of the First Division. A sum exactly sufficient had been allotted by
the Ping Pu (War Board). The first prince was too good a worshiper of
his ancestors to let such a sum of money pass through his hands without
giving the tablets their share, and he loved his women folk too much
not to give them a present, and then there was his own “cumshaw” or
commission, patriotism being a theory and “graft” a fact. The second
prince would be quite lacking in the Li code of manners if he failed
to copy the elder first prince, and so the money dwindled down the
line, until the Ordnance Department was supplying wooden shells to
field guns and wooden cannon to ramparts. The First Division personnel
was on the list all right, but there was no money to uniform or arm
them. By and by a beggar was found in tatters by the wall. An orderly
hurried up, shouted, “You’re the First Division, go and sew some of
your patches together, and defend Peking from the enemy; here’s your
ammunition.” He handed the beggar the last penny of the appropriation.
The beggar grasped the penny, ran off to the first cake stand, and
as he swallowed the rice, exclaimed: “Hunger is the enemy, and I’m
going to buy him off, for did not Confucius teach that diplomacy
always could defeat arms?” Such then was the famous equipping of the
First Division. A traveled Manchu who heard this said: “How about your
American Manchus? We read your newspapers. Why don’t you foreigners
make jokes about the Quay ring of Philadelphia, and the Tammany ring
of old New York, when you supplied your courts with everything but
justice, even to triplicate bills for undiscoverable fixtures, and
quadruplicate pay-rolls for undiscovered appointees? How about that
story of the lighting of the streets of your Darktown, each official
taking his perquisite, so that when the last penny reached the solitary
lamplighter, that worthy concluded that it was so near morning that he
would go in a saloon opposite the unlit lamp, and drink up the money,
letting nature furnish daylight to atone for the weaknesses of her
children of the West?”
Here is a story altered to suit any circuit in China. A stern mandarin
got the name of the “Old Devil”. One day, ahead of his escort, he
reached his inn, where quarters had been engaged for him. On attempting
to walk into the best room, the inn-keeper, who did not know him,
strenuously objected, explaining that the room was reserved for “the
Old Devil himself”, and woe betide them all if the engagement was not
respected. When his escort came up, the mandarin had the inn-keeper
flogged for daring to speak disrespectfully of a judge who was a
dignified “father and mother” of the people, and at the same time
handed the man a handful of coins as a reward for keeping faith with
the said mandarin.
The coolies take some of their metaphors from their dirty inns. When a
fellow acts impulsively they say: “A louse is loose in his thoughts” or
“a flea has found his brain.”
A conductor of a Chinese railway running out of Canton had his
difficulties both with the English language, and possibly with certain
English or American sailors on a holiday. He pasted up this notice in
his coach: “Small piecee bags onlee. Shaky head, shaky tongue, crazee
men, no can attain. Dirtee men must not smelee. Sick men more better
die, and go freight. Onlee Number One passenger can attain this car.”
Quick transportation is not appreciated in every guild in China. In
Ichang the “loata” (captain) of a Yangtze gorge junk objected to the
proposed railway to Wan Hsien. As an object lesson he was asked how
long it took him to take a cargo to Chungking, and he replied twenty
days. When he was told that a railway could deliver it in a day, he
asked with a grimace, half between a sneer and a smile: “What would my
men and I do with the other nineteen days?”
Yunnan, the capital of the great southwest province, was the first
city of China, under the progressive Viceroy Li Chin Hsi, to erect
a sanitary modern prison, with workshops, commissary, etc. Yunnan,
though an extremely rich province in minerals, is so mountainous that
the people, who live on agriculture, are reduced to great poverty, and
are in constant slavery to oppressive landlords who are really foray
chiefs. Now that the comparatively palatial prison has been erected,
there is a rush to commit life-sentence crimes, so that the boarders
may be sure of a fine bed, good food, medical care, personal security,
and interesting work in the various workshops for the rest of their
happy lives, as compared with the unbearable penury and danger of their
lives among the hills. The Miaos, Lolos, Shans, and Chinese of Yunnan
know a good thing when they see it, and penology is a fad which is
spreading like a fire among their mountain terraces at present.
