SIN-TIEN-TZE TO TZE-TUNG HSIEN.
On this second long journey, involving a distance of three hundred and
thirty miles, I was persuaded into a slightly more luxurious style of
travelling, _i.e._, I took an additional man, well acquainted with the
province and its ways, who went on first, towards evening, cleaned out a
room, and had hot water ready for tea. I got new oiled sheeting and an
apron for the chair, and with some unleavened bread, curry for three
days, a supply of Paoning smoked beef and some chocolate for lunch, I
felt myself in luxury. Yet, with eight men, my expenses were only seven
shillings per day.
At Sin-tien-tze I had to quit my companions, who are as full of
brightness, intelligence, and culture as they are of goodness. Mr.
Williams walked with me through thawing snow the first eight miles to
the great market-place of Shang-wa-li-tze, where, not being market day,
the only living creature was a deformed cat. I had excellent cooking,
and we made long journeys, accomplishing thirty miles on some days. The
snow soon disappeared, and though the roads were slimy, straw shoes,
grippers, and the cold, keen air enabled me to walk a good deal, which
was very pleasant.
At the first midday halt there was considerable confusion, for a young
married woman had committed suicide with opium, and was lying apparently
dead. In great fear of something—I know not what—the villagers appealed
to me for remedies, which I succeeded in forcing down her throat, and
also put plasters of hot vinegar and cayenne pepper behind her ears. I
was proceeding to put them on the soles of her feet, but there were no
soles, only a crumple of deformed toes, a cleft, and a heel. Then I
tried for the calves of the legs, but there were no calves, only a bone,
a few muscles, and a great bag of crinkled skin. I was more fortunate in
finding that she had a back to her neck! I was told that it was a
quarrel with her mother-in-law which had driven her to suicide. I had a
bad quarter of an hour before she became conscious, for, had she died,
the opium would have been acquitted, and the blame would have been laid
on the foreigner. When she came sufficiently to herself to be herself,
she was demented with rage, and tore and scratched everybody near her. I
did not think that her husband was interested in her recovery.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO A MARKET-PLACE.]
An idea, though possibly only a local one, is, that when a person
commits suicide by opium, the spirit is refused entrance at the gate of
Hades, because it has not completed its natural term of life, and it
seeks, by inducing another to do the same, to transfer its crime to that
person.
The relations showed me the courtesy of offering me food, which I
reluctantly ate out of coarse, unglazed basins: a strip or two of fat
pork, some bean curd floating in grey sauce, some black beans, tasting
like rotten cheese, some small onions, pickled dark brown, some rice,
mixed with chopped cabbage, and some chopped capsicum.
I had previously eaten bean curd, and old eggs which are an expensive
delicacy, and formed part of a Chinese dinner given to me at the English
Legation at Seoul. At the next village I saw the process of preparation.
Ducks’ eggs alone are used, and they must be quite fresh. They are
steeped in a solution of lime, with the addition of salt. The lime
penetrates the shell and turns the white into a dark, bottle-green
jelly, while the yolk becomes hard and nearly black. After this the egg
is wrapped up in clay, which is dried by gentle heat. It will then keep
a year or more. Such eggs are very good, indeed they are one of the few
Chinese delicacies which I can eat with equanimity. The variety of food
eaten by all classes in China is amazing. It would require four or five
pages to put down what I have myself seen in the eating-houses and food
shops on this journey.
