{341}
_The question of squeeze--Batter fingers for the boatmen--An array
of damp scarecrows--Ox carts--Prehistoric wheels--A decadent
people--Beggars--The playing of a part--A side show--Cumshaw._
|They tell me I must not talk about a river port in Babylon, because
Babylon was a city not a country, and it had no river port, but in that
valley of Mesopotamia there must have been in those old days, little
places where the people living along the banks landed their produce, or
gathered it in, and I think they must have resembled this river port of
Lanchou in Chihli, to which I came one still pleasant evening in June.
The sun was on the point of setting, and I consulted Tuan about where I
should go for the night. The inns, he opined, would be full, for all the
country-side had come to the feast, and, in truth, I did not hanker much
after a Chinese inn. I infinitely preferred the wupan, even at its very
worst, when the rain was coming through the matting. I only wondered if
Tuan and the boatmen would think it extremely undignified of me to stay
where I was. The worst I knew there were the cockroaches, and Heaven
only knew what I might find in a Chinese inn in June. {342}Apparently
Tuan did not think it undignified, and the boatmen of course were glad.
“You pay him one dollar,” suggested Tuan. Now a dollar is a thousand
cash, and a thousand cash, I suppose would about fill that money-box of
his. He got the dollar, because I paid it him myself, but what squeeze
Tuan extracted I am sure I don't know. Some he did get, I suppose as of
right, for squeeze seems to be the accepted fact in China.
A woman once told me how she was offered squeeze and a good big squeeze
too.
She was head of a hospital, and being an attractive young person,
she used to go out pretty often for motor drives with the locomotive
superintendent of the nearest railway. The Chinese took note of this,
as apparently they do of all things likely to concern them, and one day
there called upon her a Chinaman, well-dressed, of the better class. He
stood at the door of her sitting-room, shaking his own hands, and bowed
three times.
“What do you want?” said she, for she had never to her knowledge, seen
him before.
He spoke as good English, almost as she did herself, and he said,
well it was a little matter in which she might be of service to him,
and--yes--he of service to her.
She looked at him in astonishment. “But I don't know you,” she said,
puzzled and surprised.
It was a matter of oil, he said at last, when he got to the point. It
was well known that the engines required a great deal of oil, and he had
several thousands of tons of oil for sale. {343}“But what has that to do
with me?” asked the girl, more surprised than ever.
He bowed again. “You are a great friend of ------”
“But how do you know that?”
“Oh pardon,” his hand on his heart, “Chinaman know everything. You can
help me.”
“How?” she said still wondering.
“You speak to Mr -------. He buy oil,” and he looked at her
ingratiatingly.
She stared at him, hardly knowing whether to be angry or not.
“I have nothing to do with the locomotives.”
“Oh, but it will pay you,” said he, and from each side out of a
long pocket he drew two heavy bags, and planked them down on her
writing-table. Still she did not understand what he was driving at.
“For you,” said he, “for a few words.”
“Why, you are offering me squeeze,” said she indignantly, as the full
meaning of the thing flashed on her.
He made a soothing sound with his mouth. “Everybody does it,” said he.
“Indeed I don't.”
“Not enough?” said he. “There is five hundred and fifty dollars there,”
and he looked at her questioningly. “Well,” thoughtfully, “I can make it
two hundred dollars more, I have much oil,” and down went another bag of
silver. More than six months' salary was on the table.
“And suppose,” said she, curious, “Mr -------- pays no attention to me.”
“That would be unfortunate,” with a low bow, “but I think not. I have
much oil. I take risk.” {344}Then she rose up wrathfully. “Take it
away,” she said, “take it away. How dare you offer me squeeze!” And he
did take it away, and as he probably knew her salary to the very last
penny, thought her a fool for her pains.
I don't know whether Tuan extracted his squeeze beforehand, but I know
all three boatmen had the long fingers of batter fried in lard for
their breakfast the next morning, for I saw them having them, and Tuan
informed me with a grin, “Missie pay dollar. Can do,” and I was very
glad I had not patronised the Chinese inn.
Of course I rose very early. Before half-past four I was up and dressed
and peeping out of my little tent at the rows and rows of boats that lay
double-banked against the shore. The sun got up as early as I did, and
most of those people in the boats were up before him. The boats were own
sisters to the one in which I had come down the river, with one mast,
and shelters in the middle, and all the people had suffered, as we had
done, from wet, for such a drying day I have never before seen. All the
sails of course had to be dried, all the mats, the dilapidated bedding,
and it seemed most of the clothing, for padded blue coats and trousers
were stuck on sticks, or laid out in the sun. All the scarecrows that
ever I had known, had apparently come to grief on that double-banked
row of boats. The banks were knee-deep in mud, but it was sandy mud that
soon dried, and by six o'clock business on that shore was in full swing.
