Feng Shuey literally translated means wind-water, and is a general
term denoting the superstitious feeling with regard to the
topographical surroundings of cities or houses, the good fortune or
luck of a district being in proportion to its propitious relations
to mountains, rivers, etc.
HING FAI was angry and annoyed. Many things had happened to produce this
condition of mind. To explain. Hing Fai lived in the province of Fo Kien
or the “Consummation of Happiness,” and was a merchant of considerable
respectability, his business being in hogs’ bristles and plaited rice
straw.
Intelligent reader, you perhaps think that neither of these articles
interest you, but you are wrong, they do; the insignificant tooth-brush
which you use on your honourable molars is made of finest hogs’ bristles
from China, and perchance the hat you wear during your summer holiday
saw its birth as rice in the province of Fo Kien.
All the hot morning that persistent beggar Wang had moaned and groaned
in the dusty road opposite the business-house of Hing Fai. For a long
time Wang had been an annoyance to all decent merchants and wealthy
persons, and to-day he had hit on an admirable plan for gathering
“cash.” Early he had stationed himself opposite the office of Hing Fai,
and had brought with him a large stone. The stone he had placed in the
dusty road, and with great persistence continued to beat his
inadequately shaved head on it. It was now well after noon. Wang’s
groans had disturbed Hing Fai for the last four hours, and the stone and
Wang’s head were both liberally spattered with blood. Wang continued to
groan and beat his head on the stone, and there was every reason to
suppose that if he continued this unpleasant occupation he would
eventually fracture his skull and die in front of the honourable door of
Hing Fai’s business-house.
A junk laden with bristles belonging to Hing Fai had sunk in the river
this morning, and recently a go-down belonging to him had been burnt
down with its contents of several tons of straw braid. These two
misfortunes meant the loss of hundreds of taels, and now added to all
these misfortunes were the groans and blood sprinklings of the
despicable Wang. Hing Fai was justly angered. He threw his rabbit-hair
pen across the room, closed his paper ledgers in anger, and strode to
the door and out into the dusty road, where he bestowed three kicks and
five cash on the despicable Wang, after which he was carried in his
chair by three sweating coolies to his residence on the outside of the
town.
The bestowal of the cash and the departure of Hing Fai had the effect of
causing the despised Wang to cease his melancholy self-torture. He
abandoned his stone, wiped the clotted blood from his head, and with the
five cash proceeded to a cheap eating-house to regale himself on rice.
Wang’s profession of beggar made him conversant with many of the affairs
of his townsmen, so he was acquainted with the recent losses sustained
by Hing Fai. Having eaten his fill of rice, he washed his head free of
blood in the neighbouring stream and betook himself to the pleasant
abode of Hing Fai, where he accosted the gate-keeper in suitable terms:
“Most honourable keeper of the gate, this degraded and unspeakably
insignificant person has matters of importance to reveal to the most
exalted and charitable Hing Fai.”
The gate-keeper replied that the air of the immediate neighbourhood was
already sufficiently tainted, but that the presence of the disgusting
Wang rendered it almost unbearable. Wang replied that he was well aware
that the unspeakable odours that emanated from his degraded self must
necessarily be unpleasant to such an exalted and gently born person as
the gate-keeper, but that should admission be refused him he would bring
ten thousand more worse smelling beggars to the gate, and that they
would remain there and clamour for admission for one hundred years.
After a protracted conversation carried on in similar polite terms the
truculent gate-keeper admitted the impecunious Wang to Hing Fai’s
compound. Wang advanced towards the house, walking at the side of the
path, and carefully avoiding any desecration of the honourable
brick-laid pathway by his own low-born feet.