Here is a story of merry days at Peking. The legation ladies had
informed the Manchu princess that she must be modern since the Dowager
Empress Tse Hsi had decreed it; that she must learn English, music and
dancing. As it was the trend of the hour, the suggestion was accepted.
The Manchu learned various things. It came to be her duty in time
to receive a delegation of earnest missionary ladies, to whom she
was ready to prove that she was modern, and had received the foreign
branding. “I know modern American hymn; national anthem of great
flowery flag country; hail to America. I will sing it and I will dance
it.” She danced it and she sang it, and here is what the horrified
missionary ladies heard Madame Manchu Innocence thrill: _Waltz Me
Around Again, Willie_.
“With butter at fifty cents a pound and eggs at fifty cents a dozen
in your honorable country, I should think you’d move the piano out,
and move the cow and hens into your best room so as to be sure of the
precious creatures,” said a Chinese economist, who was reading the last
American paper at the Hankau guild, and who was satisfied with three
cents a dozen for his eggs.
The tea-tasters employed are all foreigners, and it is essential that
the taster shall abstain from liquors and tobacco. When the first man
among them is seen at the bar in a foreign club at Canton or Hankau, it
is a surer sign than the calendar that July 1st is around again.
Mencius relates the story of a thief who, when apprehended, promised
that if he was not punished, he would gradually reduce his peculations
until he reached the stage of honesty; that it was cruelty to stop him
short; that as he had been used to the privilege so long, he did not
know any other way in which to gain his livelihood. If Grover Cleveland
were living he might say that this Chinese was the first attorney for
the tariff, and its progeny.
The humorous pirate, who infests Kwangtung province waters near
Hongkong, seldom kills his victims now, as he has as effective a way of
escape with the loot, while the helpless bark drifts at the mercy of
the waves to the wonder of the foreign navigator, who afar off spies
its strange actions because of the unmanned rudder. Lately at Mui Shah,
a swift snake boat pulled up in the darkness alongside a slow-sailing
junk, which was boarded. After robbing the crew, the pirates battened
them down beneath secured hatches, and made good their escape, smiling
at their aptitude in carpentry.
It is well known that Chinese doctors are only rewarded for cures
and for keeping their patients well. A physician was called in to
see a sick tax-collector (yamen runner). “You’ll have to call in
another doctor,” said the physician. “Am I so bad that you must have a
consultation?” inquired the alarmed patient. “No. You will remember,
however, if you have as good a memory as I, that last week you searched
high and low and taxed me the last cash on the limit of my property and
maximum income. I have too much conscience to kill you, but I’m honest
enough to say that I want as little as possible to do with curing you,
so good-by.”
There are more Chinese Macks and Mc’s in Canton and Hongkong than in
all Argyleshire, Scotland. I recall a particularly droll character,
Mak, who was our godown-man at West Point, Hongkong. Mak (we never
called him his personal name, which was Fun) was in full charge of
the warehouse, and came to the office twice a month with proper
accounts, which always checked up with the yearly inventory. When, by
appointment, I went down to supervise that inventory, all was as it
should be. Mak had a clean warehouse, in which neither rats nor coolies
were tenants, and his wharf was kept free of junks and sanpans. I
returned unexpectedly one day and found Mak collecting wharfage for
himself from junks which he had allowed to tie up at the wharf, and
rent from coolie families whom he had allowed to camp, with possibly
their plague Bacillariaceæ, between the aisles of gunny bales in the
godown. Longfellow speaks of “folding their tents like the Arabs and
silently stealing away,” but on this occasion, the retreat of the enemy
with their camp paraphernalia was accomplished with both confusion and
noise, because of the haste involved. “How is this, Mak?” I shouted
as a stern typan should. “Oh, cousins overnight, you sabee; plenty
bobbery, but Confucius says, shelter your kin,” Mak blandly replied.
I made him assure me that they were all sailing for parts known or
unknown on the morrow, but I knew that if I caught them there again,
they would be “other cousins” who had claimed hasty hospitality under
the same law and the same necessity. There was only one way to match
the blandness of Mak Fun, or any other godown-man, and that was to move
in myself. As Mak was in other respects a good godown-man, I was blind
in the port eye thereafter to this adaptation of the “cumshaw” by the
clan of Chinese Macks, though as I passed, to quote from the same verse
of Longfellow’s poem, “the night was filled with music” in Chinese
Mak’s direction.
