Sometimes it is a matter of several years, my guide told me, the
geomancers or fortune-tellers being employed all this time in finding
a suitable site for a grave. These miserable scoundrels pretend that
the soul of the dead man will not rest unless he is buried in just the
right spot and in just the right kind of soil. Perhaps no professional
man in China earns as much as these fakirs. Sometimes it happens that
after a man has been dead two or three years his family suffers a
series of misfortunes. A frequent explanation in such cases is that
the wrong site has been chosen for the dead man's burial place.
Another geomancer is then hired and told to find a new grave where the
soul will rest in peace. Of course, he charges a heavy fee.
In one $1400 coffin I saw was the body of a wealthy young Chinaman who
died last spring. Three times a day a new cup of tea is placed on the
table for his spirit, and on the walls of the room were scores of silk
scrolls, fifteen feet long, expressing the sympathy of friends and
relatives. Around the coffin, too, were almost life-size images of
servants, and above it a heap of gilded paper to represent gold. When
the geomancers finally find a suitable grave for the poor fellow he
will be buried, and these paper servants and this paper gold will be
burned, in the belief that they will be converted into real servants
and real gold for his use in the spirit world.
{145}
A friend of mine in Peking who saw the funeral of the late Emperor and
Empress Dowager told me some interesting stories of the truly Oriental
ceremonies then celebrated. Tons of clothes and furs were burned, and
vast quantities of imitation money. A gorgeous imitation boat, natural
size and complete in every detail from cabins to anchors, steamer
chairs, and ample decks, was fitted up at a cost of $36,000 American
money, and burned. Furthermore, as my friend was coming home one
evening, he was surprised to see in an unexpected place, some distance
ahead, a full regiment of soldiers, gorgeous in new uniforms, and
hundreds of handsome cavalry horses. Getting closer, what was his
amazement to find that these natural-size soldiers and steeds were
only make-believe affairs to be burned for the dead monarchs! To
maintain their rank in the Beyond they must have at least one full
regiment at their command!
Since we are on such gruesome subjects we might as well finish with
them now by considering the punishments in China. I went out to the
execution grounds in Canton, but it happened to be an off-day when
nobody was due to suffer the death sentence. I did see the cross,
though, on which the worst criminals are stretched and strangled
before they are beheaded. The bodies of these malefactors are not
allowed ordinary burial, but quick-limed, I believe. There were human
bones beside the old stone wall where I walked, and when a Chinese
brat lifted for a moment a sort of jute-bagging cover from a barrel
the topmost skull of the heap grinned ghastly in the sunlight.
The cruelty of Chinese punishments is a blot upon her civilization.
When I was in Shanghai a friend of mine told me of having been to a
little town where two men had just been executed for salt-smuggling.
Salt is a government monopoly in China, or at least is subject to a
special revenue duty, so that salt smuggling is about equivalent to
blockading whiskey in America.
{146}
Recognized forms of punishment are death by starvation and "death by
the seventy-two cuts"--gradually chopping a man to pieces as if he
were a piece of wood. This latter punishment is for treason. To let a
bad criminal be hanged instead of beheaded is regarded as a favor, the
explanation being that the man who has his head cut off is supposed to
be without a head in the hereafter.
The worst feature of the whole system is the treatment of prisoners to
make them confess. The Chinese theory is that no one should be
punished unless he confesses with his own mouth. Consequently the most
brutal, sickening tortures are practised to extort confession, and, in
the end, thousands and thousands of innocent men, no doubt, rather
than live longer in miseries far worse than death, have professed
crimes of which they were innocent.
But let us turn now to happier topics--say to an illustration of
Chinese humor. Very well; here is the sort of story that tickles a
Chinaman: it is one they tell themselves:
A Chinaman had a magic jar. And when you think of a jar here don't
think of one of the tiny affairs such as Americans use for preserves
and jams. The jar here means a big affair about half the size of a
hogshead: I bathed in one this morning. It was in such jars that Ali
Baba's Forty Thieves concealed themselves. Well, this magic jar had
the power of multiplying whatever was put into it. If you put in a
suit of clothes, behold, you could pull out perhaps two or three dozen
suits! If you put in a silver dollar, you might get out a hundred
silver dollars. There doesn't seem to have been any regularity about
the jar's multiplying properties. Sometimes it might multiply by two,
while again it might multiply by a hundred.
