CHINESE HANKOW (HANKAU)
It is a short step from the stately dulness of the bund to the crowds,
colour, and noise of the native city—the “Million-peopled City,” the
commercial centre of China, the greatest “distributing point” in the
empire, the centre of the tea trade, which has fallen practically into
Russian hands, and the greatest junk port in China.
The city wall is imposing, with a crenelated parapet, forts at the
corners, and tunnelled under double-roofed gate-towers for heavily
bossed gates, which are closed from sunset to sunrise. The unpaved
roadways are usually foul quagmires owing to the perpetual passage of
water carriers; where big dogs of the colour of dirty flannel, with pink
patches of hairlessness, wrangle over offal. The streets are from ten to
twelve feet wide. The houses are high. Matting or blue cotton is
stretched across from opposite roofs in summer to moderate the sun’s
heat and glare; so the traffic is carried on in a curiously tinted
twilight, flecked now and then by a vivid ray gleaming on the red and
gold of the long, hanging shopboards, lighting up their flare and glare,
and giving them a singular picturesqueness.
The shape of the signboard and the different colours of the letters and
face of the sign indicate different trades. The devising of a signboard
is a very important matter; it may affect the luck of the shop. The name
of the shopkeeper comes first, but in the case of a firm a word of good
omen is substituted for the names, with a character signifying union. In
both cases the top characters are followed by words of good omen,
suggesting wealth, prosperity, and increase.
Gold platers of ornaments use salmon-coloured boards with green
characters, druggists gilded boards frequently traced with many lines,
and large standard tablets which remain in their sockets at night, and
there are a few other combinations of colour used by different traders
for the sake of easy distinction; and on some signboards the articles
sold within are carefully pictured, but black and gold and carnation-red
and gold largely predominate, the gold being used for the highly
decorative characters, the writing of which is a lucrative trade. An old
signboard is a valuable piece of property, and if the business is sold
fetches a high price, like the goodwill of a long-established business
at home. An old-established druggist’s sign has sold for as much as 3000
taels, about £450. In the winter, with the streets so decorated, with
the overhead screens removed, the narrow strips of bright blue sky
above, and the slant sunbeams touching gold and colour into marvellous
brilliancy, Chinese cities, especially Canton and Foochow, have a nearly
unrivalled picturesqueness.
Of the crowded and semi-impassable state of such streets no adequate
idea can be given. Though on my first visit to the native city the
British Consul was walking beside me with an attendant, and my bearers
wore the red-plumed hats and well-known liveries of the Consulate, I was
often brought to a halt, more or less ignominious, or was roughly shaken
by the impact of the burden of some hurrying coolie, while the chairmen
threaded their way with difficulty through thousands of busy, blue-clad
Chinese, all shouting or yelling, my bearers adding to the din by the
yelling in chorus which is supposed to clear a passage for a chair.
Among the meaner cotton-clad folk there were not wanting rich costumes
of heavy brocaded silks and costly furs, worn probably by compradores
and shopkeepers, who in the treaty ports are coming to vie with the
highest officials in the splendid expensiveness of their dress.
Occasionally yells louder than usual, and an attempt on the part of the
crowd to pack itself to right and left, denoted the approach of a
mandarin in a heavy, coloured and gilded official chair, with eight
bearers, and many attendants in heavily plumed hats and red and black
decorated dresses; the official himself sitting very erect within his
chair, nearly always very pale and fat, with a thin moustache of long
curved hairs, and that look of unutterable superciliousness and scorn
which no Oriental of another race is equally successful in attaining.
[Illustration: A STREET IN HANKOW.]
The principal streets are flagged; the others are miry ways cut into
deep ruts by wheelbarrows. “Ancient and fish-like smells” abound, and
strong odours of garlic, putrid mustard, frizzling pork, and of the
cooking of that most appetising dish, fish in a state of decomposition,
drift out of the crowded eating-houses. If of the lower class, the
culinary operations of restaurants are visible from the street, the
utensils consisting of a row of pans set into brickwork, one or two iron
pots, and a few earthenware dishes. Not a tipsy man or a man noisy with
drink was to be seen. The Chinese have the virtue of using alcoholic
liquor in great moderation, and almost altogether with their food.
