_ARTS AND INDUSTRIES._
Porcelain.--Bronzes.--Silver-work.--Pictures.--Architecture.--
Tea.--Silk.--White Wax.--Grass cloth.--Ivory Fans.--Embroidery.
Even if I had the knowledge, it would be useless to attempt to write
exhaustively of Chinese porcelain in one chapter; but a few shreds of
information about it may be new to the general reader. Julien's theory
that it was first made between the years 185 B.C. and A.D. 87 is set
aside by Dr. Hirth, the greatest living authority upon ancient Chinese
porcelain. The latter believes it was first made during the Tʽang
Dynasty, which lasted to A.D. 907; but there are no specimens of
porcelain extant before the Sung Dynasty, which ended in 1259, the
majority even then being of the class known as "celadons," which
survived owing to their thickness and strength. The prevailing colour
of these celadons is green, the colour of jade; and yellow is
mentioned as one of the ingredients used for producing this colour.
They were mostly made in the south-west of the province of Chekiang,
taken by river to the Amoy waters, and thence distributed by Arab
traders to Japan, Borneo, Sumatra, the west of Asia, and the east
coast of Africa, in which last, curiously enough, large numbers have
been discovered. They have been freely imitated at King-teh-chen, the
great porcelain factory of China, as well as in Japan; but collectors
should, it seems, have no difficulty in distinguishing the genuine
articles, from their extreme hardness.
The safest guide to Chinese porcelain is Hsiang-tse-ching, who was
collecting and cataloguing it whilst Shakespeare was writing his early
poems, and whose richly illustrated catalogue has been translated. The
most exquisite Chinese porcelain seems to have perished from its
fragility, and the extraordinarily large demands of the Imperial
Palace had apparently in old days the same effect European demands are
said to have now. When the Palace ordered a hundred thousand pairs of
cups or vases--the Chinese always want pairs--naturally the Government
factories were obliged to supplement the most expensive and rare
colours by others less costly and more simple, whilst the highest
order of artistic excellence had to give way to mechanical repetition.
Modern collectors get the bulk of their specimens from the dispersion
of articles furnished to meet such vast orders; and the Ming porcelain
is naturally somewhat coarse in make, faulty in shape, and decorated
with paintings which, though characterised by boldness of design, have
usually been executed without much care.
The ancient bronzes of China only became an object of interest to
Chinese collectors about eight centuries ago. From that date on great
attention has been paid to the inscriptions upon ancient vases, and it
is very difficult to deceive Chinese archæologists, from their
thorough knowledge of their own past history. A vase dating from the
Chow Dynasty, and preserved at Silver Island near Chinkiang, has
attracted especial attention. A former Viceroy of Kwangtung,
Yuen-yuen, writing at the beginning of this century, describes his
visit to Silver Island to see this vase. He examined it critically,
and described it minutely in his four-volume archæological collection.
He studied its colour, shape, and dimensions, and especially the
inscriptions of forty characters. He was himself a scholar of the
highest attainments, and his judgment in regard to the epoch to which
this valuable relic of former ages belongs has been accepted and
endorsed by succeeding scholars. The vase was much coveted by the
notorious Yen-sung, an unprincipled statesman, who made great efforts
to add it to his private collection in Peking in the Ming Dynasty.
Yuen-yuen refers to these abortive designs, because, Yen-sung being a
good judge of all relics of old times, this is an additional testimony
to the genuine antiquity of the vase, and it indicates the deep
interest felt in it by the archæologists of the Ming Dynasty. Beside
the descriptions of it in the ordinary works which give details on
bells and vases generally, monographs have been published on this
particular vase showing that the best-informed native scholars are at
one in the regard felt for it as genuine.
Twenty years ago the _Chin Shih So_ was published, and this work with
its profuse illustrations helped to spread the knowledge both of the
new-found Han Dynasty sculptures and of the earlier bronze vessels.
Rich men and scholars became sensible of the great pleasure to be
derived from archæological research. And this has become a real
feature of modern Chinese life. Men of means and leisure visit all
celebrated monuments to study them for themselves, and take back with
them rubbings to preserve at home. The large demand that there is in
China for rubbings of ancient inscriptions is very remarkable. The
bells and vases have now, like the stone drums, after much cautious
inquiry and no little collision of opinion, secured a place stronger
than ever in the judgment of the well informed in the Chinese reading
class.
