{019}
_Chien Men Railway Station--Driver Chow--“Urgent speed in high
disdain”--Peking dust storm--Joys of a bath--The glories of
Peking--The Imperial City--The Forbidden City--Memorial arches--The
observatory--The little Tartar princess--Life in the streets--Street
stalls--A mercenary marriage--Courtly gentlemen._
|I looked out of the carriage window as the train ran through the
Chinese city on its way to the Chien Men railway station, and wondered
what the future was going to be like, and I wondered aloud.
“How will I get on?”
Opposite me sat an amusing young gentleman with a ready tongue.
“Oh you'll be all right,” said he. “The Chinese 'll like you because
you're fat and o----” and then he checked himself seeing, I suppose, the
dawning wrath in my eyes. The Chinese admire fat people and they respect
the old, but I had not been accustomed to looking upon myself as old
yet, though I had certainly seen more years than he had, and as for
fat--well I had fondly hoped my friends looked upon it as a pleasing
plumpness. With these chastening remarks sinking into my soul, we rolled
into the railway station.
The railways in China, with a few exceptions, have been built by the
English or French--mostly {020}by the English--and are managed to a
great extent on European lines, so that arriving at the railway station
in Peking does not differ very much from arriving at any other great
terminus, save for the absence of cabs; but I imagine there must be
differences, and that those who run the lines have little difficulties
to contend with that would not occur on the London and North Western for
example.
“Dear Sir,”--wrote a stationmaster once to the locomotive
superintendent--“I have, with many tears, to call your attention to your
driver, Chow, who holds urgent speed in high disdain.”
The locomotive superintendent, without any tears, investigated the
charge against this driver, Chow. The line was worked on the staff
system. No driver could leave a station without giving up the staff he
had brought in, and receiving the corresponding one for the next stretch
of line. The staff--to follow the directions--is to be handed to the
driver by the stationmaster, but the stationmaster on this, and I expect
on many other occasions, for the Chinese are past-masters in the art of
delegating work to someone else, had handed the staff to a coolie and
gone about his pleasure. Now Chow evidently had a grudge against him,
for, I fear me, no one believed in his altruism. He insisted on the
strict letter of the law and declined to take the staff until it was
handed to him by the important man himself, and he kept the whole train
waiting, while that worthy was searched for, and hauled out of the
particular gambling-house he most affected. When the gentleman appeared,
furious and angry, on the platform, Chow calmly lifted up his staff to
effect {021}an exchange, and he swore on investigation he had forgotten
that the end the stationmaster received had been reposing for all the
long wait upon the nearly red-hot boiler! That the stationmaster burnt
his fingers is a mild statement of the case.
There was a wild wind blowing when I stepped out of the train and looked
around me at the frowning walls, at least I looked as much as I could,
for the day was bitterly cold, and most of the ground was in the air.
A London fog was nothing to it, that is soft and still and filthy, this
was hard and gritty, moving fast and equally filthy, and every one of
the passengers was desperately anxious to exchange the bleak railway
station for the warmth and comfort and cleanliness to be found between
four walls.
I was just as anxious as anybody else, but by the time I had collected
my luggage the awful facts were borne in on me that all the people with
whom I had made friends on the way across, were rapidly departing, and
that there was no one to meet me. Peking was wonderful, I knew it was
wonderful; there were such walls as I had never even dreamt of, towering
above me, but I was not able to rise above the fact that I was in a
strange city, among quaint-looking people who spoke an unknown tongue,
and that I did not know where to go. And the Morrisons' invitation had
been most cordial. I had rejected all offers of help, because I was so
sure someone from their house would be there to meet me, now I seized
the last remaining passenger who could speak a little Chinese, and, with
his help, got a hand-cart for my gear, drawn by two ragged men, and
a rickshaw for myself--this man haulage, this {022}cheapness of human
labour, made me realise more quickly than anything else could have
done, that I had really arrived in the Eastern world--and after a little
debate with myself I started for Dr Morrison's. I had been asked to stay
there, and I felt it would be rude to go to the hotel, but as we
drove through the streets I thought--as much as the dust, the filthy
dust--that the violent gusts of wind were blowing in my face would
allow--not of the wonders of this new world upon which I was entering,
but of how I should announce myself to these people who apparently were
not expecting me. I had such a lot of luggage too!