At any rate, the owner of the magic receptacle was getting rich fairly
fast, when a greedy judge got word of the strange affair somehow.
Accordingly he made some kind of false charge against the man and made
him bring the jar into court. {149} Then the judge pretended that he
couldn't decide about the case, or else pretended that the man needed
punishment for something, and so wrongly refused to give the citizen's
property back. Instead the magistrate took the jar into his own home
and himself began to get rich on its labors.
{147}
[Illustration: THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA.]
The building of the Great Wail, considered simply as a feat of
Herculean labor, leaves us no room to boast over the Panama Canal.
[Illustration: CHINESE WOMAN'S RUINED FEET.]
The lower picture shows the terrible deformity produced by
foot-binding.
{148}
[Illustration: CHINESE SCHOOL CHILDREN.]
The upper picture suggests a word about the amazing fertility of the
Oriental races--the Japanese, for example, increasing from their
birth-rate alone as fast as the United States from its birth-rate
plus its enormous immigration.
[Illustration: THE AMERICAN CONSULATE AT ANTUNG.]
A great need of America in the East is better consular buildings.
Witness this one at Antung.
{149 continued}
Now, when this happened, the friends of the mistreated man began to
murmur. Failing to do anything with the magistrate, they appealed to
the magistrate's father--for though you may be fifty or seventy years
old in China, if your father is living you are as much subject to his
orders as if you were only ten; this is the case just as long as you
both live. But when the father spoke about the complaints of the
people the magistrate lied about the jar somehow, but not in a way
entirely to deceive the old fellow. He decided to do some
investigating, and went blundering around into a dark room in search
of the jar, and before he saw what he was doing came upon it and fell
into it. Whereupon he cried to his son to pull him out.
The son did come, but when he pulled out one father, behold there was
another still in the jar--and then another and another and another. He
pulled out one father after another till the whole room was full of
fathers, and then he filled up the yard with fathers, and had six or
eight standing like chickens on the stone wall before the accursed old
jar would quit! And to have left one father in there would naturally
have been equivalent to murder.
So this was the punishment of the unjust magistrate. He had, of
course, to support all the dozens of aged fathers he pulled out of the
jar (a Chinaman must support his father though he starve himself), and
it is to be supposed that he used up all the wealth he had unjustly
piled up, and had to work night and day as well all the rest of his
life. Of course the jar, too, had to be returned to its owner, and in
this way the whole community learned of the magistrate's unfairly
withholding it.
This story is interesting not only for its own sake, but for {150} the
light it sheds on Chinese life--the relations of father and son; the
unjust oppression of the people by the officials in a land where the
citizen is without the legal rights fundamental in American
government; and, lastly, the "Arabian Nights" like flavor of this
typically Chinese piece of fiction.
One of the funny things among the many funny things I have encountered
in China is the peculiar way of buying or selling land, as reported to
me by Rev. Dr. R. T. Bryan. If you buy land from a Chinaman, about
Shanghai at least, without knowing the custom of the country, you may
have to make him three additional payments before you get through with
him. For, according to the custom, after the first payment he will
give you a deed, but after a little while will come around sighing,
regretting that he sold the land and complaining that you didn't pay
enough. Accordingly, you will pay him a little more, and he will give
you what is called a "sighing paper," certifying that the "sighing
money" has been paid. A few days or weeks pass and he turns up again.
You didn't pay him quite enough before. Therefore, you make another
small payment and he gives you the "add-a-little-more" paper showing
that the "add-a-little-more" money has been paid. Last of all, you
make what is called the "pull-up-root" payment, and the land is safely
yours.
Of course, the impatient foreigner hasn't time for this sort of thing,
consequently he pays enough more in the beginning to cancel these
various dramatic performances. Doctor Bryan's deed certifies that the
"sighing money," "add-a-little-more money," and "pull-up-root money"
have all been settled to start with.
