or godown, has presented many a difficulty, and the civilian is more
inconsiderately humorous than the missionary, especially when his help
changes often, as is the case in Hongkong. Numbers instead of names
are generally used. “Number Two piecee cook” is what you would say if
you desired the second cook called. “Number One piecee topside boy” is
what your wife would say if she desired the first up-stairs chamber
boy called. There are no chambermaids. Where a woman is employed, she
serves only as an amah; that is, mother-nurse, or mother-maid. In the
irreverent messes and barracks, some of the men name their servants
after some personal distinction or appearance, such as “The Tall One”;
“One Eye”; “Melica”, because he told you that he had once sailed on a
ship for America; “Jesus man”, because he told you he got converted at
a mission school and preferred the name; “Governor boy”, because he was
once a servant in the governor’s yamen. Sometimes the messes christen
their servants according to their favorite political leaders in America
or England: “Loosy Velly” is, of course, Roosevelt; “Blyan” is Bryan;
“Wheel Sun” is Wilson; “Salls Belly” is Salisbury; “Loy Jo” is Lloyd
George, and one boy rejoiced in the name of “Jimmy de Blaney” (Blaine).
Hundreds of these silent servants are moving about the dining-room
of the palatial Hongkong Club at tiffin (lunch) time, yet you will
not hear a footfall, as they wear felt-soled shoes. Perhaps they are
as silently giving you and me numbers, instead of names, in Chinese.
Indeed, I know they do, and would be ashamed to tell my tourist
friends that some of them are soon known as “Wigglety Walk”; “Always
Shout”; “Fool Laugh”; “Pig Eye”; “Wine Face”; “Wine Whiskers” (red
beard); “Buddha’s Belly” (stout); and when women attract them, “Tea
Flower” (pale one); “Buddha’s Mother” (a sweet matron); “Flowery Flag”
(American); “British Queen”; “Snow Flower” (Canadian), etc.
Kipling, Archibald Little, Price Collier and others have written
that some men sometimes drink hard east of Suez. The writer himself
in a former book related the bravery of a famous 11 A. M. Cocktail
Brotherhood in the blazing stifling Orient, and two world-known knights
of the pen took him to tournament to break a lance because of it.
One witty evening an old hand on the club veranda admitted the soft
impeachment, and gave himself and some others medals for the dangers he
had passed in these words of Cicero in the immortal “Murena” oration:
“If Asia does carry with it a suspicion of luxury, surely it is a
praise-worthy thing, not never to have seen Asia, but to have lived
temperately in Asia.” Ah! we who had weathered many a storm, sighed,
and in bravery ordered one more, drinking not to the habit, but to the
wit. As Archibald Little, veteran of the East, said, the tea-tasting
season was over, and a mile-stone should be set to mark it!
A droll Chinese boy brought his fast running watch to Gaupp’s jewelry
store on Queen’s Road, Hongkong. On being asked to explain as best he
could what seemed to be the trouble, the Celestial rolled up those
expressive eyes of his, which must move the gods, as they always do
men, to laughter: “Oh, he too muchee to-mollow (to-morrow); you jerk
back to to-day.”
“We have come here to stay,” boasted a corps of the enemy, which took
up an advanced position. “Yes, they stayed,” replied doughty General Li
Yuen after the battle, and his grim smile explained that they stayed as
dead bodies.
Yen Tsz, an eminent premier of the Tsi principality, and a contemporary
wit with Confucius, referring to the increase of crime which called for
the punishment of the amputation of feet, used this ironical phrase:
“False feet are cheaper than shoes these days in our market-place.”
The humor of war is grim. Shortly before Confucius’ day the prince of
Tsu State had overcome the army of Tsin State. The dead lay in heaps.
The Tsu prince was asked if he would not order a tablet raised over
the brave enemy. “Not much,” said he, “I will have a tablet to my own
ancestors raised over them, giving thanks that we do the crowing
instead of them this time.”
A fireman on the new Canton-Hankau railway made out his report of a
regrettable fatality in a collision as follows: “The engineer was died
without senses.”
A consolidation of three formerly independent samshu liquor dealers of
Canton advertised as follows: “This three rice bier dealers, before
separate, is now amalgamated for quite economic, and glad with much
public order for oblige soled more cheap to foreign friends.”
