[Illustration]
The marriages are arranged in a somewhat similar manner to that of the
Irish peasants. The negotiations are usually begun by a go-between
instructed by the young man's family, the etiquette of the entire
proceeding being rigidly adhered to. There is one insurmountable
objection to unrestricted choice--the bridegroom and bride must not
bear the same name, except in the province of Honan, where the
prohibition is disregarded. The extent of this restriction will be
realized when we remember that among the four hundred millions of
Chinese there are not much over a hundred family names. There may be
four millions of Wongs, but no man of that name may marry any one of
the four millions. As marriage is the principal event of a Chinese
woman's life, she has crowded into it as much gorgeous ceremonial as
the circumstances of her parents will allow. The day before she
leaves her ancestral home her trousseau and presents are forwarded to
her new home. At the wedding of a daughter of a wealthy gentleman in
Canton a few years ago, seven hundred coolies were engaged in
transporting in procession all these belongings, some of the presents
being of great beauty and value. The next day the bridegroom arrived
with his procession of two hundred men--some on horseback, some armed
and in military array--trays of sweetmeats, and numbers of children
representing good fairies. The inevitable red lanterns, with a band,
led the procession, which was brought up by a dragon thirty feet long,
the legs being supplied by boys, who carried their portion on sticks,
and jumping up and down gave life and motion to the monster.
The bridal chair in which the bride was carried was elaborately carved
and decorated. Its colour was red, picked out with blue feathers of
the kingfisher carefully gummed on, which has the effect of enamel. On
arrival at her new home, the bride was met with the usual ceremonies,
and was carried over the threshold on which was a fire lighted in a
pan, lest she should by any chance be accompanied by evil influences.
This carrying of the bride over the threshold is sometimes practised
in the Highlands of Scotland, the ceremony having been observed when
Her Royal Highness Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, first entered
Inveraray Castle as a bride.
The day after the wedding it is the custom for the bride to cook her
husband's rice, the fire being made from wood, which forms part of her
trousseau, as she is supposed to bring everything necessary for the
purpose to her new home. At a wedding at Macao not long ago, on
proceeding to perform the usual ceremony, it was found to the
consternation of the bride that no firewood had been sent. Her
mother-in-law good-naturedly offered to give her the wood, but this
the proud bride would by no means permit. Calling her amah, she
directed her to fetch two rolls of silk, each worth about forty
dollars, and with them she cooked the rice. When next her father came
to see her she told him of the occurrence. He said, "You did right, my
daughter; you have saved your father's face"; and on his return he
promptly dispatched a hundred coolies laden with firewood, which was
more than the bridegroom's house could hold.
[Illustration: A STUDENT.]
The ceremony of the "teasing of the bride" is sometimes trying for
her, but in good families propriety is rarely outraged. Here is an
account of such a ceremony which took place in the house of one of our
friends the day after her marriage. The ladies' dinner was over when
we arrived; the gentlemen had not yet come up from their dinner at
the restaurant. This evening the bride had gone round the tables
pouring out samshu, a ceremony that her mother-in-law had performed on
the previous evening. The bride came into the room wearing a gorgeous
and elaborate costume of red, the long ribbon-like arrangements over
her skirt, huge open-work collar of red and gold, and the bridal crown
on her head. The veil of pearls was looped back from her face, and she
looked arch and smiling. It was quite a relief to see her after the
shrinking, downcast girl of the previous evening. When the gentlemen
came the "teasing" of the bride began. She was given various puzzles
to solve, two or three of which she undid very deftly. An intricate
Japanese puzzle was produced, but the mother-in-law would not allow it
to be given to the bride to solve, as she said it was too difficult.
The bridegroom came in, and the gentlemen present demanded that he and
the bride should walk round the room together, which they did, and
were then made to repeat the peregrination. There was a demand that
the pearl veil, which had been let down, should be hooked back that
all present might see her face. This was done. Then a sort of poetic
category was put to her, a gentleman of the family standing near to
judge if she answered correctly. The bride was told to ask her husband
to take her hand; to ask him what he had gained in marrying her, and
so on. The bride had to go round the room saluting and offering tea
to the various gentlemen. To one or two relatives she kotowed, and one
or two kotowed to her. This, of course, was a question of seniority.
Some of the questions and remarks made on the bride must have been
trying and unpleasant to any young lady, but being in Chinese they
were incomprehensible to us. The idea of the custom is to test the
temper, character, and cleverness of the bride.
[Illustration]
In the case of people of the lower orders, the ceremony must be more
than unpleasant, as there is sometimes rough horseplay, the
unfortunate bride being insulted, and now and again pinched severely.
But she must show no display of temper or resentment at the rough
process, as it would be taken as an indication that she did not
possess the qualification of non-resisting submission to her husband.
