Peking, and photographs are being generally used for identification.
The Chinese have been very averse to photographs. The custom was
broken down by Hongkong insisting for twenty years that emigrants
should be photographed in duplicate so that their certificates might
be identified. This gradually got the Chinese used to the custom, the
returned emigrants spreading word that there was no ill-luck in the
operation. The old-fashioned policeman who went his rounds beating a
gong is becoming obsolete, and the new policeman, like our own, is
supposed to bait himself with silence and skill, so as to be sugar
in leading the burglar to the trap. Not long ago, however, I heard
the old-fashioned Chinese Lukong beating his wooden drum as he went
his rounds in the Portuguese colony of Macao, China. When the police
recover lost goods, half only is returned to the owner, and half often
goes to public charity which is organized in a guild. This is an old
regulation in many parts of China. One of their wits said that the
difference between a lower and a higher court is that one has the first
and the other has the last “guess” at a case! The Chinese point out
the delays in the execution of murderers as a most serious defect in
justice, and the sentimentalism expressed by part of our press and
pulpit as a most serious defect in our mentality. They show headings
in our newspapers reading as follows: “Ministers Strive with Murderer
Blank”; “Four Pastors Prepare Murderer Blank for Death,” etc. The
laconic Chinese ask: “How long a time did the murderer give his victim
to prepare for death.” The Chinese say that our levity in this terrific
matter has run the average of murders in America up to the highest
point in any nation, and that their average, with England’s, is the
lowest because of swift and sure justice in those two countries.
In our month of August occurs the festival of the goddess of
needlework. It is customary for the women to exhibit the wealth and
ornaments of the family during this festival. In 1911, at Fatshan,
near Canton, where Sunyacius was born, robbers disguised as women
arrived in closed chairs before the yamen (compound) of the Li family,
and pretending to be relatives, they broke past the doormen. When
inside the home, they drew weapons, and with the inmates intimidated,
ransacked the house of jewels and valuables, escaping to the river,
where the pirate boats took them on board and made off for the
reaches and canals. Owing to the paucity of maritime police, because
of a limited revenue, piracy has swept over China’s waters since her
Captain Kidd, Koxinga, operated from Amoy in 1657. The West River of
Kwangtung province has been notorious in recent years, and in my former
book, _The Chinese_, I have related the attacks upon Europeans in the
steamers _Sainam_ and _Shui On_.
The most startling attack in many years was upon the well-known
Pacific Mail steamer _Asia_, in April, 1911. Known previously as the
_Coptic_, this steamer sailed from San Francisco for twenty years in
the trans-Pacific service, and she was therefore well known to many
thousands of Americans. She was a graceful Belfast-built boat of low
freeboard, and easily boarded. In a fog on April 23rd she ran against
the precipitous Finger Rock Island, which rises off the coast of
Chekiang province. Wireless was immediately sent out, and the Chinese
Merchants’ S. S. Company’s vessel _Shoa Shing_ started for the rescue.
Before she could arrive and after her departure with the sixty rescued
passengers, Chekiang pirates, in swift snake boats and sanpans, put
off to the attack, and despite revolver defense, boarded the _Asia_
and her boats. They even demanded under duress that passengers should
sign “chits,” promising to pay sums of money for rescue. When the
steamer was temporarily abandoned, they boarded and stripped her of
almost everything except the smokestack paint. Fisherman and pirate
are about as synonymous on some waters of China as Cornishman and
farmer, Panamanian and placer miner are in some of our romantic novels!
Thrilling engagements with pirates not infrequently occur almost
under the windows of the fashionable Boa Vista and Hing Kee Hotels on
romantic Macao’s Praya Granda.