Oil in earthenware jars, each large enough to contain a man, or freshly
arrived in the paper-lined wicker baskets in which it is shipped from
SZE CHUAN, denotes the oil shops; parcels of tea done up in oiled paper,
built up to a great height with surprising regularity, slabs of brick
tea, and sacks of sugar denote the grocers; while rolls of carefully
packed silk, which one longs to investigate, proclaim the prince of
retail shopkeepers, the dealer in silks.
There are bean cakes, melon seeds, dates, and drugs from the north and
west, brought in by the great junks, with huge sweeps and Vandyke-brown
sails, which crowd the Han. There are idol-makers with every sort and
size of idol for home use and export, some of which find their way to
Tibet and Turkestan, and receive perpetual worship in the homes and
_gonpas_ of Ladak and Nubra; but none of them are treated with even
scant respect until the ceremony takes place which invests them with the
soul, represented by silver models of the “five viscera,” which are
inserted at a door in the back. In the same quarter are dealers in the
manifold paraphernalia of idol worship, in the tinsel, gold, and silver
shoes burned in ancestor-worship, and in the very clever and in some
cases life-size representations of elephants, tigers, horses, asses,
cows, houses, carts, and many other things which are burned at funerals,
adding to their great costliness, the sons of a merchant of average
means often spending a thousand dollars on these mimicries.
But while there are dealers in everything which can minister to the
luxury or necessities of the “Million-peopled City,” many of the shops
give a piteous notion of the poverty of their customers. And everywhere
in these crowded streets not a thing is sold, from a valuable diamond
down to a straw shoe, without the deafening din of bargaining, no seller
asking what he means to take, and no purchaser offering what he
eventually means to give, the poorest buyers, to whom time is money,
thinking an hour not misspent if they get a reduction of half a _cash_.
As all the bargaining, except in the case of the great shops, is done at
the shop fronts, and the bargainers are men, and Chinese men, specially
of the lower orders, shout at the top of their voices, the Babel in a
Chinese commercial street is inconceivable.
Enormous quantities of goods are everywhere waiting for transit, for
Hankow is the greatest distributing centre in China, and the big
steamers lying at the bund, or at anchor in the stream, and the thousand
junks which crowd the waterways, seem barely sufficient for her gigantic
commerce.
Among the ghastly curiosities of Hankow, as of all big Chinese cities,
are the coffin shops, which usually herd together in special quarters
and are apt to use portions of the streets for their timberyards. In
them are seen the great cumbrous coffins, at times ten and even twelve
feet in length, which Chinese custom demands, of all grades and prices,
from highly polished lacquer with characters raised or incised in gold
to the roughly put together shell in which the tired coolie takes his
last sleep. Many of the more costly are ordered as filial gifts from
children to parents, and from grandchildren to grandparents, and take
their lugubrious place, set up on end, among the decorations of the
lofty vestibule by which rich men’s houses are entered, and where they
may rest for years. As a body may remain for months or years unburied,
waiting for the decision of the geomancers as to an auspicious place and
date for the interment, the coffins are very carefully constructed, and
are either lacquered or treated with the celebrated Ningpo varnish,
which is practically impermeable both to air and moisture.
The varnishers and lacquerers also herd together, and their trade, which
is based on the _Rhus vernicifera_, is a very important one. The
eating-houses—and from the number of them and the crowds which frequent
them it might be supposed that nobody eats at home—the tobacconists, and
the opium shops are scattered broadcast through the city, and each has
its special _clientèle_.
[Illustration: COFFINS AWAITING BURIAL.]
[Illustration: HANKOW FROM HAN YANG.]