On a landing in a curio store, popular with foreigners, was the
following sign: “Peoples alighted here go down stairs if curious
wishing.”
A penitent convert wrote his mission school teacher as follows: “Many
thoughts of unpleasant come into my mind. Many tears drop my spiritual
soul not to speak of outside eyes. I break my beautiful promise. I
contemps the difficults but was mistake. I was failed that time to
finish the very good of God which begunned. Deep repents of my throat
is blocked thickly in bearing regrets for everlasting, but I standing
for your forgive and excuse of God like poor Peter in three times with
handkerchief on shame face and water eyes.”
Just as humorously confused is the attempt of nine-tenths of the
foreigners to make themselves understood in Chinese. Sometimes the
efforts of our missionaries and translators reach the old book-shops,
and are promptly thrown with a smile, which is more humorous than
cynical in these days of humor and enlightenment, into the compartment
entitled: “Second Hand Religion.”
I asked my Chinese friend why their ideograph for two friends was two
pearls, and he explained: “Because each is equally precious, without
the possibility or necessity of being exactly alike.” Let this answer
for a picture of America and China as the new days dawn on each side
of the Pacific. A Tientsin shop seems to have grasped satisfactorily
the situation, its sign reading: “All languages spoken: American
understood.”
The many thousand ideograms of the Chinese language are memorized, and
words are often tabulated for the pupil by rhyme. They have no alphabet
and therefore can never use a linotype or typewriter. The Chinese,
accordingly, have wonderful memories, but their memory-method sometimes
places them in humorous situations. English is now required in nearly
all the new Chinese schools, though the Chinese mandarin examiners
know little about the language as yet. A confident Chinese candidate
appeared before the board of a Kwangtung province school as an
applicant for the position of “Professor of English”. “How much English
do you know?” profoundly inquired the mandarin from behind his heavy,
tortoise-rimmed glasses. The amusing reply was: “Numbers, one to ten;
a hundred words beginning with ‘A’, and ten words rhyming with sing.”
The Chinese board accepted the Chinese teacher of English for want
of a better man. The new Chinese are eminently a business race, and
therefore, in their excellent business judgment, the day will come when
they will be compelled to throw away their ideographs so as to avail of
the business facilities of our alphabet-typewriter and linotype. The
present Chinese ideograph case in a printing office has thousands of
ideograph types, and it is a sadly humorous sight on a hot day in humid
South China to see a Chinese typesetter darting about the room like a
dragon-fly, trying to meet the editor’s demand for an “extra.”
The carriages of a funeral procession rolled along the maloo of
modernized Shanghai. The mourners in the first carriage played cards
and laughed. Every one else in the procession joked and smiled. I
asked my Chinese humorist to explain the astonishing incongruity and
he replied: “Why shouldn’t everybody be happy when everybody is deeply
satisfied? Hop Long’s enemies believe that he has descended below to
get at last the many punishments that are coming to him, and Hop Long’s
friends just as confidently believe that he has ascended on high to
receive his richly merited rewards; therefore, you see, all are joyful.”
The landlord made an agreement with the tenant that when the rice was
harvested, he should receive one-third. Harvest was long past in its
pale and sickle moon, and the landlord, receiving nothing, accosted
the tenant: “Look here, thou Choi, didn’t we make an agreement that I
should receive one-third of that rice?” Choi, nothing daunted, replied:
“Yes, Laoye, but there was no third; there were only two baskets of
rice and they are both mine.”
Two Chinese youths were discussing their ambitions. One said: “When I
grow up I want to belong to a theatrical company.” His brother replied:
“Humph, not I. I want the theatrical company to belong to me.”
The Chinese do not raise milch cows or goats. The following aged milk
joke accordingly has been trotted out before every mess table of Treaty
Port China, and been made to blush as a novice for the entertainment
of every griffin. It seems that the new China hands insisted on having
fresh milk in their tea. For the sake of peace the Number One boy at
last procured it. The new hands said: “Of course it’s not like the June
grass milk at home, but it will do in a pinch.” The Number One boy
smiled blandly. At last the milk ceased and the new hands demanded an
explanation, which the Number One boy gave as follows: “No molo milkee;
that piecee olo pig have now got litter of lil pigs; that piecee bucket
whitewash now makee finish.”
III
INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL CHINA.