After leaving Sin-tien-tze, I entered a richer and more prosperous
region, with a very productive soil, much mineral wealth, and important
industries both in towns and villages; and the food shops reflected the
prosperity. There was fresh pork everywhere. Every village seemed to
have killed a pig that morning. In most places bread made of wheaten
flour was to be got in the form of dumplings, leavened, but steamed, not
baked. These make good toast. Bean curd is everywhere also, and is
universally liked. It is pure white, as if made with milk, and resembles
in insipidity unflavoured _blanc mange_, made with Carrageen moss. There
is scarcely a hamlet in which it is not sold. The beans are ground
between two millstones, the upper one having a hole in the centre. Into
this the beans are poured along with water, and the thick white cream
which results from the grinding is caught in a trough below. Plenty of
gypsum and some salt are added, the cream is boiled, the froth is thrown
away, and the residue, after undergoing considerable squeezing in a
cloth, is poured into flat, deep trays to set; when cold it is cut up
into bricks. Every traveller in China, Japan, and Korea makes
acquaintance with this preparation. Beans are enormously used, fresh,
and made into patties, and preserved in equal parts of brine and syrup,
when they taste like hazel nuts.
Patties, or pies, are universal, and the itinerant pieman frequents all
markets and places where men congregate. Vegetable patties of beans,
chopped cucumbers, vegetable eggs, and sweet potato are much liked, and
so are patties of pork, and salt fish, and frog, but the last are
somewhat of a luxury. Then there are cakes of wheaten flour containing
chopped and fried onion, or a spoonful of treacle, and cakes of ground
millet, with sugar-candy or scorched millet on the top, and the same
pieman often sells bags of popcorn, melon seeds, and pieces of
sugarcane.
Water-melon seeds ought rather to be classed with amusements than with
food. As in Persia, they are enormously used; it is difficult to write
consumed. They descend to the poorest class, but chiefly on holidays.
Their use implies leisure and sociability. I never saw a man eating them
alone, except on a journey. They are a national custom. Where our men
would enjoy themselves drinking wine or spirits, the Chinese play with
melon seeds. Eating them seems a masculine amusement, and the higher a
Chinese is in rank the more melon seeds he consumes. One dare not
speculate on what the consumption of the Son of Heaven must be.
Doubtless they serve the useful purpose of helping to supply the system
with fatty matter.
In some parts of SZE CHUAN water-melons appear to be grown entirely for
their seeds. I have seen the cooling, delicious pulp thrown on the road,
while the seeds are carefully preserved, and, as in Tibet the
proprietors of apricot orchards allowed me to eat as many apricots as I
liked, provided that I returned them the stones, so I have been allowed
to eat melons, if I returned the seeds. Huc writes that on the rivers
“huge junks may be seen loaded entirely” with these “deplorable
futilities.” I do not pretend to such a remarkable vision, but at good
inns I have seen parties of six or eight well-dressed merchants, with
carefully-tended, pointed finger-nails an inch long, spending three or
four hours in cracking melon seeds, plate after plate rapidly
disappearing. Piles of shells of melon seeds some inches high often
greeted me in inn rooms. Every wayside restaurant sells them. Groups of
children sit apathetically in village streets eating them. They are
served before, with, and after every meal, with tea and wine, and at all
social gatherings. Men crack and eat them while they are bargaining or
discussing business, or are travelling in sedan chairs. And the
dexterity and rapidity with which they extract the small kernel from the
tough shell is worthy of squirrels and apes. This consumption of melon
seeds is a feature of the whole empire, and I really believe is, as a
pleasure, second only to “foreign smoke.”
Our ideas as to Chinese food are, on the whole, considerably astray. It
is true that the rich spend much in pampering their appetites, that the
foolish extravagance of providing meats, fruits, and vegetables, out of
season at “dinner parties” prevails among them as among us, and that
such delicacies as canine cutlets and hams, cat fricassees, bird’s-nest
soup—a luxury so costly that it makes its appearance on foreign
tables—stewed _holothuria_, and fricassee of snails, worms, or snakes
are to be seen at ceremonious feasts. I have been myself in dog and cat
restaurants in Canton, but they are only frequented by the extravagant.
