_HINDRANCES AND ANNOYANCES._
Sulphur Bath.--Rowdy Behaviour.--Fight in
Boat.--Imprisonment for letting to
Foreigners.--Book-keeper in Foreign Employ
beaten.--Customs Regulations.--Kimberley Legacy.--Happy
Consul.--Unjust _Likin_ Charges.--Foreigners
massacred.--Official Responsibility.
As an illustration of the position of Europeans up-country, I will
relate very briefly the trivial events of two days. First I must say
that nearly every woman in the place was ill--some very seriously so;
and as I thought I was not well either, on hearing that my husband and
another gentleman, who had gone for a cure to the sulphur baths about
thirteen miles from Chungking, found the people quiet, I decided I
would join my husband when his friend left him. The villagers, not the
priests, objected to my sleeping in the airy temple, where the
gentlemen had been allowed to put up their beds, amongst all the
gilded images; so my bed and I and a servant moved down to the inn,
where some twelve or fifteen persons assisted at the remaking of the
bed in an already sufficiently stuffy room--although, happily, most of
the dirty paper was gone from its one window--and being accustomed to
the ways up-country, I slept just as well in that filthy inn room as
I could have anywhere.
Next day, with a chair and a variety of coolies and boys, we took
three photographs, and spent the morning under the shade of a
magnificent banyan-tree in a lonely valley, stuck over with palms as a
pincushion is with pins. The baths were so very hot, my husband
thought he would refresh himself by a swim in the limpid stream that
runs with many a beautiful cascade down the extremely picturesque
limestone valley of the Wentang. Meanwhile, though it was extremely
hot, so that it was an effort to move, especially after the hot
sulphur baths, yet, being like Frederick "a slave to duty," I took a
chair and five coolies to go a hundred yards across the bridge and
photograph that and the hot springs from the opposite side.
Unfortunately, as is so often the case, about twenty little laughing
boys ran whooping along with me, joined as they went by some older
people. This is so usual, I was only bored by it as I got out, and,
studying the scene first from one point and then from another, was
telling the coolies to bring the camera to a grassy plot from which
the best view of the arches of the bridge and the deep pool and the
hills behind could be obtained, when some agriculturists rushed
forward, one lusty fellow violently threatening me with a stone, and
at once snatching my alpenstock out of my hand. I trust I did not move
an eyelid, certainly I did not budge a step, as I said: "Is this your
land? If so, you are master here; and if you do not wish me to
photograph, I certainly will not. But I am doing no harm." The head
coolie did his best to explain what other photographs I had taken, and
that photographing did not spoil crops. But the agriculturist first
listened, and then resumed his violence. Probably he was excited by
the prospect of all my following capering across an infinitesimal bit
of cultivation that he had squeezed out of the rocks below. He told
them not to do so. The coolie told them not to. They did not. But he
continued to be violent. The best plan seemed to be to get into the
chair and secure the camera; and as all the crowd began to get
uproarious, I thought I would be carried quickly away instead of back
through them. A very steep hill must, I thought, choke my following
off. But it did not. And I had either to return with them to the town,
in which case there was sure to be a row, or go to a distance of about
two hours up one side of the stream by a very pretty path, and back
again the other side by one of the most lonely of wild mountain roads.
I had done it all before, having enjoyed all these scenes two years
ago, when there was no thought of violence. However, my following kept
with me, and grew. So I tried my old plan, the only one I have ever
found effectual with a Chinese crowd, and, getting out of the chair,
standing quite still, looked solemnly and sadly at first one, then
another, till he wished the ground would cover him and retired. I
fancy glasses heighten the effect. Anyway, they all sat down, each one
hiding behind the other as far as he could.
[Illustration: MARKET STREET OUTSIDE CITY.]