The eastern states of America and Great Britain have a new slogan:
“Get ready for the Panama Canal.” The western states of America,
and indeed all America, should have another slogan: “Get ready for
the China trade.” It is not far off; it is already on the horizon,
“arising a little cloud out of the sea, like a man’s hand”. It may
come with a rush any year and thousands of companies will have their
headquarters at New York. There are many things to arrange, internally
and externally, in currency, in a tariff of twelve per cent. instead
of five per cent., in provincial, inter-provincial and international
politics, in loans and finances, in education, in nationalization
of trunk railways, in harbor, canal and river conservancy, in
reforestation, in patent, copyright and mining laws, in commercial
law, in army matters, in a revenue navy, in police, in municipal
organization, in hygiene, in paternalization as far as famine, flood
and seed grain are concerned, in collection of taxes, in civil service,
etc., but none of these difficulties is insuperable. Then comes the
great trade.
On my travels and life of three years in China, I have listened, and I
have glanced about for signs of the new times; and I shall relate just
a few of the indications of progress, indications as different from
the old manifestations as day is from night. Three years ago, yes, one
year ago, few thought that these things were possible. Twenty recent
books and five thousand newspaper articles prophesied that they were
not possible. Thirty recent authors and ten thousand newspaper writers
were Laodicean in attitude. Alas, ye Manchuized scribes! A few books, a
few articles, many missionaries, and the October, 1911, revolution said
they were possible, and the fall of Nanking proved it.
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Industrial China. The government, foreign and native capital are
vieing with one another in developing industries of all kinds.
Wages are rising, so that the West need not be alarmed.
]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Modern road (bund); electric light; telegraph; buildings; trees on
border; at Canton, South China.]
[Illustration:
Copyright, American Episcopal Church, Foreign Board, N. Y.
The grandest river gorges in the world, on the Yangtze. These
difficult rapids have separated Eastern and Western China, but
a railway is now under construction. A modern road skirts the
cliffs.
]
Agricultural machinery will before long be required on the great plains
of Pechili, Mongolia and the three Manchurian provinces, whence America
will draw much grain, meat, oil, lumber and coal. Nail, needle and
glass factories are going up on a small scale. China has the iron in
the mine, but she will need our machinery. Paper mills are largely
increasing, and we need their pulp. Some mills use bamboo, which the
Japanese successfully experimented on in Formosa. Factories for making
soap, the most glaringly deficient thing in dirty China hitherto, have
been erected, even in far western Chingtu City. China, like Japan, has
concluded to adopt wool in the northern provinces instead of padded
cotton and sheepskin. Woolen mills have been erected at Shanghai,
Peking, Lanchow, Hankau, Kalgan, etc., to work up to the vast supplies
of Mongolian and Pechili shearings. The old method of making winter
clothing was to pad cotton and silk with cotton batting and silk waste,
the wearer being transformed into a comical Falstaffian size. Modern
tanneries have been erected by Mohammedan Chinese at Hankau, Lanchow,
Singan, etc. Hardware and enameled ware factories have been erected at
Tientsin, Canton, etc., but China can not for years take care of her
needs in hardware. Flour mills abound at Harbin, Shanghai and Hongkong,
and will be rapidly extended throughout the north. Cement is being
heavily produced, and will increase, great factories now being run
at Tongshan in Pechili, Canton and Macao in Kwangtung, and Tayeh in
Hupeh provinces. All of these industries will need machinery. Of all
municipal improvements, China has needed modern water-works the most.