I think in addition to the enormous variety in Chinese articles of diet,
multiplied a hundredfold by culinary art, the food is wholesome and well
cooked, and that the cooking is cleanly, steaming being a very favourite
method. Cleanly cooking and wholesome and excellent meals are often
produced in dark and unsavoury surroundings, and those foreigners who
travel much in the interior learn to find Chinese food palatable. My
chief objection to it is the amount of vegetable oil used, and the
prevalent flavour of garlic. The bulb well applied is an excellent
condiment, but it is startling to meet with it in unexpected places, and
everywhere.
Rice, wheat, Italian milled and maize are the grains chiefly eaten, but
rice is the staff of life, and is regarded as absolutely indispensable.
But it is not eaten by itself, even by the poorest, but mixed with fried
cabbage, or with such dainty relishes as rotten beans, or putrid
mustard, or soy, or Chili sauce. Among common expressions, to “take a
meal” is “to eat rice,” and the salutation equivalent to “How do you
do?” is literally “Have you eaten rice?”[44]
The Chinese list of culinary vegetables about quadruples ours, and with
the exception of rice they are the great result of garden cultivation
and heavy manuring, some of the root crops receiving individually at
stated intervals a supply of liquid manure. Cucumbers, melons, and
radishes weighing a pound each, are produced in enormous quantities.
More than twenty sorts of peas and beans are cultivated—one monstrous
bean being eaten with its soft squashy pod. Leaves are important
articles of diet, beginning with the opium leaf. There are pig weed
(_Chenopodium_), sow thistle (_Sonchus_), ginger, radishes, mustard,
clover, shepherd’s purse, succory, sweet basil, lettuce, celery,
dandelion, spinach, purslane, artemisia, amaranthus, tacca, and
numberless others which have no English names. In addition to carrots,
turnips, parsnips, Jerusalem artichokes, sweet potatoes, enormously
used, and “Irish potatoes” increasingly grown, they have aquatic edible
roots, among others the big root of the _Nelumbium_, water-caltrops, and
water-chestnuts.
Onions, garlic, leeks, scallions, and chives are consumed both by rich
and poor, and it is seldom possible to be out of their odour. Cabbage,
broccoli, kale, colewort and cress are eaten enormously, both fresh and
preserved, as well as musk and water-melons, pumpkins, squashes, gourds,
tomatoes, and brinjals, besides many eccentric pods, of the names of
which I have not a notion. One of the most delicious of all Chinese
vegetables is the young shoot of the bamboo, which looks like huge
asparagus, and is eaten boiled. The Chinese consume enormous quantities
of pickled cabbage and onions, as well as candied roots and fruits, and
others preserved in syrup. Even the common potato is dignified by this
treatment.
In the absence of butter and oily foods, the use of much oil in cooking
is a physical necessity, but the European palate would require a long
education before it could enjoy the strong flavours of some of the
vegetable oils, such as castor oil, sesamum, and ground nut. Lard and
pork fat are used also.
Very little land in the Yangtze Valley is used for the rearing of
animals for food. Pork is the principal meat used, and I suppose that
every family possesses a pig. Beef is rarely obtainable, except where
there are Mohammedans. I never saw mutton west of Ichang, or, indeed,
sheep till I reached the mountains. Pork, fowls, geese, and ducks really
represent animal food over much of SZE CHUAN. If young cats and dogs are
bred for the table they are fed on rice. Locusts, grasshoppers,
silkworms and grubs are eaten, being fried till they are crisp. In some
cities human milk is sold for the diet of aged persons, great faith
being placed in its nutritive qualities.
Undoubtedly much of the grain, especially millet, which is grown between
Sin-tien-tze and Mien-chuh is used for the distillation of spirits.
There are no vines in SZE CHUAN, so what we call wine is unknown. There
are water-white spirits distilled from both millet and barley, and a
sort of beer like the Japanese _sake_ made from rice, from which spirits
can be distilled. I never saw a drunken man in fifteen months of Chinese
travelling, or heard mirth of which strong drink was the inspiration.
Men take spirits in very small quantities, and almost invariably with
their food. They never drink anything cold, which safeguards them from
the worst results of the abominably contaminated water. They drink plain
hot water, the water in which rice has been boiled, tea, and decoctions
of various leaves.