The Chinese accept the saddest thing in the world in a droll cheerful
manner. A son, who had grown prosperous in Hongkong, sent his father,
who lived in the silk district outside of Canton, a splendid lacquered
coffin, which he was to keep before him in the best room for friends to
see. The son’s letter said: “Here is something gorgeous for The Event”
(that is, his father’s death).
The North China _Herald_ gives the following as a sample of a Chinese
boy’s request upon his employer for a recommendation, after he had been
discharged by the officious butler: “Before I have leaved here the
services, was troubled by here butler. He squeezes (steals), lies, and
makes private of anythings, and also he said wrong of my bad conducts
as a rascal. He discharged me for his brother in secret. After that you
lost things which are determined in my brain. Now I beg you to request
of Missy (the employer’s wife) which as possible as you can. But I am
unliking at there Master to do anythings, I am much obliged to come
to my new place under of your charges (recommendation) and beg you to
bless me as boy or coolie business for my content at all, or please
you to commence the any other places you know of. So I hope you to
grant me a good report, for I am beg it to you on knees. Shall be much
obediently and obliged. Address me to here as ‘No. 2 boy’. I remain,
Sir, That obedient coolie servant, etc.”
For centuries there has been an amusing burglary insurance system and
a droll code of courtesy between watchmen and robbers in China. If you
do not wish to run the risk of being robbed, you pay the Head Thief,
or Chief of the Robber Beggars, a fee, and he protects and insures you
from loss and annoyance. Your watchman pounds his drum to show you that
he is earning his salary, and at the same time to let the thief know
where the watchman is, so that he may operate in safety if the owner
has not taken out the usual insurance.
A coolie urged his cousin “for ten thousand reasons” not to go into the
foreigner’s church, where the powerful orator was “sending people who
stole to hell.” He was fully convinced that if no one spoke over him
the dreadful words of objurgation, he could steal and run no chance of
going to the inferior regions. _In ignorantia salus!_
On the subject of compressed feet, here is the Oriental side: “It’s
fear, not modesty, that denies you white men more than one wife,” said
the Chinese joker. “You equip your women with first-class feet, and
they are as strong and swift as your men. What would one lone man do in
a retreat before many claimants?”
There is a law prohibiting fortune-tellers soliciting on the streets.
The Hongkong _Telegraph_ writes that a fakir is standing at a hotel
door, desiring to peer into the future of the passers-by. The paper,
with its usual wit, suggests that an officer of the law should peer
into the fakir’s immediate future!
The same paper coins this aphorism: “We never know how many friends we
have till we don’t need them; or how few friends we have till we need
them.”
A motor truck was rushing by with a load of empty barrels. “Nothing can
stop them,” suggested the admiring Chan. “Nothing but corks,” replied
the punnist Choi.
The Oriental has seized on Billiken, with the exaggerated mosquito-bite
on his bald head, his elongated cranium, his wolf’s ears, comedian’s
smile like DeWolf Hopper’s or Coquelin’s, his elephant’s feet, Buddha’s
barrel-stomach, and monkey’s arms, as the god of western wealth, humor,
or what-not. The idiot idol, warming his enormous feet, is installed
before many a footlight of burning tapers and punk-sticks in the
shrines of eclecticism in both Taoist and Buddhist China.
To show that hygiene is not fully understood yet in China, which is
so anxious to learn, they tell this story. A European passenger in a
coast-wise steamship, who had to share his room with an Oriental who
had been modernized too quickly, found the latter using his tooth-brush
in the morning ablutions. “You blankety son of the sun, that’s MY
tooth-brush,” exclaimed the disgusted Occidental. “Me bow low for
pardons; me thought it was ship’s tooth-brush,” apologized the Oriental.
The witty Hongkong _Mail_ (was the veteran Murray Bain or the scholarly
Reed the author?) explained to the fellow into whose nog glass an
ancient egg was deposited by the Chinese boy that it wasn’t the fault
of the Cathayan hen, but the fault of the administrators of her estate.
