THE CITY OF CHUNGKING--THE CHINESE CUSTOMS--THE FAMOUS MONSIEUR HAAS,
AND A FEW WORDS ON THE OPIUM FALLACY.
After passing through the gorge known as Tung-lo-hsia ten miles from
Chungking, the laoban tried to attract my attention, calling me from my
crib and pointing with his chin up the river repeating "Haikwan one
piecee," which I interpreted to mean that there was an outpost of the
customs here in charge of one white man; and this proved to be the case.
The customs kuatze or houseboat was moored to the left bank; the
Imperial Customs flag floated gaily over an animated collection of
native craft. We drew alongside the junk and an Englishman appeared at
the window.
"Where from?" he asked, laconically.
"Australia."
"The devil, so am I. What part?"
"Victoria."
"So am I. Town?"
"Last from Ballarat."
"My native town, by Jove! Jump up."
I gave him my card. He looked at it and said, "When I was last in
Victoria I used to follow with much interest a curious walk across
Australia, from the Gulf of Carpentaria to Melbourne done by a namesake.
Any relation? The same man! I'm delighted to see you." Here then at the
most inland of the customs stations in China, 1500 miles from the sea,
I met my fellow countryman who was born near my home and whose father
was a well-known Mayor of Ballarat City.
Like myself he had formerly been a student of Melbourne University, but
I was many years his senior. What was his experience of the University I
forgot to inquire, but mine I remember vividly enough; for it was not
happy. In the examination for the Second-year Medicine, hoping the more
to impress the Professors, I entered my name for honours--and they
rejected me in the preliminary pass. It seems that in the examination in
Materia Medica, I had among other trifling lapses prescribed a dose of
Oleum Crotonis of "one half to two drachms _carefully increased_." I
confess that I had never heard of the wretched stuff; the question was
taken from far on in the text book and, unfortunately, my reading had
not extended quite so far. When a deputation from my family waited upon
the examiner to ascertain the cause of my misadventure, the only
satisfaction we got was the obliging assurance "that you might as well
let a mad dog loose in Collins Street" as allow me to become a doctor.
And then the examiner produced my prescription. But I thought I saw a
faint chance of escape. I pointed a nervous finger to the two words
"carefully increased," and pleaded that that indication of caution ought
to save me. "Save _you_ it might," he shouted with unnecessary
vehemence; "but, God bless my soul, man, it would not save your
patient." The examiner was a man intemperate of speech; so I left the
University. It was a severe blow to the University, but the University
survived it.
My countryman had been five years in China in the customs service, that
marvellous organisation which is more impartially open to all the world
than any other service in the world. As an example, I note that among
the Commissioners of Customs at the ports of the River Yangtse alone, at
the time of my voyage the Commissioner at Shanghai was an Austrian, at
Kiukiang a Frenchman, at Hankow an Englishman, at Ichang a Scandinavian,
and at Chungking a German.
The Australian had been ten months at Chungking. His up-river journey
occupied thirty-eight days, and was attended with one moving incident.
In the Hsintan rapid the towline parted, and his junk was smashed to
pieces by the rocks, and all that he possessed destroyed. It was in this
rapid that my boat narrowly escaped disaster, but there was this
difference in our experiences, that at the time of his accident the
river was sixty feet higher than on the occasion of mine.
Tang-chia-to, the customs out-station, is ten miles by river from
Chungking, but not more than four miles by land. So I sent the boat on,
and in the afternoon walked over to the city. A customs coolie came with
me to show me the way. My friend accompanied me to the river crossing,
walking with me through fields of poppy and sugarcane, and open beds of
tobacco. At the river side he left me to return to his solitary home,
while I crossed the river in a sampan, and then set out over the hills
to Chungking. It was more than ever noticeable, the poor hungry
wretchedness of the river coolies. For three days past all the trackers
I had seen were the most wretched in physique of any I had met in China.
Phthisis and malaria prevail among them; their work is terribly arduous;
they suffer greatly from exposure; they appear to be starving in the
midst of abundance. My coolie showed well by contrast with the trackers;
he was sleek and well fed. A "chop dollar," as he would be termed down
south, for his face was punched or chopped with the small-pox, he swung
along the paved pathway and up and down the endless stone steps in a way
that made me breathless to follow. We passed a few straggling houses and
wayside shrines and tombstones. All the dogs in the district recognised
that I was a stranger, and yelped consumedly, like the wolfish mongrels
that they are. From a hill we obtained a misty view of the City of
Chungking, surrounded on two sides by river and covering a broad expanse
of hill and highland. I was taken to the customs pontoon on the south
bank of the river, and then up the steep bank by many steps to the
basement of an old temple where the two customs officers have their
pleasant dwelling. I was kindly received, and stayed the night. We were
an immense height above the water; the great city was across the broad
expanse of river, here more than seven hundred yards in width. Away down
below us, moored close to the bank, and guarded by three Chinese armed
junks or gunboats, was the customs hulk, where the searching is done,
and where the three officers of the outdoor staff have their offices.