[Illustration: 0049]
At last the coolies stopped opposite a door guarded by two stone lions,
and as I got out of my rickshaw, entered the porch, and stood outside
a little green wicket gate, the doorkeeper stepped out of his room and
looked at me. He was clad all in blue cotton and he had an impassive
face and just enough English for a doorkeeper.
No, Missie was not at home, he announced calmly. “Master?” I asked
frantically, but he shook his head, Master was out too. Here was a
dilemma. I would have gone straight to the hotel I had discovered Peking
boasted, but I feared they might think it rude. I made him understand I
would come in and wait a little, and my luggage, my dilapidated luggage,
for Kharbin and Manchuria had been hard on it, was carried into the
courtyard of the first Chinese house I had ever seen. But I wasn't
thinking of sight-seeing then; I was wondering what I should do.
I questioned the No. 1 boy, as I subsequently found he was, a
pleasant-faced little man in a long blue coat or dress, whichever
{023}you please to call it, and a little round silk cap suppressing
his somewhat wild hair. I learned afterwards that some students,
enthusiastic for the new regime, had caught him the day before and shorn
off his queue with no skilful hands. It was his opinion that Missie
was not expecting a guest, but he suggested I should come inside and
have-some tea. The thought of tea was distinctly comforting, and so
was his attitude. It suggested that unexpected guests were evidently
received with hospitality, and dirty as I felt myself to be, I went in
and sat down to a meal of tea and cakes.
“I makee room ready chop chop,” announced the boy, and I drank tea and
ate cakes, wondering whether I ought not to stop him, and say he had
better wait till his mistress came home. And I felt so horribly dirty,
too. Then there came in a lady who also looked at me with surprise.
She had come to tea with Mrs Morrison, and she was quite sure Mrs
Morrison was expecting no guest. This was awful. I became so desperate
that nothing seemed to matter, and I went on eating cake and drinking
tea till presently the No. 1 boy came in again, and calmly announced:
“Barf ready.”
And I had just been told that my hostess did not expect me!
I looked at the lady sitting opposite me, I looked at the boy, and I
considered my very dirty and dishevelled self. I had not even seen a
bath since I left Moscow. I had come through the Peking streets in
a Peking dust storm, and I felt a bath was a temptation not to be
resisted, wherever that bath was offered; so I arose and followed the
boy, and {024}presently Mrs Morrison, coming into her own courtyard, was
confronted by a heap of strange luggage, and a boy standing over it with
a feather duster, no mere feather duster could have coped with the dirt
upon it, but a Chinese servant would attack a hornet's nest with one;
it is his badge of office. He looked up at her and remarked, in that
friendly and conversational manner with which the Chinese servant makes
the wheels of life go smoothly for his Missie when he has her alone.
“One piecey gentleman in barf!”
She came and knocked at the bedroom door when I was doing my hair and
feeling much more able to face the world, and made me most cordially
welcome, and, when I was fully dressed and back in the drawing-room, Dr
Morrison appeared, and said he was glad to see me, and no one mentioned
that my arrival had been unexpected, till a week later, when the letter
I had written saying by what train I was coming, turned up.
I stayed with Dr Morrison and his pretty young wife for close on a
fortnight, and they gave me most kindly hospitality, and not only did I
view the wonders of Peking, make some acquaintances and friends, but saw
just a little of the peculiarities of Chinese servants. They are good,
there is no gainsaying it, but sometimes they did surprise me. Dr
Morrison has a secretary, young and slim and clever, who in the early
days of our acquaintanceship was wont very kindly to come over and help
me in the important matter of fastening up dresses at the back. One
evening, being greatly in need of her assistance, I sent across the
courtyard to her, and the startled young lady was calmly informed by
{025}a bland and smiling boy as if it were the most natural thing in the
world:
“One piecey gentleman wanchee in he's bedroom.”