A visitor chided a Hongkong volunteer with the sounds of revelry which
proceeded from one quarter of the camp, and a wit connected with the
local _Press_ shot out this repartee: “Oh, I know Ancient and Honorable
Military Companies where you come from, whose strategy is greatest on
the canteen, whose night attacks are mostly on the bottle, and whose
field-glass is a wine glass.”
The Happy Valley Cemetery trustees at Hongkong were arguing over the
prices of graves. One wit defended the resolution before the board by
saying: “A man only dies once in the East, and surely can afford the
luxury of a high-priced grave.”
The astrologer complained of thieves robbing his house. “You’re an
infallible astrologer, aren’t you?” inquired the judge. “Yes, indeed,”
replied the soothsayer. “Well, why didn’t you foretell the advent of
the thieves?” remarked the droll mandarin. Tableau!
Said the ignorant but successful man of enormous paunch to the caustic
wit: “I have no use for a man whose head is so big that he has to
scratch his hair away out here.” “Nor I,” said the wit, “for the
little-brained hog who has to button his vest away out here.”
The Chinese poor sleep in the open--the Great Unroofed--generally on
their backs against a pillar or wall, with their knees drawn up. A new
mission hospital gathered in the sick, the lame and the blind, who
were sweetly tucked in soft clean beds, under sheets, and commended to
their lullabies. In the morning the staff came upon an amusing sight.
Every patient had dropped out of bed, and was sleeping in the tried
and true, good old fashion against the bed post on the floor. All they
would say was: “Me no sabee new fashion.”
The patient missionary at last reminded John that it was all right to
eat rice “on him” and get hospital treatment, but that there was a
little card which he had signed promising to be a regular contributor
as well as a benefiting member of the organization. John wrote: “My
venerable Rev.: Blushed am I to have been reminded of my forget in
worshipping and offering. Here I enclose my apology and the sum you
like if I am right in making out your multiply. Your spoiled lamb.”
Many nations have been credited with this witty repartee, and the
Chinese are included in the list. The Hongkong merchant prince was
showing his mountain palace, his tennis courts, his stable, his
automobile, possibly his flying machine, his billiard table, his
bowling alley, etc., to the Solon from Canton. “You see that when we
British devote ourselves to pleasure, we do it regardless of expense.”
“Rather,” replied the Chinese, whose relaxation was of a gentler kind,
such as walking in gardens, and flying birds and kites, “I should say
you devote yourself to expense regardless of pleasure.”
Solomon came to humorous judgment when two women of First Kings brought
their case before him, and Lord Kitchener is credited with a grim humor
in dealing with the Arab sheiks who wanted to enlist in the war against
Italy. Here is Chinese humor of the same sort. All of the mandarin’s
staff at his new station thought they would embarrass him by applying
for promotions. Granted with gusto! Every one’s position was advanced
one grade, but the salaries were all reduced one grade at the same time
owing to retrenchments needed.
A freshman of Queen’s College, writing of the popularity of Sir Matthew
Nathan, the indefatigable British governor of Hongkong, who died
from exposure in the 1900 typhoon, said: “He is a very common man.”
He, however, meant common in the Scriptural sense that the heroic
governor’s fame was common to all.
Chinese women are short and soft as compared with the larger and
stronger foreign women seen in the treaty ports. A Chinese student
satirist, who had served as a house boy in San Francisco, thus
described in an essay his former American mistress and her daughters:
“The Americaness is open air breather, consequently her meat is
harder than Chinese (he meant her muscle). In a dangerous melancholy
acting, the young Americaness quickly traps her sorrow husband who
comes to pity, but soon runs to grieve in divorce when loving voice
of Americaness recovers from coyness. Bud of romance early frosted
makes scandal column of paper, which is best advertising much sought
and read like dog in manger by all actress without job. Cold ethics of
Chinese woman in comparison sprouts not too quick ruin, consequently
wears better. Americaness system much exciting is open-air theater for
all to laugh and read as run. Americaness never reaches next birthday,
consequently always fresh and sweet like comquat in syrup; but American
poet says: ‘Beware, some sweets do cloy, but food is good each day.’ I
think then China wife is like food, if plain, always satisfying, and
fills the bill, as American Zoo keepers say. American man and Chinese
man believe womans should go slow; consequently Americaness wear
hobble skirt like lasso on ankle, and Chinese woman bind foot. Both
mens take no chances, and exchange mutual wink. However, Chinese woman
and Americaness woman, is both queenesses of talk--when once begun then
heroes run. Talk then is kingdom of womens called Suffragetia, where
mans sees finish and casts his weapons in humble dust.”
