THE CITY OF TONGCHUAN, WITH SOME REMARKS UPON INFANTICIDE.
When I entered Tongchuan the town was in commotion; kettledrums and
tomtoms were beating, and crackers and guns firing; the din and clatter
was continuous and deafening. An eclipse of the sun was commencing--it
was the 6th of April--"the sun was being swallowed by the Dog of
Heaven," and the noise was to compel the monster to disgorge its prey.
Five months ago the Prefect of the city had been advised of the
impending disaster, and it was known that at a certain hour he would
publicly intervene with Heaven to avert from the city the calamity of
darkness. I myself saw with my own eyes the wonderful power of this man.
The sun was darkened when I went to the Prefect's yamen. A crowd was
already gathered in the court. At the foot of the steps in the open air,
a loosely built framework of wood ten feet high was standing, displaying
on its vertex a yellow disc of paper inscribed with the characters for
"voracity."
As we waited the sun became gradually clearer, when, just as the moon
was disappearing across its edge, the Prefect in full dress, stepped
from his yamen into the court, accompanied by the city magistrate and a
dozen city fathers. Every instrument of discord was still clanging over
the city. Then all these men of weight walked solemnly three times
round the scaffold, and halted three times, while the Prefect went down
on his knees, and did obeisance with nine kotows to the rickety frame
and its disc of yellow paper. There was almost immediate answer to his
prayer. With a sigh of relief we saw the lingering remnant of darkness
disappear, and the midday sun shone full and bright. Then the Prefect
retired, his suite dividing to let him pass, and we all went home
blessing the good man whose intercession had saved the town from
darkness. For there can be little doubt, I hope, that it is due to the
action of this Prefect that the sun is shining to-day in Tongchuan. The
Chinese might well ask if any barbarian missionary could do as he did.
Eclipses in China are foretold by the Government almanac published
annually in Peking by a bureau of astrology attached to the Board of
Rites. The almanac is a Government monopoly, and any infraction of its
copyright is a penal offence. "It monopolises the management of the
superstitions of the people, in regard to the fortunate or unlucky
conjunctions of each day and hour. No one ventures to be without it,
lest he be liable to the greatest misfortunes and run the imminent
hazard of undertaking important events on blackballed days."
The Chinese almanac is much more comprehensive than ours, for even
eclipses are foretold that never happen. Should an error take place in
their almanac, and an expected eclipse not occur, the royal astronomers
are not disconcerted--far from it; they discover in their error reason
for rejoicing; they then congratulate the Emperor that "the heavens have
dispensed with this omen of ill-luck in his favour." For eclipses
forebode disaster, and every thoughtful Chinaman who has heard of the
present rebellion of the Japanese must attribute the reverses caused by
the revolt to the eclipse of April 6th, occurring immediately before the
insurrection.
Tongchuan is one of the most charming towns I have ever visited; it is
probably the cleanest city in China, and the best governed. Its prefect
is a man of singular enlightenment, who rules with a justice that is
rarely known in China. His people regard him as something more than
mortal. Like Confucius "his ear is an obedient organ for the reception
of truth." Like the Confucian Superior Man "his dignity separates him
from the crowd; being reverent he is beloved; being loyal he is
submitted to; and being faithful he is trusted. By his word he directs
men, and by his conduct he warns them."
For several years he was attached to the Embassy in Japan, and he boasts
that he has made Tongchuan as clean a city as any to be found in the
empire of the Mikado. The yamen is a model of neatness. Painted on the
outflanking wall there is the usual huge representation of the fabulous
monster attempting to swallow the sun--the admonition against
extortion--and probably the only magistrate in China who does not stand
in need of the warning is the Prefect of Tongchuan.
Prices in Tongchuan at the time of my visit were high and food was
scarce. It was difficult to realise that men at that moment were dying
of starvation in the pretty town. Rice cost 400 cash for the same
quantity that in a good season can be bought for 60 cash; maize was 300
cash the sheng, whereas the normal price is only 40 cash. Sugar was 15
cash the cake instead of 6 cash the cake, and so on in all things. Poppy
is not grown in the valley to the same extent as hitherto, because
poppy displaces wheat and beans, and the people have need of all the
land they can spare to grow breadstuffs. In the other half of the year,
rice, maize, and tobacco are grown together on the plain, and at the
same season potatoes, oats, and buckwheat are grown in the hills.
Part of the plain is permanently under water, but it was the drought in
the winter and the rains in the summer of successive years that caused
the famine. There are no Mohammedans in the town--there have been none
since the rebellion--but there are many small Mohammedan villages across
the hills. No district in China is now more peaceful than the Valley of
Tongchuan. The Yangtse River--"The River of Golden Sand"--is only two
days distant, but it is not navigable even by Chinese boatmen. Sugarcane
grows in the Yangtse Valley in little pockets, and it is from there that
the compressed cakes of brown sugar seen in all the markets of Western
Yunnan are brought. Coal comes from a mine two or three days inland;
white-wax trees provide an important industry; the hills to the west
contain the most celebrated copper mines in the empire.