At first I don't think I appreciated Peking. It left me cold, and my
heart sank, for I had come to write about it, to gain material perhaps
for a novel, and this most certainly is a truth, you cannot write well
about a place unless you either love or hate it. Still, I have always
had a great distaste for dashing through a country like an American
tourist, and so I settled down at the Wagons Lits Hotel, surely the most
cosmopolitan hotel in the world.
And then by slow degrees my eyes were opened, and I saw. Blind, blind,
how could I have been so blind? It makes me troubled. Have other good
things been offered me in life? And have I turned away and missed them?
The wonder of what I have seen in Peking never palls, it grows upon me
daily.
“Walk about Zion and go round about her... consider her palaces that ye
may tell it to the generation following.” So chanted the psalmist, not
so much, perhaps, for the sake of future generations, but because her
beauty and charm so filled his soul that his lips were forced to song.
“Tell the towers thereof, mark ye well her bulwarks.” Far back in the
ages, a nation great and civilised on the eastern edge of the plain
that stretches half across the world, builded themselves a mighty
city. Peking first came into being when we Western nations, who pride
ourselves upon our intense civilisation, were but naked savages, hunters
and nomads, and she, spoiled and sacked and looted, {026}taking fresh
masters, and absorbing them, Chinese and Tartar, Ming and Manchu, has
endured even unto the present day. To-day, the spirit of the West
is breathing over her and she responds a little, ever so little, and
murmurs of change, yet she remains the same at heart as she has been
through the ages. How should she change? She is wedded to her past, she
can no more be divorced from it than can the morning from the evening.
There is something wonderful and antique about any walled city, but a
walled city like Peking stands alone. The very modern railway comes
into the Chinese City through an archway in the wall, and the railway
station, the hideous modern railway station, lies just outside the great
wall of the Tartar City. There are three cities in Peking, indeed for
the last few years there have been four--four distinct cities. There is
the Imperial City, enclosed in seven miles of pinkish red wall, close on
twenty feet high, and in the Imperial City, the very heart of it, behind
more pinkish red walls, is the Forbidden City, where dwell the remnant
of the Manchu Dynasty, the baby emperor and his guardians, the women,
the eunuchs, the attendants that make up such a gathering as waited in
bygone days on Darius, King of the Medes, or Ahasuerus, King of Babylon.
Here there are spacious courtyards and ancient temples and palaces, and
audience halls with yellowish-brown tiled roofs, extensive lakes, where
multitudes of wild duck, flying north for the summer, or south for the
winter, find a resting-place, watch-towers and walls, and tunnelled
gateways through those walls. When through the ages the greatest artists
of a nation have been giving their minds to {027}the beautifying of a
city, the things of beauty in that city are so numerous that it seems
impossible for one mind to grasp them, to realise the wonder and the
charm, especially when that charm is exotic and evasive.
The Imperial City, all round the Forbidden City, consists of a network
of narrow streets and alleys lined with low buildings with windows of
delicate lattice-work, and curved tiled roofs. Here, hidden away in
silent peaceful courtyards shaded by gnarled old trees, are temples
guarded by shaven priests in faded red robes. Their hangings are torn
and faded, the dust lies on their altars, and the scent of the incense
is stale in their courts, for the gods are dead; and yet because the
dead are never forgotten in China--China that clings to her past--they
linger on. Here are shops, low one-storied shops, with fronts richly
carved and gilded, streets deep in mud or dust, narrow alley-ways and
high walls with mysterious little doors in them leading into secluded
houses, and all the clatter and clamour of a Chinese city, laden
donkeys, mules and horses, rickshaws from Japan, glass broughams weirdly
reflecting the glory of modern London, and blue, tilted Peking carts
with studded wheels, {028}such as have been part and parcel of the Imperial
City for thousands of years, all the life of the city much as it is
outside the pinkish red walls, only here and there are carved pillars
and broad causeways that, if the stones could speak, might tell a tale
of human woe and Human weariness, of joy and magnificence, that would
surpass any told of any city in the world.