There is at present but little smuggling, because there are no Chinese
officials. Smuggling may be expected to begin in earnest as soon as
Chinese officials are introduced to prevent it. Chinese searchers do
best who use their eyes not to see--best for themselves, that is. The
gunboats guarding this Haikwan Station have a nominal complement of
eighty men, and an actual complement of twenty-four; to avoid, however,
unnecessary explanation, pay is drawn by the commanding officer, not for
the actual twenty-four, but for the nominal eighty.
[Illustration: THE CITY OF CHUNGKING, AS SEEN FROM THE OPPOSITE BANK OF
THE RIVER YANGTSE.]
My two companions in the temple were tidewaiters in the Customs. There
are many storied lives locked away among the tidewaiters in China. Down
the river there is a tidewaiter who was formerly professor of French in
the Imperial University of St. Petersburg; and here in Chungking,
filling the same humble post, is the godson of a marquis and the nephew
of an earl, a brave soldier whose father is a major-general and his
mother an earl's daughter, and who is first cousin to that enlightened
nobleman and legislator the Earl of C. Few men so young have had so many
and varied experiences as this sturdy Briton. He has humped his swag in
Australia, has earned fifteen shillings a day there as a blackleg
protected by police picquets on a New South Wales coal mine. He was at
Harrow under Dr. Butler, and at Corpus Christi, Cambridge. He has been
in the Dublin Fusiliers, and a lieutenant in Weatherby's Horse, enlisted
in the 5th Lancers, and rose from private to staff-sergeant, and ten
months later would have had his commission. He served with distinction
in the Soudan and Zululand, and has three medals with four clasps. He
was present at El Teb, and at the disaster at Tamai, when McNeill's
zareeba was broken. He was at Tel-el-kebir; saw Burnaby go forth to meet
a coveted death at Abu-klea, and was present at Abu-Kru when Sir Herbert
Stewart received his death-wound. He was at Rorke's Drift, and appears
with that heroic band in Miss Elizabeth Thompson's painting. Leaving the
army, C. held for a time a commission in the mounted constabulary of
Madras, and now he is a third class assistant tidewaiter in the Imperial
Maritime Customs of China, with a salary as low as his spirits are high.
Chungking is an open port, which is not an open port. By the treaty of
Tientsin it is included in the clause which states that any foreign
steamer going to it, a closed port, shall be confiscated. Yet by the
Chefoo Convention, Chungking is to become an open port as soon as the
first foreign steamer shall reach there. This reminds one of the
conflicting instructions once issued by a certain government in
reference to the building of a new gaol. The instructions were
explicit:--
Clause I.--The new gaol shall be constructed out of the
materials of the old.
Clause II.--The prisoners shall remain in the old gaol till
the new gaol is constructed.
In Chungking the Commissioner of Customs is Dr. F. Hirth, whose Chinese
house is on the highest part of Chungking in front of a temple, which,
dimly seen through the mist, is the crowning feature of the city. A
distinguished sinologue is the doctor, one of the finest Chinese
scholars in the Empire, author of "China and the Roman Orient," "Ancient
Porcelain," and an elaborate "Textbook of Documentary Chinese," which is
in the hands of most of the Customs staff in China, for whose assistance
it was specially written. Dr. Hirth is a German who has been many years
in China. He holds the third button, the transparent blue button, the
third rank in the nine degrees by which Chinese Mandarins are
distinguished.
The best site in Chungking has been fortunately secured by the Methodist
Episcopalian Mission of the United States. Their missionaries dwell with
great comfort in the only foreign-built houses in the city in a large
compound with an ample garden. Their Mission hospital is a well-equipped
Anglo-Chinese building attached to the city wall, and overlooking from
its lofty elevation the Little River, and the walled city beyond it.
The wards of the hospital are comfortable and well lit; the floors are
varnished; the beds are provided with spring mattresses; indeed, in the
comfort of the hospital the Chinese find its chief discomfort. A
separate compartment has been walled off for the treatment of
opium-smokers who desire by forced restraint to break off the habit.