Each family possesses an ancestral "hall," where are kept the tablets
of every defunct member of the family, before which incense sticks are
burnt daily, and where once or twice a year all the members of the
family within reach attend to lay offerings before the tablets in a
spirit of reverence. Should a man disgrace his family he is often
repudiated as a member, and at his death no tablet will be placed for
him in the ancestral hall. The consequence is that his descendants
cannot present themselves for the competitive examinations upon which
all official position depends.
The family lands are apportioned annually, and from one particular
portion the contribution must be paid towards the expenses of the
local temple, including the theatrical performances that cost
considerable sums. This portion of the family land is cultivated by
each member of the family in turn. If the tenant be a Christian he
declines to pay the money for purposes to which he claims to have a
conscientious objection. Increased expense therefore falls upon the
other members of the family, who feel that the secession has placed an
additional burden upon them. The result is a feeling of antagonism to
Christianity; otherwise religious intolerance is not characteristic of
the Chinese.
The official hierarchy in China is peculiarly constituted. China is,
like all democracies, intensely autocratic, and, within certain
bounds, each official is a law unto himself. To become an official is
therefore the ambition of every clever boy. At the triennial
examinations held in the capitals of provinces, from 150,000 to
200,000 candidates present themselves, who have passed successfully
preliminary competitive examinations held annually at various places.
To compete in these examinations a certificate must be produced by the
candidate that he is a member of a known family. If unsuccessful, he
may go on competing at every triennial examination held during his
life. Here we see the importance of family tablets in the ancestral
hall. No barber, or actor, or member of the boat population may
compete.
At Canton, and also at Nanking and other great cities, may be seen the
examination halls and the rows of cells in which the candidates--after
being rigidly searched to ensure that no scrap of paper or writing is
retained that could assist them in the tremendous pending effort of
memory--are strictly confined during the time that the examinations
last. In Canton there are over eleven thousand; in Nanking there are
many more. The lean-to cells are built in rows, and measure three feet
eight inches in width by five feet nine inches in length, being six
feet high in front and nine feet in the back. From this cell the
candidate may not stir, except as an acknowledgment of failure, and
many die during the trial. At Nanking during an examination an average
of twenty-five deaths occurred daily.
Those who win the prizes are at once appointed to office, and are
received at their homes with great honour. Of those who have passed
lower down, some are allocated to different provinces, where they
remain in waiting at the expense of the viceroy until some situation
becomes vacant. Once appointed they are eligible for promotion to the
position of prefect or taotai, or governor, or even viceroy. In all
these promotions money plays no inconsiderable part, and a wealthy man
may purchase mandarin's rank without the drudgery of examination, as
is not unknown in countries that boast of more advanced civilization.
In some cases, if a boy shows great intelligence and aptitude for
learning, a syndicate is formed by his family, and no expense is
spared upon his education. Should he be successful and attain a
position of importance, his family rise with him in wealth and
influence, and the syndicate turns out a productive speculation. The
whole system of examination is one of cramming, which, with
competitive examinations, was adopted by England from the Chinese.
[Illustration]
The Chinaman who has passed the examination and received what we
colloquially term his B.A. degree, even though he obtains no official
employment, holds himself above all manual labour, and however poor he
may be he belongs thereafter to the body of _literati_ known as the
gentry, who are consulted on all matters affecting the district in
which they reside. It is not easy to know how they live, but the
Chinese, like all Easterns, have a great respect for men of letters,
and have not yet become so civilized as to abandon higher ideals for
the degrading worship of wealth. There is probably found for such men
suitable employment in their localities that works into the social
economy. There are, of course, among them some lazy ones who, for want
of regular work, abandon themselves to the solace of opium-smoking;
but the class is a valuable leaven in the mass of the population.
The viceroy of a province is really semi-independent. His nominal
salary in a province of possibly sixty millions of inhabitants is
£1000 or £2000 a year, out of which he must supply an army, possibly a
navy, internal customs, and civil service.
The taxes are very much at his discretion, with the exception of the
settled duty paid by the cultivators on seed corn, that being the way
in which the land tax is levied. That paid, the small cultivator is
practically free from official interference, and such a man in China
if quiet and honest is as free as any man of his position elsewhere.
This method of levying a land tax is most ingenious, and has existed
from time immemorial. The land is taxed, not proportionate to its
area, but to its productive capacity. Of two plots of equal area one
may produce a return from two bushels, while the other being poorer
soil will require wider sowing and take but one bushel. All seed must
be procured through the official, who levies an equal rate upon it.
The same idea governs the computation of distance. A road to the top
of a hill may be counted and carriage paid for ten li, the return
down hill being measured as five or six, it being assumed that the
muscular exertion and time are in both cases being paid for at the
same rate.
