HOW THE CHINESE, THE JAPANESE, AND THE KOREANS AMUSE THEMSELVES.
There is nothing else, I think, that so positively proves the intimate
relationship of China, Japan, and Korea, as does the great similarity
between their games and their amusements—a similarity which almost
amounts to identicalness. If it is true that “_in vino veritas_,” it
must be equally true that men are most natural when they are happiest,
freest from care, and have neither business nor duties beyond recreating
themselves. So when we study the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Koreans
at play, and find that they all play very much alike, appreciate the
same or kindred amusements, have the same methods of feasting, of
resting, and of enjoyment, we are justified in concluding that these
three peoples are very near of kin. But if they be children of the same
parents, they are not the children of one birth, and this to me, at
least, is proved by the few but sharp differences between each of their
three ways of amusing themselves.
China, Korea, and Japan! And the greatest of these is China. Let us
watch them, beginning with China, at their recreations, and then let us
note how in those recreations they differ.
Feasts naturally form an important part of the happiness of a people,
the majority of whom commonly go hungry. A Chinese dinner is in more
than one way startling—to the average European mind. But it is a very
good dinner for all that.
I have been at many a Chinese dinner. Sometimes I have sat with the
quaint Chinese women, behind the shelter of the lattice. Sometimes I
have feasted brazenly with the men; and more than once the women of a
Chinese household have, out of courtesy to me, come forth from the
prized seclusion of their lattice-screened coign of vantage, and joined
me in eating with the commoner faction of the family herd; in breaking
bread with men.
Chinese festivals! The subject is so intricate and so interesting that I
have not the impertinence to dismiss it in a sentence. But, in passing,
I may say that no people enjoy festivals more, no people indulge in them
more discreetly, less frequently than do the Chinese.
Chinese ceremonials! Funerals, weddings, and a hundred others! I know,
in all the East, nothing more incomprehensible to the average, well
educated European mind; nothing more philosophically pregnant to minds
that are exceptionally industrious and exceptionally open.
Chinese recreations are almost myriad. They fly kites; they let go
perfumed, brightly-lit balloons of silk and of silk-like paper; they
light their fire-fly-lit land with a hundred thousand lanterns, and in
honour of those lanterns, in indulgence of themselves, they hold a
feast.
The dramatic is the chief of all arts. In China dramatic performances
take the precedence of all entertainments. A Chinese theatre, at the
best, is a barn-like place. It is devoid of scenery. Only men take part
in Chinese theatrical performances.
In China, actors are looked down upon as social pariahs, and their sons
may not enter for the competitive examinations which are the birthright
of almost every Chinaman.
But nevertheless the Chinese have a god of play-acting, and they pay him
no small homage. Indeed, all the Chinese deities are supposed to be
great theatre-goers; and for their benefit theatrical performances are
frequently held in the courtyards of the temples. The people (who have a
free _entrée_) flock to these performances and enjoy them as much or
even more than the gods are supposed to do.
To almost no Chinese dramatic performance is admission charged. A number
of people club together, hire the actors, engage the musicians, put up a
shed—on the street, in a field, anywhere, anyhow—invite the entire
community—which needs no urging—and the performance begins. Or a rich
man is the momentary impresario. But even then the people expect to be
admitted, and usually are.
The Emperor of China is a great devotee of the drama. He often commands
a play at eight in the morning. Indeed, the day is the more usual hour
for all theatrical performances in China.
But the most well worth seeing of Chinese Thespian entertainments are
those that take place in the temple courtyards. No need of scenery
there! Behind the bamboo stage rise the not unimpressive walls of the
queerly-architectured Chinese temple. Where we are wont to have glaring
footlights there is a soft, rosy glow, for there great rhododendrons
lift their proud and heavy heads. The courtyard is partly surrounded by
a wall so old and broken that it might be the veritable old wall of
China. From its sides lean double-flowering apricots and the sweet
yu-lan, with its thousand blooms of pale peach colour. From the wall’s
top strange Chinese grasses nod and flower-heavy vines hang. Among the
vines and grasses primroses nestle cosily. Beside the wall tulips
flaunt, and great clumps of mignonette grow among the hibiscus flowers.