The cash of Tongchuan are very small and inferior, 2000 being equivalent
to one tael, whereas in Chaotong, 110 miles away, the cash vary from
1260 to 1640 the tael. Before the present Prefect took office the cash
were more debased still, no less than 4000 being then counted as one
tael, but the Prefect caused all these cash to be withdrawn from
circulation.
Unlike Chaotong, no children are permitted to be sold in the city, but
during last year no less than 3000 children (the figures are again
Chinese) were carried through the town on their way from Chaotong to the
capital. The edict of the Prefect which forbids the selling of children
increases the cases of infanticide, and in time of famine there are few
mothers among the starving poor who can truthfully assert that they have
never abandoned any of their offspring.
The subject of infanticide in China has been discussed by a legion of
writers and observers; and the opinion they come to seems to be
generally that the prevalence of the crime, except in seasons of famine,
has been enormously overstated. The prevalent idea with us Westerns
appears to be, that the murder of their children, especially of their
female children, is a kind of national pastime with the Chinese, or, at
the best, a national peculiarity. Yet it is open to question whether the
crime, excepting in seasons of famine, is, in proportion to the
population, more common in China than it is in England. H. A. Giles of
H.B.M. Chinese Consular Service, one of the greatest living authorities
on China, says "I am unable to believe that infanticide prevails to any
great extent in China.... In times of famine or rebellion, under stress
of exceptional circumstances, infanticide may possibly cast its shadow
over the empire, but as a general rule I believe it to be no more
practised in China than in England, France, the United States and
elsewhere." (_Journal, China Branch R.A.S._, 1885, p. 28.)
G. Eugène Simon, formerly French Consul in China, declares that
"infanticide is a good deal less frequent in China than in Europe
generally, and particularly in France." A statement that inferentially
receives the support of Dr. E. J. Eitel. (_China Review_, xvi., 189.)
The prevailing impression as to the frequency of infanticide in China is
derived from the statements of missionaries, who, no doubt
unintentionally, exaggerate the prevalence of the crime in order to
bring home to us Westerns the deplorable condition of the heathen among
whom they are labouring. But, even among the missionaries, the
statements are as divergent as they are on almost every other subject
relating to China. Thus the Rev. Griffith John argues "from his own
experience that infanticide is common all over the Empire," the Rev. Dr.
Edkins on the other hand says that "infanticide is a thing almost
unknown in Peking." And the well known medical missionary, Dr. Dudgeon
of Peking (who has left the London Mission), agrees with another medical
missionary, Dr. Lockhart, "that infanticide is almost as rare in China
as in England."
The Rev. A. H. Smith ("Chinese Characteristics," p. 207) speaks "of the
enormous infanticide which is known to exist in China." The Rev. Justus
Doolittle ("Social Life of the Chinese," ii. p. 203) asserts that "there
are most indubitable reasons for believing that infanticide is tolerated
by the Government, and that the subject is treated with indifference and
with shocking levity by the mass." ... But Bishop Moule "has good reason
to conclude that the prevalence of the crime has been largely
exaggerated." (_Journal, China Branch R.A.S._, _ut supra_.)
One of the best known Consuls in China, who lately retired from the
Service, told the writer that in all his thirty years' experience of
China he had only had personal knowledge of one authentic case of
infanticide.
"Exaggerated estimates respecting the frequency of infanticide," says
the Rev. Dr. D. J. MacGowan, "are formed owing to the withholding
interment from children who die in infancy." And he adds that "opinions
of careful observers will be found to vary with fields of observation."
(_China Review_, xiv., 206.)
Whatever the relative frequency of infanticide in China and Europe may
be, it cannot, I think, admit of question that the crime of infanticide
is less common among the barbarian Chinese than is the crime of
foeticide among the highly civilised races of Europe and America.
There are several temples in Tongchuan, and two beyond the walls which
are of more than ordinary interest. There is a Temple to the Goddess of
Mercy, where deep reverence is shown to the images of the Trinity of
Sisters. They are seated close into the wall, the nimbus of glory which
plays round their impassive features being represented by a golden
aureola painted on the wall. The Goddess of Mercy is called by the
Chinese "_Sheng-mu_," or Holy Mother, and it is this name which has been
adopted by the Roman Catholic Church as the Chinese name of the Virgin
Mary.
