CANTON, UNIQUE CITY OF CHINA
It is a steamboat journey of but ninety miles up the estuary of the
Pearl River from Hong Kong to wonderful Canton, and a traveler in Asia
who fails to see the city that is the commercial capital of China misses
something that he may think and talk of the remainder of his life.
Historians profess to trace the origin of Canton to a period antedating
the Christian era, when, it is somewhere recorded, the thirty-fourth
sovereign of the Chan dynasty, by name Nan Wong, who ruled for nearly
sixty years, was on the Chinese throne. In those days the city bore the
name of Nan-Woo-Ching, meaning "The Martial City of the South," and was
encircled by a stockade formed of bamboos and river mud, tradition has
it. Tradition additionally tells us that in the shadowy past Canton used
to be known as the "City of the Rams," inasmuch as once upon a time five
genii, each mounted on a ram carrying ears of grain in the mouth, rode
into the market-place and said to the wondering people, "May famine and
dearth never visit your city." This benevolent sentiment uttered, the
genii are said to have instantly vanished, leaving their steeds in the
market-place, and forthwith these were turned into stone. There is
to-day a Temple of the Five Genii, where five clumsily sculptured rams
are pointed out as the identical animals that once were flesh and blood.
Passing over twenty centuries we find the metropolis of the present
time, with its two million people, the most satisfying, fascinating, and
puzzling city in the Orient, if not in the whole world. Canton with its
agglomeration of a primitive existence, is surely distinct and different
from any other city. Its dazzling color effect, its pile of massive
gilding in grotesque ornamentation, its wonderful sign-boards in
bewildering hieroglyphics, and its host of odd-looking humanity--all is
at variance with anything the traveler has before seen. To successfully
view Canton requires some urbanity, a wealth of patience, and a stomach
not readily overthrown by gruesome and unusual sights. And, further, the
visitor must never forget that his vision is looking back from one to
two thousand years, and that the hordes of human beings congesting the
labyrinth of streets not seven feet wide, speak of a great nation as it
was, which to-day is the oldest living nation on earth. You, of the
fast-marching West, are viewing at its fountainhead a race for which the
word "conservative" was most likely first called into use. It was the
great Li Hung Chang who stingingly rebuked some patronizing Englishmen
who were urging the astute old statesman to advocate certain social
reforms in China, by saying: "Why, we Chinese look upon England merely
as an interesting experiment in civilization, wondering where you'll be
five hundred years hence."
The only impress that Europe and Christianity have visibly made upon
Canton is the French cathedral of the twin spires that you see near the
place where your steamer lands. In all Canton there is not a wheeled
vehicle, street-car, hotel, or mouthful of food appealing to the
convenience or appetite of the visitor from the West; and apart from
your own coterie of sight-seers, you may for days be about the streets
of the vast city without seeing a person wearing the habiliments of
Europe. That section of Canton known as Shameen, in reality an island
suburb, is set apart under concessions to the United States and certain
European powers, and the consuls, missionaries and foreign merchants
there dwell surrounded by many of the comforts of home.
[Illustration: TEMPLE OF THE FIVE HUNDRED GENII, CANTON]
Few venture upon leaving Hong Kong for Canton until satisfying reports
are received assuring that no immediate outbreak is apprehended of the
known Cantonese hatred for foreigners, nor until a vast amount of
letter-writing and telegraphing for guide and chair-bearers has been
gone through with, and the steamboat company has placed the craft of
their line at your command, to be used as hotels, restaurants, and
otherwise as bases of supplies. Confident that you would be met at the
landing by the guide of whom you had reassuring reports, and with whom
you believed you had been in correspondence, a gorgeously-clad,
good-looking fellow greets you at your state-room door on the boat
before your ablutions have been completed, and tells you politely but
firmly that he is to be your guide. His card says he is "Ah Cum John,"
which is not that of the guide you had expected to meet you, and you
meekly remonstrate, until the potentate tells you through the
half-opened door that you will see Canton under his auspices or not at
all. "Why?" "Because I am proprietor of all the sedan-chairs worth
riding in, and employ every good coolie; and, besides, Ah Cum, my
father, showed Canton to Rudyard Kipling twenty-five years ago. I'm the
third son of Ah Cum, and my family does all the guiding that is done in
Canton--nobody else speaks any English."