The actors are very fine with their crowns of tinsel and their robes of
silk. The audience, too, is well worth watching, with their intelligent
yellow faces, and their glittering black eyes. They are tense with
interest, those Mongolian play-goers. And the Chinese orchestra! Ah!
that is droll indeed.
We are apt to think of Chinese music as being noise pure and simple.
Certainly very much Chinese music is superlatively noisy. But even
Chinese music has its softer side, its refined moments. I remember a
little band in Canton that used to make very pleasant lullaby music, and
to handle their odd instruments with most considerable taste.
When Noah was learning something of boat-building, the Chinese were, in
their Chinese way, expert musicians. Their principal instrument was made
of twelve tubes of bamboo. Six tubes were for the sharps, and six for
the flats.
To-day the Chinese have over fifty musical instruments—instruments made
of stone, of metal, and of wood.
Chinese dramatic literature is unusually interesting. To study it is no
mean mental tonic, and it is, I believe, the best way to study the
Chinese people, unless one can live among them with some little
intimacy.
But I must not linger too long by the wayside of my pleasant subject.
Yet I must touch—if only with a sentence—upon four or five of the many
other ways in which the Chinese recuperate their overburdened bodies and
their jaded minds.
They take great joy in Nature. Picnics are a most Chinese institution.
They are invariably planned to be at some spot where there is an
exceptional view. And the picnic party will sit for hours, and watch the
hills, or masses of fruit trees in bloom, or the sunset—sit silently
too; for the Chinese, though the noisiest nation on earth, are apt to be
hushed in the presence of nature, however much they chatter in the
presence of their gods.
The Chinese are intensely fond of gardening. Every Chinaman that can
afford it has a flower garden, and in nothing, save the graves of his
ancestors, does he take more pride. In the garden’s centre there will be
a lake—a very round, funny lake—and on its rippleless bosom great
drowsy lien-hoas will sleep away their perfumed lives.
The lien-hoa is the Chinese water-lily. There are many varieties. They
are single and double. They are red, they are rose, they are white. And
some are of an indescribably lovely pale red, delicately streaked with
white.
In almost every Chinese garden you will find a summer-house, its roof
heavy with festoons of the wisteria. And there will be a pansy bed, a
bosque of bamboo, a grove of camellias, a field of chrysanthemums, a
world of peonies, trees of peaches, of plums, and of apricots,
parallelograms planted with hydrangeas, and clumps of azaleas.
There are two other Chinese pleasures that I must at least
mention—opium-smoking and gambling. Both are ineradicable
characteristics of the Chinese.
The poppy gives the Chinese masses inestimable alleviation, and does
them, I believe, the veriest minimum of harm.
Gambling, I fear, has a more baneful effect upon them. But it is their
most positive and commonest diversion, and it will, I fancy, always be
their national habit.
I have spoken of Chinese amusements, and now my trouble begins. I am at
an entire loss to know how to speak of Korean amusements without
repeating myself almost word for word. I can think of but two Chinese
amusements which are not as general in Chosön as in Cathay—card-playing
and theatre-going. In Korea it is not good form to play cards, and they
are not played openly, except by the soldiers, and the lowest grades of
society. Soldiers are allowed to play cards as much as they like, and
for a very quaint reason. A soldier is often called upon for night duty.
Now after eating, the thing dearest to the average Korean is sleeping,
and the Korean government, which is not, from the Far Asiatic point of
view, so merciless after all, has decreed that, as the playing of games
of chance is more likely than any other thing to keep a man from being
sleepy, the Korean soldiers may indulge in any and every game of chance,
including those that are played with cards.
Korea is not without theatrical performances, no Eastern land is; but
the theatrical performances of Korea are very different from the
theatrical performances of China and of Japan. Indeed, in no branch of
amusements do the three countries so differ as they do in the branch
dramatic. With the possible exception of the Hindoo and the Mohammedan,
the Japanese dramatic school approaches our own more than that of any
other Oriental country. I have seen performances in Yeddo that seemed to
me to quite merit classification with London productions at the Lyceum,
and at the Savoy. Chinese dramatic art is a thing apart, and a law unto
itself. It makes little or no appeal to European intelligence, or to
European imagination. It is for the Chinese, and takes as little concern
as the Chinese themselves voluntarily do of other peoples.