There are, besides the seed tax, likin, or internal customs, levied on
transport of all commodities between districts, and various imposts
upon traders. When a man has amassed any wealth he is bled pretty
freely. Should a loan be requested it could only be refused at a risk
that he would not care to face, and any idea of its repayment is out
of the question. But should the demands exceed the bounds of custom
there is a check. The people of all classes know pretty well how far
the cord may be drawn before it breaks. Should the demands be
excessive the people put up their shutters, refusing to do any
business, and memorial the Throne. Should such a state of affairs
continue for any time even a viceroy would be recalled. Such a state
of affairs existed a few years ago in Canton over a proposal to
collect a new tax. The people resisted, and at length the viceroy
yielded.
The principles on which the viceroy acts are adopted in a lesser
degree by all officials, but the people seem to understand the custom
and accept it, and in the ordinary business of life justice is on the
whole administered satisfactorily.
[Illustration: SAMPANS.]
There are, of course, exceptions. In the province of Kwangtung the
house of a well-to-do man living in the country was attacked by a
numerous band of armed robbers. The owner stoutly defended his house
and having killed three of the assailants the robbers decamped. But
this was not the end of it, for the indignant robbers lodged a
complaint with the magistrate, who summoned the owner of the assailed
house to appear, which he did with fear and trembling. He was obliged
to pay a hundred and fifty dollars before he was admitted to the
presence of the magistrate, who, instead of commending him for his
bravery, scolded him roundly, and ordered him to pay the funeral
expenses of the three dead robbers. The system of payments to
everybody connected with the court, from the judge downwards, would
appear to be destructive of every principle of justice; but a highly
educated Chinese official, who held the degree of a Scotch university
and who had experience of the colony of Hong Kong, when speaking on
the subject, declared that he would rather have a case tried in a
Chinese court than in a British, for while he knew what he would pay
in the first, in the colonial court the lawyers would not let him off
while he had a dollar to spend.
When the territory of Kowloon was leased from China and added to the
colony of Hong Kong (after some armed resistance by the inhabitants,
who had been led to believe that with the change of the flag terrible
things would happen to them), local courts were established giving
summary jurisdiction to their head-men sitting with a British
magistrate, but a proviso was inserted that no lawyer or solicitor
should practise in these courts. The result was peaceful settlement of
disputes, generally by the arbitration of the British magistrate, at
the joint request of both parties to the dispute.
The punishments inflicted in Chinese courts are severe, and sometimes
very terrible. The ordinary punishment for minor offences is the
cangue and the bastinado. The cangue is a three-inch board about three
feet square, with a hole in the centre for the neck. When this is
padlocked on the neck of the culprit he is placed outside the door of
the court, with his offence written upon the cangue, or is sometimes
allowed to walk through the town. In this position he cannot feed
himself, as his hands cannot reach his head, nor can he lie down or
rest in comfort. Sometimes the hands are fastened to the cangue. The
punishment is more severe than that of our old parish stocks, but the
idea is the same. Were it in the power of a troublesome fly to
irritate a Chinaman, which it is not, he might suffer grave discomfort
if the insects were active.
[Illustration]
The bastinado is a different matter. This is administered by placing
the prisoner on his face, his feet being held by one man and his head
by another. The blows are inflicted with a large bamboo or with two
small ones. The large bamboo looks more formidable, but though the
strokes are heavy they break no bones, and do but little injury. The
small bamboos are used in a different manner. Taking one in each hand,
the operator sits down and strikes the culprit rapidly with alternate
strokes, apparently mere taps. These are hardly felt for the first
fifty or sixty taps, and the skin is not broken; but after this phase
the flesh below the skin becomes regularly broken up, and the agony is
very great. The recovery from this severe punishment is slow, as the
tissues are destroyed for the time being.
These are, however, the light punishments; torture for the purpose of
extracting evidence is still inflicted, and in pursuance of a custom
that down to a late period had acquired the force of a law, that no
person should be executed except he had confessed his crime, the
palpable difficulty of that apparently beneficent rule was surmounted
by the administration of torture, until the victim was reduced to such
a state of mutilation and despair that he was prepared to state
anything that would secure for him relief from his sufferings by a
speedy death. It must be acknowledged that the pressure of the torture
has now and again secured valuable evidence from unwilling witnesses
that may have been capable of independent proof, but as a rule such
evidence was utterly untrustworthy.
The following story was told to me by a Chinese gentleman who had
personal knowledge of some of the persons concerned.
A son and daughter of two wealthy families were married. At the
conclusion of the first evening's ceremonies the bride and bridegroom
retired to their apartments, which were separated from the main house.