Whatever your degree of objection to monopolies, a single reason
enumerated by the autocrat seeking to enter your employ is sufficient to
swing you into a feeble acquiescence, for, to tell the truth, you are
not impressed favorably by the mob of jostling, shoving yellow humanity
on shore, naked to the waist, who seem to be accentuating with menacing
gestures their demands upon your patronage. You wonder how long a white
man can be on shore without having his throat cut, and reason that if Ah
Cum John can bully a sovereign-born American into accepting him as
guide, when you had wanted somebody else, why is he not the very man to
control the passions of a fanatical Chinese mob? His administrative
ability impresses by the manner in which he directs affairs from the
instant his control is confessed by your party of seven native
Americans, and after breakfast this born leader sets forth at the head
of the timid pleiad longing to explore the great human warren of
China--the thugs of the river bank are now your bearers and devoted
subjects, four to a chair, and countless assistants and relatives trail
at the end of the procession.
The cavalcade attracts good-natured attention from shopkeepers drawn to
the fronts of their stalls by the yelping of forty lusty Mongol throats,
commanding all and sundry wayfarers to allow honorable visitors to pass.
So narrow are the filth-smeared streets that a sight-seer might help
himself at will from shops on either side of the way. Hundreds of messes
stewing over braziers in the thoroughfare have to be moved, and now and
then the bearers of a native dignitary slide into a conveniently wide
place that the procession of "foreign devils" may not be inconvenienced.
But a mandarin, in his palanquin and preceded by an orderly mounted on a
short-legged pony, and guarded front and rear by forty wicked-looking
soldiers armed with carbines, has precedence so instantly accorded him
that the clients of Ah Cum's third son are almost precipitated sideways
into a row of shops. The mighty official passes without so much as
casting a glance of compliment at the women of the party, thereby making
it evident that Canton mandarins have a code of deportment peculiarly
their own.
The products of every section of Asia are said Canton, Unique City of
China to be heaped high in the warehouses of this great mart of Southern
China; but the tourist sees naught of these. What he views from his
sedan-chair is thousands of shops but little larger than catacomb cells,
wherein everything from straw sandals for street coolies to jade
bracelets for the richly endowed is offered for sale. Preserved from
theft and fire in Canton's godowns and pawnshops are stored enough
fabrics of silk, art-embroideries, and carvings in ivory and teakwood,
to cause a person of average taste to lose his mind, could they be
paraded for his benefit; and a collector would find it difficult to
preserve solvency, were the treasures of the shabby-looking warehouses
proffered for sale. Unusually repugnant are the stalls where food is
vended, for their wares are prepared in a manner making it easy for the
visitor to forget that he ever possessed an appetite. A hundred times as
you are borne through Canton's streets your chair escapes by only a few
feet or inches rows of cooked ducks and pigs that seem to have been
finally varnished to make them appeal to the native epicure. Here and
there you observe strange hunks of meat held together by a wisp of straw
that your guide tells you with immobile countenance are rat hams, and in
sundry shops your ready eye thereafter detects tiny dried carcasses that
can only be rats. Let it be said in fairness to the sights of Canton
that the display of vegetables is attractive enough to turn your
thoughts to the dietary benefits of vegetarianism.
You early perceive that Ah Cum John is many kinds of a "boss" by the way
he takes command of the shops at which he deigns to halt his caravan.
All are charmed with the jewelry fabricated by the workers in
kingfishers' feathers, and make liberal selections. But you are not
permitted to pay the merchant with whom you have made a bargain, for
John says, "You pay him nothing, you pay me to-night for
everything"--and the purchases are carried away in his sumptuous
palanquin. Pictures executed on rice-paper are next acquired on the same
terms; then a cargo of daggers and swords with handles and scabbards
covered with shark skin is secured after a brief dicker. When you buy a
carved ivory ball representing years of labor by a genius, or a dozen
bolts of Chee-fu silk, the price of which may be several hundred Mexican
dollars, John insists that you are entitled to a _cumsha_ of value. The
merchant makes obeisance and proffers you a paper-cutter or a box of
candied ginger. John resents this parsimony and says "Not good enough."
