no chance to use their despotic power on the
person of any unfortunate one.
Immediately behind them comes another set of men, quite as evil-looking,
with chains in their hands. These have a proud and haughty mien, as though
the supreme authority of the town rested in their hands. Should any one be
unwise enough to dispute that for a moment, he would find himself
instantly bound and shackled, and bundled off to prison, where ample time
would be given him to review his temerity.
Coming closely behind these scamps, the luxurious chair of the mandarin,
carried by eight bearers, fills the vacant space in the street. He is the
mayor of the town, and for all practical purposes the supreme power in it.
He is an ideal-looking official, for he is large and massive in
appearance, whilst he has that stern and uncompromising look that is
supposed to be necessary in any magistrate who would hope to keep his
subjects in order. He has a stern and forbidding aspect, as though he were
on his way to the execution ground to have some criminal decapitated. This
is the kind of air that the mandarins put on when they appear in public.
In the course of many years' experience, I have never once seen any one of
them, from the highest to the lowest, with a smile on his face or a look
of sympathy for the people whilst he was being carried officially through
the streets. In a few seconds the procession has passed by, and the human
stream again flows along its ancient channel, and the life of the street
is once more resumed.
We saunter along again closer to humanity than the most crowded city in
the West, except on some great festival, could let one have. The sensation
is not in every respect a pleasant one. The ancient odours of China assert
themselves and will be felt, whilst the aroma of unwashed garments and
persons that never used a bath, gives a delicate taint to the air that is
purely Oriental.
But whilst moving slowly on and carefully guarding lest our feet should
trip against the uneven slabs of stone with which the road is so badly
paved, a strange procession of men catches our eye and at once arrests our
footsteps. We count them one by one, and there are just ten of them, as
gruesome and unsavoury a collection of human beings as could be made were
the whole city to be ransacked to find their equal.
They are beggarmen, and are taking advantage of the privilege allowed them
by a custom that goes back into the remote past, of soliciting alms from
the shopkeepers on the days of the new and full moon. They are
perambulating the streets and visiting every shop that lies in their way,
and almost demanding from each their accustomed toll of one cash each. A
cash, I may remind the reader, is the one-thousandth part of two
shillings.
They walk in a string, each man behind the other. The leading one in this
particular set is an old man, with wrinkled face and hair turned to grey.
His clothes are in rags and tatters, and so dirty that one would not care
to touch them even with a long pole. He is a thorough gipsy in look, and
there is a vigour about his sharp-set features and a flash in his
coal-black eyes that show him to be a person of considerable independence
of thought.
Close behind him is another with his hand resting on his shoulder, and
depending upon him to guide him through the streets. He is quite blind,
and it is most pathetic to see how he raises his head up towards the sky,
as though the sun in some mysterious way could impart light to the deep
sockets where his eyeballs ought to be. Following close on his heels is a
jolly musical beggar, whose soul, amidst all his dirt and squalor, is
touched with the spirit of music. He has an old banjo, with two strings,
that he uses in his profession, and as he moves along his fingers strike
the chords, and the first notes of a Chinese ballad sound out with a lilt
that for a moment seems to relieve the tragic look that this weird
procession has.
Behind this Orpheus of the band come several ragamuffin degraded specimens
of the begging fraternity, the last of whom holds a bamboo stick, which a
blind man, who brings up the rear, holds in his left hand to act for him
in the place of eyes. As each one comes to the shop door the owner stands
ready with a cash for each one, which he hastily puts into his hand and
motions him on.
There is no attempt to evade this poor-rate which custom has decided shall
be paid. Were any man so mad as to defy the unsavoury crowd, he would soon
be brought to his senses in a way that he would not forget for many a long
day. They would stand around his counter till the cash was paid, and they
would in turns appeal to his pity, and then call down the imprecations of
Heaven upon his head because of the hardness of his heart.