And outside the Imperial City, hemming it in, in a great square fourteen
miles round, is the Tartar City with splendid walls. Outside that
again, forming a sort of suburb, lies to the south the Chinese City with
thirteen miles of wall enclosing not only its teeming population, but
the great open spaces and parks of the Temple of Heaven and the Temple
of Agriculture. But though the Tartar City and the Chinese City are
distinct divisions of Peking, walled off from each other, all difference
between the people has long ago disappeared. The Tartars conquered the
Chinese, and the Chinese, patient, industrious, persistent, drew the
Tartars to themselves. But still the walls that divided them endure.
The Tartar City is crossed by broad highways cutting each other at right
angles, three run north and south, and three run east and west, they are
broad and are usually divided into three parts, the centre part being a
good, hard, well-tended roadway, while on either side the soil is loose,
and since the streets are thronged, the side ways are churned up in
the summer into a slough that requires some daring to cross, and in the
winter--the dry, cold rainless winter, the soil is ground into a powdery
dust that the faintest breeze raises into the air, and many of the
breezes of Northern China are by no means faint. The authorities try to
grapple with the evil--at regular intervals are stationed a couple of
men with a pail of muddy water, which with a basket-work scoop they
distribute lavishly in order to try and keep down the rising dust.
But the dust of Peking is a problem beyond a mere pail and scoop. This
spattering of water has about as much effect upon it as a thimbleful of
water flung on a raging fiery furnace.
[Illustration: 0057]
Still, in spite of the mud and the dust, the streets {029}are not
without charm. They are lined with trees; indeed I think no city of its
size was ever better planted. When once one has realised how treeless
is the greater part of China, this is rather surprising. For look which
way you will from the wall in the summer and autumn, you feel you
might be looking down upon a wood instead of a city; the roofs of the
single-storied houses are hidden by the greenery, and only here and
there peeps out the tiled roof of a temple or hall of audience with the
eaves curving upwards, things of beauty against the background of green
branches. Curiously enough it is only from the walls that Peking
has this aspect. Once in the network of alley-ways it seems as if a
wilderness of houses and shops were crowding one on top of the other, as
if humanity were crushing out every sign of green life. This is because
there is to all things Chinese two sides. There is the life of the
streets, mud-begrimed, dusty, seething with humanity, odoriferous,
ragged, dirty, patient, hardworking; and there is a hidden life shut
away in those networks of narrow alley-ways.
There is many a gateway between two gilded shop fronts, some black
Chinese characters on a red background set out the owner's name
and titles, and, passing through, you are straightway admitted into
courtyard after courtyard, some planted with trees, some with flowering
plants in pots--because of the cruel winter all Chinese gardens in the
north here are in pots, sometimes with fruit-trees thick with blossom
or heavy with fruit, and in the paved courtyards, secluded, retired as
a convent, you find the various apartments of a well-arranged Chinese
house; there are shady verandas, and dainty lattice-work {030}windows
looking out upon miniature landscapes with little hills and streams and
graceful bridges crossing the streams. But only a favoured few may see
these oases. For the majority Peking must be the wide-open boulevards
and narrow hu t'ungs, fronted by low and highly ornamental houses,
and shops so close together that there is no more room for a garden or
growing green life than there is in Piccadilly. True there are trees in
these boulevards, in Morrison Street, in Ha Ta Men Street, in the street
of Eternal Repose that cuts them at right angles, but they would be but
small things in the mass of buildings were it not for the courtyards of
the private houses and temples that are hidden behind.