He goes then behind the counter and pulls down a mandarin coat weighted
with embroidery, or maybe an intricately carved puff-box, saying "The
merchant gives you this with his compliments." Everything is dumped in
the gorgeous palanquin, and your spoliation dash through commercial
Canton is resumed.
[Illustration: CITY OF BOATS, CANTON, WHERE GENERATIONS ARE BORN AND
DIE]
Between purchases, you are taken to see innumerable temples and other
objects of interest, as they fall in your path. The Temple of the Five
Hundred Genii is made amusing by the scion of the house of Ah Cum
explaining that a figure sculptured with hat of European pattern is
"Joss Pau Low." As a reader you are aware that it is the effigy of Marco
Polo, the intrepid Italian traveler supposed to have been the first
European to have penetrated ancient China. The water-clock, elsewhere,
is found to be out of order and not running, and you assume that the
water of the Pearl River is too muddy for delicate mechanisms. The
execution ground is found to be merely a quadrilateral of vacant land,
employed by native potters when not required by the State when a group
of criminals is to be officially put to death.
The guide is regretful that your visit is a few days too late for you to
see five men beheaded in as many minutes. Employing a chair-coolie as a
lay figure, John manages to give a satisfactory description of the
_modus operandi_ of a decapitation, and you let it go at that. A
stalwart native is then introduced as the official headsman, and this
functionary promptly tries to sell the heavy-bladed sword with which he
says he struck off five heads earlier in the week. Probably three
hundred malefactors are annually put to death on this spot, and it is
said that the public executioner has been known to sell twice that
number of swords in a year. Now and again a loaferish policeman is seen,
nearly always leaning against a building or finding support from the
angle of a deep-set door. Most of the police wear sandals and straw
hats, and carry long batons and revolvers; but there is no sameness of
apparel or armament among these guardians of the peace, attested by
their wearing only a portion of their uniform at a time. The Cantonese
believe their police are equipped and dressed in strict accord with the
"finest" of a great city in America.
On the way to that section of the city where Cantonese of high and low
degree are laid away after death, we encounter a returning funeral party
that made a curious procession, and one stretching to inordinate length.
In front was a ragamuffin corps of drummers and men extracting
ear-racking noises from metal instruments that looked like flageolets,
but were not. Twenty or thirty bedraggled Buddhist priests in pairs
trotted behind, proving by their individual gaits that in China there is
no union of religion and music. Interspersed in the marching medley were
a dozen or more gaudily painted platforms with pole handles, carried by
coolies in the way that chairs are borne. Each platform displayed a
layout of varnished pigs with immovably staring eyes, plates of uncooked
strips of fish, and decorative objects suggesting place in a well-to-do
Chinese home. Every fifty yards or so a mustached official of uncertain
rank was mounted on a Tartary pony, and at the end of the column a
coolie loped along bearing across his naked shoulders the deceased's
Yankee-made bicycle. No student of foreign conditions could ask more
striking evidence that China was at last "waking up," was heeding the
influences of Western civilization, surely. The funeral party suggested
perfunctory pomp and display, and gave not a suggestion of
bereavement--and that it was, for every person in the cortege was hired
for the occasion. Half the food had been left at the tomb for the
departed in his spirit form; the remainder was to be devoured by the
mercenary mourners when the procession broke up at the door of the home
from which the corpse had been carried.
Ah Cum John's clients lunch in the renowned Five-Story Pagoda, rising
from the city wall to an elevation that spreads Canton at its feet; but
by the time one reaches the building he is satiated with views and wants
nothing but food. The Chicago "air-tights" and bottled beers and
table-waters fetched from the steamer are relished to the full by
appetites not always satisfied by the culinary achievements of a
Delmonico.
Travelers insist that Canton is more essentially Chinese in an
educational sense than any other city in China. Public speech in Hong
Kong reflects the control of Britain, and in Shanghai popular opinion is
held to be tainted with German or British opinion. At Pekin the game of
diplomacy is played too consummately to allow an expressed utterance to
have any national significance, for the capital is looked upon as a city
eddying with cross currents and rival influences. Consequently, the
pulse of the great Flowery Kingdom, with its more than four hundred
million people, can best be taken at Canton, for the native press and
native scholars there say frankly what they believe.