No one in the meantime would dare to come near his shop. His customers
would be so terrified by the dirt and smells of the diseased and unwashed
crowd that they would take their custom for the time being elsewhere, and
when, finally worn out by the noise and disorder at his door, he gave the
cash, he would find perhaps that some of his wares had been so damaged by
the mere presence of these filthy beggars, that he had lost far more than
he would have gained if he had come out victorious in his contest with
them.
It is only on two days in the month that the beggars are allowed the
privilege of collecting their tax from the shopkeepers, for these latter
have originally compounded with their king for a regular payment, which
prevents them from being annoyed with their visits at any other time. As
soon as the amount has been settled a printed form, with the picture of a
gourd on it, is pasted over the door, and no beggar will dare to approach
it for the purpose of asking alms. There are many specimens of humanity in
China that, through destitution and in the bare struggle for existence,
have to go through want and hunger and intense suffering both of mind and
body, but for real degradation and acute acquaintance with the pains and
penalties of poverty there is no one to be compared with the beggarman in
this land. The beggar in the West is a royal personage when compared with
him, clothed in purple and fine linen, and living sumptuously. He is often
able to lay by money, and cases have been not infrequent that when he has
died sovereigns and bank-notes have been found stitched in various parts
of his garments.
Such an experience in China is absolutely unknown. A beggar here is really
poor, and always close up to the border line across which is starvation.
Besides, he is nearly always diseased. A beggar, except he is a wandering
minstrel, would fail to charm the solitary cash that is usually thrown at
him, unless he had some glaring disease that would excite pity. The
stock-in-trade of the begging fraternity is some hideous sore, or twisted
legs or sightless eyes, or some abnormal deformity that disqualifies the
person from gaining a living by manual labour. And then, too, the hovel
into which he crawls when night drives him from the streets is something
unspeakable for its wretchedness and discomfort. The beggars' camp is
filthy, and so unsavoury that it may never be pitched within the precincts
of the city, but is always erected in some open space outside its walls,
where its smells and abominations may not contaminate the rest of society.
As we wander aimlessly along, only anxious to witness the sights that an
Oriental town gives in such striking contrast to the cities of the West,
we come upon a street where there is an unusual bustle, and a sound of
many voices and loud tones, as though men were quarrelling. One accustomed
to Chinese life would never make the mistake of imagining from these signs
that there was any trouble going on. They are simply evidences of
increased activity. The Chinese are fond of noise and high-toned speaking,
and clash of voice, and bawling to each other. They have absolutely never
properly learned the art of whispering. Two men are carrying a heavy
burden on a common bamboo pole through the streets, and they shout in a
rhythmical strain that can be heard a hundred yards in the distance. A
play is being performed, and from the very beginning to the end, the drum
keeps beating and the cymbals clash, and drown the actors' voices at those
points where it would be supposed the greatest silence would be required.
And so in many other things, it would seem as though noise were an
essential for the performance of any effective work in China.
The sounds we hear are evidences that we have come upon one of the busiest
streets in the town. It is the fish market for the whole city, and as we
move slowly along it we begin to understand how it is that such loud tones
caught our ear a minute or two ago. Here are great brawny fellows with
sleeves tucked up, and the sea breezes, as it would seem, blowing on their
faces. In loud voices, as though they were trying to outbellow the roar of
the storm where the fishes were caught, they cry up the superior quality
of the catch they are displaying for sale. Others are chaffering with
their customers, for no true Chinaman ever gives the price that is first
asked of him, and with jest and banter he gradually comes down to the sum
which he finally means to take.
The very best fish in the whole town are to be found in this street, for
the moment that the fishing boats come in from sea, the very choicest of
their catch is hurried off by men who are interested in the trade and
brought to the dealers here. It is interesting to stroll along and watch
the ingenious way in which the fish is presented in the most attractive
way to the various kinds of purchasers.