Describing life among his friends, the bell-boys at the Shanghai hotels
who have frequently to answer calls for a B. & S. after a bath, another
wit said: “The guests are ringing (wringing) wet in two spellings.”
Was this Oriental a flatterer of womankind, or a droll cynic regarding
mankind? The wife of the missionary asked the native pupil to translate
our maxim: “Out of sight, out of mind,” and he rendered it into these
characters: “Your husband is insane when he is away from you.” Another
boy wrote it: “The angels are crazy.”
At the Chinese Club a scholarly Chinese traveler warned me to follow
the Royal Hongkong Golf Club’s motto, “Festina lente” (make haste
slowly), in dwelling upon the wonderful traits of the Chinese, and he
related the following humorous story: “In your country an enthusiastic
missionary, daringly stimulated by the applause of his audience, put
wonder upon wonder, Pelion on Ossa piled, in describing the vicarious
virtues of the Chinese, by saying: ‘Yes, dear children, lives are cheap
in China. I knew a man there who made his living by selling himself to
the executioners to take the place of those condemned to death.’”
Here is a tale of facetiousness and evasion. A wag, whose appearance
was against him, called at a prison, and held this dialogue with the
clerk: “Is the mandarin in?” “No.” “Is the deputy in?” “No.” “Is the
jailer in?” “No.” “Is the bamboo-wielder in?” “No.” “Oh, say, are the
prisoners in, Mr. No-No-No?”
One of the modernized officials labeled his friend’s book of personal
press flatteries, “The Pursuit of Egotism.”
The well-known Bankers’ Association of Tokio is called the “Eel
Society”. I asked my Chinese friend for his interpretation of this, and
he explained: “Because they are as slippery in the grasp of their Diet
as is your Money Trust in the hands of Congress.” He further told me
that they call the administration papers which say that “everything is
lovely and the goose hangs high”, “official frogs”, because they only
know one note, and one sets the others going on the same old thing.
Two wags met on the street of the Shansi Bankers’ Guild, Peking. One
wore a sour and the other a comical expression. The cynic clenched
his fist at the teak-barred windows of one bank, and with a wry face
exclaimed, “I don’t know how he’s giving it away, but I do know how he
got it.” The other, holding out the hush-money of a silver sycee bar,
and pointing to a banker’s residence across the road, answered: “I
don’t know how he got it, but I happen to know how he’s giving it away.”
A popular Chinese restaurant bears the legend of “The Quiet Woman”, and
the caricature shows a standing woman, whose decapitated head lies at
her feet, and wears at last, before her triumphant husband, a defeated
expression. The double humor is that henpecked men may safely come to
this restaurant, and enjoy that quiet and retirement which home does
not afford.
The humorist tells of a stutterer who held up an old friend, and
clinging to his pajama-frog (for pajamas are outside and not inside
clothes in old-style China), said: “If-f-f-f-f y-y-you h-have an hour
I’d l-l-like to h-have a m-m-minute’s c-conversation with you.”
Athletics of all sorts, except Rugby football, are popular at China’s
best technical school, Pei Yang University at Tientsin. English is used
for all lectures except, of course, Chinese classics. The subject of
establishing a debating class or a Rugby football team came up, and a
professor who defended the former said that “he preferred a man who
could stand on his feet and make his head work to one who could stand
on his head and make his feet work”.
A rich brute went to meet his victim whom he had impoverished. He
jeered, so as to break his spirit as he had done to his estate: “My!
what a come down; what poor clothes.” Quick as a flash from the
never-say-die man came the repartee: “Yes, I expected to meet you, but
you should see me on ordinary days.”
The practical joker has visited romantic Macao. They tell this story
of the Portuguese Sé Mission Cathedral. The Macao women are short, and
the fonts of holy water are placed too high on the wall for them to
look into. The devil was put into the sacred waters by the bad boy, the
devil this time being crabs, which unseen, nipped the fingers of the
superstitious women as they searched high up for the soothing blessing.