From "THE CHANGING CHINESE." Chapter I. Copyright, 1911, by
the Century Co.
China is the European Middle Ages made visible. All the cities are
walled and the walls and gates have been kept in repair with an eye to
their effectiveness. The mandarin has his headquarters only in a
walled fortress-city and to its shelter he retires when a sudden
tempest of rebellion vexes the peace of his district.
The streets of the cities are narrow, crooked, poorly-paved, filthy,
and malodorous. In North China they admit the circulation of the heavy
springless carts by which alone passengers are carried; but, wherever
rice is cultivated, the mule is eliminated and the streets are adapted
only to the circulation of wheel-barrows and pedestrians. There is
little or no assertion of the public interest in the highway, and
hence private interests close in upon the street and well-nigh block
it. The shopkeeper builds his counter in front of his lot line; the
stalls line the streets with their crates and baskets; the artisans
overflow into it with their workbenches, and the final result is that
the traffic filters painfully through a six-foot passage which would
yet be more encroached on but for the fact that the officials insist
on there being room left for their sedan chairs to pass each other.
The straightened streets are always crowded and give the traveler the
impression of a high density and an enormous population. But the
buildings are chiefly one story in height, and, with the exception of
Peking, Chinese cities cover no very great area. For literary effect
their population has been recklessly exaggerated, and, in the absence
of reliable statistics, every traveler has felt at liberty to adopt
the highest guess.
Until recently there was no force in the cities to maintain public
order. Now, khaki-clad policemen, club in hand, patrol the streets,
but their efficiency in time of tumult is by no means vindicated. A
slouching, bare-foot, mild-faced _gendarme_ such as you see in Canton
is by no means an awe-inspiring embodiment of the majesty of the law.
There is no common supply of water. When a city lies by a river the
raw river water is borne about to the house by regular water-carriers,
and the livelong day the river-stairs are wet from the drip of
buckets. When the water is too thick it is partially clarified by
stirring it with a perforated joint of bamboo containing some piece of
alum.
There is no public lighting, and after nightfall the streets are dark,
forbidding, and little frequented. Until kerosene began to penetrate
the Empire the common source of light was a candle in a paper lantern
or cotton wick lighted in an open cup of peanut oil. Owing to the lack
of a good illuminant the bulk of the people retire with the fowls and
rise with the sun. By making the evening of some account for reading
or for family intercourse, kerosene has been a great boon to domestic
life.
Fuel is scarce and is sold in neat bundles of kindling size. Down the
West River ply innumerable boats corded high with firewood floating
down to Canton and Hong Kong. Higher and higher the tree destruction
extends, and farther and farther does the axman work his way from the
waterways. Chaff and straw, twigs and leaves and litter are burned in
the big brick bedsteads that warm the sleepers on winter nights, and
under the big, shallow copper vessels set in the low brick or mud
stoves. Fuel is economized and household economy simplified among the
poor by the custom of relying largely on the food cooked and vended in
the street. The portable restaurant is in high favor, for our
prejudice against food cooked outside the home is a luxury the common
people cannot afford to indulge in.
Proper chimneys are wanting and wherever cooking goes on the walls are
black with the smoke that is left to escape as it will. Chinese
interiors are apt to be dark for, in the absence of window glass, the
only means of letting in light without weather is by pasting paper on
lattice. The floors are dirt, brick, or tile, the roof tile or thatch.
To the passer-by private ease and luxury are little in evidence. If a
man has house and grounds of beauty, a high wall hides them from the
gaze of the public. Open lawns and gardens are never seen, and there
is no greenery accessible to the public unless it be the grove of an
occasional temple.
In the houses of the wealthy, although there is much beauty to be
seen, the standard of neatness is not ours. Cobwebs, dust, or
incipient dilapidation do not excite the servant or mortify the
proprietor. While a mansion may contain priceless porcelains and
display embroideries and furniture that would be pronounced beautiful
the world over, in general, the interiors wrought by the Chinese
artisan do not compare in finish with those of his Western
_confrere_....
No memory of China is more haunting than that of the everlasting blue
cotton garments. The common people wear coarse, deep-blue "nankeen."
The gala dress is a cotton gown of a delicate bird's-egg blue or a
silk jacket of rich hue. In cold weather the poor wear quilted cotton,
while the well-to-do keep themselves warm with fur-lined garments of
silk. A general adoption of Western dress would bring on an economic
crisis, for the Chinese are not ready to rear sheep on a great scale
and it will be long before they can supply themselves with wool. The
Chinese jacket is fortunate in opening at the side instead of at the
front. When the winter winds of Peking gnaw at you with Siberian
teeth, you realize how stupid is our Western way of cutting a notch in
front right down through overcoat, coat and vest, apparently in order
that the cold may do its worst to the tender throat and chest. On
seeing the sensible Chinaman bring his coat squarely across his front
and fasten it on his shoulder, you feel like an exposed
totem-worshipper.
Wherever stone is to be had, along or spanning the main roads are to
be seen the memorial arches known as _pailows_ erected by imperial
permission to commemorate some deed or life of extraordinary merit. It
is significant that when they proclaim achievement, it is that of the
scholar, not of the warrior. They enclose a central gateway, flanked
by two, and sometimes by four, smaller gateways, and conform closely
to a few standard types, all of real beauty. As a well-built _pailow_
lasts for centuries, and as the erection of such a memorial is one of
the first forms of outlay that occur to a philanthropic Chinaman, they
accumulate, and sometimes the road near cities is lined with those
structures until one wearies of so much repetition of the same thing,
however beautiful.