_LIFE IN A CHINESE CITY._
Arrangement of a Chinese House.--Crowd in Streets.--My
First Walk in Chungking City.--Presents.--Cats, Rats, and
Eggs.--Paying a Call.--Ladies Affectionate.--Shocked at
European Indecency.--Cost of Freight.--Distance by
Post.--Children's Pleasures.--Precautions during
Drought.--Guild Gardens.--Pretty Environs.--Opium
Flowers, and Smokers.--Babble of Schools.--Chinese
Girlchild.
Chungking has been so fully described in my husband's volume _Through
the Yangtse Gorges_, I will not here enter upon a description of it
further than to say it is situated, like Quebec, at the junction of
two rivers. It a little recalls Edinburgh; it is about the size of
Lyons; has walls all round it; and its gates are shut at sunset, all
but two, which remain open an hour or two longer, except when the
country is in commotion. It is built upon a rock; and as the summer
progresses all the rock warms up, till the heat is very great indeed.
The streets are mostly covered over, both as a protection against the
sun, and the rain, which is very frequent. There is thus no
possibility of fresh air getting into its streets, short of a gale
occurring; and there is only very rarely any wind, as is shown by the
large shade-trees on the tops of the hills, and the awnings to keep
the sun off the houses, which are supported on bamboos, and which in
this windless region are taken up even over the roofs of the houses.
[Illustration: CHUNGKING, COMMERCIAL CAPITAL OF WESTERN CHINA.]
Now all the missions have built European houses; but a little while
ago all foreigners lived in Chinese houses within the walls of the
city. To describe one: You enter off a dirty alley by a large gateway,
the only opening in the lofty fire-proof walls that surround the whole
property; for fire is the great danger of a Chinese city, and a whole
quarter of Chungking has been burnt down since we have lived there.
You pass into a sort of courtyard; from that you proceed by a long
passage to another gateway, thence into a courtyard ornamentally laid
out with pots and flowers. The house door opens from this; and
entering by it, you find yourself in the lofty entrance hall, used by
Europeans as a dining-room. Passing through an ornamental screen with
open doorways, over which hang portières, you find yourself in a
sitting-room, of which one wall and two half-walls consist of paper
windows, with occasional panes of glass. On either side of these two
principal rooms are long narrow ones, only thirteen feet wide, which
for convenience their English occupants had divided into two, the end
wall being in both cases again paper windows with occasional glass.
Paper ceilings had been put in to prevent the dust falling through
from the tiled roof above; but the sun would shine through this as
well as the tiles quite brilliantly at times. None of the partition
doors had handles or latches, and the outer walls, as well as the
inside partitions, were all alike of thin planks of wood, not
overlapping, and which would shrink in dry weather so as to leave
quite large openings between them. It will thus be realised that,
whatever was the temperature outside the house, the same was the
temperature inside, with the additional disadvantage of draughts on
rainy, wintry days; and in winter it generally rains in Chungking.
Europeans always took care to secure wooden floors for themselves; but
these floors were not uncommonly rotting away under their feet. And
picturesque though the houses are, with their lofty roofs, their
solid wooden pillars, black rafters, and white plaster, their highly
decorated exteriors, little pictures in black and white under the
eaves, richly carved and heavily gilded ends to the beams, etc., it
became increasingly evident each year that Europeans could not hope
for health in them. Chinese in winter wear heavily wadded and
fur-lined clothes, in which it is impossible to take exercise, and
inside of which they loll about in a semi-comatose condition, much as
if in bed.
[Illustration: DINNER PARTY IN THE GARDEN OF A MEMBER OF THE HANLIN
COLLEGE,--WHITE CLOTH SPREAD IN COMPLIMENT TO EUROPEANS.
_By Mrs. Archibald Little._]
The streets, although wide for a Chinese city, are very narrow in
comparison with English streets, being only eight feet at the widest,
and extraordinarily crowded. Passing through them is a continual
pushing through a crowd of foot-passengers; of sedan-chairs, carried
by coolies, with sometimes one or two men running before to clear the
way, and if it be necessary beat back the crowd; of mules, donkeys, or
ponies, with loads; and of numbers of carrying-coolies, a bamboo
across their shoulders, and from either end a basket hanging by
strings. Everything that can be done in the streets is done in them:
pedlars go by with great quantities of goods for sale; men are mending
broken china with little rivets after a fashion in which the Chinese
are great experts; here is a barber shaving a man's head, there are
two women menders, on little stools very neatly dressed, pursuing
their avocation; here is a man working at an embroidery-frame, there a
cobbler mending shoes; here some pigs, there some chickens; here a
baby in a hen-coop, there a pussy-cat tied to a shop-counter; and in
the evenings street preachers, in the afternoons vast crowds pouring
out from theatres. At night, in going out to dinner we used always to
pass at least three street preachers. These men wear official caps,
and are as a rule, I believe, reading or expounding the Sacred Edicts.