Cantonese opinion is potential because the capital city of the great
Kwang-tung province is recognized as the center of national learning,
where scholarship is prized above riches. No Canton youth who aims at
the first social order thinks of setting himself to make money; to enter
the service of the government is his object, and to achieve this he
studies literature. There is practically no barrier in China to becoming
a "literate," and the classification means all that the word "gentleman"
can in Europe. For this and other reasons thousands of men in Canton
wear horn-rimmed spectacles, look wise, and discuss mundane affairs in a
manner brooking no contention. The literary bureaucracy of Canton wields
a mighty influence in the affairs of the nation, it is insisted. A
member of this class may not be able to do the simplest sum in
arithmetic without the assistance of his counting-machine, but he may be
able to write an essay on the meanings of ideographs, reproduce a
trimetrical classic, or quote the philosophic works of Confucius and the
Book of Mencius until you grow faint from listening.
Once every three years Canton teems with men, young and old, who have
gathered to compete for academic degrees. Any one save the son of a
barber, an actor, or the keeper of a brothel, may enter the list,
provided he possesses the certificate of a high school. A certain part
of the city not demanded by business or residential purposes is
designated as the Examination Hall, where 10,616 cells or compartments
are built of brick and wood. These cubicles, six by eight feet square,
are arranged in rows, like cattle-pens at an American agricultural
fair. Placed side by side they would extend eight miles. These cells
have no furnishing whatever, save a plank to serve as desk and bed. The
night before the examination is to begin the student is searched, and
with writing materials and provisions sufficient for three days, is shut
in his cell. This is repeated three times, making the examination extend
to nine days. From sunrise to sunset no candidate is permitted to rise
from his seat, and if one be taken ill and carried out, he cannot return
for that contest. It is said that a few of the old men succumb to the
strain at each examination.
The theses or essays of but eighty-three of the competitors can be
accepted, and the fortunate ones are rewarded by the Bachelor of Arts
degree. In time these compete near Pekin for a "Doctor" degree--and if
abundantly rich, the successful scholar may bribe his way to official
employment, say persons intimately knowing the customs of China. Those
who pass the final degree become members of what is termed the Hon Lum
College, and this furnishes China with her councilors, district rulers,
and examiners of scholarships in all the provinces--at least in theory.
The fortunate man standing at the head of the list in the great
examination near Pekin receives the title of Chong Yuen, and is termed
"the greatest scholar in the world." The entire empire reveres him, and,
taking into consideration the number of the examinations he has stood,
he should be respected, if not for erudition, for his tenacity of
purpose and the possession of a marvelous constitution. But it is
asserted that this "greatest scholar" is invariably a millionaire and a
Manchu.
[Illustration: EXAMINATION BOOTHS, CANTON]
Even the "literate" failing to secure appointment to public office has
certain valued exemptions and prerogatives. When he fulminates against
the Pekin government or against the acts of an overbearing viceroy, his
words are attentively listened to and carry weight. Besides, the
horn-rimmed spectacles give him a local standing envied by every man who
toils or has to do with business. In Canton and other cities of China,
standing before many of the larger and pretentious houses, are
ornamental "literary poles," and these are always in pairs and generally
show respectable decay. When newly erected they are painted in colors
according to the rank of the family--white for a private citizen, red
for a civil functionary, and blue for the army. A mast having a single
row of brackets a few feet from the top means the degree of Ku Yan,
equivalent to our M. A., and called in China the degree of Promoted Men;
the degree of Entered Scholar, nearly equivalent to our LL.D., called
Tsun Sze, is represented by two rows of brackets; and the highest degree
attainable, Hon Lum, is announced by three rows of brackets, locally
termed the "Forest of Pencils." The projecting brackets make admirable
perches for pigeons and other domesticated birds. As the family and not
the individual is the basis of the custom, the masts are always erected
in front of the ancestral home, although the distinguished scholar
may live miles away. The poles are never repaired or replaced unless
some other member of the family acquires academic honors. China has no
custom more poetic than the indicating of an abode from which a scholar
has emerged.