On July 13, 1910, a party of Chinese students, women and children were
kidnapped in Macao, by pirates led by the second of the swashbuckler
Leungs, and by the leader Luk, and taken to Ko-Ho (Colowan) Island,
where they were chained to the walls of caves and of a Portuguese
fort, after the latter had been stormed, and the blue and white flag
of the castles hauled down to be succeeded by the triangular red flag
of the pirates. The governor of Macao sent the Portuguese gunboats
_Patria_ and _Macao_, and an expedition of artillery and infantry of
the “Legionaries Coloniale.” The possession of this island by the
Portuguese has long been disputed by China, and the Chinese gunboats,
which now drew up only watched the engagement. Two thousand pirates
fought with modern weapons and smokeless powder, which had been
smuggled from Japan. The Portuguese bombarded with four-inch guns, and
dropped so many shells into so many compartments of two pirate junks,
as with skull and sail they made for rocky Wung Kum Island, that they
sank with all on board. In an armistice, Commander Wu, of the Chinese
navy, a brave commander of whom we shall hear more, disguised as a
coolie, courageously spied on the pirates’ stronghold and ascertained
where most of the women were imprisoned, so as to save these retreats
from being bombarded. The pirates were smoked out of these caves with
sulphur and the women resuscitated.
Not only South China, but North China also has experienced piratical
attacks in recent times. In September, 1910, a large band of Hung-Hutz
pirates, disguised as bean merchants, sailed down the Liao River to
Newchwang and captured for ransom fifteen wealthy Chinese merchants
under the walls of the foreign settlements. They safely made retreat
with captured arms to their mountain stronghold, one hundred miles up
the river, near Liaoyang, and settled down for a siege. The Chinese
desire to build more railways through this section, but the Japanese
and Russians have opposed American backing of another road and have
hoodwinked Britain and Europe into a disinterested attitude, which is
the _status quo_, but not the permanent settlement of the question.
The Chinese have a saying regarding courts, retainers and the animals
outside, as follows: “When the mandarin swears, the dogs bark, and when
the mandarin laughs the dogs grin, and the terrible tsai ren (yamen
court runners, corresponding to our detectives) stroke their rough
fingers.” Some of their legal proverbs are:
“When two rascals differ, the truth is near; when they agree, the truth
is hid.”
“Don’t jump to conclusions in evidence, for a grain of sand is not the
seashore, nor a tree a forest.”
“It is hard to rise, but easy to fall.”
“No one would believe a blind man who tried to tell a ghost story.”
“It’s easier to twist the road than the mountain.”
XXV
CHINESE DAILY LIFE
The happy Leigh Hunt, who was half American by blood, in one of his
incomparable Addisonian essays, _Tea Drinking_, wrote as follows of
the daily life and surroundings of the Chinese: “The very word tea,
so petty, so infantine, so winking-eyed, so expressive, somehow or
other, of something inexpressibly minute and satisfied with a little
(tee!) resembles the idea one has (perhaps a very mistaken one) of that
extraordinary people of whom Europeans know little or nothing, except
that they sell us this preparation, bow back again our ambassadors,
have a language consisting of only a few hundred words, gave us
chinaware and the strange pictures on our teacups, made a certain
progress in civilization long before we did, mysteriously stopped at it
and would go no further, and if numbers and the customs of venerable
ancestors are to carry the day, are at once the most populous and the
most respectable nation on the face of the earth. As a population they
certainly are a most enormous and wonderful body, but as individuals,
their ceremonies, their trifling edicts, their jealousy of foreigners,
and their teacup representations of themselves impress us irresistibly
with a fancy that they are a people all toddling, little-eyed,
little-footed, little-bearded, little-minded, quaint, overweening,
pig-tailed, bald-headed, cone-capped or pagoda-hatted, having childish
houses and temples with bells at every corner and story, and shuffling
about in blue landscapes, over nine-inch bridges, with little mysteries
of bell-hung whips in their hands,--a boat or a house or a tree, made
of a pattern, being over their heads or underneath them, and a bird
as large as the boat, always having a circular white space to fly in!