"Pidgin English," or the corruptions of English words and phrases by
means of which foreigners and Chinese exchange ideas, is also very
amusing. "Pidgin English" means "business English," "pidgin"
representing the Chinaman's attempt to say "business." Some of the
Chinese phrases are very useful, such as "maskee" for our "never
mind." Other good phrases {151} are "chop-chop" for "hurry up,"
"chin-chin" for "greeting," and "chow-chow" for "food."
"Have you had plenty chow-chow?" my good-natured Chinese elevator-boy
in Shanghai used to say to me after dinner; and the bright-eyed little
brats at the temples in Peking used to explain their failure to do
anything forbidden by saying they should get "plenty bamboo
chow-chow"! Bamboos are used for switches (as well as for ten thousand
other things), and "bamboo chow-chow" means the same thing to the
Chinese boy as "hickory tea" to an American boy!
A Scotch fellow-passenger was telling me the other day of the saying
that "The Scotchman keeps the Sabbath day, and every other good thing
he can lay his hands on." Now, the Chinaman, unlike the Scotchman,
doesn't keep the Sabbath, but he does live up to all the requirements
of the second clause of the proverb. Nothing goes to waste in China
except human labor, of which enough is wasted every year to make a
whole nation rich, simply because it is not aided by effective
implements and machinery. The bottles, the tin cans, the wooden boxes,
the rags, the orange peels--everything we throw away--is saved. And
the coolies work from early morn till late at night and every day in
the week. Their own religion does not teach them to observe the
seventh day, and this requirement of Christianity, in China as well as
in Japan, is regarded as a great hardship upon its converts.
Buddhism in China, as in Japan, it may also be observed just here, is
now only a hideous mixture of superstition and fraud. As I found
believers in the Japanese temples rubbing images of men and bulls to
cure their own pains, so in the great Buddhist temple at Canton I
found the fat Buddha's body rubbed slick in order to bring flesh to
thin supplicants, while one of the chief treasures of the temple is a
pair of "fortune sticks." If the Chinese Buddhist wishes to undertake
any new task or project, he first comes to the priest and tries out
its advisability with these "fortune sticks." If, when dropped to the
{152} floor, they lie in such a position as to indicate good luck, he
goes ahead; otherwise he is likely to abandon the project.
Let me close this chapter by noting a remark made to me by Dr. Timothy
Richard, one of the most eminent religious and educational workers in
the empire.
"Do you know what has brought about the change in China?" he asked me
one day in Peking. "Well, I'll tell you: it is a comparative view of
the world. Twenty years ago the Chinese did not know how their country
ranked with other countries in the elements of national greatness.
They had been told that they were the greatest, wisest, and most
powerful people on earth, and they didn't care to know what other
countries were doing. Since then, however, they have studied books,
have sent their sons to foreign colleges and universities, and they
have found out in what particulars China has fallen behind other
nations. Now they have set out to remedy these defects. The
comparative view of the world is what is bringing about the remaking
of China."
In China, no doubt, the men who have brought the people this
"comparative view of the word" were criticised sometimes for presuming
to suggest that any other way might be better than China's way; but
they kept to their work--and have won. Doctor Richard himself did much
effective service by publishing a series of articles and diagrams
showing how China compared with other countries in area, population,
education, wealth, revenue, military strength, etc. Such comparisons
are useful for America as a country, and for individual states and
sections as well.
Hong Kong, China.
{153}
XVI
WHAT I SAW IN THE PHILIPPINES
Of the cruelty of Chinese punishments I have already had something to
say, but there is at least one thing that should be said for the
Chinese officials in this connection: No matter how heinous his crime,
they have never sent a criminal from Hong Kong to Manila in an
Indo-China boat in the monsoon and typhoon season.
Dante could have found new horrors for the "Inferno" in the voyage as
I made it. From Saturday morning till Sunday night, while the storm
was at its height, the waves beat clean over the top of our vessel. A
thousand times it rolled almost completely to one side, shivered,
trembled, and recovered itself, only to yield again to the wrath and
fury of mountain-like waves hurled thundering against it and over it.