I have dwelt so long upon food, because for two hours of every day I had
nothing to do but study it and inferior cooking as well, for several
months, and saw infinite varieties of food in the different parts of the
province at different seasons during my long journey. On the whole,
except in times of scarcity, the Chinese is a fairly well-fed person.
The journey of March 23 was along the top of a ridge over rocky ground,
and along limestone terraces incapable of cultivation. There were no
villages, and few houses, but we passed through two market-places of
large size. The country, as seen from the ridge, is all low, undulating
ranges, sprouting up now and then into conical protuberances, till
suddenly, from an altitude of 2300 feet, there is a view of a narrow
valley and an extraordinary bend of the Chia-ling. Then comes an abrupt
and difficult descent of 800 feet, on ledges of rock and steep flights
of broken stairs, and at its foot the small town of Mao-erh-tiao, with a
very fine temple lately restored. Boats of twenty tons, salt laden, were
lying in the clear, blue-green water along the bank. It was a delightful
day’s journey, the sky very blue, the air dry and as keen as a knife,
and I reached a fairly good inn where the curiosity was not
overpowering. The coolies were, if possible, cheerier and better than
those from whom I had reluctantly parted, and as they were not opium
smokers they were able to feed themselves well, and thought nothing of
travelling thirty miles a day at a good pace.
[Illustration: AUTHOR’S ARRIVAL AT A CHINESE INN.]
Other halcyon days followed, of keen air, light without heat, and
country which, if not actually pretty, led one continually to believe
that it was about to become so. The plumed bamboo and orange and
pommeloe groves had vanished, and on the high altitudes which the road
pursues, which are very barren and rocky, there was almost no
cultivation, and on one day’s journey of twenty-three miles we only met
four people, and passed eight houses and a small market-place.
Whenever the elevation was lower, as at times where the road runs along
the edges of limestone cliffs, there are deep valleys well wooded and
cultivated, but the upland soil is very poor and bears scanty crops.
What is called a road is only a narrow footpath, winding along the edges
of wheat fields, through rocky clefts or ferny defiles, so narrow that
the chair continually bumped both sides, or under cedars or other big
trees, over the tops of which trailing red and white roses have grown,
sending down streamers, then in the pink flush of their spring leafage,
over the road. This beautiful climber, which grows with prodigious
rapidity, also flourishes in Korea.
There were pretty little bits, sweet, restful, rural scenes, great
breezy sweeps, and freedom; no calling of “Foreign devil” and “Foreign
dog.” The people were quite disposed to be friendly. On arriving one
afternoon at a specially lofty hamlet, having learnt much caution as to
the use of my camera, I asked if I might “make a picture” of a mill
worked by a blindfolded buffalo-cow, as we had not any such mills in my
country, and they were quite willing, and stopped the cow at the exact
place I indicated. They were friendly enough to take me to another mill,
at which two women grind, turning the upper stone by means of poles
working in holes. The Chinese use a great deal of wheat flour; it can be
purchased at all markets and large villages, and I never used any other.
It is not a good colour, and owing to some defect in the millstones one
is apt to be surprised by grits. After seeing the mills I showed the
people a number of my photographs taken _en route_, to show them that I
was not doing anything evil or hurtful, but they said, though quite
good-naturedly, that it was “foreign magic.”
At the same hamlet I got a room in a new inn which, though on the
road-level on one side, was two storeys above a winding stream and some
undulating agricultural country on the other. On that side it actually
had a window and a view. The boards were new, and though the chinks were
wide and the air which entered was keen, I congratulated myself heartily
on such unusually pleasant surroundings. This was premature. When the
bustle of unpacking was over, noises all too familiar made me look
through the chinks of the floor, and I saw that I was over a pigsty the
size of my room, inhabited by nine large, black sows.
[Illustration: AN OX MILL.]