Such are the Chinese of the teacups and the grocers’ windows, and
partly of their own novels, too, in which everything seems as little
as their eyes, little odes, little wine parties and a series of little
satisfactions. However, it must be owned that from these novels one
gradually acquires a notion that there is a great deal more good sense
and even good poetry among them than one had fancied from the accounts
of embassies and the autobiographical paintings on the chinaware, and
this is the most probable supposition. An ancient and great nation as
civilized as they is not likely to be so much behind hand with us in
the art of living as our self-complacency leads us to imagine. If their
contempt of us amounts to the barbarous, perhaps there is a greater
share of barbarism than we suspect in our scorn of them.”
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Buddhist temples, now used as schools. Fine type of architecture;
ornamented ridge, curving eaves; unique medallions.]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Actors, in characters of general, emperor and prime minister. Note use
of modern scenery. The old stage did not use scenery.]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
The new woman in the New China, borne to market on a wheelbarrow
along a modern tree-lined road; modern umbrellas in background
used as a protection from the sun. A beggar crouches at the
roadside.
]
In August the Chinese resort to the graveyards and burn paper money and
tin- and gold-foil models at the graves of their ancestors. It is a
pretty sight at night to see thousands of these little fires lighting
up the vast fields of the dead like a plain of stars through which
the living spirits move. The ceremonies sometimes include the Greek
custom of pouring out a libation of wine, and as this is the custom
especially in the western provinces, it may indicate a former communion
with old Greece. Long before the Christian era Greece had possibly
acquired veneration for graves from older China. Demosthenes cried out
to the Athenians in B. C. 354 as a climax to his arguments: “Will ye
sacrifice your sepulchres to the Persian?” A mortuary custom in the
southwest provinces, also similar to the Greek, is to place a coin
in the mouth, to pay for ferriage of the spirit. The round coin, made
of jade, and sometimes banded with pure gold, is an exact copy of the
copper cash, with a square hole in the center. These tomb jades acquire
a stained appearance as compared with the delightful glisten of jades
kept in the light.
Foreigners with cinematograph lanterns are now going into the interior
of China with interpreters to manage part of their shows, and are doing
well, as the Chinese delight in the moving pictures. It is necessary to
apply to the provincial governor for a passport, and to register at the
consulate at the nearest treaty port. Both French and American films
are used.
The purpose of the long nails, dwarfed feet and heavy hairdressing
is the snobbish one of showing that such a person does not need to
work, but can afford to keep servants. These devotees of fashion,
rapidly becoming fewer, suffer so much torture that their conceit
can be forgiven them. “Don’t say a word, you Westerners; remember
your suffocating waists and your high-heeled compressed shoes,”
retort some of the Chinese! At Ningpo boys wear boots made of human
hair. Over these they draw straw sandals. For waterproof material an
oiled cotton is used. The very poor classes use a picturesque cape
and kilt made of rush leaves, and one sees sights on the mountain
roads of Hongkong that remind one of Robinson Crusoe and Friday. The
Chinese are great bird fanciers. Crows, magpies, hawks, larks, ducks,
finches, etc., are exposed for sale in the fairs. The singing birds
are taught to sing in competition, and also to catch seeds thrown into
the air. Fortune-tellers take up their location at the street corner
in Hongkong, Canton, and other ports, with their trained Kwangtung
sparrows. When you pay your coin, the owner places a package of cards
in envelopes before the door of the cage. The bird selects one and is
rewarded with a grain of rice. You identify the card by the picture
that it bears. The owner puts the card, together with a tiny slip of
sandalwood, back in the envelope, shuffles the envelopes and calls the
bird out again. The bird will select the same envelope, which proves
that Kwangtung sparrows at least have a fine sense of smell! On another
corner stands a bird trainer with a grossbeak-weaver perched upon his
finger. He throws coins into the air, toward which the bird darts,
catching the coins in its bill and returning to the finger of the
master.