There is always a little crowd listening, though often a very small
one. In the better streets every attention is paid to decency; in the
lesser streets none is apparent. At the street corners there are often
large tanks full of water, as a precaution against fire. These are
invariably grown over with weed. A vast army of coolies is every day
going down the steep flights of steps to the river to bring water,
which drips from the buckets as it is carried along. Another army is
carrying out the sewage of the city to be used as manure. A very soft
coal is used for fuel; and baskets of coal are constantly being
carried in, two dangling from a pole across a coolie's shoulders. The
coal-dust, and the smoke, and the drippings, and the bustling crowd,
all make the streets rather an unpleasant place to walk in. Yet,
although every one told me it was impossible for an English lady to
walk in them, I felt it was impossible for me to live in Chungking
unless I did; for in summer no one could walk out till sunset, and
then the gates are closed; so after showing myself about as much as I
could in a sedan-chair with the curtains up--unlike the other ladies,
who all kept theirs down in those days--I determined to attempt a
walk, with my sedan-chair, of course, following behind to show I had
some claim to respectability.
[Illustration: MORNING TOILETTE.]
In a few minutes two or three hundred men and boys were following me.
As long as they kept behind and did not press upon me, it did not so
much matter; but the boys have a knack of clattering past, and then
turning round to stare into one's face in the most insulting and
annoying manner. And I felt I could not go back home with all this
rabble following, as of course they would all try to press into our
house after me, and then there would probably be a row. So I turned
into the official residence of the principal magistrate of the city,
hoping that the guardians of his gate might stop both me and my
following, as I supposed it would be their duty to do, and then I
might somehow detach myself. Into the first courtyard every one has a
right to go; but as we proceeded farther, soldiers came up and
remonstrated with me. "Well, do your duty--shut us out," I said. "Do
shut the people out, and then I won't go any farther." But they did
not do their duty; and so, not seeing what else to do, I set up the
camera and photographed the crowd and the soldiers, not doing their
duty and turning them out. After that I got into my chair; and the
people, curiously enough, satisfied that that was what I had come out
for, dispersed, and I arrived at home unattended. But many a walk
since then have I taken through these same streets; and the people
have got so accustomed to the sight of me, that they now do not turn
round to look.
One of the most fatiguing things about Chinese life is the presents.
Whatever you do, you ought to take or send a present. Every lady who
goes out to dinner takes a present to the hostess; and at a certain
period of the dinner all sorts of things are done up in a
heterogeneous mass for each guest to take home to her children, if she
has any; whilst the hostess pays all her friends' chair-coolies, and
the guest tips the hostess's servants, especially the cook, who has a
great title of honour in China. If ladies care to call, they generally
bring presents too, rolled up in a handsome, coloured handkerchief.
The most curious present I have received at a dinner party was a white
cat, that could hardly see out of its eyes. The general present seems
to be sponge-cakes or fruit.
[Illustration: OUTSIDE GOVERNOR'S RESIDENCE IN CHUNGKING.
_By Mrs. Archibald Little._]
Cats are very much prized in a Chinese city, because of the fierce
depredations of the rats; and in Chungking cats are always kept
prisoners, and only occasionally let loose at night. It is sad to see
the poor things tied up; and we have never been able to make up our
minds to keep our cats thus chained. The consequence is they are
always stolen, and have a miserable life of it, tied up, and probably
far less well fed than they would have been with us. Fowls and pigs
are both kept in Chinese cities, and the eggs get a most unpleasing
flavour from the vile nature of the places where the poor hens have to
lay them.