There are, too, in the streets p'ia lous or memorial arches, generally
of three archways with tiled roofs of blue or green or yellow rising
in tiers one above the other, put up in memory of some deed the Chinese
delight to honour. And what the Chinese think worthy of honour, and what
the Westerner delights to honour are generally as far apart, I find,
as the Poles. In Ha Ta Men Street, however, there is a p'ia lou all of
white marble, put up by the last Manchu Emperor in memory of gallant
Baron von Kettler, done to death in the Boxer rising, but there, I am
afraid, Chinese appreciation was quickened by European force.
We are apt to think that European influence in China is quite a thing of
yesterday, that Baron von Kettler was the first man of note who perished
in the inevitable conflict, and yet, when I looked at the eastern wall
of the city, I was reminded, with a start, that European influence dates
long before {031}the Boxer time, long before the days of the Honourable
East India Company, and many must have been the martyrs. There on the
eastern wall stands the observatory, and clear-cut against the bright
blue sky are astronomical instruments with dragons and strange beasts
upon them. They were placed there by the Jesuits in the middle of
the seventeenth century, and I know that those priests could not have
attained so much influence without a bitter baptism of blood. They stand
out as landmarks, those orbs and astrolabes, up and down the wall, even
as they have come down through the centuries; monuments, as enduring as
any Chinese p'ia lou, of faith and suffering; but the Jesuits were not
the first to place astronomical instruments there. The Chinese were not
barbarians by any means, though by some curious freak we Westerners have
passed them in the race for civilisation, and, as long ago as the days
of Kublai Khan, they had an observatory here by the wall. On the
ground below, in a tree-shaded courtyard, there is an astrolabe with a
beautiful bronze dragon for a stand, the dust-laden air of Peking has
polished and preserved it, so that I can see but little difference
between it and the newer instruments on the platform above--newer and
yet two hundred and fifty years old.
And beyond the observatory in the north-east corner of the city is the
Lama Temple, a temple with picturesque, yellowish-brown tiled roofs and
spacious courtyards, in which are quaint old gnarled trees, and building
after building in that curious state that is part beautiful, part
slovenly decay, ruled over by hundreds of shaven, yellow-robed monks
among whom, they say, it is not safe for a {032}woman to go by herself.
There is the Temple of Confucius, with surely the most peaceful
courtyard in the world, and there are other temples, temples with
courtyards and weird, twisted coniferous trees in them that are hundreds
of years old, pagodas, and bells, and towers, and to each and all is
attached many a story.
[Illustration: 0063]
Overlooking the great causeway that runs along in front of the Forbidden
City, west past the south main gate, are two towers, one to the north in
the Forbidden City, and one to the south without its walls; and of these
two towers they tell a story of tenderness and longing. Hundreds of
years ago, when the Tartars were first subject to the Ming Emperors,
part of their tribute had to be one of their fairest princesses, who
became a member of the Emperor's harem.
The poor little girl's inclinations were not considered, not even now
is the desire of a woman considered in China, and the little Tartar girl
was bound to suffer for her people. She might or might not please the
Emperor, but whether she did or not the position of one who might share
the Emperor's bed was so high that she might never again hold communion
with her own kin. And then there came one little Tartar princess, who,
finding favour with her lord, summoned courage to tell him of her love
and longing. But there are some rules that not even the mighty Emperor
of China may abrogate, and he could not permit her ever again to mingle
with the common herd. One thing only could he do, and that he did. He
built the northern tower looking over the causeway, and the southern
tower on the other side. On the one tower the poor “lest we forget.”
{033}little secondary wife, lonely and weighted by her high estate,
might stand so that she could see her people on the other, and, though
they were too far apart for caress or spoken word, at least they could
see each other and know that all was well.
I do not know whether many of the people who throng the streets from
morning to night, and long after night has fallen, ever give a thought
to the little Tartar princess. The shops, most of them open to the
streets, are full, and on two sides of the main roadways are set up
little stalls for the sale of trifles. Curiously enough, and I suppose
it denotes poverty and lack of home life, about half these stalls are
given up to the cooking and selling of eatables. In Ha Ta Men Street,
in Morrison Street, in the street of Eternal Repose, that is as if we
should say in Piccadilly, in Regent Street, and the Hay-market, and just
outside the gates in the Chinese City, on the path that runs between the
canal and the Tartar wall, you may see these same little stalls.