Here is a heap of the less expensive kind such as the poorer classes can
afford to buy. They look like magnified sprats, and a man stands by and
continues to sprinkle them with salt water, and he does this in such a
deft way that they present a sparkling appearance as though they had just
been brought out of the sea and were fresh and full of life. Close by are
some splendid mackerel that were caught this morning, and they lie with a
stiff and dignified air, as though they resented being laid out here to
the public gaze. Some of them have already been cut into slices and
customers are trying to beat down the dealer to a more reasonable price.
It is noticeable that the most of those who are bargaining for the fish
have brought their own steelyards to weigh their purchases, as they
evidently have no faith in the honesty of the one belonging to the shop.
Further on we notice a young shark, that seems very much out of place, and
altogether plays a mean and inglorious part for an animal that takes so
conspicuous a place amongst the dwellers in the sea. Close beside it is a
native fish that evidently has been too long out of the water to add to
its market value, and so it has to be doctored to induce customers to look
upon it with favour. To carry out this idea, it has been cut in two, and
the ends have been ingeniously smeared with pig's blood to make it appear
to the uninitiated that it has only just ceased to live, and the red
streaks show where its own life-blood has just ceased to ebb out. Yet this
simple and childlike deception is plain to every one that comes to buy,
and no one is taken in by it. It is one of the devices of the trade, that
some clever scamp invented in the past when the forefathers of the race
were more ingenuous and more easily taken in than men are to-day, and so
the trick is kept up, in order that the inventor of it, wherever he may be
to-day, may not "lose face" in the eyes of his descendants.
After we emerge from this busy and unsavoury market, where the odour of
decaying fish mingles with the national and purely Chinese exhalations of
the drains, which here are peculiarly foul, we turn into a narrow street,
where the passengers are few, and the shops have a dull, semi-respectable
look about them. They have no counters outside of them, and so the whole
street, which is about five feet in width, is entirely available for foot
passengers. We discover to our astonishment that every shop in it sells
shoes. It is in fact the great centre of the shoe trade for the town, and
also for the country districts for many miles outside of it.
At first sight it would seem that this placing of a considerable number of
shoe shops side by side would interfere with the trade of each, but the
Chinese think differently, and the result has proved that they are right.
Instead of diminishing the business of each it has had actually the very
opposite effect. When people want shoes, they have not to wander all over
the city in search of a shoemaker. They make their way to this particular
street, the first shop that takes their fancy they step into, and they are
soon served with what they require.
This plan is especially serviceable to the countryman, who looks upon the
town very much as a country bumpkin does at home, when he leaves his
fields and green lanes for the busy streets of a great city. He wants a
pair of shoes, say, for his wedding day, and the village shoemaker has not
sufficient style to suit him for such a great occasion. He must go away to
the great city where the latest fashions in shoes are to be found, and
where he can purchase a pair that will be the envy of every young man who
shall attend the joyful ceremony. But how amid the maze of narrow streets
shall he find a shop where he shall be able to make his selection? He
would be lost in the windings and intricacies of the labyrinths along
which the streams of human life pour incessantly the livelong day, and
in inquiring for such he might be recognized as a greenhorn by some
sharper, who would soon relieve him of his spare cash. The fact that the
shoe shops are all in one street renders it easy for him to inquire his
way there, where without delay he will be served with the very article he
requires.
[Illustration: A STREET SCENE.
_To face p. 194._]
In our stroll through the city, there is one feature about it that has
been most noticeable, and that is its freedom from rows and disorders. It
contains fully two hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, and yet there
is not a single policeman patrolling any of its streets during either the
day or the night. No doubt this is due in a large measure to the
law-abiding character of the Chinese. They are essentially peacemakers,
for not only do they avoid breaking the peace themselves, but they also
exert themselves most vigorously to put an end to any row that may be
started amongst others. The result is the disgraceful scenes that often
disfigure the streets of the West are of very rare occurrence in any of
the cities of this great Empire.
