CHANG WANG was a Chinaman, and was reputed to be one of the shrewdest
dealers in the Flowery Land. If making money fast be the test of
cleverness, there was not a merchant in the province of Kwang Tung who
had earned a better right to be called clever. Who owned so many fields
of the tea-plant, who shipped so many bales of its leaves to the little
island in the west, as did Chang Wang? It was whispered, indeed, that
many of the bales contained green tea made by chopping up spoilt black
tea-leaves, and coloring them with copper—a process likely to turn
them into a mild kind of poison; but if the unwholesome trash found
purchasers, Chang Wang never troubled himself with the thought whether
any one might suffer in health from drinking his tea. So long as the
dealer made money, he was content; and plenty of money he made.
But knowing how to make money is quite a different thing from knowing
how to enjoy it. With all his ill-gotten gains, Chang Wang was a
miserable man, for he had no heart to spend his silver pieces, even
on his own comfort. The rich dealer lived in a hut which one of his
own laborers might have despised; he dressed as a poor Tartar shepherd
might have dressed when driving his flock. Chang Wang grudged himself
even a hat to keep off the rays of the sun. Men laughed, and said that
he would have cut off his own pigtail of plaited hair, if he could have
sold it for the price of a dinner! Chang Wang was, in fact, a miser,
and was rather proud than ashamed of the hateful vice of avarice.
Chang Wang had to make a journey to Macao, down the great river
Yang-se-kiang, for purposes of trade. The question with the Chinaman
now was in what way he should travel.
“Shall I hire a palanquin?” thought Chang Wang, stroking his thin
moustaches; “no, a palanquin would cost too much money. Shall I take my
passage in a trading vessel?” The rich trader shook his head, and the
pigtail behind it,—such a passage would have to be paid for.
“I know what I’ll do,” said the miser to himself; “I’ll ask my uncle
Fing Fang to take me in his fishing-boat down the great river. It is
true that it will make my journey a long one, but then I shall make it
for nothing. I’ll go to the fisherman Fing Fang, and settle the matter
at once.”
The business was soon arranged, for Fing Fang would not refuse his rich
nephew a seat in his boat. But he, like every one else, was disgusted
at Chang Wang’s meanness; and as soon as the dealer had left his hovel,
thus spoke Fing Fang to his sons, Ko and Jung:
“Here’s a fellow who has scraped up money enough to build a second
porcelain tower, and he comes here to beg a free passage in a
fishing-boat from an uncle whom he has never so much as asked to share
a dish of his birds’-nests soup.”[E]
“Birds’-nests soup, indeed!” exclaimed Ko; “why, Chang Wang never
indulges in luxuries such as that. If dogs’ flesh[E] were not so cheap,
he’d grudge himself the paw of a roasted puppy.”
“And what will Chang Wang make of all his money at last?” said Fing
Fang more gravely; “he cannot carry it away with him when he dies.”
“Oh, he’s gathering it up for some one who will know how to spend
it,” laughed Jung. “Chang Wang is merely fishing for others; what he
gathers, they will enjoy.”
It was a bright, pleasant day when Chang Wang stepped into the boat of
his uncle, to drop slowly down the great Yang-se-kiang. Many a civil
word he said to Fing Fang and his sons, for civil words cost nothing.
Chang Wang sat in the boat twisting the ends of his long moustaches,
and thinking how much money each row of plants in his tea-fields
might bring him. Presently, having finished his calculations, the
miser turned to watch his relations, who were pursuing their fishing
occupation in the way peculiar to China. Instead of rods, lines, or
nets, the Fing Fang family was provided with trained cormorants, which
are a kind of bird with a long neck, large appetite, and a particular
fancy for fish.
It was curious to watch a bird diving down in the sunny water, and
then suddenly come up again with a struggling fish in his bill. The
fish was, however, always taken away from the cormorant, and thrown by
one of the Fing Fangs into a well at the bottom of the boat.
“Cousin Ko,” said the miser, leaning forward to speak, “how is it that
your clever cormorants never devour the fish they catch?”
“Cousin Chang Wang,” replied the young man, “dost thou not see that
each bird has an iron ring round his neck, so that he cannot swallow?
He only fishes for others.”
“Methinks the cormorant has a hard life of it,” observed the miser,
smiling.
“He must wish his iron ring at the bottom of the Yang-se-kiang.”
Fing Fang, who had just let loose two young cormorants from the boat,
turned round, and from his narrow slits of Chinese eyes looked keenly
upon his nephew.
“Didst thou ever hear of a creature,” said he, “that puts an iron ring
around his own neck?”
“There is no such creature in all the land that the Great Wall
borders,” replied Chang Wang.
Fing Fang solemnly shook the pigtail which hung down his back. Like
many of the Chinese, he had read a great deal, and was a kind of
philosopher in his way.
“Nephew Chang Wang,” he observed, “_I_ know of a creature (and he is
not far off at this moment) who is always fishing for gain—constantly
catching, but never enjoying. Avarice—the love of hoarding—is the iron
ring round his neck; and so long as it stays there he is much like one
of our trained cormorants—he may be clever, active, successful, but he
is only fishing for others.”
I leave my readers to guess whether the sharp dealer understood his
uncle’s meaning, or whether Chang Wang resolved in future not only
to catch, but to enjoy. Fing Fang’s moral might be good enough for a
Chinese heathen, but it does not go nearly far enough for an English
Christian. If a miser is like a cormorant with an iron ring round
his neck, the man or the child who lives for his own pleasure only,
what is he but a greedy cormorant without the iron ring? Who would
wish to resemble a cormorant at all? The bird knows the enjoyment
of _getting_; let us prize the richer enjoyment of _giving_. Let
me close with an English proverb, which I prefer to the Chinaman’s
parable,—“Charity is the truest epicure; for she eats with many mouths.”