"It was about A.D. 166 that a king of Rome sent an embassy which
arrived from the borders of Annam, bringing tribute of ivory,
rhinoceros-horn, and tortoise-shell. From that time began the direct
intercourse with that country. The fact that no jewels were found
among the articles of tribute must be accounted for by the supposition
that the ambassadors retained them for themselves." In the following
century, the third, Western traders resorted to Canton; so that it
appears the Cantonese have been afflicted by the presence of
barbarians for no less than sixteen hundred years. Possibly this
explains how the Mæander pattern on old Chinese bronzes so resembles
the Greek "key" pattern, and why the lions' heads at the approach to
the tomb of the first Ming Emperor at Nanking have rings in their
mouths, thus exactly resembling the lions' heads so often to be seen
on the mahogany cellarettes of our grandfathers, possibly also why
the Chinese Buddhist ritual and that of Roman Catholics are so
strikingly similar.
According to Dr. Hirth, paper already existed in China in the second
century. But to leave these ancient researches and come down to modern
times.
It was a real pleasure to me at Kiukiang to see Chinamen hammering
away at silver ornaments exactly after the method advocated in Mr.
Leland's (Hans Breitmann's) excellent volume in the Art at Home
Series, and just as so many amateurs are now making admirable
brasswork at home--laying a thin sheet of metal on pitch, and working
at the background with a hammer and sharpened nail or punch, thus
making the pattern, previously traced out, start into high relief. The
more roughly this work is done, the handsomer is its effect; so that
it seems better suited for brass sconces for candles or doorplates
than for silver hair ornaments. But it was pleasant to find these
Chinamen in their little shops provided with a plentiful supply of
sharpened nails, together with the familiar punches.
It is not an equal pleasure to study modern Chinese paintings.
Centuries have passed since they were what we must imagine from the
story of Wu Taotze, the Chinese Giotto, who flourished in the eighth
century. It is related that, when he was commanded to paint a
landscape upon the walls of the great Hall of Audience at the Palace,
he begged that he might work alone and undisturbed. When he announced
that all was ready, the Emperor and the Court, on entering, found the
artist standing alone in front of a great curtain. "As the folds of
drapery rolled away, a marvellous and living scene was spread out
before the amazed spectators,--a vast perspective of glade and forest,
hill and valley, with peaceful lakes and winding streams, stretching
away to a far horizon closed in by azure mountain-peaks; and in a
wild, rocky foreground, in the very front of the picture, stood a
grotto, its entrance closed by a gateway. 'All this, sire, is as
naught,' said the painter, 'to that which is concealed from mortal
gaze within.' Then at a sign the gate opened, and he passed through,
beckoning his royal master. But in a moment, before the entranced
Emperor could move a step, the whole eerie prospect faded away,
leaving the blank and solid wall. And Wu Taotze was never seen again."
"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard----" The pictures that
never were painted, the poems that never were written!--the Chinese
thought it all out long ago, how those that were only imagined were
the best. And yet we think them a people without sentiment or artistic
sensibility--we, with our fairest scenes disfigured by coarse
advertisements, every silken detail in our theatres given us by Mr.
So-and-so, only the acting left out.
[Illustration: IN A CHUNGKING GUILD-HOUSE.
_By Mrs. Archibald Little_]
The glorious white falcon attributed to the Emperor Hui Tsung at the
beginning of the twelfth century and the exquisite pictures of flowers
and birds to be seen at the British Museum show whence the Japanese
borrowed their art inspiration; but in China, its birthplace, it is
wanting now, though probably in many rich official residences
glorious specimens are still to be found such as I have myself been
delighted by in Japan, where alone and at the British Museum I have
seen Chinese masterpieces of painting. Before Giotto was born the
Chinese were painting living human figures such as they cannot paint
now. It is, however, true that in Chungking, the only Chinese city I
know really well, there is to this day an artist who paints flowers as
a connoisseur, the head of an English technical school, pronounced
only one man in England could. And how does this poor artist sell his
pictures? Of course, it will never be believed in England that he is
an artist at all, when I tell the sad truth--he sells them by the
square foot! And when you decide to buy a picture, he--measures it!
The popularly received opinion is that there is no architecture in
China. Houses and temples alike are built with wooden pillars, raised
off the ground upon stone bases. The roofs are placed upon the
pillars, and only when the roofs are finished are the walls built up
like screens. The proportions often strike me as very beautiful; and
the cunningly contrived perspectives add much to their dignity. But,
as in Japan, whilst moved to admiration by the approach, one often has
a disappointed feeling of not arriving at anything in the end. At the
same time, the conception of a Chinese house, like the design of
Peking, strikes me as very lordly; the courtyards are extremely
graceful and elegant, whilst the beautiful sweep of the roofs makes
European roofs painfully mean by comparison. Indeed, a European house
now usually gives me the same effect as a face would divested of
eye-lashes. The Chinese roofs in the west of China and at Peking are,
however, far more beautiful than those generally to be seen along the
east coast.