It was the only night of my journey on which I had no sleep, and my
servant, who had the next room to mine, said that he did not sleep after
eleven, for the groaning, grunting, routing, and quarrelling were
incessant. I had shared a room with pigs twice on the journey, but they
were quiet by comparison. Looking through my floor at daylight, I saw
that eighteen young pigs had been added to the family. This sleepless
night was a bad preparation for an early start, and a long and very cold
day’s journey.
The road leaves Tien-kia-miao, a remarkably clean and attractive
village, by a level bridge on twelve stone piers, and soon rises again
to barren altitudes, looking down on well-cultivated valleys wooded with
cedars. Along every rocky path men were crowding with their wares to a
neighbouring market, bamboo hats and baskets, sugarcane, fowls, and
straw shoes being the principal wares. It was some time since I had seen
any foreign cottons exposed for sale in these markets.
[Illustration: A HAND MILL.]
The soil of the region I had traversed for a fortnight, except in the
basin of Paoning, is poor and unfitted for rice, and the people are
chiefly hardworking peasant farmers and coolies. Without having any
mission from associated or dissociated Chambers of Commerce, my interest
in the subject led me to make continual inquiries into the local trade
and the requirements of the people, and something as to the latter was
to be learned in conversation with the women.
Apart from the general question of weight and make, the general verdict
was that the widths of our cottons are wrong, and that widths above
fifteen inches cut to waste in making Chinese clothing. Another
complaint was that our goods, put up as they are in wrappers intended to
impose on “semi-civilised” people, constantly make a display of colours
which in China are “unlucky.” Another was that the printed cottons,
besides offending in this respect, are coarse in pattern, colouring, and
style, more fitted for outside barbarians than for the refined tastes of
a civilised people! If these, which may appear minor matters, were
attended to, there is probably an opening for both our white and printed
cottons among the _middle and upper classes of Western China_. But I am
not a convert to the roseate views which many people take of the
enormous potentialities for our trade in SZE CHUAN if the means of
communication are improved by steam on the Yangtze and other methods. It
is not that our cottons are too dear, but that the great majority of the
people don’t want them at any price. That is, that the strong, heavy,
native cottons woven by hand, wear four times as long, and even when
they are reduced to rags serve several useful purposes. A coolie will
not buy a material which will only last a year, when, for the same price
or less, he can get one which will last three, or even four years.
[Illustration: THE TA-LU.]
Coolies dispense with all clothing but cotton drawers in summer, and
these must be strong to resist hard wear; and they say that our cottons
are too cold for winter. This is obvious, for a yard of Chinese
home-spun cotton cloth, fifteen inches wide, weighs over twice as much
as a yard of British calico over thirty inches wide, and resists the
wear and tear of hard manual labour and the ofttimes profuse
perspiration of the labourer. More than two millions sterling worth of
raw cotton and Sha-shih heavy home-spun cottons are supposed to be
imported into SZE CHUAN annually, just because the wear requires, and
must continue to require, the heavy make. Later, in Sin-tu Hsien, a
prosperous town of 15,000 inhabitants, twelve miles north of Cheng-tu, I
saw some Japanese cotton goods, fifteen inches wide, made on looms,
which the alert cotton-spinners of Osaka had adapted for the Korean
market, and which were of an equally heavy make with the Sha-shih goods,
and scarcely to be distinguished from home-spun cloth. The shopkeeper
highly approved of these goods, and said that if he could get them there
would be a large demand for them. Possibly British “workhouse sheeting”
of the same width might meet with similar approbation.
At the hamlet of Lu-fang, where I was stopped by an official with a card
from the district mandarin, who kept me waiting an hour while he copied
my passport on a stone and provided fresh runners, the by-road by which
I had journeyed for some days joined the Ta-lu, the great Imperial road
from Pekin to Cheng-tu. I travelled along this westwards to Mien-chow. A
thousand years ago it must have been a noble work. It is nominally
sixteen feet wide, the actual flagged roadway measuring eight feet. The
bridges are built solidly of stone. The ascents and descents are made by
stone stairs. More than a millennium ago an emperor planted cedars at
measured distances on both sides, the beautiful red-stemmed, weeping
cedar of the province. Many of these have attained great size, several
which I measured being from fourteen to sixteen feet in circumference
five feet from the ground, and they actually darken the road.