The crack where the door fitted over the sill furnished opening enough
to flood my cabin. In spite of the heat not even a crack could be
opened at the top of the window until Monday morning. A bigger ship a
few hours ahead of us found the sea in an even more furious mood. The
captain stayed on the bridge practically without sleep three days and
nights, going to bed, spent with fatigue and watching, as soon as he
came at last into sight of Manila. Two weeks ago the captain of
another ship came into port so much used up that he resigned and gave
his first mate command of the vessel, while still another vessel has
just limped into Manila disabled after buffeting the storm for a brief
period.
{154}
At any rate, the trip is over now, and I write this in Manila, with
its tropical heat and vegetation, its historic associations, its
strange mixture of savage, Spanish, and American influences. The Pasig
River, made famous in the war days of '98, flows past my hotel, and
beautiful Manila Bay, glittering in the fierce December sunlight,
recalls memories of Dewey and our navy. But the moss-green walls about
the old Spanish city remind us of days of romance and tragedy more
fascinating than any of the events of our own generation. In the days
when Spain made conquest of the world these streets were laid out, and
the statues of her sovereigns, imperious and imperial, still stand
here to remind us that nations, like men, are mortal, and that for
follies or mistakes a people no less surely than an individual must
pay the price.
Nor let our own proud America, boasting of her greater area and richer
resources, think she may ignore the lessons the history of her
predecessors here may teach. The statue of Bourbon Don Carlos in his
royal robe that stands amid the perennial green of the Cathedral
Park--it may well bring our American officers who look out daily upon
it, and the other Americans who come here, a feeling not of pride but
of profound and reverent humility:
"God of Our Fathers, known of old.
Lord of our far-flung battle-line.
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine.
Judge of the nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget!"
In order to see what the Philippine country looks like, I left Manila
Thursday and made the long, hot trip to Daguban, travelling through
the provinces of Rizal, Bulacan, Pampanga, Tarlac, and Pangasinan. The
first four of these are known as Tagalog provinces; the fifth is
inhabited by Ilocanos and Pampangans. Three dialects or languages are
spoken by the {155} tribes in the territory covered. Not far beyond
Daguban are savage dog-eating, head-hunting tribes; taos, or peasants,
buy dogs around Daguban and sell to these savages at good profits.
The provinces I travelled through are typical of Filipinoland
generally. Rather sparsely settled, only the smaller part of the land
is under cultivation, the rest grown up in horse-high tigbao or Tampa
grass, or covered with small forest trees. Among trees the feathery,
fern-like foliage of the bamboo is most in evidence; but the
broad-leaved banana ranks easily next. The high topknot growth of the
cocoanut palm and the similar foliage of the tall-shanked papaya
afford a spectacle unlike anything we see at home. About Daguban
especially many cocoanuts are grown, and the clumps of trees by the
Agno River reminded me of the old Bible pictures of the River Nile in
the time of Pharaoh--especially when I looked at the plowing going on
around them. For the Filipino's plow is modelled closely on the old
Egyptian implement, and hasn't been much changed. A properly crooked
small tree or limb serves for a handle, another crooked bough makes
the beam, and while there is in most cases a steel-tipped point, some
of the poorer farmers have plows made entirely of wood. A piece of
wood bent like the letter U forms the hames; another piece like U with
the prongs pulled wide apart serves as a singletree. Then, with two
pieces of rope connecting primitive hame and single-tree, the
Filipino's harness is complete.
Before going into any further description of the plows, however, let
us get our picture of the typical country on the Island of Luzon as I
saw it on this hot December day. Great fields of rice here and there,
ripe for the harvest, and busy, perspiring little brown men and women
cutting the crop with old-fashioned knives and sickles; the general
appearance not unlike an American wheat or oat harvest in early
summer. Bigger fields of head-high sugarcane at intervals, the upper
two feet green, the blades below yellow and dry. Some young corn, some
of it tasselling, some that will not be in tassel before the last of
{156} January. Some fields of peanuts. Here and there a damp
low-ground and a sluggish river. Boats on the rivers: small freight
boats of a primitive type and long canoes hewed out of single logs.
Most striking of all are the houses in which the people live,
clustered in villages, as are farmhouses in almost every part of the
world except in America. Surrounded in most cases by the massive
luxuriance of a banana grove, the Filipino's hut stands on stilts as
high as his head, and often higher. One always enters by a ladder. In
most instances there are two rooms, the larger one perhaps 10 x 12
feet, and a sort of lean-to adjoining, through which the ladder comes.