Arriving at the door of the house he did not presume to call one of the
house-servants, but knelt on the pathway of narrow bricks and
rhythmically beat his head on them, from time to time uttering almost
inaudible groans. Two or three of Hing Fai’s servants idly observed
these actions, and as the blood began to stream from the wretched Wang’s
head one of the servants ventured to inform Hing Fai that there was a
miserable person without who evidently begged an audience. Hing Fai had
dined, he was now smoking a cigar and sipping sweet champagne, and felt
more at peace with the world, so he signified his willingness to have
speech with the beggar, for he argued that the man’s persistence in
attracting attention might mean that he had something of importance to
communicate. Wang’s obeisances having been deemed sufficiently servile,
the honourable Hing Fai commanded him to speak, at the same time hinting
that should the beggar’s communication be considered so unimportant as
to not warrant his thrusting his objectionable presence on the
honourable Hing Fai, one hundred blows on the bare feet would seem but a
mild reproof. Wang humbly kneeling with his forehead on the floor spoke
as follows:—
“It has come to the knowledge of this altogether insignificant person
that recently certain severe pecuniary losses have happened to the
honourable Hing Fai.” Any annoyance that Hing Fai may have felt at this
speech he carefully concealed, and the beggar continued: “Has it never
occurred to the far-seeing Hing Fai what may be the cause of this
growing ill-luck? Is there in Fo Kien a more charming and beautiful
residence than that the life-restoring air of which this entirely
despicable person at present dares to breathe? Let the honourable Hing
Fai look round, and his heaven-sent intellect will at once see wherein
lies the secret of his misfortunes.”
Hing Fai was now really angry. Fixing a stern gaze on the loathsome
Wang, he commanded him to speak more plainly, or—and Hing waved his arm
suggestively.
Then Wang rose to his feet, pointed through the open door across the
beautiful garden, and said—
“The foreign devil builds a high temple.”
Hing Fai remained for some minutes deep in thought and oblivious of the
beggar; then he ordered his servants to take the man away and feed him.
Wang’s appearance as he left the presence still bore the mark of abject
humility, but inwardly he exulted: he had sown the seeds of distrust,
which he hoped would eventually lead to the sacking of the Mission
Station and a fair share of loot to himself. Hing Fai sank into a deep
reverie after the departure of the beggar. He thought of the foreign
devils and of the religion they preached, of which he had taken the
trouble to make some inquiries. He knew that the foreign devils had a
house near his compound, and that the meanest and worst characters
occasionally attended their worship; but that these people could
possibly menace his prosperity came to him as an astounding idea, and
one scarcely to be credited.
Hing Fai and the Rev. Arthur Jones were both good men in their way—both
honest, and both hardworking; but one was a Christian Welsh missionary
and the other a Chinese Buddhist merchant. The Rev. Jones was small,
near-sighted, and very hardworking, and his wife resembled him in these
three particulars. For some two years they had conducted their mission
and school near the house of Hing Fai, and once the foreign devils had
become a familiar sight the heads of the wealthier Chinese concerned
themselves little with the doings of the missionaries.
The Rev. Jones was now about to accomplish one of his pet ambitions,
namely, to build a real church. So far, divine worship had been
conducted in the school-house attached to the mission, but the pastor’s
honest work had at last been recognised by the authorities at home, and
a small corrugated iron chapel had been sent him in sections. This
chapel was now in course of construction, and the devilish mind of Wang,
the beggar, had seized on its building as a chance to better himself;
and by him the first seeds of distrust had been sown in the mind of Hing
Fai. All day Hing Fai remained deep in thought, and even the
blandishments of the beautiful Mah Su, his wife, did little to rouse him
from his state of mental depression.
The next day, Hing Fai, when going to his business house in the town,
observed the grey iron building of the foreign devil. As the horrid Wang
had implied, the structure was growing to an inordinate height. It began
to rear a sharp-pointed tower above the house of Hing Fai—that is to
say, far higher than the roof of Hing Fai’s residence, and so lofty that
its pointed spire intervened between Hing Fai’s residence and the hills
at the back of the town.
Hing Fai certainly thought his good fortune was likely to be seriously
affected by this building; but being a just man, he was not anxious to
hastily jump at a conclusion and lay the blame of his recent losses on
the Mission Station. However, that veiled hint of the beggar’s still
stuck in his mind, and on reaching his office he found that one of his
most trusted clerks had absconded with some nine hundred taels. The
amount of money lost was not excessive, but still it had an effect on
Hing Fai, considering his losses of the previous day. Business was
carried on as usual for some days, and Hing Fai was still undecided as
to whether the foreign joss-house was working him evil or not. Still the
corrugated iron edifice grew under the Rev. Jones’ direction, and the
despicable Wang had for days lain hidden from view, advancing no further
theories. By everyone in the town it was understood that the
missionaries had come for their own good. No one was such a fool as to
think that these people worked for nothing; but as workers they were
entitled to whatever they earned—that was only justice. Now it occurred
to Hing Fai that possibly the foreigners were seeking to get influence
on their side; but how could it possibly benefit them to injure his
trade? Hing Fai possessed the ordinary amount of contempt for foreigners
that all Chinese have, but he decided to visit the Rev. Jones and in a
Chinese roundabout way try to find out if he really intended to do
injury to his business. It would never occur to a Chinaman to say, “Why
do you build so high a house? Do you intend by so doing to overwhelm my
house, and so cause my downfall?” No, a Chinaman would act differently.