To turn to Chinese industries. When tea was first discovered, all
sorts of medicinal properties were attributed to it. It is to be hoped
the virtue lay rather, as we are told now it does with whisky-and-water,
in the hot water; for if not, what does the poor Tibetan get out of
the _£_150,000 he is said to spend on tea at Tachienlu, the frontier
city--for 65 per cent. of wild scrub leaves, scrub oak, etc., are said
to be mixed up in the brick tea he receives? And the cost of the tea
in the Tachienlu market is nearly doubled before the Tibetan receives
it at Batang; at Lassa it has quadrupled its price. It is only for the
last four centuries the Tibetans have had silver to exchange for tea;
till then it was exchanged for horses, a good horse being valued at
240 lb. of tea. Even to this day the tea trade is much too limited for
the four million of Tibetans; and the many thousand Tibetans who
cannot afford tea use oak bark instead, astringency being the quality
they desire to relieve them from headache and excessive meat-eating.
The tea trade with Russia still thrives; but that with Europe has been
killed by the much more carefully grown and prepared tea of Ceylon and
India--though melancholy experience must ere long teach people that
this tea has altogether other and more undesirable properties than the
soothing, refreshing beverage of China.
[Illustration: PACKING TEA.]
It is, however, no wonder that the China tea trade has languished.
Home industries are universal in China, and each peasant who farms a
bit of land grows his tea, picks it and dries it, according to his own
ideas. To introduce any improvement it would be therefore necessary to
educate the great mass of peasant cultivators. European tea-buyers'
exhortations have so far proved fruitless; and it is distressing to
see the utter want of care with which the tea-plant, with its glossy
green leaves and delicate white blossom, is treated, compared with the
untiring labour expended upon the poisonous poppy-plant. The latter is
carefully weeded, planted in regular lines, with the earth mounded
round its roots, and presents an appearance of the most perfect
vigorous health, with its erect stalk over five feet high, its
blue-green leaves, and beautiful blossoms. Sometimes it stands out
brilliant crimson against a transcendently blue sky, making the eyes
ache with the gorgeous colour contrast; at others it is white,
delicately fringed and pink-tipped, or pink, or scarlet, or scarlet
and black, or with the purple of the purple iris, or oftenest of
all--and perhaps, after all, most beautiful--white of that frail fair
whiteness that makes it impossible to think of crime or vice as
connected with it--impossible even to believe in the existence of so
foul a weed as vice being able to exist in a world that produces so
frail and pure a flower, able to stand upright in the full heat of a
China noonday sun and remain unwilted. The tea-shrubs, on the other
hand, are old and gnarled, planted irregularly just anywhere, and
never by any chance weeded. The same want of care is shown in the
drying of the young leaves, picked just as they are opening out off
their young shoots. At the same time, if Scotland would take to China
tea, there would not be so many cases of tea-poisoning as there now
are in Glasgow; but the beverage is a mild one, that must seem
tasteless to whisky-drinkers. It has the further apparent disadvantage
that an equal amount of leaf will not make anything like the same
strength of decoction that Indian tea will.
China silk is also in a bad way; but, indeed, all over the world now
it seems difficult to get healthy silkworm eggs. To turn, however, to
an especially Chinese industry, and one which still seems to me even,
after seeing it, to border on the marvellous--the white or vegetable
wax of China. The processes essential to its use began about six
centuries ago. The tree which produces the white wax insect grows in
the Chienchang valley, on the far or western side of the unconquered
Lolos, a valley about five thousand feet above the level of the sea.