They are now in operation in the cities of Shanghai, Hankau, Tientsin,
Canton, Peking, Mukden, Chingtu, Nanking, Hangchow, Chinkiang, Swatow,
Tsinan, Newchwang, etc. Electric cars are run at Canton, Shanghai,
Peking, Hongkong, Hankau, Tientsin, Tsingtau, etc. Hongkong has a
wonderful cable railway up 1,500 feet of mountain, which will be
copied at Kiukiang, and other hill resorts from the heat. Telephone
service is installed at Hongkong, Canton, Shanghai, Peking, Tientsin,
Tsingtau, Chingtu, Wuhu, Hangchow, Ningpo, Nanking, etc. Electric
light is furnished at Nanking, Peking, Tientsin, Tsingtau, Hankau,
Swatow, Mukden, Newchwang, Shanghai, Hangchow, etc. In little of this
have the Americans entered as yet, though they will on a vast scale
as American finance and industry extends its agencies. The financing
and the contracting often go together, and it is not unknown for the
British and Germans to combine, though the British would be glad to
join with the Americans, if there were Americans on the ground. Often
the suppliers divide on a plant, the British furnishing the engines
and boilers, and the Germans the dynamos. Gas works are also being
erected, and the incandescent mantle lamps are very popular. As China
has untold riches in coal, her development in gas lighting will be
extensive. There is a great field for American machinery here. Her pipe
foundries will grow, as she has as much iron as coal. For many years,
however, her industrial, municipal and railway supplies, and certainly
her machinery, must largely come from abroad. It is a great field
for the manufacturing nations, and even Austria is entering it with
recent success. She has increased the service of the Austrian Lloyd
Steamship Company from Trieste, and her manufactures are seen more and
more throughout the Far East. Yet Austria is not a nation that can be
compared with America, Britain or Germany in potentiality.
Since China has become a purchaser of machinery, she invites the world
to advertise in Chinese in her newspapers, and to open agencies in
China, where Chinese is read by the compradores at least. She hates
concession hunters when they are of the Pizarro and Cortez type, and
desires to exploit and profit by her own wealth. I have seen the
bitterest complaint in the _Ching Wei Pao_, an able native paper of
Tientsin, that too many franchises are given free to foreigners, who
pay small wages and take the profits out of the country. Can you blame
them for desiring municipal ownership, if they are willing to buy our
machinery and hire our instructors?
China is slowly establishing fire departments in its municipal and
marine life. I have seen a fire break out on oil boats in the West
River of Kwangtung province. Gongs were struck everywhere, and tugs
and launches hastened to the scene and with hose poured water upon the
blaze.
The Chinese engine builders of Hongkong, who were apprenticed at the
British Hongkong and Whampoa Dock Company, are successfully copying
foreign marine engines and pumps, and for boats under one thousand
tons European builders can not compete with them, except in the matter
of quicker delivery, which is often important. Many motor-boats,
manufactured in Hongkong, are brought across the Pacific for delivery
in Canada via the C. P. R. steamships. Until recently the Szechuen and
Hupeh boatmen of the upper Yangtze would not permit the competition of
steam, but the Kwangtung province men of the West River--the brainiest
men of modern China--have been quick to adopt machinery, possibly
because wonderful Hongkong was so near as an example of the new era and
an efficient interpreter of the West to the East. While the labor at
Hongkong is Chinese, most of the capital and the expert foremanship is
British.
The total taxes that a Chinese pays for national, provincial and
municipal purposes is one dollar per head per year, against seven
dollars in Russia, and twenty dollars in Europe and America. As most of
this money is wasted on soon obsolete navies and armies, and is drawn
from mines and land that can not be replenished, one can see the vast
wealth with which China will some day suddenly step into the world
arena, China strong, and the others impoverished in all but brain power.
In Kiangsu and Chekiang provinces, very simple methods are followed in
producing cotton-seed oil. The seeds are heated, packed into a barrel
and pressure is exerted by driving wedges under a hoop. Meal is made in
buffalo-driven stone mills. These methods will soon change with modern
industrial organization and the importation of our machinery.
At Kiating in the south of Szechuen province are the remarkable gas and
salt wells, the former supplying fuel to evaporate the brine of the
latter. The industry is immense, there being many thousands of wells in
the opulent Min River valley of Central China. The salt is a government
monopoly, and may be retained as such in the new financing, as in some
features of national revenue French and Japanese methods, instead
of American and British, may be followed. In that case, the federal
government would be the purchaser of the new machinery.
Only north of the Yangtze River are ponies seen. Szechuen province
has the most beautiful, many of them being black. The Mongolian pony
of the provinces farther north has a heavier body and a worse temper.
Japan has commenced the stocking of horses, and China will do likewise,
when she widens her roads, and increases the size of her farms so as
to make an animal useful, the men displaced from employment going to
the new mines and railways. Moreover, China is at her wits’ end for
fertilizer, which stock will furnish. She has been at her wits’ end
for fuel and has been burning the field stubble and straw needed for
compost. Now coal will save for her this land enricher.