There is no doubt but that one potent reason for this is the absence of
the public-house. Fortunately that is an unknown institution in this land,
and consequently the mad excesses and wild disorders and terrible rows
both in private and on the public streets that are the result of the use
of alcohol are never seen anywhere throughout the country.
Whilst we have been sauntering around, we have noticed one particular kind
of building that differs from all the others about it. It is not a private
dwelling-house, and yet it has none of the signs that it is a shop, where
goods of some special description may be purchased. Its front is not open
like those next door to it so that the public can see what is going on
inside. Its aim, indeed, seems to be to conceal from the passers-by the
movements of the people within, whilst at the same time intimating that
any one that likes to enter may do so freely.
Every window is closed up so that one can get no glimpse of what is going
on behind them. The door, indeed, stands wide open, but hanging about two
feet in front of it is a bamboo screen that effectually guards the secrets
of the house. Any attempt to peer inside will be ineffectual, for the
utmost that can be seen beyond the sentinel screen is the posts of the
door that are but the outer works of the fortress beyond.
As we stand speculating why this house and others that we have seen of a
similar character during our stroll should be so different from the rest,
a man approaches in a furtive manner, with head cast down as though he
were ashamed, and glides in a ghost-like manner into the opening behind
the screen and vanishes into the dark interior. We caught but a glimpse of
him, but what we did see did not favourably impress us. His clothes were
greasy and dilapidated looking, and his face wore a leaden hue as though
his blood had been transmuted by some chemical process into a colour that
nature would never recognize as a product of her own. He was a man, we
should judge, that we should not care to have much to do with, for there
seemed to be a shadow on his life, and he was not anxious to get into the
sunshine where men could have a good look at him.
Hardly has he disappeared when a man still in the prime of life, with
slightly stooping shoulders and the same dull colour in his cheeks and on
his lips, advances quickly to the screen, dives behind it, and except for
a momentary shadow that falls upon the doorway, disappears at once from
sight.
We begin to speculate as to what kind of a place this is that pretends to
have a huge secret from the public, and what is the nature of the goods
that it supplies to men that have one characteristic at least that seems
common to them all. It cannot be a pawn shop, for the two men had no
parcels with them, and besides, the "Uncle" in China does this business
openly and hangs no screen in front of his door to conceal his operations
from the public. Whilst these thoughts run through our own mind, a young
fellow of about twenty hurries up with an impetuous rush as though he were
racing to catch a train, and after a quick glance up and down the street
plunges behind the screen and is gone.
Our curiosity is excited. This man differs from the two that preceded him
in that he has no leaden hue, but the evident desire to avoid being seen
going into the place is just as strong as it was in the case of the others
that came before him. We feel we must investigate, and so we cautiously
get within the screen and peer into a dimly-lighted room that lies right
in front of us. No sooner have we got to the doorway than a sickening,
oppressive odour at once reveals to us the secret of the place. It is an
opium den.
We advance into the room and the fumes are so dense that we feel inclined
to retreat, but we are inquisitive, and we should like to have a glimpse
at what at the present moment may be called the curse of China. We find
the owner seated in front of a little desk where he keeps the opium all
ready for the use of his customers. In the dimly-lighted room and in this
dull and drowsy atmosphere he seems just the man to preside over a place
where men lose their manhood, and where the ties of nature and of kindred
dissolve before the touch of an enchanter that no writer of fairy stories
has ever had the genius to imagine.
His face is thin and emaciated and his Mongolian high cheek-bones jut out
like rugged cliffs that have been beaten bare by the storms. A leaden hue
overspreads his parchment-like skin, and his eyes have lost their flash
and are so dull and listless-looking that they might have been made with
balls of opium fashioned by some cunning hand to imitate the creation of
nature. His fingers are long and attenuated and stained with the dye that
the opium has put into them, and they are deftly measuring out into tiny
little cups, in anticipation of coming customers, the various amounts that
he knows by experience each may need.