The first ascent from Lu-fang under this solemn shade is truly grand,
nearly equalling the cryptomeria avenues which lead up to the shrines of
Nik-ko, Japan. Each tree bears the Imperial seal, and the district
magistrates count them annually. Many have fallen, many have hollow
trunks, and there are great breaks without any at all. Still, where they
do exist, the effect is magnificent. This road, like much else in China,
is badly out of repair, many of its great flagstones having disappeared
altogether. There was a great deal of traffic on it, and not a few
saddle horses and mules were tripping easily up and down its stone
staircases. It was quite cheerful to be once more on a travelled highway
abounding in large villages and towns, with good inns and much
prosperity.
These were days of delightful travelling without any drawbacks. The
weather was beautiful, the air sharp, and the people well-behaved. There
was no fatigue or annoyance, the accommodation was fair, and there was
literally nothing to complain of; the travelling was fit for a Sybarite.
The soil is rich, and enormous quantities of opium were grown; indeed,
in some long valleys there was no other crop. Wu-lien, where I slept one
night, is the cleanest and prettiest little Chinese town that I
saw—prettily situated, with a widish main street, good inns, fair shops,
and singular cleanliness, and the people were very mannerly. It has a
level stone bridge, supported on twelve stone piers decorated with
finely-carved dragons’ heads.
On the road from Wu-lien to the large town of Tze-tung Hsien there is
some very pretty country, rich in agricultural wealth, and growing much
opium, which unfortunately in good years pays better than any other
crop, and is easy of transit. Wheat, which was only two or three inches
above the ground on the high ridges, was bursting into ear in the
valleys, and peas and beans were in their fragrant beauty. There was
much pink and white mistiness of peach and plum, and yellow fluffiness
of mimosa, and the people were astir and alert, performing spring
pilgrimages to popular shrines, men and women in separate companies.
There are two very fine and ancient temples of brown cedar to the gods
of Literature and War in a cedar wood on the road, with most picturesque
hilly surroundings, a lovely spot, and the tides of pilgrimage set
strongly towards them. The God of War there as elsewhere is very
attractive to women, as may be seen any day in his great temple in the
native city of Shanghai. Perpetual incense burns on these altars, and
the priests claim the round-numbered antiquity of two thousand years for
the temples.
There were very many companies of from ten to thirty well-dressed women
on the road, some of whom had hobbled on their crippled-looking feet for
fifteen miles, and were going back the same day; and many large bands of
men, each led by a man with a gong, carrying a small table with incense
sticks burning on it, the procession followed by another coolie loaded
with red candles, large and small, with thick paper wicks, incense
sticks, and red perforated paper for the God of War. His temple was
crowded, and dense clouds of incense rolled from the open front into the
atmosphere of heavenly blue. The God of Literature is chiefly worshipped
by the _literati_, and there were only a few sedan chairs with their
occupants and attendants at his splendid shrine.
The Ta-lu failed to keep up its reputation. Its great flags were tilted
up or down, in mud-holes, or had disappeared; its noble avenue was
spasmodic and often non-existent for miles, leading to the prophecy that
it would disappear altogether, as it did. But the vanished grandeur was
made up for by the extraordinary traffic—baggage coolies, chair-bearers,
sedan chairs, passengers on foot and on horseback, varied at times by
marriage and funeral processions, or batches of criminals tied together
by their queues, being led to justice. Of the numbers of weight-carrying
coolies, divested of the upper garment, on the road, there were very few
free from hard tumours or callosities on both shoulders, and many of
them have deep, cracked wounds in their heels. A man carries a load five
miles before he earns a bowl of rice.