Korean dramatic art, if it is at all akin with the dramatic art of
Europe, approaches most nearly the art methods of the high-class music
halls, and the best French variety theatres. Every Korean actor is a
star, superior to, indifferent to, and independent of scenery.
More often than not, the Korean actor is not only the star, but the
entire company. He plays everything—old men, juveniles, low comedians
and high tragedians, leading ladies, _ingénueux_, and rough
soubrettes—plays them with little or no change of costume, plays them
in quick succession, and wholly without aid of scenery. And very clever,
indeed, he is to do it. Closely allied as all the three great peoples of
the far Orient are in their amusements, the amusements of the Koreans
resemble the amusements of China very much more than they do the
amusements of Japan; and yet Korean acting is very much more like
Japanese than like Chinese acting. This is especially worthy of note, I
think, because in every nation in the world, the theatrical is the
highest form of amusement.
Korean acting would come, perhaps, more properly under the heading of
Korean art than under the head of Korean amusements, or quite as
appropriately, perhaps, under the head of Korean religion. For in Korea,
as in every other country, acting is not only an exquisite, and one of
the highest expressions of a nation’s intellectuality, but is the child,
almost the first-born child, of that country’s religion. It is, perhaps,
because Korea has ceased to have a religion that Korea has no theatre,
at least, no permanent theatre. The Korean actor gives his performance
on the bare paper floor of some rich man’s banqueting hall, or at the
street corner. The actors of Japan are surrounded with every possible
accessory, and with the perfection of accessories. The most faultless
stage setting I ever saw, the utmost nicety of properties that I ever
saw, and the best trained supers I ever saw, I saw on the stage of a
Tokio theatre. The Korean actor has no stage setting, he has no
properties, and he never heard of supernumeraries. His theatre—for,
after all, I am inclined to withdraw what I said, and to maintain that
wherever an artist acts there is a theatre—his theatre consists of a
mat beneath his feet, and a mat over his head, and four perpendicular
poles separating the two mats. And yet the Korean actor shares very
largely the polish, the definiteness of method, and the convincing
artisticness of the Japanese actor. If religion had flourished in Korea
as it has flourished in Japan, it is probable that, under the sheltering
patronage of religion, Korean acting would now equal, if not excel, the
best acting of Japan. As it is, the Korean actor is remarkable for his
versatility, for his mastery of his own voice, his mastery of facial
expression, and his comprehension of, and his reproducing of, every
human emotion. A Korean actor will often give an uninterrupted
performance of some hours length. He will recite page after page of
vivid Korean history; he will chant folk-songs; he will repeat old
legends and romances, and he will give Punch and Judy-like exhibitions
of connubial infelicity and of all the other ills that Korean flesh is
heir to. And he will intersperse this dramatic kaleidoscope with
orchestral music of his own producing. Perhaps he has pitched his
theatre of mats in the full heat of the noon-day sun, but even so, he
only pauses to take big, quick drinks of peppery water, or of a very
light, rice wine, in which good-sized lumps of hot ginger float. If the
actor is performing at a feast of some mandarin or other wealthy Korean,
he is, of course, paid by an individual employer; and the audience which
has, in all probability, been amply dined and amply wined, sit near him,
sit at their ease, and in an irregular semicircle. If the performance is
given in the street, it is purely a speculation on the part of the
actor. The audience sit about on queer little wooden benches, or squat
on mats, or stand. And when the actor knows (and this is something which
an actor always does know, the acting-world over) that he has struck the
high-water mark of his momentary possible histrionic ability, he pauses
abruptly and collects such cash as his audience can or will spare. The
result is usually very gratifying to the actor. The audience want to see
the play out, and the player won’t play on until he is paid. A street
audience appreciates the play highly, appreciates it none the less,
perhaps, because it—the audience—eats and drinks from the first scene
until the last. It is an interesting sight to see in front of the
temporary temple of a Korean actor a concourse of men with eyes a-stark
with pleasure, and faces a-bulge with refreshment, but it is a sight
which is not too open to the criticism of the people in whose own
theatres ices and coffees and sweetmeats are hawked about between the
acts. It always seems to me that we insult art grossly when we tacitly
admit that we cannot sit through a fine dramatic performance without the
stimulant of meat or of drink. The Japanese also eat between the acts,
but then they have the excuse of sitting through performances that are
sometimes twelve hours long. We lack that excuse in Europe. And though
the Koreans munch and sip through the intensest moments of a Korean
theatrical exhibition, no dramatic performance in Korea lasts, unless I
mistake, for more than three, or at the utmost, four hours. A Korean
actor, to attain to any eminence in his profession, must be able to
improvise, and probably in no Eastern country, certainly in no Western
country, is the art of improvising carried to so high a degree of
perfection as it is in Korea. The Korean actor also approaches somewhat
to the Anglo-Saxon clown. He must be quick with cheap witticisms, glib
jests, and jokes that would be coarse if they were not above all stupid.