Some time after they had retired, hearing a noise overhead, the
bridegroom got up and putting on his red bridal dress he lit a candle
and went up to the loft. Here he found a robber, who had entered
through a hole in the roof, and who, seeing himself detected, after a
short struggle plunged a knife into the bridegroom and killed him. He
then assumed the bridegroom's dress, and taking the candle in his hand
he boldly went down to the chamber where the bride awaited the return
of her husband. As Chinese brides do not see their husbands before
marriage, and as she was somewhat agitated, she did not perceive that
the robber was not her newly married spouse. He told her that he had
found that a robber had entered the house, but had made his escape on
his appearance. He then said that as there were robbers the bride had
better hand her jewels to him, and he would take them to his father's
apartments and place them in the safe. This she did, handing over
jewels to the value of several thousand taels. The robber walked out,
and he and the jewels disappeared.
[Illustration]
Early next morning the father of the bridegroom came to visit his son,
and on entering the apartment was told by the bride that she had not
seen her husband since he took the jewels to have them deposited in
safe keeping. The father on hearing the story went up to the loft,
where he found the dead body of his son. He searched about and in one
of the courtyards outside he found a strange shoe.
For the wedding a number of the friends of the family had assembled
who were, as usual, accommodated in the house. Among them was a young
man, a B.A., and most respectably connected. The father taking the
strange shoe went round all the guests, who had just arisen. On
comparing the shoe he found that it belonged to the young B.A., who
was wearing its fellow, the other shoe being that of his murdered son.
The father was a cautious man, so instead of taking immediate action
he returned to the young widow and questioned her closely. He asked if
she could identify the man whom she had mistaken for her husband. She
said that she could not. He begged her to think if there was any mark
by which identification was possible, and after thinking for a time
she answered "Yes," that she now remembered having remarked that he
had lost a thumb. The father returned to the guest chamber and asked
the B.A. for explanation of his wearing the son's shoe, for which he
accounted by the statement that having occasion to go out during the
night he had stumbled in crossing one of the courtyards and lost his
shoe in the dark, and groping about had found and put on what he
thought was his own. Upon examining his hands he was found to be minus
a thumb. The father having no further doubt caused him to be forthwith
arrested and taken before the prefect. The young man denied all
knowledge of the murder, saying that he had a wife and child, was well
off, and was a friend of the murdered bridegroom. He was put to the
torture and under its pressure he confessed that he was the murderer.
The body had been examined and the extent of the wound carefully
measured and noted. Asked to say how he had disposed of the knife with
which the murder had been committed, and what had become of the
jewels, he professed his inability to say, though tortured to the last
extremity. He was then beheaded. His uncle, however, and his widow
would not believe in his guilt, and they presented to all the superior
authorities in turn petitions against the action of the prefect, who
ought not to have ordered the execution until corroborative proof of
the confession had been secured by the production of the knife and
the jewels, but the officials refused to listen to them. At length
they appealed to the viceroy, who, seeing their persistence, concluded
that there must be something in a belief that braved the gravest
punishment by petitioning against a mandarin of prefect rank. He sent
for the father and widow of the murdered man, who repeated the story,
which seemed almost conclusive evidence of the young man's guilt. He
asked the widow if she remembered from which hand the thumb was
missing of the robber to whom she had given the jewels. She replied,
"Yes, perfectly. It was the right." He then sent for the petitioning
widow and asked her from which hand her husband had lost a thumb. She
answered, "The left." Then recalling the father of the murdered man he
bade him try to recollect if he had ever known any other man wanting a
thumb. He said that there was such a man, a servant of his whom two
years before he had dismissed for misconduct. Asked if he had noticed
the dismissed man during the time of the wedding the answer was that
he had, but he had not seen him since.
[Illustration]
The viceroy then had inquiry made, and the man was traced to another
province, where he was living in affluence, with a good shop, etc. He
was arrested, and under torture confessed the crime and told where he
had concealed the knife and disposed of the jewels. The knife had a
wide blade that coincided with the width of the wound, and a portion
of the jewels were recovered, some having been pawned, some sold. The
prefect was degraded and punished for culpable want of due care in
having executed the man without securing complete proof by the
production of the knife and the jewels.
The case is curious as showing the danger that lurks in all cases of
circumstantial evidence, and also, from a purely utilitarian point of
view, the failure and success of the system of torture. It will always
be to me a source of deep gratification that during my administration
of the government of Hong Kong, in the case of two murderers
surrendered from that colony and convicted after a fair trial and on
reliable evidence, I induced the then viceroy to break through the
immemorial custom, and have the criminals executed without the
previous application of torture, though they refused to confess to the
last. The precedent once made, this survival of barbarous times will
no longer operate in cases of culprits surrendered from under the
folds of the Union Jack, and awakening China may, I hope, in such
matters of criminal practice soon find herself in line with the other
civilized nations of the world, to the relief of cruel injustice and
much human suffering.
[Illustration: CHOPSTICKS.]