Possibly there may have originally been a plan on which the Hankow
streets were built, but it must have been outgrown for some centuries,
and at present there is little suggestion of design; streets and alleys
intersect each other in singular confusion, and only a practised hand
can find any given point without irksome and delaying tergiversations.
On the whole there is a tendency to arrive at the top of the river bank,
where at low water (winter) a singular spectacle presents itself.
The Han, an opaque, yellow, rapid flood, 200 yards wide, lies from forty
to sixty feet below. Its summer rises have carried away its banks on the
Hankow side, and the dense mass of ill-looking houses which formerly
stood, as is the wont of houses, on the ground, have been undermined,
and are now propped up on what it would be flattery to call piles, for
they are only slender and casual poles lashed together till the
requisite length is gained, some leaning one way, some another, while
the dwellings they upbear owe their continued existence to their
involuntary mutual support, and to the pestilent habit which such
ramshackle buildings have everywhere of hanging together. Thousands of
the poorer class of coolies live in these precarious abodes, which,
however, are less unsavoury than some, for they have fresh air below and
innumerable holes in the floors for the easy disposal of refuse. In the
summer of 1898 a great many of these dwellings were carried away with
much loss of life.
Almost below these, on the mud slope above the river, are hundreds of
mat huts, which have to be removed as the water rises. These are the
miserable, peripatetic kennels of the very lowest dregs of the Chinese
humanity of a large city. It is difficult to say how this large
population lives. Doubtless the “odd jobs” which support it are mostly
connected with junks, for below each house is moored some rotten leaky
thing capable of floating, to which descent is made by iron spikes
driven into the strongest of the piles. Here are the men who on these
“odd jobs” perpetuate lives which are not worth living—the beggars,
blind and seeing, with malformed and loathsome bodies; lepers with
gaping sores and fingers and toes dropping off; the unsightly and
unnatural who rely for their living on revolting the feelings of the
passers-by; suffering women old and friendless, who prefer the free
Bohemianism of beggary to the almshouse or refuge provided by Chinese
charity; and hosts of others, the pariah _débris_ of Hankow. These
wretched beings have one solace in life—the opium pipe—and they starve
themselves to procure it.
Flights of stone stairs, one of them at least of magnificent width and
appearance, always crowded with water carriers splashing the contents of
their pails, with coolies carrying burdens, and with passengers hurrying
to and from the ferries, lead from the bank to the water. Through every
opening in the dilapidations the river traffic is seen.
[Illustration: FEMALE BEGGAR IN MAT HUT.]
At least three miles of junks[20] and other craft lie two, three, and
four deep (to quote Lu Hew again), “like the teeth of a comb,” of all
sizes, colours, and builds, having but two features in common: a
prominent eye on each side of the bows and sterns considerably higher
than the bows. Every maritime province of China is represented on that
crowded waterway. One could never weary of the spectacle. It represents
the extent, the enterprise, the industry, and the conservatism of China,
and with an unrivalled variety and picturesqueness.
No junks interested me more than the great passage and salt boats, from
seventy to one hundred tons burthen, with their lofty, many-windowed
sterns like the galleys of Henry IV., their tall single masts and their
big brown-umber sails of knitted cane or coarse canvas extended by an
arrangement of bamboo, looking heavy enough to capsize a liner, and with
hulls stained and oiled into the similitude of varnished pine, as coming
from that Upper Yangtze for which I was bound. There were huge junks
from the Fukien province, bringing to me recollections of Foochow and
the Min river, piled high with bamboos and poles, and extended to a
preposterous width by masses of the same lashed on both sides, the
buoyancy of the cargo permitting as little as five inches of freeboard,
gaily painted and decorated junks from Canton, with rows of
carefully-tended plants on their high sterns, sombre craft from Tientsin
and the north, junks from the Poyang and Tungting lakes, nondescript
craft from inland streams and canals, alert tenders to the big junks,
lorchas, some of them foreign-owned, doing homage to Chinese nautical
experience by their Chinese rig, rafts, with their inhabitants,
_sampans_ of all sizes, and huge junks heavily laden, crawling slowly
down stream with their great sweeps, and the wild melancholy wail of the
oarsmen—the Argonauts of Swatow or Ningpo.
