THE CHILDREN’S HOME
Homes differ as much in China as in other lands. Some are palaces,
some poor huts, some are caves cut into the face of cliffs, some are
boats upon rivers, where thousands of boys and girls learn to handle
the oar from their earliest childhood. Some are in dusty villages by
the roadside, others are set between stairs of green rice fields upon
mountain slopes, or built upon flat plains among giant millet and other
crops.
A large number of children are brought up in cities. You cannot easily
get at their homes because of the streams of blue-clad people who
throng the streets. Come for a walk among the busy shops, so that you
may know something of the place where Chinese boys and girls spend so
much of their time. Sedan-chairs, carried by strong men, push through
the crowd, shaving butchers’ stalls and narrowly missing the heads of
running children. Burden bearers, with bags of rice on their backs,
or loaded with vegetables, pigs in open baskets, bales of cotton or
tobacco, follow one another over the slippery pavement.
Here comes a pedlar selling tapes, needles and bits of silk. He is
called a ‘bell shaker,’ because he tinkles a little bell to call
attention to his wares. That poor man, with shaggy hair and half-naked
skin, is ‘a cotton-rags fairy,’ or beggar. He lives in a ‘beggars’
camp’ not far away.
Look in at this temple. The heavy scent, reminding you of rose-leaves
and stale tobacco, which comes through the open doorway, is the smell
of incense. Beyond the court, inside the door, is a big room where
idols, once bright with gilding, now blackened with smoke, sit each
upon its throne. Those spots of light inside the hall are made by
candles burning on the altar beneath the gloomy roof.
Boys and girls do not care to go inside, unless their mothers bring
them to bow before the idols. Some of the images have ugly faces, blue,
black and fiery red, which children can scarcely look at without being
afraid. Some are gilt and have a strange smile upon their lips. Here is
description of an idol in its temple:
“I dreamed I was an idol, and I sat
Still as a crystal, smiling as a cat,
Where silent priests through immemorial hours
Wove for my head mysterious scarlet flowers.
* * * * *
“There as I waited, day by changeless day,
My people brought their gifts and knelt to pray,
And I ...
... in unavailing pity sat
Still as a crystal, smiling as a cat.”
Let us turn down this narrow lane. Now we have left the shops and the
busy street. Look at the rows of smallish houses, each with a bit of
plain wall and a bamboo screen hanging in front of the door. You hear
the sound of children’s voices within as you pass. How happy that
little boy is, running along in bright red trousers, flying his kite.
His home is near by; when he is older he will go to school, or learn a
trade in one of the shops not far away.
Here the streets are narrower. What strange names they have! Stone Bird
Lane, Grinding Row, Old Woo’s Lane, Bean Curd Lane, Family Ma’s Market.
Look at this big house. Turn in by the opening at the right of the
front door. Now we are inside the first court, an open space with rooms
all around. The room in front of us is the largest in the house. A
wooden cabinet stands on the narrow table against the back wall: it is
full of slips of wood, each about a foot high. These slips of wood are
called ‘ancestral tablets,’ because the Chinese think that the souls of
their ancestors live in them. Each one has writing upon it, telling the
name of the person whose soul is said to be inside.
To right and left of the chief room are two smaller ones, used as
bedrooms. Behind these again is another court, with rooms ranged round
it like the front one, and behind it perhaps another. Some houses have
‘five descents’; for Chinese storeys, which are called ‘descents,’ are
put one behind the other, instead of being piled upwards as are ours.
You may see a girl seated at a loom, driving the shuttle to and fro.
How slowly the cloth grows. Every time the shuttle flies across, the
web gains a line. Thread by thread it lengthens, just as a child’s
life lengthens day by day; that is why the Chinese proverb says, “Days
and months are like a shuttle, light and dark fly like an arrow.” The
older boys of the household are at school or at work. That woman who is
washing rice in an earthen pot, has a baby slung by a checked cotton
cloth upon her back. The child rolls its bullet head and sucks a fat
thumb, whilst one dumpy foot sticks out below its mother’s arm. The
lady in a blue tunic, with bright flowers in her hair, is the mistress
of the house; see how she sways on her tiny bound feet, as she moves
across the tiled floor.