On the narrow streets, in constant danger of being jostled into, the
letter-writer sits at a table, painting the beautiful characters for
whomsoever wishes to buy a letter. His customers are many,--fruiterers,
laborers, fishermen, cooks, gunny-lifters, hotel-runners, lantern
sellers, rice bird hawkers, etc. The Buddhist or Taoist priest, too, is
not averse to writing a letter for a wife buyer for an added fee after
his customer has bought a written prayer to Buddha or his own dead
father, which prayer the priest burns in presenting it to the spirit.
There are many Mohammedan Chinese in the western and southwestern
provinces, and scattered throughout the empire are Mohammedan
companies. They are generally butchers and bakers by occupation. Among
these Mohammedans are doubtless the lost colonies of Chinese Jews.
It is found that the Miao aborigines of Szechuen and Yunnan are a more
impulsive, vivacious, and by turns a more sulky race than the staid,
trim, mannerly Chinese. Missionaries, therefore, report that when they
Christianize the aborigines they find them delightfully frank and
vivacious companions, who grow to be liked heartily, as the cultured
Chinese is in comparison deeply respected. The Miaos (Now Su tribe)
show Burmese influence, too, for they burn their dead, a custom which
is abhorred by the Chinese masses, though some Buddhist priests do it.
The Miaos often worship a hill, and far to the east, even at Hongkong,
I have seen members of the aboriginal Hakka tribes worshiping a hill,
or a rock, or the seashore. On the hillsides of Hongkong jars will be
found on stones among the woods. These contain the bones of Hongkong
Chinese who have died in America and whose bones lie out in the woods,
waiting till the Taoist calendar reports that it is a lucky day for
burial. If you make the fee large enough the priest can grant you
absolution any day and you may bury with full assurance of good luck.
It then becomes a struggle between the priest’s determination and the
mourner’s stubbornness in the matter of securing possession of the
coins of the dead one! The body lies in an American graveyard until
the large bones only remain. These are manifested across the Pacific
as “fish bones” and are received at Hongkong by the Tung Wah Hospital
for the guild of which deceased was a member. The hospital turns the
bones over to the chief mourner, who places them in a jar, as already
related. While the Chinese abhor sickness, and will sometimes desert a
fever patient after loading his blanket with stones so that he can not
leave the bed, they have no abhorrence of coffins or bones. For long
periods they keep the coffin in the best room of the house, or the jar
of bones in the garden.
In selling goods by auction at the pawnshops, or inns, the auctioneer
does not permit audible bidding. The goods are passed through an
opening for inspection. Then the bidders walk to the window, and
by whisper, card, or squeeze of the hand, indicate the bid. This
encourages high instead of low bidding at the beginning, for it is
known that the first bidder who offers a fair price secures the
article.
The Chinese, on account of their localization, and lack of experience,
while usually placid, can be worked up into uncontrollable excitement.
This explains the murders of missionaries by mobs in the long years
up to 1901. Many suicides among officials and widows and daughters of
soldiers followed the excitement and distress of the October, 1911,
revolution. The camaraderie of American clubs which has evolved the
greeting, “old fellow,” equal to the “old chap” of British clubs, was
copied from China, where you must call every one “old man” (lao jen).
It is the highest term of respect, is in diplomatic use, and even
bonzes and teachers are addressed in that way. A captain of a sanpan
is called the “great old one” (lao ta). The mayor is called “old man
of the village” (hsiang lao). The following incident will illustrate
how the clan dominates Chinese life. San Wui is a city lying near
Canton. The Kwan family is one of the largest and wealthiest clans
living there. It maintained near the district burial ground a fine,
large ancestral hall filled with family tablets and effigies. Against
the votes of the clan, in the middle of August, 1911, Kwan Ta, one
of the most powerful members, rented the building to the police, who
used it as headquarters in collecting unpopular taxes and pressing
the people to accept the nationalization of railways scheme. The
people led by the Kwan clan, burned the ancestral temple. The members
of the clan then rebuilt the hall and ordered the sculptors to make
an image of the unpopular Kwan Ta, who had died in the meantime. The
granite image represents the man with his hands behind his back in a
kneeling posture. On his back is carved the history of his defection.