People who think it witty to ridicule everything Chinese poke fun at
these junks and their “pig-tailed,” long-coated crews, but the handling
of them is masterly; in emergencies there is no confusion, every man
obeys orders, and the ease with which these apparently ungainly craft
tack, with their complicated arrangement of bamboos stiffening their
vast sails, is absolutely beautiful.
The streets of Hankow, like those of most of the large trading cities,
present a perpetual series of dramas. In them hundreds of people eat,
sleep, bargain, gamble, cook, spin, and quarrel, while they are the
sculleries, sinks, and sewers of a not inconsiderable portion of the
population. They are the playgrounds of the children, if that can be
called play which consists merely in rolling and tumbling over each
other after the manner of puppies, the elder among them watching with
greedy eyes the bargains of their seniors, eager cupidity and ofttimes
precocious depravity written on faces which should be young.
[Illustration: A TRAVELLING RESTAURANT.]
Itinerant barbers pursue their essential calling, carrying their
apparatus on their backs, and perambulating the streets with a curious
cry. Their business is an enormous one in China, where hair is regarded
as an enemy to be battled with. Once a week at least, the Chinese,
however poor, must have the front and middle of his head smoothly
shaven, or he looks like a convict, his face, I cannot say his beard,
and his eyebrows, if he has any, trimmed, when he emerges from the
barber’s hands a respectable member of the community. All these
operations are conducted publicly under the eaves and gateways and at
the street corners, with much shampooing, and dexterous manipulation of
oddly shaped razors, which scrape rather than cut, the face of the
client nevertheless wearing a look of serene contentment. The fees of
the barber are an important item in the expenditure of a Chinese coolie.
Many other industries are carried on in the streets, and the Government
is lenient to all encroachments, so long as a mandarin’s chair and
retinue can pass unhindered. Government is represented in this
_congeries_ of cities by _yamens_, with picturesque curved roofs, and
gateways with a certain stateliness, and courtyards usually filled with
petitioners and their agents, prisoners awaiting trial, _yamen_ runners,
who, from three to six hundred or more in number, hang about official
residences; while clerks and writers carrying papers and dressed in
expensive brocaded silks move haughtily among the common herd. The inner
court is concealed by a plastered brick screen, on which is emblazoned
in brilliant colouring a bold representation of the dragon of the Dragon
Empire.
Government in its military aspect is made apparent by a number of
soldiers, usually in picturesque but stagey and unserviceable uniforms,
in which blue and carnation-red predominate, who are encountered in the
streets hanging round opium or tobacco shops, or gambling for _cash_, or
attached slightly to some procession, or lounging at the city gates, or
swaggering at the great entrance to the _yamen_, under the curse of
abounding leisure. Their somewhat mediæval military equipments are
supplemented with additions laughably grotesque, long fans attached to
their girdles, and big paper umbrellas, occasionally gaudily decorated
with mythical monsters, but oftener with proverbs or Confucian maxims.
Hurry, crowds, business, the absence of the feminine element, and noise,
are common to all Chinese cities. Drums and gongs are beaten, cymbals
are clashed, bells ring, muskets are fired, crackers are exploded
everywhere, beggars wail, there are street cries innumerable, the din of
bargaining tongues rises high, and the air is full of the discordant
roar of a multitude.
In the centre of such surroundings, within hearing of the ceaseless din,
and within smelling of the foul and ancient odour which pervades the
city, the colony of English Wesleyan missionaries has placed itself in
close contact with its medical missionary hospitals and dispensaries for
men and women, its home and school for the blind, and its other
missionary agencies, and not far off in a Chinese house, and living and
dressing as a native, was one of the noblest and most sympathetic
missionaries who ever sought the welfare of the Chinese, the Rev. David
Hill, who died of typhus fever shortly after my first visit, genuinely
mourned by those for whom he had sacrificed himself.