We went on, and thus came near a very large Chinese house and garden,
with a queer tale of a dead magician, where we had been hospitably
entertained two years before. The people knew he had been a magician,
because he used to disappear every day at a certain hour; and some one
peeped through a crack one day, and saw him actually in a cold-water
bath like a fish. I thought it would be a pleasure to visit the garden
once more; but again a man shouting and gesticulating, this time armed
with one of those heavy hoes they use in digging, which he brandished
across my face! It seemed his master, who had entertained us, was
dead, and this rustic would have no photography. It was a long way
back by the other side of the river, so that it was quite dark when we
got back to the little town. This perhaps was just as well.
Next day by daybreak we set off for Chungking. After five pretty but
surely very long miles, we came to a market town; and, alas! it was
market day. The coolies were desired to carry me to the best inn, and
take me in quickly. Of course, it was necessary for them to get some
refreshment, or we should not have stopped. I walked to the farthest
end of the huge room set out with tables; but the agitated innkeeper
asked me to come into a bedroom beyond, there were so many people. He
banged to the doors, and then there began a hurly-burly, everybody
wanting to get a sight of me. He begged me to go into a bedroom beyond
down a steep ladder, and again bolted the doors. This room was even
nastier than the first,--four beds with straw, no chair, and a frowsy
table. It was so good of him to tell me it was clean, for I should
never have imagined it otherwise. A young gentleman occupying an
adjacent bedroom began to look furious at the noise and the barring of
the doors. With a haughty air he unbarred them. I did not wonder he
did not like it. I did not either. Who wants to be barricaded in a
chairless, windowless bedroom on a hot day?
It was a great relief when my husband quickly followed me, passing in
through the files of people gazing at closed doors. But no one could
serve us with tea, and the people got all round the room trying to
peep in through the cracks, as also to pull down one partition.
Meantime, there was what Germans call "scandal." At last our coolies
had fed, the chairs were ready, and, handsomely escorted, we passed
out through people in rows, to find the street outside and all the
houses one living mass of human heads all staring. It was easy enough
to get into the chair, but the coolies had to fight the crowd back to
get the poles on their shoulders; and so, amongst a chorus of the
usual soft Szechuan imprecations, we departed. I have composed a song
with it for the chorus; it sounds pretty, but I am told it is
untranslatable. One moves everywhere to the music of it.
[Illustration: THE OLDEST OFFICIAL IN THE PROVINCE OF SZECHUAN.
_Lent by Mr. Willett._]
Probably our coolies' temper was not improved by the hustling. For, a
mile and a half farther on, when we had to take a boat, and after the
usual amount of wearisome bargaining had secured one, they greeted
a boatman, who kept us waiting some time till he appeared with the
long pole iron-spiked used for poling the boat off rocks, with the
usual Szechuan oath, and a tag, that seemed to me harmless enough. But
the boatman, a tall, fine-looking man, said he could not stand that,
and immediately rolled one of our coolies in the mud. In a minute all
our gang together were on him. Vainly did my husband call them off. At
last, however, somehow they got into the boat again and pushed off;
and the great thing seemed to be to get away, for there was the
infuriated giant with his pole and his friends wildly springing from
rock to rock to get at us. But whether because we were caught in a
whirlpool, or whether the owner of the boat steered it back, or what,
there we were presently drifting round to the now assembled village,
all shrieking, and many armed with carrying-poles. The only thing to
do seemed to be to sit quite still; but I felt the more frightened,
because it was impossible even to speak to my husband for the uproar.
And, indeed, for a time mine was the silence of despair; for a tap
from one of those carrying-poles, and all would be over for me, whilst
the river was running so strongly, to get into that would be certain
drowning. The fight, however, was, after all, not so bad; for a
village elder appeared, and again and again collared the infuriated
giant and forced him off the boat. Meanwhile, every one shouted, and
the expressions of the crowd were something horrible to see,
especially those of some women, whose faces seemed to have passed
away and left nothing behind but concentrated rage. One of these
viragoes actually came on to our boat, and was proceeding herself to
capture the one of our coolies who may be said to have begun it all by
his inconsiderate language. This first gave me courage. If she, a
thin, weak-looking woman, could venture into the midst of these angry
men, she must know they were not really so violent as they appeared, I
argued. But she also was forced away by the elder. Then two spitfires
of boys became prominent, shrieking menaces and brandishing their
arms.