The fine guild houses in the various cities are erected by subscription
and are put in charge of a caretaker. Meeting halls, showrooms,
restaurants, theater and sleeping quarters are provided. It is the
same as if the Ohio men put up a guild house in New York, and the New
York men put up a guild house in Cincinnati; or if Edinburgh traders
erected a guild house in London, and London men reciprocated. It
was the reciprocal working of these guilds which showed the Chinese
that assemblies and parliaments were feasible, and next to the
foreign-trained students, the guild men have been foremost in China’s
representative political bodies. Here are some of the practical
proverbs that are hung up in the guild rooms:
“He who keeps everlastingly at it will grow legs long enough to jump
the highest mountain.”
“When there’s fire a distant lake is not so good as a near bucketful.”
“Gambling is not good, but still I have known one who risked his last
penny and got his first pound.”
“You don’t need to thrash a fast horse, or yell at a wise man.”
“Trust an orange-seller to say that his oranges are sweet, and a
shoemaker to say that his shoes don’t leak.”
“A smiling salesman enhances his wares.”
“A little attention to the cutting end of a chisel makes necessary only
a little attention to the striking end.”
The inland Chinese are sometimes clever in working themselves into the
foreigner’s personnel of staff. First the father brings his boy, and
the boy brings his cousin, imploring the foreigner to let them wait
around the office to pick up a little English. They insist on doing
or pretending to do chores; they whisper to the staff to halve their
work with them, and then they beg for or demand a wage “while they are
learning English.” Seldom does the kind-hearted foreigner refuse it,
and he is really spreading the commercial and literary gospel of the
West by doing so.
In some of the Yangtze provinces designs are even yet stamped into the
dyed cotton and silk, by stencil with lime, which takes out the color,
as compared with our system of rolling the inked design on plain goods.
The old will be rung out by the new, as Tennyson prophesied.
Man as a beast of burden must depart in patient earnest China, which
is associated with such unique sights of physical slavery as dozens
of coolies harnessed to a wagon-load of teak in Hongkong, or several
hundred trackers tied to long bamboo hawsers, while they pull junks
through the terrific rapids of the noble Yangtze gorges between Ichang
and Wan Hsien. Men for thousands of years have also supplied with their
legs the motive power of irrigation wheels for raising water, and of
tread wheels for turning paddles. Billions of tons of freight have been
carried on the backs and from the shoulders of men, women and children
over the hundreds of mountain passes on the great trade routes of
mountainous China, such as the steep Mei Ling pass of Kwangtung, the
Tangyueh pass of Yunnan, the Tachien pass into Tibet, etc. Hongkong’s
thousand palatial villas and châteaux eighteen hundred feet above the
clouds were carried up brick by brick and stone by stone in baskets and
on bamboos balanced on the bare shoulders of human beings, who panted
piteously in a stifling hot and humid atmosphere in the equator region.
Men have pumped the brine from the deepest brine wells in the world.
Their arms have lifted the weights that have driven the wells for gas
and brine. A pulley, a rope, an endless chain, have been unknown, and
hearts and feet have strained up the thirteen stories of the pagodas
with the coping stone and upcurled eaves. The day of labor-saving
devices dawns for a China whose population is going to decrease
within reason, not with the intent to starve labor, but so that labor
may devote itself to better-paying work. Government officials only
can supervise this condition in China or in America, government’s
work being to govern the big as well as the small, as we are just
discovering in the West.
Shopping has been done by a tedious system of bargaining extending over
days, the contract concluding with a shout of “Mai Te” (sale attained),
which corresponds with our stock exchange phrase of “Bid taken.”
Doubtless the modern Chinese will adopt the Anglo-Saxon method of
saving time and coming to a decision quicker. Healthy competition will
bring this about.
Many guilds and Chinese merchants continue the old custom of sending
letters from city to city by messenger or trusted traveler. Hongkong
has attacked this competition with the government post-office by fining
those who deliver private letters from out-ports, though Hongkong
permits private delivery by the excellent “chit-book” system within the
city.
China is finding that she can knit her own goods, and she will
soon import yarns mainly. I shall instance the Wei San factory as a
sample of five factories in Hongkong. Canton has ten factories, and
Kwangtung province has many more, not to speak of the immense number
of hand-knitting machines which the Japanese and the Germans are
supplying. Tientsin and Shanghai have several knitting factories, and
much foreign machinery will be needed throughout the land, especially
in the Yangtze valley.