At intervals there were small huts, each sporting a military flag, and
with halberds or lances with silk pennons leaning up against them.
Sometimes these were in a village, but occasionally the flag, which is
very showy, having a pennon end, and seen afar off, was only supported
by a heap of stones on the roadside. There were no soldiers in uniform,
but possibly the two or three peasants lying by every flag were men in
mufti. Sometimes boys were carrying firearms of an ancient type, bows
and arrows, or heavy swords. The people said that the flags were to
frighten the rebels, and that the men were watching for them, but the
region seemed in a state of profound peace.
The peasants’ coffins on the road were those of the poorest class, and
were carried at a run, merely wrapped up in blue cotton. A mandarin’s
coffin on its way to Mien-chow was draped with blue kilted silk,
tasselled at the four corners, and was carried by twenty men in
red-tasselled hats, slung on a heavy beam, with a boldly carved dragon,
an emblem of official position, at both ends. The coffin was surmounted
(as were those of the peasants) by a tethered live cock. A cheap coffin
costs from five to ten dollars, and from that up to two thousand. There
is much trade done on the Chia-ling in coffin wood and coffins. I saw
many junks loaded with both.
At one place in China, where there was no inn, I slept in a room with a
coffin which had been unburied for five years, because the geomancers
had not decided on a lucky site or date for the interment, and for the
whole time incense had been burned before it morning and evening. Of
course if there is a family burial-place the services of the geomancer
are seldom required except for the date of burial.
The coffin of the mandarin on the Ta-lu was not on its way to interment,
therefore the usual procession was dispensed with, but nearer Tze-tung
Hsien we met a large funeral for which we had to leave the road.[45] On
this occasion the corpse of a well-to-do merchant, unburied for a year,
was being borne to the grave.
In order to prevent any disagreeable consequences from interment being
delayed for months or years, the coffin-boards are three or four inches
thick, the body is covered with quicklime or is laid on a bed of lime or
cotton, and afterwards the edges of the lid are closed with cement, and
if the body is to remain in a dwelling-house, the whole is made
air-tight by being covered with Ning-po varnish. A coffin is sometimes
retained in a house by a defaulting tenant to prevent an ejectment for
rent, and it is occasionally attached by creditors, in order to compel
the relations to raise money to release it. So strong is the feeling in
China regarding suitable burial, that a son if he has no other means
will sell himself into slavery to provide the expenses, and burial clubs
and charitable societies for providing the destitute with seemly
funerals are numerous.
On this occasion a band of music came first, then the monstrous coffin
on a bier carried by at least forty men in red coats and scarves,
covered by a canopy embroidered in gold thread, on which was tethered a
living fowl. Behind came the ancestral tablet in a sedan chair, the
sacrifice, and some red tablets, on which were inscribed in gold the
offices held by the deceased, followed by the male mourners dressed in
white. The eldest son, apparently sinking with grief, though it was a
year old, was supported by two men. Women and children followed, wailing
at intervals. A man preceded the whole, strewing paper money on the
ground to buy the goodwill of such malignant or predatory spirits as
might be loafing around.
One man was loaded with crackers, another carried the libations which
were to be poured out, and the rear of the procession, which was ten
minutes in passing, was brought up by a great concourse of friends and
neighbours, and a great number of bamboo and paper models, admirably
executed, and many of them life-size, of horses with handsome saddles
and trappings, mules carrying burdens, sedan chairs, houses, rich
clothing, beds, tables, chairs, and all that the spirit can be supposed
to want in the shadowy world to which it has gone. These, with a
quantity of tinsel money, are burned at the grave, the tablet and
sacrifice are carried back, the former to be placed in the ancestral
hall, the latter to be feasted on or given to the poor. The ceremonies
of the interment, as my readers are aware, only initiate the long years
of ceremonial with which the dead are honoured in China.