A one-horse farmer's corn crib is about the size of the larger
Filipino home. And it is made, of course, not of ordinary lumber, but
of bamboo--the ever-serviceable bamboo--which, as my readers probably
know, strongly resembles the fishing-pole reeds that grow on our river
banks. The sills, sleepers, and scaffolding of the house are made of
larger bamboo trunks, six inches or less in diameter; the split trunks
form the floor; the sides are of split bamboo material somewhat like
that of which we make our hamper baskets and split-bottom chairs; the
roofing is of _nipal_, which looks much like very long corn shucks.
In short, imagine an enormous hamper basket, big enough to hold six or
eight hogsheads, put on stilts, and covered with shucks: such in
appearance is the Filipino's house. Around it are banana trees bent
well toward the ground by the weight of the one great bunch at the
top, and possibly a few bamboo and cocoanut trees. For human ornaments
there are rather small and spare black-haired, black-eyed,
brown-skinned men, women, and children in clothing rather gayly
colored--as far as it goes: in some cases it doesn't go very far. The
favorite color with the women-folk is a sort of peach-blossom mixture
of pink and white or a bandanna-handkerchief combination of red and
white. Bare feet are most common, {159} but many wear slippers, and
not a few are now slaves enough to fashion to wear American shoes. The
men, except the very poorest, wear white, nor is it a white worn dark
by dirt such as Koreans wear, but a spotless, newly washed white.
Nearly every Filipino seems to have on clothes that were laundered the
day before. A sort of colored gauze is frequently the only outer
garment worn by either men or women on the upper part of the body.
{157}
[Illustration: A FILIPINO'S HOME.]
Nearly all the native houses I saw in the rural Philippines were of
this type--about this size, set on stilts, and constructed of
similar material. The scene is not quite natural-looking, however,
without a banana grove and a fighting cock or two.
{158}
[Illustration: THE CARABAO, THE WORK-STOCK OF THE FILIPINOS.]
[Illustration: AN OLD SPANISH CATHEDRAL.]
Of all the native Oriental peoples, the Filipinos alone have become
thoroughly Christianized. The great majority are Catholics.
{159 continued}
The beast of burden in the Philippines, the ungainly, slow-moving
animal that pulls the one-handled plows and the two-wheeled carts, is
the _carabao_. The _carabao_, or water buffalo, is about the size of
an ordinary American ox, and much like the ox, but his hide is black,
thick, and looks almost as tough as an alligator's; his horns are
enormous, and he has very little hair. Perhaps his having lived in the
water so much accounts for the absence of the hair. Even now he must
every day submerge himself contentedly in deep water, must cover his
body like a pig in a wallow: this is what makes life worth living for
him. Furthermore, when he gives word that he is thirsty Mr. Tao (the
peasant) must not delay watering him; in this hot climate thirst may
drive him furiously, savagely mad, and the plowman may not be able to
climb a cocoanut tree quick enough to escape hurt.
I saw quite a few goats, some cattle, a few hogs, and, of course, some
dogs. Much as the Filipino may care for his dog, however, he always
reserves the warmest place in his heart for nothing else but his
gamecock, his fighting rooster. Cock-fighting, and the gambling
inseparably connected with it, are his delight, and no Southern
planter ever regarded a favorite fox-hound with more pride and
affection than the Filipino bestows on his favorite chicken. In grassy
yards you will see the rooster tied by one leg and turned out to
exercise, as we would stake a cow to graze, while his owner watches
and fondles him. I shall never forget a gray-headed, bright-eyed,
barefooted old codger I saw near Tarlac stroking the feathers of his
bird, while in his eyes was the pride as of a woman over {160} her
first-born. A man often carries his gamecock with him as a negro would
carry a dog, and he is as ready to back his judgment with his last
_centavo_ as was the owner of Mark Twain's "Jumping Frog" before that
ill-fated creature dined too heartily on buckshot. Sundays and saints'
days are the days for cock-fighting--and both come pretty often.