Three opium-smokers were in durance at the time of my visit; they were
happy and contented and well nourished, and none but the trained eye of
an expert, who saw what he wished to see, could have guessed that they
were addicted to the use of a drug which has been described in
exaggerated terms as "more deadly to the Chinese than war, famine, and
pestilence combined." (Rev. A. H. Smith, "Chinese Characteristics," p.
187.)
Not long ago three men were admitted into the hospital suffering, on
their own confession, from the opium habit. They freely expressed the
desire of their hearts to be cured, and were received with welcome and
placed in confinement. Every effort was made to wean them from the habit
which, they alleged, had "seized them in a death grip." Attentive to the
teacher and obedient to the doctor, they gave every hope of being early
admitted into Church fellowship. But one night the desire to return to
the drug became irresistible, and, strangely, the desire attacked all
three men at the same time on the same night; and they escaped together.
Sadly enough there was in this case marked evidence of the demoralising
influence of opium, for when they escaped they took with them everything
portable that they could lay their hands on. It was a sad trial.
Excellent medical work is done in the hospital. From the first annual
report just published by the surgeon in charge, an M.D. from the United
States, I extract the two following pleasing items.
_Medical Work._--"Mr. Tsang Taotai, of Kuei-Iang-fu, was an eye witness
to several operations, as well as being operated upon for Internal
Piles" (the last words in large capitals).
_Evangelistic Work._--"Mrs. Wei, in the hospital for suppurating glands
of the neck, became greatly interested in the truth while there, left a
believer, and attends Sunday service regular (_sic_), walking from a
distant part of the city each Sunday. We regard her as very hopeful, and
she is reported by the Chinese as being very warm-hearted. She will be
converted when the first vacancy occurs in the nursing staff."
During my stay in Chungking I frequently met the French Consul "_en
commission_," Monsieur Haas, who had lately arrived on a diplomatic
mission, which was invested with much secrecy. It was believed to have
for its object the diversion of the trade of Szechuen from its natural
channel, the Yangtse River, southward through Yunnan province to
Tonquin. Success need not be feared to attend his mission. "_Ils
perdront et leur temps et leur argent._" Monsieur Haas has helped to
make history in his time. The most gentle-mannered of men, he writes
with strange rancour against the perfidious designs of Britain in the
East. In his diplomatic career Monsieur Haas suffered one great
disappointment. He was formerly the French Chargé d'Affaires and
Political Resident at the court of King Theebaw in Mandalay. And it was
his "Secret Treaty" with the king which forced the hand of England and
led to her hasty occupation of Upper Burma. The story is a very pretty
one. By this treaty French influence was to become predominant in Upper
Burma; the country was to become virtually a colony of France, with a
community of interest with France, with France to support her in any
difficulty with British Burma. Such a position England could not
tolerate for one moment. Fortunately for us French intrigue outwitted
itself, and the Secret Treaty became known. It was in this way. Draft
copies of the agreement drawn up in French and Burmese were exchanged
between Monsieur Haas and King Theebaw. But Monsieur Haas could not read
Burmese, and he distrusted the King. A trusted interpreter was
necessary, and there was only one man in Mandalay that seemed to him
sufficiently trustworthy. To Signor A---- then, the Italian Chargé
d'Affaires and Manager of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, Monsieur Haas
went and, pledging him to secrecy, sought his assistance as interpreter.
As Monsieur Haas had done, so did his Majesty the King. Two great minds
were being guided by the same spirit. Theebaw could not read French, and
he distrusted Monsieur Haas. An interpreter was essential, and, casting
about for a trusted one, he decided that no one could serve him so
faithfully as Signor A----, and straightway sought his assistance, as
Monsieur Haas had done. Their fates were in his hands; which master
should the Italian serve, the French or the Burmese? He did not
hesitate--he betrayed them both. Within an hour the Secret Treaty was in
possession of the British Resident. Action was taken with splendid
promptitude. "M. de Freycinet, when pressed on the subject, repudiated
any intention of acquiring for France a political predominance in
Burma." An immediate pretext was found to place Theebaw in a dilemma;
eleven days later the British troops had crossed the frontier, and Upper
Burma was another province of our Indian Empire.
Monsieur Haas was recalled, and his abortive action repudiated. He had
acted, of course, without orders, he had erred from too much zeal.
Signor A---- was also recalled, but did not go because the order was not
accompanied with the customary cheque to defray the cost of his passage.