There was a theatre and fair going on close at hand, but business had to
be attended to all the same. These boatmen all still wear the queue,
so the barber was very busy, as it is of course impossible to shave on
board a boat, and even the immaculate Tuan had a fine crop of bristles
all over his head. They were gone before he gave me breakfast this
morning. The alluvial mud of the shore was cut into deep cart ruts, and
there were any number of carts coming down to the boats and going away
from them. There were ox carts with a solitary ox, harnessed much as
a horse would be and looking strange to me, accustomed to the bullock
drays of Australia with their bullocks, ten or twenty of them drawing
by a single wooden yoke, there were mule carts and carts heavy with
merchandise drawn by a mixed team of mule, ox, and the small and patient
donkey, and the people took from the boats their loading of grain, grown
far away in Mongolia, of stones, gathered by the river-bank, water-worn
stones used for making the picturesque garden and courtyard paths the
Chinese love, and even sometimes for building, and of osiers, grown
up in the mountains. There were piles and piles of these, and men were
carrying them slung on the ends of their bamboos. And the boats, for
the return journey were loaded, as far as I could see, with salt and the
thin tissue paper they use everywhere for the windows, it is much more
portable than glass, and cotton stuffs, such as even the poorest up in
the mountains must buy for their clothing. And because it was the Dragon
Boat Feast, I suppose, many of the boats were full of passengers, people
who had started thus early to make a day of it, innumerable small-footed
women and small, shavenheaded children, what little there was left of
their hair done up in tiny plaits, that stood straight out on end. And
all had on their best clothing. Even {346}the gentleman whose picture
I have taken standing under a tree had on a new hat of the brightest
yellow matting, and I wondered whether the poorer folk who thronged
the river-side in Mesopotamia, so many long centuries ago, were not
something like him. The only thing that was modern was the railway
station and rolling stock, just behind the river-side town, and the
great iron bridge that spans the river. Modern civilisation come to
Babylon. It has barely touched the surface though of this age-old
civilisation. The people who came crowding into the feast came in carts
with heavy wooden wheels, Punch's prehistoric wheels, exactly as their
ancestors came, possibly three thousand years ago, and the carts were
drawn by mules, by oxen, by donkeys, and were covered, some with the
ordinary blue cloth, some with grass matting, and sometimes, when they
were open, the women carried umbrellas of Chinese oiled paper, with here
and there one of ordinary European pattern. And the carts were packed
very close together indeed, for there were numberless women, and the
majority of them could only just totter along. For them to walk far or
for long, would be a sheer impossibility. Country people? No, again I
saw it strongly, these were serfs, perhaps, but not country people, they
were a highly civilised people, far more highly civilised than I am who
sit in judgment, so civilised that they were decadent, effete, and every
woman was helpless!
They crowded round the theatricals that were going on there in the open,
and all the stalls were crowded together round them too. These sellers
cannot afford to spread themselves out when half of {347}the likely
buyers must needs be stationary. Never have I seen so many Chinese women
of the well-to-do class together before. They wore their gayest silks
and satins and embroidered coats, their hair was elaborately dressed and
decked with flowers, their faces were painted and powdered, and usually
there was on them the faintest of impassive smiles. Poor women of modern
Babylon, maimed and crippled! It was rather a relief to look at the
beggars, and there were many of them, who, clad in sacking and filthy
rags, with wild black hair, beat their foreheads in the dust, and made
loud moan of their sufferings. Everyone plays his part properly in
China. It is the beggars' to make loud moan, it is the women's to give
no hint of the cruel suffering that has made childhood and youth a
torture, and left the dreadful aftermath behind it.
[Illustration: 0488]
I had plenty of time to see everything, for the train was not due till
eleven, and when it grew too hot to stay in the open any longer, I went
on to the platform and sat in the shade, and formed a sort of side show
to the fair, for so many people crowded round to look at the foreign
woman, and they had more than what a servant of one of my friends called
“a littee stink,” that at last the station policeman, who was really a
soldier guarding the line, came and cleared them away drastically
with drawn sword, and I explained, as best I could, that on this great
occasion, I hadn't the least objection to being a show, for very likely
many of these people had come from beyond the beaten tracks, from places
where foreigners were scarce, but I must have sufficient air.
Tuan got the tickets, and then I suppose, seeing his time was short, for
we should be in Peking by seven, and should certainly part, he relieved
his mind and asked a question that had evidently been burning there ever
since we had left the mission station.
“Missie have pay mission boys _cumshaw?_”
Now the _cumshaw_ had been a difficulty.
My hostess had come to me and said: “I know you are going to give a
_cumshaw_. I may as well tell you that if our visitors don't we always
do ourselves, because the servants expect it, but I am come to beg of
you not to give too much and to give it through us. In fact the cook
went for his holiday last night and we gave him eighty cents and said it
was from you.”
“Eighty cents!” I was afraid those servants would think me very mean.
But my hostess was very fluent on the subject, and very determined. The
majority of their visitors could not possibly afford to give much, and
they were very anxious not to establish a precedent. What was I to do? I
might have supplemented it through Tuan, but I felt it would be making
a poor return to the people who had been so kind to me, so I was obliged
to let it go at that.
“I pay Missie, she give _cumshaw_ for me,” said I to Tuan.
“Ah!” said that worthy, as if he had settled a doubt satisfactorily in
his own mind, “boy say Missie pay eighty cent, I say, not my Missie, she
give five, ten dollar, always give five, ten dollar, your Missie give
eighty cent!”
And as I went on my way to Peking, across the plain in its summer dress
of lush green kaoliang, I wondered sorrowfully if all the return I had
made for the kindness received was to have those missionaries accused of
pocketing the _cumshaw_ I was supposed to have given.
But I was glad to come back, glad not to think any more of the Chinaman
as a creature whose soul had to be saved, glad to come back to my
ordinary associates who were ordinarily worldly and selfish, and
felt that they might drink a whisky-and-soda and consider their own
enjoyment, though there were a few hundred million people in outer
darkness around them. The majority of us cannot live in the rarefied
atmosphere that demands constant sacrifice and abnegation for the sake
of those we do not and cannot love.