At last there was a sufficient lull for my husband and the village
elder to exchange names, smiles, and courtesies, which they did with
as much ceremony and as pleasant expressions as if they had just met
in a London drawing-room. After a second row, the elder asked us to
get into another boat. This we did. It was much smaller; but a man
with cucumbers, who had been bent on getting a passage for nothing in
our boat, and had been ejected, managed now to establish himself in it
along with us. He was the only one who seemed to have gained anything
out of the whole transaction. We had grown too weak to eject him
again. We had been delayed a whole hour in a burning sun; and thanks
to this, and the delay in the market town, reached Chungking about
noon, both suffering from slight sunstroke.
Each time the mail came in one winter we expected to hear that some
Shanghai Volunteers had gone on a little expedition, and somehow
managed to knock up against the prison in which the poor people were
shut up whose sole crime was having sold an estate near Kiukiang to an
Englishman. In the old days the young men of Kiukiang once had a
picnic, to which they invited blue-jackets from a man-of-war in port;
and that picnic gained for the place undisputed possession of the
bungalow where so many Europeans have since then regained health.
There was no fighting, no threat of fighting, no ultimatum; they just
went and did what had to be done themselves, their friends the
blue-jackets helping them. But by the last accounts Kiukiang was
occupied with private theatricals, whilst the men who sold their land
to Englishmen--nothing more, only had dealings with Englishmen--were
still in prison. Whilst that is so, whilst the man who allowed
Christian services to be held in his house near Wenchow is persecuted,
whilst our beautiful hills are all studded round with upright slabs of
stone forbidding Europeans to build upon any of the sites sold to
them, how can we expect as Englishmen to be respected in China? One
American and one Englishman had even begun building upon these hills.
There were the projected sites of the houses, with the hewn stones
lying round and the foundations laid. Round about the upright slabs
have been stood up, with the legends upon them forbidding any further
building within these charmed enclosures.
No people like better to insult other people than the Chinese, in
spite of all the lovely adjectives Mr. Ralph showers upon them in the
pages of _Harper_,--"polite, patient, extremely shrewd, well dressed,
graceful, polished, generous, amiable"; while Dr. Morrison, the
"Australian in China," talks of "their uniform kindness and
hospitality and most charming courtesy," and says again, "Their
friendliness is charming, their courtesy and kindliness are a constant
delight to the traveller." In illustration of all this there were
these men in prison at Kiukiang and Wenchow. Do people at home realise
what was the crime of which they had been accused? Short of the Home
Government, it often seems as if the different European communities in
China could make themselves more respected, and protect those who
dealt fairly by them, with their own right hands. No Government could
urge them to do so. But, as even Sir John Walsham used to say, "There
are so _many_ things Englishmen might do even in Peking--if they only
would not come and ask me if they might."
In 1897 a Chinese in foreign employ was had up about an alleged debt
of 500 taels. By a bribe his accuser had the matter brought before a
magistrate who was well known as anti-foreign, and who no sooner heard
he was in foreign employ than he ordered him to be beaten without
going into the case. This was contrary even to Chinese law. The
unfortunate bookkeeper was unable to do his work again for months; he
was disfigured past all recognition, and, indeed, too horrible to look
upon. His offence was "foreign employ." Can we wonder that the Chinese
are not very fond of us? The marvel to me is that they dare
associate with us at all.
[Illustration: GIVING EVIDENCE IN A COURT OF JUSTICE.