When I pay a call on a lady, my chair has to be carried over the
thresholds of the various courtyards, and set down quite close to the
guest-room, where the lady of the house receives, so that I may at
once step out of the chair into the house. A woman-servant, almost
certainly a slave, comes to offer her shoulder as a help to my
tottering footsteps, and I am conducted into the guest-room, round the
walls of which there are little tables, large carved wooden chairs
with straight backs being placed one on either side of each table
against the wall. The ladies bow after the Chinese lady's fashion,
placing the right hand on the top of the left against the chest, and
moving the right hand slowly up and down; the servants are ordered to
bring tea; and then conversation commences. It is never very
interesting. The floors are as often as not made of hard mud; the
walls whitewashed, with long-shaped pictures, or _kakemonos_, hanging
upon them, often with epigrammatic sentences in the decorative
Chinese character. At one end of the room is the altarlike table,
above which is the ancestral tablet, and on it stand generally
candlesticks made of pewter, flower-vases, an incense-burner, and a
small vase for incense-sticks. Embroideries are not hung over this
table and on the backs of the chairs, unless it is the Chinese New
Year time or a dinner party. When the tea is brought, little sugared
cakes accompany it; and men say the etiquette is to go away directly
you have sipped the tea. But I have never known ladies observe this
etiquette. Indeed, the chief fault in Chinese visits is that they are
interminable. As no one exerts herself to talk more than she feels
inclined, there is, indeed, no reason why they should ever come to an
end.
[Illustration: COUNTRY HOUSE NEAR KIUKIANG.]
Chinese ladies appear very affectionate, and are very caressing.
Whether they really do like me or not, they almost always succeed in
making me think they do; and I think other European ladies would say
the same. But as to whether the holding one's hand and occasionally
stroking it means anything, I really do not know. They never have
shown me anything, unless they wanted to sell it, except their
children. At an artist's house pictures are brought out; but they are
all carefully rolled up and put away again. And at other houses
embroideries worked by various brides of the family have been shown
me; but this was in order to see if I would buy them. It must be
recollected that to the Chinese a foreign woman's tight-fitting dress
showing her figure is very indecent. It also seems to them very
shocking for a lady to go about unattended by a woman; and for a woman
to stand up firmly on her feet and walk on them like a man seems far
more indelicate than it does in England to wear so-called rationals.
Thus there are great difficulties to be got over at first. They are,
indeed, greatly concerned about our indecency; for they have heard no
European woman wears trousers, and their first great anxiety is to
examine under our petticoats, and see whether this is really true.
Trousers are the one essential garment to a woman in China. Sometimes
they ask, "Do you really eat with your waist girt in like that? How do
you manage then?" But this they have only once had the opportunity of
asking of me; for knowing it to be considered objectionable, I avoid
wearing anything that shows the figure, in China, as far as I can.
After all, tea-jackets admit of many pretty varieties. A European
man's dress is, of course, a still greater scandal; and to Chinese,
the only explanation of it is that the poor fellow had not enough
cloth to cover himself properly. After spending any length of time
amongst Orientals, I think every one must feel that our European dress
is lacking in grace and elegance.
It takes longer to get a letter the fifteen hundred miles from
Shanghai to Chungking than it does to get a letter the thirteen
thousand from England to Shanghai. Freight of goods is a great deal
higher; indeed, a ton of goods costs £6 from Shanghai to Chungking,
and £36 to get it to Talifu in Yunnan. Once I wrote to England on
Christmas Eve for stockings, saying I was in such need of them I
should like to have them sent out by post; and yet I never received
those stockings till the following spring year. In an ordinary way,
with good luck, you ought to get an answer to a letter from England in
four months; therefore, if you keep up a very animated correspondence
with an English friend, always answering every letter directly you
receive it, you write three letters a year. And curiously enough,
whatever you may do at Chungking, the sense of its being so very far
away deters other people from writing to you. Charles Lamb has written
a beautiful Elia essay upon this. He explains it by the suggestion
that the writer, thinking of the great distance the letter has to
travel, fancies it growing tired. Anyhow, the result tends to heighten
the sense of isolation, which is perhaps nowhere so much felt as among
Chinese. Whether it is their expressionlessness, their want of
sympathy, or the whole character of their civilisation being so
different from ours, very few Europeans can spend more than a year
amongst Chinese without suffering from it. Some go mad with it, and
all are accused of growing odd. There is no doubt that most of us
become somewhat self-centred and unduly impressed with the importance
of our own affairs; but the depression that often overtakes people,
women especially, is sadder to witness. In sending out missionaries,
this is a point that ought to be specially considered: Have they
enough strength of character to continue the work of an apostle
without any outside spiritual or inspiriting influences whatsoever? It
is not long since a man I had thought so ardent said to me: "I am
going away; and I never mean to return. I cannot go on giving out, and
having no spiritual help myself." Yet, just because they are trying to
live for others, missionaries stand this trial best. I have known
other men who from the moment they arrived in a Chinese town found no
pleasure but in counting the days. "One more spent here!--one less to
spend!" and this without even the least idea of when they would go
away.