With a ghastly smile that would have suited a corpse he invited us to be
seated, for he knew at a glance that we were no opium smokers, but had
wandered in simply out of curiosity, and with no intention of smoking.
As we complied with his request we noticed that the three men who had
preceded us were already curled up, each one on his own particular bench,
busily manipulating the opium and with infinite pains thrusting it with a
knitting-like needle into the narrow opening in the bowl of his pipe. He
then held it close to the flame of a small lamp, and as it gradually
melted, he drew a long breath, and the essence of the opium travelled in a
cloud to his brain, while at the same moment he expelled the smoke from
his mouth.
"You do not seem to be particularly busy just now," we remarked, as we
noticed a considerable number of empty benches in the room, all set out
and ready for immediate use.
"No," he replied, "this is our slack time, as it is still early in the
afternoon. We shall have to wait till night falls before our regular
customers will begin to drop in, and then we shall be busy until the small
hours of the morning. You know," he continued, "that the ideal time for
the opium smoker is the night time, when the duties of the day are over,
and when, free from care or anxiety of any kind, he may dream and while
away the hours under the soothing influence of the pipe."
"How is it, then, that these three have come so much earlier in the day
than is the custom with opium smokers?" we ask him.
"Oh! these are exceptionally hard smokers," he replies, "and so they
cannot wait for the usual evening hours when the others assemble to allay
the craving that comes upon them. Look at that young fellow over there,
with what feverish eagerness he is filling his pipe and taking in long
draughts of the opium. When he came in just now he appeared to be wild
with pain and every bone throbbed with agony, and every joint seemed as if
it would dissolve amidst intolerable suffering.
"The man on the next bench to him is one of the heaviest smokers in the
town, and can take as much as would poison two or three beginners. He has
smoked over thirty years, and now he seems to have lost all will of his
own, and all ambition for anything, excepting the one passionate desire to
get the opium when the craving creeps into his bones. At one time he was
fairly well to do, but now he is a poor man. Everything he possessed was
gradually disposed of to get him his daily amount of opium. His business
of course was neglected and failed to support the family. By and by he had
to sell his little son to get money to satisfy his craving, and when that
was spent he disposed of his wife, and now the child is in one part of the
town and his mother in another; and a happy release it was for them both,"
he added with a grim smile, "for the man is hopeless and could never have
supported them.
"Opium," he continued as he fixed his lacklustre eyes upon me, "is an
imperious master and treats its subjects like slaves. It first of all
comes with gentle touch as though it were full of the tenderest love for
man. Then in a few weeks, when it has got its grip upon the man, it shows
itself to be the cruelest taskmaster that ever drove men to a lingering
death. It knows that no one in the world can allay the intolerable craving
that comes over a man's life but itself, and as though it were playing
with a man's soul, it demands that before relief is given the dose must be
increased. It has no pity or remorse. It will see the home wretched and
the girls sold into slavery, and the boys calling another man father, and
the wife in the home of a stranger, rather than remit a single pain or
give one hour's release from the agony with which the opium tortures both
body and soul.
"By the way," he added suddenly, as though the subject were too painful
for him and he had been rehearsing his own life's experience, "is it not
true that opium was brought to China by you English? How cruel of your
people," he said with a passionate flash in his eyes, "to bring such
wretchedness upon a nation that never did them any wrong!"
The subject had taken an unlooked-for turn, and in that dimly-lighted room
and with three men lying with ghastly upturned faces on the benches and
the man gazing with ghoul-like features upon us, we felt that the opium
question had entered upon a tragic phase that we were not prepared to
discuss. Bidding the man a hasty good-bye, we passed out of the reeky,
vile-smelling room past the screen, and into the open air, and though the
ancient aroma of China was in it, it seemed as though we had got into the
green fields and the fresh breezes were blowing over us, and we had
escaped from a prison where we should have been stifled with a poison that
would have killed us.
[Illustration: CARRYING A COFFIN.
_To face p. 201._]