[Illustration: CHILD LEADING BUFFALO]
If the head of the house is a scholar he wears long robes of cotton or
silk, blue and grey, one above the other, or in the hot weather white
‘grass cloth,’ thin as muslin. He has the top of his head shaved and
wears his back hair in a long plait or queue. On New Year’s day or
at other special times, he puts on a pointed hat, with a flossy red
tassel, top-boots and a silk jacket on which is embroidered a stork
or some other bird, to show his literary rank. An officer in the army
would have a bear or some other fierce animal embroidered on his jacket
instead of a bird.
In country homes a mill for taking the husk off rice stands inside the
door, where perhaps you might expect to find a hatstand. Sometimes
a sleek brown cow moos softly on the other side of the porch. Jars,
full of salted vegetables, share the front court with the usual pigs,
chickens and dogs. Look at that mandarin duck, bobbing her head and
throwing forward her bill, as if trying to bring up a bone which had
stuck in her throat just as she was in the act of curtsying to you.
She bows and curtsies all day, until even the fat baby, lying on a
kerb-stone at the edge of the court, grows tired of watching her antics.
Children run in and out of the house. One plays with a big, green
grasshopper, which struggles hopelessly at the end of a string.
Somewhere outside, a little boy or girl is sure to be leading a buffalo
by a rope, on the edge of the rice fields. Farther away some boys and
girls are gathering leaves, or cutting fern on the hillside.
About noon the household gathers for dinner. The men go to the kitchen
and return with bowls of rice and sweet potatoes or vermicelli. In the
middle of the table they have salted vegetables, bean-curd cake cut
into small pieces, dried shrimps, and on feast days, pork hash in soy,
all in different dishes. Each man has two pieces of bamboo, rather
thicker than wooden knitting-needles, which he holds between the thumb
and first three fingers of his right hand. With these chopsticks, as
they are called, he picks up a bit of meat or vegetable and begins
to eat it, but before it is swallowed he puts his bowl to his lips,
and holding it there, pushes some rice or potatoes into his mouth.
One mouthful follows another, and in no time the bowl is empty. Now
you know how to answer the Chinese riddle: “Two pieces of bamboo
drive ducks through a narrow door.” The ‘narrow door’ of course is a
mouth, the ‘ducks’ are bits of pork and fish, the pieces of bamboo are
chopsticks.
Sometimes the country people do not eat at a table, but sit in the
shadow of the porch, or on the edge of the stone coping which surrounds
the front court. The story is told of a poor boy, who used to eat
his meals in this way. The stone on which he sat had a crack in it.
When the boy began to study, he used to bring his book and a basin of
food, so that he might read as he sat on the broken slab eating his
dinner. By and by he became a great scholar and viceroy or ruler of the
province of Szechuan. When he returned to his native place, full of
riches and honour, he rebuilt the old home and made it beautiful, but
he kept the broken kerb-stone unaltered, in front of the dining-room.
It was left with the crack in it to remind him of the time when he was
a barefoot boy and used to sit by the edge of the court, eating rice or
learning his lessons.
When the men have finished their meal, the women and children have
theirs. How the fat little boys and girls love sweet potatoes! They
take them, pink and yellow skinned ones, in their chubby fingers and
stuff them down their throats, dogs and chickens waiting eagerly
meanwhile to pick up the skins and stringy bits which drop upon the
ground.
Though eating apart, girls and women mix more freely with the men
in these country homes than in those of educated townspeople, where
they must keep to their own rooms at the back of the house. Into
the homes of China, so different from each other in some things, so
alike in others, the message of the Saviour’s love finds its way.
Here one, there another--man, woman or child, believes the Gospel and
begins to serve God. In spite of persecution and unkindness, the new
convert remains faithful. By and by another member of the family is
won: sometimes the whole household is changed, and the home becomes a
Christian home.