His services to England were rewarded, and he retained his engagement as
Manager of the Flotilla Company; but he lost his appointment as the
Representative of Italy--an honourable post with a dignified salary paid
by the Italian Government in I.O.U.'s.
Chungking is an enormously rich city. It is built at the junction of the
Little River and the Yangtse, and is, from its position, the great river
port of the province of Szechuen. Water-ways stretch from here an
immense distance inland. The Little River is little only in comparison
with the Yangtse, and in any other country would be regarded as a mighty
inland river. It is navigable for more than 2000 li (600 miles). The
Yangtse drains a continent; the Little River drains a province larger
than a European kingdom. Chungking is built at a great height above the
present river, now sixty feet below its summer level. Its walls are
unscalable. Good influences are directed over the city from a lofty
pagoda on the topmost hill in the vicinity. Temples abound, and spacious
yamens and rich buildings, the crowning edifice of all being the Temple
to the God of Literature. Distances are prodigious in Chungking, and the
streets so steep and hilly, with flights of stairs cut from the solid
rock, that only a mountaineer can live here in comfort. All who can
afford it go in chairs; stands of sedan chairs are at every important
street corner.
[Illustration: A TEMPLE THEATRE IN CHUNGKING.]
During the day the city vibrates with teeming traffic; at night the
streets are deserted and dead, the stillness only disturbed by a
distant watchman springing his bamboo rattle to keep himself awake and
warn robbers of his approach. In no city in Europe is security to life
and property better guarded than in this, or, indeed, in any other
important city in China. It is a truism to say that no people are more
law-abiding than the Chinese; "they appear," says Medhurst, "to maintain
order as if by common consent, independent of all surveillance."
Our Consul in Chungking is Mr. E. H. Fraser, an accomplished Chinese
scholar, who fills a difficult post with rare tact and complete success.
Consul Fraser estimates the population of Chungking at 200,000; the
Chinese, he says, have a record of 35,000 families within the walls. Of
this number from forty to fifty per cent. of all men, and from four to
five per cent. of all women, indulge in the opium pipe. The city abounds
in opium-shops--shops, that is, where the little opium-lamps and the
opium-pipes are stacked in hundreds upon hundreds. Opium is one of the
staple products of this rich province, and one of the chief sources of
wealth of this flourishing city.
During the nine months that I was in China I saw thousands of
opium-smokers, but I never saw one to whom could be applied that
description by Lay (of the British and Foreign Bible Society), so often
quoted, of the typical opium-smoker in China "with his lank and
shrivelled limbs, tottering gait, sallow visage, feeble voice, and
death-boding glance of eye, proclaiming him the most forlorn creature
that treads upon the ground."
This fantastic description, paraded for years past for our sympathy, can
be only applied to an infinitesimal number of the millions in China who
smoke opium. It is a well-known fact that should a Chinese suffering
from the extreme emaciation of disease be also in the habit of using
the opium-pipe, it is the pipe and not the disease that in ninety-nine
cases out of a hundred will be wrongly blamed as the cause of the
emaciation.
During the year 1893 4275 tons of Indian opium were imported into China.
The Chinese, we are told, plead to us with "outstretched necks" to cease
the great wrong we are doing in forcing them to buy our opium. "Many a
time," says the Rev. Dr. Hudson Taylor, "have I seen the Chinaman point
with his thumb to Heaven, and say, 'There is Heaven up there! There is
Heaven up there!' What did he mean by that? You may bring this opium to
us; you may force it upon us; we cannot resist you, but there is a Power
up there that will inflict vengeance." (_National Righteousness_, Dec.
1892, p. 13.)
But, with all respect to Dr. Hudson Taylor and his ingenious
interpretation of the Chinaman's gesture, it is extremely difficult for
the traveller in China to believe that the Chinese are sincere in their
condemnation of opium and the opium traffic. "In some countries," says
Wingrove Cooke, "words represent facts, but this is never the case in
China." Li Hung Chang, the Viceroy of Chihli, in the well-known letter
that he addressed to the Rev. F. Storrs Turner, the Secretary of the
Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade, on May 24th, 1881, a
letter still widely circulated and perennially cited, says, "the poppy
is certainly surreptitiously grown in some parts of China,
notwithstanding the laws and frequent Imperial edicts prohibiting its
cultivation."
Surreptitiously grown in some parts of China! Why, from the time I left
Hupeh till I reached the boundary of Burma, a distance of 1700 miles, I
never remember to have been out of sight of the poppy. Li Hung Chang
continues, "I earnestly hope that your Society, and all right-minded
men of your country, will support the efforts China is now making to
escape from the thraldom of opium." And yet you are told in China that
the largest growers of the poppy in China are the family of Li Hung
Chang.