Thus he called at the house of the Rev. Jones and the proper salutations
were gone through. Hing Fai kindly made inquiries as to the Rev. Jones’
reverend father, his grandfather, their health, their ages, the age of
the Rev. Jones, his health, his business, and the prospects of the rice
crops. The Rev. Jones had a good knowledge of the vernacular, but he was
completely mystified as to the reason for this visit. Hing Fai then
talked of towns, of dwellings and houses, and after much circumlocution
touched on the new building of the mission.
“Why do you build this tall grey metal building?” said Hing Fai, “and
for what purpose?”
“It is for a house of worship—in fact, a small temple,” replied the Rev.
Jones.
“And you are building a sharp-pointed tower?”
“Yes; it is a spire,” replied the missionary.
“Do you store valuables there, or is it a place of refuge?” inquired the
Chinaman.
“No,” replied the missionary, “we use it for no purpose.”
“But it costs money to build,” interjected Hing Fai.
“Yes, but then it points to heaven and leads men’s minds in that
direction.”
Hing Fai was astonished. Here, thought he, he had found a most complete
liar. A man who built a watch-tower (for some purpose unknown), spent
money on it, and then said it was simply to point to heaven. He could
hardly restrain himself, but to all appearances calm, he replied:
“Points to heaven! So does a man when he walks, so does a tree, so does
every blade of grass, so do the hills, and so does nearly everything on
earth except worms and snakes.” Hing Fai then left, more deeply
suspicious of the Christians than ever. So these two parted, and each
worked in his own way. Now a period of distress fell on the province of
Fo Kien; crops failed, continual drought prevented the young rice
growing, and then, when the rains did come, and the young rice was some
six inches in height, floods came and washed rice and fields and
everything away. Hing Fai’s business grew worse and worse; the Rev.
Jones’ spire continued to grow; and the hard times drove many a starving
coolie to embrace Christianity so as to procure some dole of rice for
himself and family. To Hing Fai it seemed that his own gradual ruin was
but keeping step with the growing popularity of the mission-house. With
the famine came the pestilence, and the district, in addition to being
impoverished, was attacked by cholera. The river was now filled with
blackened and swollen corpses. The people were too poor to buy coffins,
so the dead were wrapped in matting and thrown into the river; sometimes
three or four corpses were made up into a bundle, rolled in a mat, and
thrown into the stream at one time for the sake of economy. Rich as well
as poor were attacked, and the wife of Hing Fai succumbed to the
disease. Hing Fai’s sorrow was great: his business losses seemed as
nothing beside the loss of his beloved wife; and while in this state of
anger against fate came to him the evil Wang.
Hing Fai was willing to accept his fate as such, but Wang, the beggar,
for his own ends, wished to arouse Hing Fai’s anger against the
missionaries. The beggar approached in the most abjectly humble manner,
and having been bidden to speak, began thus: “Of the recent severe loss
of the honourable Hing Fai this contemptible person will not speak, but
what of the foreign devils who have built a tower to overlook this
graceful residence? Know! O honourable Hing Fai, their wicked actions
increase. They have begun to compass your ruin, and now they compass the
ruin of the whole neighbourhood. Both of them suffer from bad eyes and
find spectacles a necessity, and now, behold! they are buying our
children, and for what purpose? Why, to take their eyes out and heal
their own diseased vision by the application of certain medicines
cruelly concocted from the eyes of our own innocents.”
Hing Fai signified that he did not credit the suspicions of Wang, and
curtly dismissed him.
The truth was that the Rev. Jones in this season of famine found that
the poor starving mothers were willing to sell him their children to
save them from starvation. The missionary bought them, intending to
bring them up in the Christian faith. Unfortunately most of the children
when bought were moribund, and the Rev. Jones soon found that he was
continually employed as grave-digger for the purpose of disposing of the
pitiful corpses of his tiny converts.