He must be ready with topical quips, for the Korean crowd will have its
laugh, or it won’t pay. This branch of his trade he is seldom called
upon to ply when he performs at private entertainments.
The Chinese, the Japanese, and the Koreans are all inveterate
picnickers. They are all intensely fond of Nature, and of feasting out
of doors. All three of these peoples take the greatest delight in
tobacco. Opium is smoked in Korea more than in Japan, but far less than
in China. But all the Koreans, whatever their age, whatever their
station, whatever their sex, smoke tobacco almost as perpetually as do
the Burmese. The Koreans use a pipe, of which the bowl is so small that
it only holds a pinch or two of tobacco, and the stem of which is so
long that it is almost impossible to light one’s own pipe. When not in
use, a gentleman’s pipe is carried in his sleeve, or tucked into his
girdle. The labouring man or the coolie usually thrusts his down his
neck between his coat and his back. All three of these peoples are great
patrons of professional story-tellers, and of magicians. The Japanese
excel the others in magic, and the Koreans excel in story-telling.
It is a favourite pastime both in Japan and Korea to watch trained
dancers. There is no dancing in China.
In Korea fights are the occasions of great national joy. In Japan
skilful wrestlers and fencers give really artistic exhibitions, but
never carry them to the point of brutality. But in Korea a fight is a
real fight. Blow follows blow; limbs are bruised, dislocated, and
broken. During the first month of the year it is legal, and is the
height of Korean good form, to indulge in as many fights as possible.
Antagonistic guilds, numbering hundreds of men, face each other at some
convenient and appointed spot, and in the sight of thousands of
enthusiastic spectators, fight out an entire year’s debt of envy and
hatred. Men engage in the roughest of personal combat; men who during
the other eleven months of the year scarcely fight upon the gravest
provocation. A considerable fight between two Korean women of the
poorest class is not unknown, and some of them fight extremely well.
Mothers often devote considerable time training their small sons in the
art of defence, and of fisty attack. Every Korean town, almost every
Korean village, has a champion fighter. Prize-fights are to Korea what
the race-course is to Europe and to Anglo-Asia. The spectators bet until
they have nothing left to bet with, and then very often start an amateur
fight of their own. Korean gentlemen do not as a rule fight, nor are
they apt to attend a public fight. They often, however, go to very great
expense in engaging professionals to give private exhibitions of their
prowess. There is one rather comical side to a Korean fight. Every
Korean wears an abundance of big clothing, and the antagonists never
dream of disrobing in the least. And so two fighting Koreans, from a
little distance, look as much like two fighting feather beds as anything
else. Debt is said to be the cause of nine out of ten of the fights that
are not exhibitions of skill. In Korea, as in China, it is a great
disgrace not to pay all your debts on, or before the New Year; and any
Korean who fails to do so is very apt to find himself involved in a
pugilistic reckoning. Club fights and stone fights are very common. When
a stone fight is proposed the friends or admirers of the combatants
spend some hours in collecting two mounds of small rough stones. Then
the battle begins, and it is a battle. Sometimes it is a duel, and
sometimes fifty or even a hundred take an active part in it, pelting
each other as rapidly and as roughly as possible.
But the most important, and the most popular of all amusements in Korea
is that of eating and drinking. Intemperance, I fear, is very common,
and is so little condemned by public opinion that it is quite as much a
national recreation as a national vice, but it is seldom or never
indulged in by women, and even the geisha girls are sobriety itself. The
Koreans drink everything and anything of an intoxicating kind that they
can get. They are improving, however, in this respect, of late years.