There is a fine City Temple which controls the spirits of the dead of
the city as the yamens of the magistrates control the living of the
city. The Prefect and the City Magistrate are here shown in their
celestial abodes administering justice--or its Chinese equivalent--to
the spirits who, when living, were under their jurisdiction on earth.
They hold the same position in Heaven and have the same authority as
they had on earth; and may, as spirits, be bribed to deal gently with
the spirits of departed friends just as, when living, they were open to
offers to deal leniently with any living prisoner in whose welfare the
friends were prepared to express practical sympathy.
In the Buddhist Temple are to be seen, in the long side pavilions, the
chambers of horrors with their realistic representations of the torments
of a soul in its passage through the eight Buddhist hells. I looked on
these scenes with the calmness of an unbeliever; not so a poor woman to
whom the horrors were very vivid truths. She was on her knees before
the grating, sobbing piteously at a ghastly scene where a man, while
still alive, was being cast by monsters from a hill-top on to red-hot
spikes, there to be torn in pieces by serpents. This was the torture her
dead husband was now enduring; it was this stage he had reached in his
onward passage through hell--the priest had told her so, and only money
paid to the priests could lighten his torment.
Beyond the south gate, amid groves of lofty pine trees, are the temple
and grounds, the pond and senior wrangler bridge, of the Confucian
Temple--the most beautifully-finished temple I have seen in China. We
have accustomed ourselves to speak in ecstacies of the wood-carving in
the temples of Japan, but not even in the Sh[=o]gun chapels of the Shiba
temples in Tokyo have I seen wood-carving superior to the exquisite
delicacy of workmanship displayed in the carving of the Imperial dragons
that frame with their fantastic coils the large Confucian tablet of this
temple. Money has been lavished on this building. The inclined marble
slabs that divide the terrace steps are covered with fanciful tracery;
the parapets of the bridge are chiselled in marble; sculptured images of
elephants with howdahs crown the pillars of the marble balustrades; the
lattice work under the wide eaves is everywhere beautifully carved.
Lofty pillars of wood support the temple roofs. They are preserved by a
coating of hemp and protected against fire by an outer coating of
plaster stained the colour of the original wood. Gilding is used as
freely in the decoration of the grand altar and tablets of this temple,
as it is in a temple in Burma.
On a hill overlooking the city and valley is the Temple to the God of
Literature. The missionary and I climbed to the temple and saw its
pretty court, its ancient bronze censer, and its many beautiful flowers,
and then sat on the terrace in the sun and watched the picturesque
valley spread out before us.
As we descended the hill again, a lad, who had attached himself to us,
offered to show us the two common pits in which are cast the dead bodies
of paupers and criminals. The pits are at the foot of the hill,
open-mouthed in the uncut grass. With famine in the city, with people
dying at that very hour of starvation, there was no lack of dead, and
both pits were filled to within a few feet of the surface. Bodies are
thrown in here without any covering, and hawks and crows strip them of
their flesh, a mode of treating the dead grateful to the Parsee, but
inexpressibly hateful to the Chinese, whose poverty must be overwhelming
when he can be found to permit it. Pigtails were lying carelessly about
and skulls separated from the trunk. Human bones gnawed by dogs were to
be picked up in numbers in the long grass all round the hill; they were
the bones of the dead who had been loosely buried close to the surface,
through which dogs--the domestic dogs one met afterwards in the
street--had scraped their way. Many, too, were the bones of dead
children; for poor children are not buried, but are thrown outside the
wall, sometimes before they are dead, to be eaten perhaps by the very
dog that was their playmate since birth.
I called upon the French priest, Père Maire, and he came with much
cordiality to the door of the mission to receive me. His is a pretty
mission, built in the Chinese style, with a modest little church and a
nice garden and summer-house. The father has been four years in
Tongchuan and ten in China. Like most of the French priests in China he
has succeeded in growing a prodigious beard whose imposing length adds
to his influence among the Chinese, who are apt to estimate age by the
length of the beard. Only three weeks ago he returned from the capital.
Signs of famine were everywhere apparent. The weather was very cold, and
the road in many places deeply covered with snow. Riding on his mule he
passed at different places on the wayside eight bodies, all recently
dead from hunger and cold. No school is attached to the mission, but
there is an _orphèlinat_ of little girls, _ramassées dans les rues_, who
had been cast away by their parents; they are in charge of Chinese
Catholic nuns, and will be reared as nuns. As we sat in the pavilion in
the garden and drank wine sent to him by his brother in Bordeaux--true
French wine--the priest had many things to tell me of interest, of the
native rebellion on the frontier of Tonquin, of the mission of Monsieur
Haas to Chungking, and the Thibetan trade in tea. "The Chinese? ah! yes.
He loves the Chinese because he loves all God's creatures, but they are
liars and thieves. Many families are converted, but even the Christians
are never Christian till the third generation." These were his words.