Owing to the famine, Hing Fai’s business went from bad to worse, his
pecuniary losses were considerable, and he took to brooding over his
misfortunes, so that the evil words of Wang soon took such a hold of his
mind that he began to imagine that the Christians had bewitched him by
the erection of their spire. Soon his hatred grew and grew, he took
stimulants to assuage his troubles and promote sleep, but soon the idea
that the missionaries had exerted an evil influence on the whole of his
life became paramount in his mind. Suspicion now grew in the minds of
all the neighbours of the mission. The Rev. Jones’ compound had become
full of graves; he continued to purchase infants, and had found it
necessary to bury the baby corpses outside his grounds. The accursed
Wang took on himself one night to dig up one of the newly-buried babes.
The eyeballs had fallen in in the ordinary course of decomposition, and
this the beggar showed to all and pointed out as proof against the
foreign devils. It was obvious to all that the missionary and his wife
had bad eyes, as they wore spectacles, and here was an explanation of
their purchase of babies, to take their healthy eyes to make medicine to
cure their own diseased vision. The feeling became acute in the
district,—such inhuman monsters must perish. The poor people, being
already rendered desperate by hunger, were ready for any excess.
Moreover, Wang, in an impassioned speech, said that their misfortunes,
the famine even, were all produced by the workings of the foreign devils
and the evil influence of their tower. The people were frenzied, mad,
and made clamorous for blood by this speech.
“We will go to the honourable Hing Fai,” said Wang, “and get him to lead
us against our common enemy.”
The whole crowd, lusting and thirsting for blood, surged to the house of
Hing Fai, calling on him as their deliverer. Hing Fai was partly drunk,
and in a state of recklessness born of his misfortunes. The clamour of
the rabble had its effect, and, arming himself with a sword, he led the
rabble against the mission-house with shouts and the glare of many
torches. The gates of the mission compound were closed, as the noise of
the crowd had already penetrated the mission, and they feared the
intrusion of disorderly persons, imagining that some drunken carousals
had taken place in the neighbourhood. The gate was soon broken down by
Hing Fai’s orders, and someone slew the aged gate-keeper. The sight of
blood roused the lust of killing in the famished and misery-stricken
crowd; headed by Hing Fai they rushed through the compound, hacking and
maiming the terror-stricken Chinese servants, straight to the
missionaries’ house. The Rev. Jones stood in the lighted doorway, his
arms upheld as though commanding silence; but Hing Fai, blind with rage,
rushed forward and cut at his head with his sword. The missionary fell,
and was kicked and clubbed into a shapeless mass of flesh. Lamps were
overturned, doors dashed open, and upstairs was found Mrs. Jones praying
wildly and screaming with fear; twenty knives were plunged into her as
she knelt, and the now frenzied rabble hacked, smashed, and kicked
everything in the house, spreading a ghastly ruin over all. Then arose a
quick alarm of fire. An overturned lamp in the hall had set the wooden
house in a blaze; the stairs were already ignited, and the rush of the
rabble to descend caused them to fall. A frightful scene now ensued: the
house was well alight, the stairs were gone, and a leap from the upper
landing meant leaping into hell. Hither and thither the murderers
rushed, trying to find some means of escape. Wang, the beggar, had
already rushed down the stair before it was destroyed by the flames, but
Hing Fai remained above in an atmosphere already becoming intolerable;
he rushed to a window, cutting down two or three in the way with his
sword, and leapt out. Others remained and suffered an awful death in the
blazing house.
Hing Fai writhed and groaned in the lurid light of the burning mission,
and was soon found by the beggar Wang. He had broken a leg, and was
carried on the back of the evil-smelling Wang to his own residence. The
home authorities were justly indignant, and demanded full reparation
from the Chinese Government, and the Viceroy of the province was ordered
to investigate and punish the guilty parties.
The unfortunate Hing Fai with a broken leg was painfully dragged to the
execution ground and there decapitated. A brand new mission with a
particularly fine stone church and spire was built at the expense of the
already overtaxed and famine-stricken community, and there reside a
yellow-haired Scotch missionary named McTaggart with his wife.
They possess a zealous convert and most efficient colporteur named Ah
Wang. His well-shaved head is covered with scars, and the people say
that formerly he was a beggar, and used to secure the sympathies of the
benevolent by beating his head on a stone.
The pleasant residence of the late Hing Fai is now in ruins, it being
considered unfortunate to reside in any house overshadowed by the lofty
spire erected by the foreign devils.
------------------------------------------------------------------------