As each member of the Kwan clan comes into the temple on the great
days to worship the ancestral tablets which have been restored, it is
obligatory that he shall give Kwan Ta’s image three strokes of the
bamboo!
The method of carrying water in India and China is conspicuously
different. In India the drawers go from the well with the jar of water
balanced on their heads. In China the water is put into two large
buckets, which are slung from the two ends of a bamboo, which is
balanced on the shoulder. Chinese markets in the villages and smaller
cities are managed on the fair system, as in Russia. You can not buy
barrow wheels at the bridge fair every day in the week, because the
wheelwright only comes to your village fair every second Friday,
his tour taking him through ten villages perhaps. You can not buy
feather dusters or shoes every day, as the pedler is off on a tour of
six villages, and only visits your fair, held at the temple, every
Saturday. But food and coins you can buy every morning at your two
village fairs, and the hucksters there will tell you just what days the
barber, the druggist, the potter, the copper hammerer, etc., will be
around again, unless thieves waylay them, or gamblers entice them, or
Taoist astrologers, looking for a bribe, deceive them into belief that
it is their unlucky day by their birth star on the almanac!
That the Chinese civilization in general had little communication with
Egypt or Babylonia, after once being separated, may be inferred partly
from the fact that the early Chinese forgot the secret of embalming the
body. The _Bamboo Books_, tenth century B. C. recite how the Emperor
Muh, whose concubine died while traveling with him in the Tartary
desert, had to bury her there at once, and other records recite that
when tombs were opened they stank so badly that dogs had first to be
sent in to ascertain when human beings could safely enter. It was not
until long centuries after this that the Chinese learned to use lime
to destroy the flesh.
Conjuring has been popular from the earliest times. The famous _Bamboo
Books_ recite that the Emperor Muh, on his travels into Tartary in the
tenth century B. C., was infatuated by an unusually clever conjurer
there. Lieh Tsz, a patriotic chronicler of the fifth century B. C.,
complains that the emperor of disintegrating China had more time to
study the tricks of a conjurer than for state affairs.
An interesting means of transportation over the mountains of the north
is the pony-litter, which is swung between two animals in tandem. The
trip is exciting enough, especially when one of the animals falls to
its knees. Chinese gang laborers do all their pulling, pushing and
lifting, accompanied by a chantey song. The famous trackers of the
Yangtze gorges and the Grand Canal; the gunny lifters of Hongkong; the
wood sawers and teak pilers; the coal passers of Hankau, all sing at
the top of their splendid voices as they work.
When a native moves he is supposed to carry fire from his old kitchen
to the new one, so as not to rekindle the misfortunes of the last
lessee. He desires to burn up his old predecessor’s past, which may
have been all bad (or he would not have moved), and to continue his
own fortune, which is all good, or ought to be! When moving into a new
house, the tenant replaces a threshold, lintel or rafter so that he may
not inherit the bad fortune of the former tenant. He starts all things
anew, as the new piece of lumber or stone typifies. The old-fashioned
Chinese hotel buildings in the northern provinces are not unlike those
in Palestine, low buildings with few windows in the walls being built
around a court. In the court are troughs for the donkeys, mules,
Mongolian ponies and especially camels of the pack trains. The roofs
of the buildings, with their up-curling eaves and pagoda pinnacles,
are the most beautiful in the world. It seems uncanny to see a crowd
passing your house on a holiday without a sound, because the Chinese
shoe is all felt. In contrast with this, compare the noisy shuffling
of the wooden shoes of Japan, where one man makes more noise than a
thousand Chinese, or a dozen Occidentals.