To Chinese children I always think life in a Chinese city must be very
pleasant. There are the great festivals: the Chinese New Year, with
all its countless crackers; the Dragon Boat Festival, when each
district of the city mans a boat shaped like a dragon, and all paddle
like mad, naked to the waist, and with a strange shout that must be
very dear to children. Then there are the visits to the graves, when
all the family goes out into the country together; and the long
processions, when the officials are carried through the city in open
chairs and long fur gowns, hundreds of umbrellas of gay colours going
before them, and their retainers also riding in pairs and in fur coats
of inferior quality. All the beggar-children of the city have a high
day then. With fancy dress of various sorts over their rags, they walk
or ride or are carried round the city, sometimes as living pictures,
sometimes representing conquered aborigines, sometimes even Englishmen
in short square coats and tight trousers. In the spring-time a
procession goes out to meet the spring, and sacrifice an ox in the
river-bed in its honour; and, strangely enough, the day in February on
which this is done is always the most genial springlike day, though
after it is over winter sets in with renewed severity. At other times
it is the image of the fire-god that is carried round, to show him the
buildings he is honoured to protect. Then, again, one evening there
will be about four miles of little lanterns sent floating down the
great river in honour of the dead. Or there will be the baking of the
glutinous rice-cakes, accompanied by many curious ceremonials. And in
it all the child takes his part; and his elders are very kind to him,
and never bother him with cleaning up or putting on clothes to go out.
He strips to the waist or beyond it in summer; then, as the winter
comes on, puts on ever another and another garment, till he becomes as
broad as he is long. At night-time, perhaps, he takes off some
clothes; but they are all the same shape, all quite loose and easy.
Then he never need be afraid of breaking anything or spoiling
anything; for most things are put away, and Chinese things are not
like European: the shining black polished table, for instance, can
have a hot kettle stood upon it, and be none the worse. No one ever
tells the Chinese child to hold himself up, or not to talk so loud, or
to keep still; so he shouts and wriggles to his heart's content. And
European children grow like him in this respect; and when readmitted
to European houses, their feet are for ever rubbing about, and their
hands fidgeting with something, which spoils, as European things will
spoil.
Although there is so much rain in the west of China, and when it does
not rain the air is generally damp to saturation-point, yet sometimes
there is a long continuance of summer heat. One year, although
according to the Chinese calendar the ending of the great heat had
come--and, indeed, also the beginning of autumn, when, if it does not
rain, according to the saying, no rain will fall for forty days--yet
no rain fell, no thunder cooled the air. The ground was growing harder
and harder, and the hills acquiring the yellow baked look so familiar
down-river, but so unusual in Chungking.
The south gate was not closed. The idea is, that heat comes in from
the south; therefore, when it is too hot, the south gate is always
closed. There was, however, too much traffic through it. But no meat,
fowls, nor eggs were allowed to go in thereat, and the various cooks
and coolies sent in on foraging excursions from the hills returned
disconsolate. If any one sold anything, it was with the air of a
thief, one man reported. Europeans were beginning to consider what
they would have to eat, if this prohibition were strictly enforced.
Already for two days the killing of pigs had been forbidden. Outside
most houses in the city stood a tub of water ready to be dashed over
the too dry woodwork. Already report had been busy destroying the
thriving and populous city of Luchou higher up the river by fire; but
on a telegram being sent to inquire, the report was found to have
arisen in people's own heated imaginations. The danger of fire is ever
with us in China, with our wooden houses all dry as tinder and our
closely packed opium-smoking population. As to the amount of dirt then
concentrated in Chungking, it was shocking to think of; for the place
had not been washed out for six weeks.