Here is a man who sells tea, keeping his samovar boiling with shovelfuls
of little round hard nodules, coal dust made up with damp clay into
balls; here is another with a small frying-pan in which he is baking
great slabs of wheaten flour cakes, and selling them hot out of the pan;
here is another with an earthenware dish full of an appetising-looking
stew of meat and vegetables, with a hard-boiled egg or two floating on
top; another man has big yellow slabs of cake with great plums in them,
another has sticks of apples and all manner of fruits and vegetables
done into sweetmeats. And here as it is cooked, alfresco, do the people,
the men, for women are seldom seen at the stalls, come and buy, and
{034}eat, without other equipment than a basin, a pair of chop sticks or
a bone spoon like a ladle supplied by the vendor.
They sell, and make, and mend Chinese footgear at these stalls too;
there is a fortune-teller, one who will read your future with a chart
covered with hieroglyphics spread out on the bare ground; there is
the letter-writer for the unlearned; there are primitive little
gaming-tables; and there are cheap, very cheap cigarettes and tobacco of
brands unknown in America or Egypt.
I have said there is a lack of home life, and thought, like the arrogant
Westerner I am, that the Chinese do not appreciate it, but only the
other day I heard a little story that made me think that the son of Han,
like everyone else, longs for a home and someone in it he can call his
very own.
One day a missionary teacher heard an outcry behind her, and turning,
saw a blind woman, unkempt and filthy and whining pitifully. “Oh who
will help me? Who will help me?” she cried, shrinking away from the dog
that was making dashes at the basket she carried for doles.
The missionary called off her dog, and reassured the woman. The dog
would not hurt her. He was only interested in the food in her basket.
“Then,” said she, “I went on, because I was in a hurry, but as I went I
thought how horrible the woman looked, and that I ought to go back and
tell her, 'God is Love.'”
So the missionary stopped and talked religion to that blind beggar, and
told her to come up to the Mission Station. She looked after her soul,
but also, out of the kindness of her heart, she looked {035}after her
body, and when the beggar was established, a woman of means with a whole
dollar--two shillings--a week, she realised that God was indeed Love,
and became a fervent Christian.
“Clean,” I asked, being of an inquiring turn of mind, and her saviour
laughed.
“Perhaps you wouldn't call her clean, but it is a vast improvement on
what she was.”
The woman wasn't young, as Chinese count youth in a woman, she wasn't
good-looking, she wasn't in any way attractive, but she was a woman of
means, and presently her guardian was embarrassed by an offer from a man
of dim sight, for the hand and heart of her protégée. The missionary was
horrified. The woman was married already. The would-be bridegroom, the
prospective bride, and all their friends smiled, and seemed to think
that since her last alliance wasn't a real marriage it should be no bar.
Still the lady was firm, the woman had lived with the man for some
years and it was a marriage in her humble opinion. So the disappointed
candidates for matrimony went their way. However, a few weeks later the
woman came to her guardian with a face wreathed in smiles, “that thing,”
she said, she didn't even call him a man, that thing was dead, had died
the day before, and there was now no reason why she should not marry
again! There was no reason, and within ten days the nuptials were
celebrated, and the blind woman went to live with her new husband.
I asked was it a success and the missionary smiled.
“Yes, it is certainly a success, only her husband complains she eats too
much.” {036}I said there were always drawbacks when a man married for
money!
But as a matter of fact the marriage was a great success. I saw the
happy couple afterwards, and the woman looked well-cared for and neat,
and her husband helped her up some steps quite as carefully as any man
of the West might have done. Truly the Fates were kind to the blind
beggar when they put her in the way of that missionary. She is far,
far happier probably than the bride of a higher class who goes to a
new home, and, henceforward, as long as the older woman lives, is but
a servant to her mother-in-law. True the husband had complained his new
wife ate too much. But Chinese etiquette does not seem to think it at
all the correct thing to praise anything that belongs to one. And for a
husband to show affection for his wife, whatever he may feel, is a most
extraordinary thing. The other day a woman was working in the courtyard
of a house when there came in her husband who had been away for close on
six months. Did they rush at one another as Westerners would have done?