The Kew authorities pronounce that this tree is the _Ligustrum
lucidum_, or large-leaved privet, an evergreen with very thick
dark-green glossy foliage, bearing clusters of white flowers in May
and June, succeeded afterwards by fruit of a dark-purple colour. In
March brown excrescences become visible, attached to the branches; and
if these be opened, a crowd of minute insects, looking like flour,
will be discovered. Two or three months later these develop into a
brown insect with six legs. And as the Chinese have discovered that
these insects would not continue to flourish on the trees, their
birthplace, they make them up into paper packets of about sixteen
ounces each; and porters, each carrying sixty of these packets, hurry
by night along the dangerous mountain paths to Kiating, a city about
two hundred miles to north and east, and place them there on severely
pollarded trees of the _Fraxinus chinensis_. It is this flight by
night that has always fascinated my imagination, even before I
traversed the successive high mountain passes, descending into the
valleys over-grown by ferns and lit up every here and there by waxy
clusters of the beautiful begonia flower that there flourishes as a
wallflower. But it would be impossible to carry the insects through
the noonday heat, as it would develop them too fast. Therefore, at the
season of the carriage of the insect, all the city gates along the
route have to be left open at night to facilitate the passage of the
army of running porters. And to think of the rough, rocky ascents and
descents those poor porters have to stumble along! The packages of
insects are each wrapped in a leaf of the wood-oil tree; rice straw is
used to suspend the packet under the branches of the ash-tree; rough
holes are drilled in the leaf with a blunt needle, so that the insects
may find their way out; and they creep rapidly up to the leaves of the
ash-tree, where they nestle for about thirteen days. They then descend
to the branches, and the females begin to develop scales on which to
deposit their eggs, and the males to excrete what looks like snow as
it coats the under side of the boughs and twigs, till at the end of
three months it is a quarter of an inch thick. The branches are then
lopped off, and the wax removed, chiefly by hand, and placed in an
iron pot of boiling water, where it rises to the surface, is skimmed
off, and deposited in a rough mould. This is then the extraordinary
hard white wax of commerce, used to coat the ordinary tallow candles,
and give the tallow greater consistence, thus enabling the Chinese to
carry tallow candles about in the paper lanterns that supply still the
place of lamps, gas, and electric lighting for the greater part of
China. It is used also to size paper and cotton goods, as furniture
polish, and to impart a gloss to silk.
[Illustration: CHINESE HYDRAULIC APPARATUS.]
There is a tribute of white wax sent every year to Peking; and to see
it going down-river in native junks, or being trans-shipped from that
more romantic mode of travel into an ordinary steamer, has a certain
fascination for me: but the real romance about the white wax is that
hurried midnight journey across the Szechuan mountains before it has
ever come into the world at all. And it rather spoils the interest
than otherwise to be told such dry facts as that from Hankow every
year fifteen thousand piculs of white vegetable wax are exported,
Chinkiang, Tientsin, Canton, and Swatow each requiring one thousand
piculs, Shanghai absorbing seven thousand, and exporting four thousand
more to other places. But any one who has been benighted on a lonely
hillside or on the banks of some unknown river knows the transport of
delight with which a light in the distance is recognised. With what
joy one gradually convinces oneself it is coming towards one, and in
the end has to restrain oneself from embracing the always
sympathetically joyful lantern-bearer; and so in those twinkling
lights along little-trodden paths, or in scattered Chinese homesteads
of many curves and courtyards, once more the romance attaching to the
white wax reasserts itself.
Grass-cloth is another very interesting Chinese industry. It is
produced from a nettle, and with large wooden things like butter-pats
and a rough bamboo thumb-protector the women beat out the fibre on the
threshing- or drying-floor in front of the farmsteads. I often wonder
grass-cloth is not more common in England. Perhaps it lasts too long
to pay to import. It is very cool, and like a glossy kind of linen,
but far more durable. Cotton goods are made at home. They do not
crease as our cottons do; they let the air through like cellular
goods, and are therefore very wholesome wear in summer; and they last
for ever.
Ningpo carvings, fanciful and rich, but in rather perishable wood,
Canton ivory carvings, and silks generally, are too well known to
need description. Only, till I went to China, I had no idea new
patterns of silks came out nearly every year even in that most
conservative country, and are much sought after. Fans are recorded as
having been used to keep the dust from the wheels of the chariots as
far back as the Chow Dynasty, 1106 B.C. Ivory fans were invented by
the Chinese 991 B.C.; but it was not till the fifteenth century the
folding-fan, long before invented by the Japanese, found its way into
China. In the west of China it is, however, still not etiquette to
carry such a fan to a party; for it looks as if you had no servant to
stand behind your chair and hold it for you when you do not want it.
The Chinese ivory fans are carved all over right through till the
whole looks like lace, the part not taken up by the design being very
delicately cut in short perpendicular lines.