The Society for the Suppression of Opium has circulated by tens of
thousands a petition which was forwarded to them from the
Chinese--spontaneously, per favour of the missionaries. "Some tens of
millions," this petition says, "some tens of millions of human beings in
distress are looking on tiptoe with outstretched necks for salvation to
come from you, O just and benevolent men of England! If not for the good
or honour of your country, then for mercy's sake do this good deed now
to save a people, and the rescued millions shall themselves be your
great reward." (_China's Millions_, iv., 156.)
Assume, then, that the Chinese do not want our opium, and unavailingly
beseech us to stay this nefarious traffic, which is as if "the Rivers
Phlegethon and Lethe were united in it, carrying fire and destruction
wherever it flows, and leaving a deadly forgetfulness wherever it has
passed." (The Rev. Dr. Wells Williams. "The Middle Kingdom," i., 288.)
They do not want our opium, but they purchase from us 4275 tons per
annum.
Of the eighteen provinces of China four only, Kiangsu, Cheh-kiang,
Fuhkien, and Kuangtung use Indian opium, the remaining fourteen
provinces use exclusively home-grown opium. Native-grown opium has
entirely driven the imported opium from the markets of the Yangtse
Valley; no Indian opium, except an insignificant quantity, comes up the
river even as far as Hankow. The Chinese do not want our opium--it
competes with their own. In the three adjoining provinces of Szechuen,
Yunnan, and Kweichow they grow their own opium; but they grow more than
they need, and have a large surplus to export to other parts of the
Empire. The amount of this surplus can be estimated, because all
exported opium has to pay customs and likin dues to the value of two
shillings a pound, and the amount thus collected is known. Allowing no
margin for opium that has evaded customs dues, and there are no more
scientific smugglers than the Chinese, we still find that during the
year 1893 2250 tons of opium were exported from the province of
Szechuen, 1350 tons from Yunnan, and 450 tons from Kweichow, a total of
4050 tons exported by the rescued millions of three provinces only for
the benefit of their fellow-countrymen, who, with outstretched necks,
plead to England to leave them alone in their monopoly.
Edicts are still issued against the use of opium. They are drawn up by
Chinese philanthropists over a quiet pipe of opium, signed by
opium-smoking officials, whose revenues are derived from the poppy, and
posted near fields of poppy by the opium-smoking magistrates who own
them.
In the City Temple of Chungking there is a warning to opium-eaters. One
of the fiercest devils in hell is there represented gloating over the
crushed body of an opium-smoker; his protruding tongue is smeared with
opium put there by the victim of "_yin_" (the opium craving), who wishes
to renounce the habit. The opium thus collected is the perquisite of the
Temple priests, and at the gate of the Temple there is a stall for the
sale of opium fittings.
Morphia pills are sold in Chungking by the Chinese chemists to cure the
opium habit. This profitable remedy was introduced by the foreign
chemists of the coast ports and adopted by the Chinese. Its advantage
is that it converts a desire for opium into a taste for morphia, a mode
of treatment analogous to changing one's stimulant from colonial beer to
methylated spirit. In 1893, 15,000 ounces of hydrochlorate of morphia
were admitted into Shanghai alone.
The China Inland Mission have an important station at Chungking. It was
opened seventeen years ago, in 1877, and is assisted by a representative
of the Horsburgh Mission. The mission is managed by a charming English
gentleman, who has exchanged all that could make life happy in England
for the wretched discomfort of this malarious city. Every assistance I
needed was given me by this kindly fellow who, like nearly all the China
Inland Mission men, deserves success if he cannot command it. A more
engaging personality I have rarely met, and it was sad to think that for
the past year, 1893, no new convert was made by his Mission among the
Chinese of Chungking. (_China's Millions_, January, 1894.) The Mission
has been working short-handed, with only three missionaries instead of
six, and progress has been much delayed in consequence.
The London Missionary Society, who have been here since 1889, have two
missionaries at work, and have gathered nine communicants and six
adherents. Their work is largely aided by an admirable hospital under
Cecil Davenport, F.R.C.S., a countryman of my own. "Broad Benevolence"
are the Chinese characters displayed over the entrance to the hospital,
and they truthfully describe the work done by the hospital. In the
chapel adjoining, a red screen is drawn down the centre of the church,
and separates the men from the women--one of the chief pretexts that an
Englishman has for going to church is thus denied the Chinaman, since he
cannot cast an ogling eye through a curtain.