Not at all. He crossed the courtyard to announce himself to his master,
and she went on with her work. Each carefully refrained from looking at
the other, because had they looked people might have thought they cared
for each other. And it is in the highest degree indelicate for a husband
or wife to express affection for each other.
[Illustration: 0070]
In truth, once my eyes were opened, I soon grew to think that, from the
point of view of the sightseer, there are few places in the world to
compare with Peking, and the greatest interest lies in the people--the
crowded humanity of the streets. Of course {037}I have seen crowded
humanity--after London how can any busy city present any novelty--and
yet, here in Peking, a new note is struck. Not all at once did I realise
it; my mind went groping round asking, what is the difference between
these people and those one sees in the streets of London or Paris? They
are a different type, but that is nothing, it is only skin deep. What
is it then? One thing cannot but strike the new-comer, and that is that
they are a peaceable and orderly crowd, more amenable to discipline, or
rather they discipline themselves better, than any crowd in the world.
Not but that there are police. At every few yards the police of the New
Republic, in dusty black bound with yellow in the winter, and in khaki
in the summer, with swords strapped to their waists, direct a traffic
that is perfectly capable of directing itself; and at night, armed with
rifles, mounted bands of them patrol the streets, the most law-abiding
streets apparently in the world. In spite of the swarms of tourists, who
are more and more pouring into Peking, a foreigner is still a thing to
be wondered at, to be followed and stared at; but there is no rudeness,
no jostling. He has only to put out his hand to intimate to the
following crowd that he wishes a little more space, that their company
is a little too odoriferous, and they fall back at once, only to press
forward again the next moment. Was ever there such a kindly, friendly
nation? And yet--and yet--What is it I find wrong? They are a highly
civilised people, from the President who reigns like a dictator, to
the humble rickshaw coolie, who guards my dress from the filth of the
street. He will hawk, and spit, but he is as {038}courtly a gentleman as
one of the bucks of the Prince Regent's Court, who probably did much the
same thing. It dawned upon me slowly. These people have achieved that
refinement we of the West have been striving for and have not attained
as yet. It is well surely to make perfection an aim in life, and yet I
feel something has gone from these people in the process of refining.
Ninety-nine times out of a hundred they can be trusted to keep order,
and the hundredth probably not all the police in the capital could hold
them. The very rickshaw coolies, when they fall out, trust to the sweet
reasonableness of argument, even though that argument Waste interminable
hours. A European, an Englishman or an American probably, comes
hectoring down the street--no other word describes his attitude, when
it is contrasted with that of the courteous Orientals round him. On the
smallest provocation, far too small a provocation, he threatens to kick
this coolie, he swings that one out of the way and, instead of being
shocked, I am distinctly relieved. Here is an exhibition of force,
restrained force, that is welcome as a rude breeze, fresh from the sea
or the mountains, is welcome in a heated, scented room. These
people, even the poorer people of the streets, are suffering from
over-civilisation, from over-refinement. They need a touch of the
primitive savage to make the red blood run in their veins. Not but that
they can be savage, so savage on occasion, the hundredth occasion when
no police could hold them, that their cruelty is such that there is
not a man who knows them who would not keep the last cartridge in his
revolver to save himself from the refinement of their tender mercies.
{039}But I did not make this reflection the first, or even the tenth
time, I walked in the streets. It was a thing that grew upon me
gradually. By the time I found I was making comparisons, the comparisons
were already made and my opinions were formed. I looked at these strange
men and women, especially at the small-footed women, and wondered what
effect the condemning of fifty per cent of the population to years of
torture had had upon the mental growth of this nation, and I raised my
eyes to the mighty walls that surrounded the city, and knew that the
nation had done wonderful things.