But probably the art and industry carried to the greatest perfection
in China is that of embroidery. English people do not appreciate what
Chinese embroideries really are, because such a quantity of work is
done by men working at frames, and merely for so much a day. The best
has always been done by ladies, working at home, and putting all the
fancy of a lifetime into a portière, or bed-hanging. One of the most
fairylike pieces of embroidery I have ever seen was mosquito-curtains
worked all over with clusters of wistaria for either the Emperor or
Empress, and somehow or other bought, before being used, out of the
Imperial Palace by a European collector. The rich yet delicate work
upon the very fine silky material made these mosquito-curtains a thing
to haunt the dreams of all one's after-life.
Whilst, however, the handiwork of the Chinese appears to me
unsurpassed, and their colour arrangements in old days, before the
introduction from Europe of aniline dyes, are much more agreeable to
me than those of Japan, there seems to be nothing to satisfy the soul
in Chinese artistic work, which gratifies the senses, but appeals to
none of the higher part of man. I should, however, say quite the same
of that of Japan, which got all its art originally from China, and has
never, I think, quite arrived at the ancient dignity of Chinese art,
although at the present day Japan's artistic work is certainly far
more graceful and pleasing.
One day in the neighbourhood of Shanghai we walked along a path where,
marvellous for China, two people could walk abreast, and, crossing a
variety of creeks in a variety of ways, came upon the ruins of a camp,
finally reaching two tall chimneys, a landmark in the scene. Our
puzzle was what fuel they could possibly find to burn inside those
tall chimneys. It turned out to be rice husks. A man sat on the
ground, and with one hand worked a bellows, thus making forced
draught, while with the other he threw on a tiny handful of rice
husks, not enough to choke the bright flame roused by the draught.
Another man weighed out crushed cotton seeds into a little basket,
emptied them into a vessel on the fire till it just boiled, then
emptied them again into another vessel--if you can call it such--a
sort of frame of split bamboo twisted, kneaded it, all hot as it was,
with his feet, and then piled it up ready to be pressed, always with a
bit of basket-work flattening it on the top. We waited to see the
cakes pressed. They were like cheeses, each with their twisted bamboo
rings round them. When as many as could be were fitted into the
trough, then by putting in wedges the bulk was reduced to rather less
than half what it at first appeared, during which time a constant
stream of oil was flowing through the trough. A man hammered the
wedges, towards the end using a stone hammer so heavy I could only
just lift it. It was rather amusing to see the politeness of these
men. One of them wanted to smoke. But before doing so he offered his
pipe both to my husband and to myself, quite with the air of expecting
his offer to be accepted. I had an ulster, and they all admired the
material of it very much, saying each in turn they were quite sure it
was _pi chi_ (long ells). There were buffaloes crushing the cotton
seeds, walking round and round with basket-work blinkers over their
poor eyes. Curiously enough, the heavy millstones they wheeled round,
all of hardest granite as they were, yet were decorated with carvings.
One had the key pattern, or a slightly different scroll; also
characters, very carefully carved, to the effect that it was the fairy
carriage and the dragon's wheel.
It seemed strange to come upon this touch of æstheticism in this very
homely sort of factory, whose whole plant must have cost so very
little, and which was in consequence, though so well adapted for its
purpose, yet so simple that it might well serve as an illustration for
an elementary primer in mechanics. Indeed, this factory at home, and
in the fresh air, was the very ideal Ruskin writes about, and that the
Village Industries Society at home has lately been formed to realise,
if yet it may be, in England. It has been realised during long
centuries in China, and yet the millennium has not arrived.
We went back through a long, crowded, flourishing street. At an open
doorway there were young priests sitting inside, chanting. They had
musical instruments and gongs. A man behind a table was very busy
stamping envelopes such as Chinese officials use, very large and
covered with characters. He was good enough to pause, and show us the
letters these envelopes were to contain, very long and beautifully
written, and most neatly and cunningly folded. There was some one very
ill in the house, and these letters were addressed to heaven,
describing circumstantially his sad case. They were presently to be
burnt, and thus delivered. The lanterns with which this house was
decorated were blue for semi-mourning. Only a few doors farther off,
curiously enough, we came upon a wedding. The doors stood wide open,
and we saw a long vista of courtyards and _ting-tzes_, all with open
doors, and at the end what I fancied were a number of smartly dressed
servants standing. There was a band in the first courtyard, with the
quaint, pretty-looking instruments of crocodile-skin which I had
before so much admired in Shanghai Chinese city. Every one seemed so
obliging, I asked to look inside the wedding-chair. It was remarkably
smart, really beautifully embroidered all over outside. But, to my
intense disgust, the cushion on which the bride was to sit was an old
common red cushion, worn at the corners, and actually dirty, and the
inside of the chair had not even been swept out.