_Lent by Mr. Willett._]
Other nations seem to protect their nationals and those dependent upon
them far more vigorously than the British Government does. When
Chungking was first made a Treaty Port, the then British Consul, a
most able and energetic man, was not even advised from Peking that the
port was open. Consequently, he was absent from all public functions
instituted at the formal opening, took no part in the drawing up of
the regulations under which British trade was to be established there,
had no voice in the rules issued by the Chinese Customs. Subsequent
incumbents of the Consulate have not unnaturally employed any liberty
of action given them less in promoting British interests than in
keeping things quiet for the Chinese, and so have refrained from
endorsing the requests made from time to time to have the obstructive
Customs rules modified or the position of the port in any way
improved. The rules, issued in Chinese, were so impracticable that
successive Commissioners of Customs suspended their action from the
day they were published; but this suspension, it afterwards appeared,
was a privilege revocable at the arbitrary will of the Commissioner
for the time being, and an American Commissioner revoked them to the
detriment of the only _bona-fide_ European shipping firm as yet
established there, thus doing what lay in his power to take away
business from European firms and throw it into the hands of the
Chinese firms, which continued as before to enjoy a suspension of the
Customs rules.
Business at Chungking is all carried on by so-called chartered junks.
They are not really chartered; but before they can clear the Customs,
they must fly a foreign house-flag and number. The permission to fly
this must be obtained by a foreigner through his Consul. The British
Consul, up till then the only one there, resided at the opposite end
of the city to the business quarter, where the Customs Office is
situated. This entailed some hours delay. And when it is considered
that one junk carries as a rule from fifty to a hundred packages only,
it "passeth the wit of man" to conceive why this red-tapeism was
allowed to continue. The China Merchants' Steamship Co., the largest
shippers in Chungking, were allowed to obtain their "passes" from the
Custom-house direct--a great convenience, as the Custom-house is in
one part of this city, the Customs' Bank in another, and the
examining-pontoon across the river at the head of a rapid. The junks
mostly lie in a reach below; and it is no exaggeration to say that it
takes a day for a man to get round to the three places. Yet the
Customs rules do not allow the duty to be paid until the cargo has
passed examination at the pontoon; nor is the cargo-boat allowed to
leave it until a duty-paid certificate is brought back and exhibited
at the pontoon. This necessitates the cargo being left in an open boat
all night at the head of a rapid, and much loss has resulted from the
delay that occurs there in any case. Consequently, this rule had
never been enforced, and the cargo-boat had been allowed to leave and
proceed to load the chartered junk in safety immediately after
examination. But an application to his Consul by the Britisher was met
by a "despatch" in the stereotyped language, "I cannot interfere with
the Customs regulations."
The telegraph office, formerly situated in the business quarter of the
city, was then moved into the distant country enclosure which forms a
part of all Chinese cities, because the manager owned a piece of land
there, and thus rented it to advantage. Naturally here the foreign
merchant could not expect a remonstrance to be of any avail, as the
telegraph is a purely native concern.
It would take too much space to enumerate the further difficulties to
which a foreigner is at present exposed. To enforce a claim for debt
he must apply to his Consul. A Chinaman unwilling to pay is never at a
loss to invent an excuse,--the papers are not in order, just as in
cases of sale the land was not really his. If the Consul is content to
become merely the translator of these Chinese excuses, which by
transmission he appears, indeed, even to accept, and to a certain
extent to endorse, we, as the farmer said, "seem to get no forrader."
How far the actions of Consuls in these matters, and with regard to
obstructions about buying land and renting houses, come from
individual action or from instructions from Peking, of course it is
not for a mere woman to decide. We used in China at one time to put
down everything that went wrong to Lord Kimberley. Now even sometimes
we fancy it is a Kimberley legacy. But very likely we are quite wrong.