There is an old saying that drought never wrought England harm. One
has the same feeling in Szechuan; and when day by day the beautiful
red-golden glow spreads along the range beyond range of mountain-tops,
and the sun arises upon a cloudy sky, we cannot help thinking these
clouds must gradually get lower, and rain come to cool the air and
refresh the country. At night, as we see the lightning flash on the
clouds south and west of us, and feel the cool breath of distant rain,
we again think it must be on its way. Only during the long hot day
there seems no prospect of it; the clouds reveal themselves as summer
clouds; the sun shines; and we think how hot it must be in that
southern region from which the hot wind comes to us, and wonder
whether it is in Tongking, or where, there has been a tremendous
rainfall. Has there been somewhere some great convulsion of nature? or
is it again all a case of sun-spots? When it is so very hot, what can
one think of but the weather?
I never saw the thermometer mark higher than 120° Fahr. in our
sitting-room; but then, when it got to that, I always went down into
the cellar, and did not come out again till evening. The Chinese have
cool, dark places dug out of the rock into which they retire to
_schwa_, i.e. enjoy themselves. All the guild gardens round Chungking
are provided with such places. The worst of them is, there is no air
in them. But, then, every one has a fan. Even the man heavily laden
like a beast of burden has his fan stuck into his waist-belt; the
soldier has his fan. It is not a luxury, but a necessary of life, in a
Chinese city in summer.
[Illustration: A CHINESE COUNTRY CLUB, OR GUILD GARDEN.
_By Mrs. Archibald Little._]
In the spring-time what can be prettier than the environs of a Chinese
city? The rape-fields are all fragrant with their bright-yellow
flowers; whilst the still sweeter scent of the bean blossom makes it a
real pleasure to walk along the narrow paths by the river-side. Every
one is walking about with a bunch of roseate peach blossom, and the
tangles of trees in the gardens are all flowering and all scented.
Then a little later the poppy-fields become gorgeous almost up to the
city gates, only shortly afterwards to give out a poisonous exhalation
most irritating to the mucous membrane. After that everything trembles
and glitters with the scorching sunshine, all the leaves droop,
gigantic sun-flowers are running to seed, and the large
pink-and-white lily flowers of the lotus float upon the waterside.
Every woman has a white gardenia flower stuck on the left side of her
glossy black hair. And all outside the city is inspiriting, when the
sun shines and the blue rivers laugh back at the blue sky. But inside
the city it is still all dark and dank, and all is pervaded by a
sickly sweet odour, the emanation from the opium-pipe; while the lean
ribs and yellow faces of the opium-smokers controvert without the need
of words all the scientific assertions about the non-volatilisation of
the opium poison. With opium-dens all over the place, with exquisite
opium-pipes and all the coquetries of opium-trays and other
accessories in the houses of the rich, how is it that we all give
warning to a servant when we hear that he has taken to opium? How is
it that the treasure on a journey is never confided to a coolie who
smokes? How is it that every man shrinks with horror from the idea of
an opium-smoking wife? And this in a land in which all important
business dealings are concluded over the opium-couch, where, indeed,
alone, with heads close together, is privacy to be obtained, and in
which all important military posts are confided to opium-smokers, not
to speak of most of the important civil offices!
[Illustration: A HOT DAY.
_By Mrs. Archibald Little._]
There is, it is true, an immense difference between the man who smokes
and him who has the _yin_, or craving, that must at all costs be
satisfied; just as there is at home between the moderate drinker and
the dipsomaniac. But in China people refuse to employ the moderate
smoker to sweep out their rooms for them. Yet they will confide an
army to him! These, however, are secrets of State, not to be got to
the bottom of simply by life in a Chinese city.
There is one other matter, however, I must touch upon--the
all-pervading babble, row I had almost called it, of the boys in the
schools, here, there, and everywhere, so that it is almost impossible
to get out of earshot of them, all at the top of their boy voices
shouting out the classics, as they painstakingly day after day and
year after year commit them to memory. With the sickly sweet smell of
the opium, and to the sound of the vast ear-drum-splitting army of
China's schoolboys, all must for ever associate life in a Chinese
city. And through it all, and up and down its flights of stairs,
painfully hobbles the Chinese girl-child, the most ungraceful figure
of all girl-children,--poor little mutilated one, with her long stick
and dreadful dark lines under her sad young eyes! Whatever the men may
be, certainly the little girls of China are brought up as Spartans
even never were, and those who survive show it by their powers of
endurance.