While it is easy to admit the erudition of the Chinese in their own
language, the tourist swung through Canton's streets perceives from his
sedan-chair many signs displayed to catch the eye of the foreigner that
prove the English schoolmaster to be absent. To read such announcements
as "Chinese and Japanese Curious," "Blackwood Furnitures," "Meals at All
Day and Night," and "Steam Laundry & Co." provoke a titter in a city
where you believe yourself to be an unwelcome visitor. It is obvious
that the scholars of China are not reduced to the straits of becoming
sign-painters.
The greatest of all Canton sights is undeniably that of life on the
boats along the river front, penetrating every creek, and extending
along the paddy fields above and below the great city. There has never
been a census of this "floating population," but it is estimated that
more than three hundred thousand Cantonese have no other homes but the
junks, sampans, "flower boats" and "snake boats," upon which they are
literally born, reared, married, and die. Lining both sides of the
river, extending into Shameen Creek, the sampans are everywhere. They
ferry people across the stream or convey them wherever they wish to go
in the neighborhood, carry light cargoes of fuel, food, or merchandise,
deliver packages, and do a thousand and one services of the "odd-job"
order. A sampan nearly always houses an entire family, and is rowed by
the father and mother. Beneath the round covering amidships the woman
conducts the domestic affairs of the family with a cleverness that is
remarkable, and for cleanliness it may be said that the Canton sampan is
equal to any abiding-place on shore. The cooking is done forwards over a
"fire-box," flowering plants frequently are placed in the boat's stern,
and within the cabin incense sticks may nearly always be seen burning
before the family idol. A mother ties very young children to the deck by
a long cord, while older children romp at large with a bamboo float
fastened about their bodies, which serves at once for clothing and
life-preserver. It is a common sight to see sampans propelled up and
down stream by women, each rower having an infant strapped to her back.
The good behavior of the babies of the sampan flotilla is always
appreciated by visiting mothers whose nurse-maids at home have
difficulty in keeping their young from crying their lungs out.
The "flower boats," moored a mile or two below the business part of
Canton's foreshore, are the antithesis of the sampans, for they cater to
a pleasure-loving class, to men and women possessing wobbly morals, who
love good dinners and suppers and a game of fan-tan without too much
publicity, with singing and dancing as adjuncts. In build these craft
are like the house-boats of the Thames, and the custom of tricking them
out with flowering plants suggests the scene at Henley during regatta
week. Practically all the vice that a traveler learns of during a visit
to Canton is confined to the flower boats, and their floral appellation
comes from the reputed attractiveness of the sirens dwelling upon them.
The boats are moored side by side in long rows, with planks leading from
one to another. Prices on the boats are always high, and the native
voluptuary pays extravagantly and the foreigner ruinously whenever he
devotes an evening to the floral fleet. By night the boats are gorgeous
with their mirrors and myriad lamps alight, and blackwood tables and
stools inlaid with mother-of-pearl; but by the light of day they look
tawdry to the point of shabbiness.
To a person interested in marine construction, especially one hailing
from a land where steam has supplanted sail-power, and where gasolene
and other inexpensive motors have made rowing almost obsolete, the Pearl
River "hot-foot" boats, so called by Europeans, are intensely
interesting. These craft connect Whampoa and other out-lying towns with
Canton, run in and out of rivers, and carry passengers, freight, and
sometimes the mails. They are of fairly good lines, but are propelled by
huge stern-wheels, and the motive power is contributed by from ten to
twenty barebacked and perspiring coolies running up a treadmill that
occupies as much room amidships as boiler and engine might. When the
taskmaster urges the coolies to do their best, one of these "hot-foot"
boats chugs along in calm water at a five-knot gait, but ordinarily
three knots an hour is the normal speed.
On the left bank of the river and close to Canton is a large leper
village, where all native craft approaching the city have to pay a
"Leper toll." If this is done as soon as the vessel reaches the suburb
the head leper gives a pass which franks the ship through; without this,
any of the numerous lepers are able to demand a fee, which has to be
paid, otherwise the junk would be surrounded by these people and all
work brought to a standstill.