It will be obvious from the above how much depends upon the
disposition of the Consuls. Naturally they vary greatly. The theory
used to be that they were too apt to look upon themselves as
protectors of the Chinese against the encroachments of their
nationals. Having suffered severely under the most flagrant specimen
of this class, I am happy to add that I think it is dying out. Most of
the Consuls in China now seem only too able for the importance of
their posts. At the same time, one never knows when a crisis may
arise; and then the men, who as a rule have been foremost in all the
social life each of his own port, are admirably seconded by willing
communities, that rejoice to follow the lead of those who are
certainly generally in all things the opposite to the delightful
caricature sketch well known to have been written by a leading member
of the China Consular body:
"THE HAPPY CONSUL.
Who is the happy Consul? Who is he
That each aspiring sub. should wish to be?
He who, behind inhospitable door,
Plays, like Trafalgar founts, from ten to four;
Takes Rip Van Winkle as a type to follow,
And makes his Consulate a Sleepy Hollow,
Content to snooze his lazy hours away,
Sure of a pension and his monthly pay
So he can keep on good terms with his Chief,
Lets meaner interests come to utter grief;
Treats with smooth oil august Legation nerves,
With vinegar the public whom he serves.
Each case through native spectacles he sees,
Less Consul than Protector of Chinese;
Trembles at glances from Viceregal eyes,
And cowers before contemptuous Taotais;
But should mere nationals his aid implore,
Is quite the haughty personage once more.
Lives on the bounty of the public's purse,
Yet greets that public with a smothered curse;
With scowls that speak of anything but pleasure,
Daunts ill-advised invaders of his leisure;
From outward signs of courtesy exempt,
Treats their just protests with a fine contempt;
Does little, strives to make that little less,
And leads a life of cultured uselessness.
Such is the happy Consul. Such is he
That each aspiring sub. should wish to be."
Even, however, where the Consul is all he should be--and probably no
body of men ever was more respected and trusted than the British
Consular Body in China--yet British subjects' interests must suffer,
if the British Minister will not support them. Nor can the British
Minister do much, if the permanent officials at the Foreign Office
wish him to do little.
When two men were murdered at Wusüeh, the village ought, at least, to
have been razed to the ground. When the Kucheng massacre occurred, the
Viceroy and the Chinese officials, who _laughed_ about it all as they
talked with the British officials sent to settle about compensation
with them, ought one and all to have been degraded at the very least.
No one likes bloodshed. The Chinese only get on as they do without an
army or a police force by means of very exemplary punishments; they
understand slight punishment as a confession of weakness, or an
acknowledgment that the offender was not so much to blame after all.
Nor does any one who lives in China believe in Chinese peasantry ever
daring to murder foreigners except at the instigation of men in high
place. People in England often fancy missionaries are very much
disliked in China. As a rule, they seem greatly liked and respected
each in his own neighbourhood, although in the abstract officials and
old-fashioned literati may object to them.
Whatever may be said about all these matters, an English subject
cannot but be pained on finding how little British Consuls are able to
effect in redressing serious grievances, such as inability to buy or
rent land in the surrounding country, whereby we were for many years
forcibly compelled to live in a Chinese house in a filthy street
inside the walls of an overcrowded Chinese city. Let a Frenchman or a
Russian be the aggrieved party, and instantly his Consul is on the
war-path, and the Chinese have to give way at once. Englishmen have
gone on paying _likin_ illegally, until a Frenchman, backed by his
Consul, successfully protested. British steamers are illegally
arrested and detained by the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, and no
redress is obtainable; when a French steamer is only boycotted by
Chinese shippers, an indemnity is immediately claimed, and at once
paid.
It is little things like these, for ever being repeated, that lead to
Englishmen in the west of China often saying they must take out
naturalisation papers as Frenchmen or Italians in order to get on.
Possibly the bitterness thereby engendered will do the British
Government no harm; but it paralyses commercial enterprise. And
Manchester will suffer from it, when it is too late to alter anything,
unless a more consistent and dignified policy be pursued in the Far
East. People have not been proud of England out in China lately. It
may be stupid of us all; but as a rule it takes a good deal to make
Englishmen ashamed of their country. And that point has been
unfortunately reached some time ago.