Japanese beer is somewhat displacing the heavier rice liquors, and among
the very wealthiest people both claret and champagne are popular. But
the Koreans eat as much as ever they did, and no other people extract so
much genuine enjoyment from eating. The Koreans season their food more
highly, and use more chillies, more mustard than any other people in
Asia. They are very fond of the taro, a smooth, small, sweet potato.
They devour sea-weed by the pound, and eat lily-bulbs by the bushel.
Here is the _mênu_ of a very elegant Korean dinner:—
Boiled pork with rice wine.
Macaroni soup.
Chicken with millet wine.
Boiled eggs.
Pastry.
Flour.
Sesame and honey pudding.
Dried persimmons and roasted rice with honey.
Both the Koreans and the Chinese, at least those who can afford it, use
very much more meat than do the Japanese.
Sleeping is another great national amusement in Korea. I know no other
people that seem to take so much positive enjoyment in sleep, and who go
at it so deliberately and systematically. They positively regard it as a
pastime.
The Koreans are fond of music, and have many concerts, but then so, too,
do the Japanese and the Chinese. Fishing is a popular sport in all three
countries.
The Koreans have many festivals, at which they indulge themselves in as
much pleasure as possible. As in China, New Year’s day is perhaps the
most important, and certainly the most generally observed of the
festivals. The Korean New Year customs and the Chinese New Year customs
are almost identical. I won’t describe the New Year customs of Korea,
because to do so, I should have to say almost word for word what I
recently wrote about the Chinese New Year. Kite-flying and top-spinning
occupy a good deal of the time of old and young in China, in Korea, and
in Japan. Kite fights and top battles are of very frequent occurrence,
and are really very pretty to watch.
The Koreans are very fond of visiting, and of being visited, but in this
again, they in no way differ from the other peoples of the further
Orient.
Besides fishing, there are three manly sports in vogue in Korea, and I
believe, three only; all others being considered undignified and
ungentlemanly. The three are archery, falconry, and hunting. Indeed, I
scarcely know if I am right in including hunting in the list. It is so
very generally pursued as a business, and not as a pleasure. I believe
that a few Koreans do sometimes hunt for sport, and very good sport they
usually get. Deer, tigers, leopards, badgers, bears, martens, otters,
sables, wolves, and foxes are abundant, and the peninsula is full of
feathered life. Pheasants are as plentiful, as beautiful, and as
toothsome in Korea as they are in China. And they have wild geese,
plover, snipe, varieties of ducks, teal, water hens, turkeys and
turkey-bustards, herons, eagles, and cranes; and the woods are full of
hares and of foxes.
Archery is considered in Korea the most distinguished of recreations.
Every Korean gentleman, from the king down, is, or tries very hard to
be, expert at archery. They use a tight, short bow, never over three
feet long, and arrows of bamboo. The Koreans are wonderful marksmen, and
professional archers are among the most popular of public entertainers.
Falconry is almost as popular as archery, and every nobleman has at
least one falcon. The falcon is invariably extensively and gaudily
wardrobed, and has usually a personal attendant. Falcon competitions,
both public and private, are frequent, and among the nobility are often
made the occasion of elaborate entertainments.
The Koreans have a quaint little festival, called “Crossing the
Bridges.” Söul abounds in queer little stone bridges. A moonlight night
is chosen for the festival. Usually a man and a woman walk to the centre
of the bridge, and make a wish for the ensuing year, or pray for
good-luck, and search the stars for some augury of prosperity. They have
a number of peculiar, picturesque customs in connection with “Crossing
the Bridges,” but I fancy that with both men and women it is more an
excuse for a night out than anything else.
The Koreans are even more impersonal than the Chinese. The Japanese are
intensely personal. The Korean is impersonal in business, and impersonal
in pleasure. He feasts with other men, and mingles with other men in all
his amusements, but his interest is absorbed by his surroundings, and
not by his companions. Introspection, and the study of other men, are
seldom or never methods of Korean self-entertainment. Nature is after
all the greatest entertainer of the Koreans; and to study Nature, to
watch her, and to fall more and more deeply in love with her, is a
Korean’s greatest amusement.