The Project Gutenberg EBook of Chinese Sketches, by Herbert A. Giles
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Title: Chinese Sketches
Author: Herbert A. Giles
Release Date: March 28, 2006 [EBook #2133]
Last Updated: December 10, 2012
Language: English
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*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHINESE SKETCHES ***
Produced by John Bickers; Dagny and David Widger
CHINESE SKETCHES
by Herbert A. Giles
CONTENTS
PREFACE
CHINESE SKETCHES
THE DEATH OF AN EMPEROR
THE POSITION OF WOMEN
ETIQUETTE
ETIQUETTE, NO. II
LITERATURE
EDUCATIONAL LITERATURE
DENTISTRY
MEDICAL SCIENCE
MEDICAL SCIENCE, NO. II
LOAN SOCIETIES
GUILDS
PAWNBROKERS
POSTAL SERVICE
SLANG
FORTUNE-TELLING
GAMES AND GAMBLING
JURISPRUDENCE
JURISPRUDENCE, NO. II
BUDDHIST PRIESTS
RESPECT FOR THE WRITTEN CHARACTER
SUPERSTITION
NATURAL PHENOMENA
CELEBRATION OF THE NEW YEAR
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS
OPIUM SMOKING
THIEVING
LYING
SUICIDE
TORTURE
FENG-SHUI
MONEY
A DINNER-PARTY
FEMALE CHILDREN
TRAVEL
PREDESTINATION
JOURNALISM
FUNERALS
INQUESTS
INQUESTS, NO. II
CHRISTIANITY
ANTI-CHRISTIAN LYRICS
CONCLUSION
"The institutions of a despised people cannot be judged with fairness."
Spencer's Sociology: The Bias of Patriotism.
DEDICATION
To Warren William de la Rue,
"As a mark of friendship."
PREFACE
The following Sketches owe their existence chiefly to frequent
peregrinations in Chinese cities, with pencil and note-book in hand. Some
of them were written for my friend Mr. F. H. Balfour of Shanghai, and by
him published in the columns of the Celestial Empire. These have
been revised and partly re-written; others appear now for the first time.
It seems to be generally believed that the Chinese, as a nation, are an
immoral, degraded race; that they are utterly dishonest, cruel, and in
every way depraved; that opium, a more terrible scourge than gin, is now
working frightful ravages in their midst; and that only the forcible
diffusion of Christianity can save the Empire from speedy and overwhelming
ruin. An experience of eight years has taught me that, with all their
faults, the Chinese are a hardworking, sober, and happy people, occupying
an intermediate place between the wealth and culture, the vice and misery
of the West.
H. A. G.
Sutton, Surrey, 1st November 1875.
CHINESE SKETCHES
THE DEATH OF AN EMPEROR
His Imperial Majesty, Tsai-Shun, deputed by Heaven to reign over all
within the four seas, expired on the evening of Tuesday the 13th January
1875, aged eighteen years and nine months. He was erroneously known to
foreigners as the Emperor T'ung Chih; but T'ung Chih was merely the style
of his reign, adopted in order that the people should not profane by
vulgar utterance a name they are not even permitted to write.[*] Until the
new monarch, the late Emperor's cousin, had been duly installed, no word
of what had taken place was breathed beyond the walls of the palace; for
dangerous thoughts might have arisen had it been known that the State was
drifting rudderless, a prey to the wild waves of sedition and lawless
outbreak. The accession of a child to reign under the style of Kuang Hsu
was proclaimed before it was publicly made known that his predecessor had
passed away.
[*] Either one or all of the characters composing an emperor's name
are altered by the addition or omission of certain component
parts; as if, for instance, we were to write an Albart chain
merely because Albert is the name of the heir-apparent.
Similarly, a child will never utter or write its father's name;
and the names of Confucius and Mencius are forbidden to all alike.
Of the personal history of the ill-fated boy who has thus been prematurely
cut off just as he was entering upon manhood and the actual government of
four hundred million souls, we know next to nothing. His accession as an
infant to the dignities of a sensual, dissipated father, attracted but
little attention either in China or elsewhere; and from that date up to
the year 1872, all we heard about His Majesty was, that he was making good
progress in Manchu, or had hit the target three times out of ten shots at
a distance of about twenty-five yards. He was taught to ride on horseback,
though up to the day of his death he never took part in any great hunting
expeditions, such as were frequently indulged in by earlier emperors of
the present dynasty. He learnt to read and write Chinese, though what
progress he had made in the study of the Classics was of course only known
to his teachers. Painting may or may not have been an Imperial hobby; but
it is quite certain that the drama received more perhaps than its full
share of patronage. The ladies and eunuchs of the palace are notoriously
fond of whiling away much of their monotonous existence in watching the
grave antics of professional tragedians and laughing at the broad jokes of
the low-comedy man, with his comic voice and funnily-painted face.
Listening to the tunes prescribed by the Book of Ceremonies, and dining in
solemn solitary grandeur off the eight[*] precious kinds of food set apart
for the sovereign, his late Majesty passed his boyhood, until in 1872 he
married the fair A-lu-te, and practically ascended the dragon throne of
his ancestors. Up to that time the Empresses-Dowager, hidden behind a
bamboo screen, had transacted business with the members of the Privy
Council, signing all documents of State with the vermilion pencil for and
on behalf of the young Emperor, but probably without even going through
the formality of asking his assent. The marriage of the Emperor of China
seemed to wake people up from their normal apathy, so that for a few
months European eyes were actually directed towards the Flowery Land, and
the Illustrated London News, with praiseworthy zeal, sent out a
special correspondent, whose valuable contributions to that journal will
be a record for ever. The ceremony, however, was hardly over before a
bitter drop rose in the Imperial cup. Barbarians from beyond the sea came
forward to claim the right of personal interview with the sovereign of all
under Heaven. The story of the first audience is still fresh in our
memories; the trivial difficulties introduced by obstructive statesmen at
every stage of the proceedings, questions of etiquette and precedence
raised at every turn, until finally the kotow was triumphantly
rejected and five bows substituted in its stead. Every one saw the curt
paragraph in the Peking Gazette, which notified that on such a day
and at such an hour the foreign envoys had been admitted to an interview
with the Emperor. We all laughed over the silly story so sedulously spread
by the Chinese to every corner of the Empire, that our Minister's knees
had knocked together from terror when Phaeton-like he had obtained his
dangerous request; that he fell down flat in the very presence, breaking
all over into a profuse perspiration, and that the haughty prince who had
acted as his conductor chid him for his want of course, bestowing upon him
the contemptuous nickname of "chicken-feather."
[*] These are—bears' paws, deers' tail, ducks' tongues, torpedos'
roe, camels' humps, monkeys' lips, carps' tails, and beef-marrow.
Subsequently, in the spring of 1874, the late Emperor made his great
pilgrimage to worship at the tombs of his ancestors. He had previous to
his marriage performed this filial duty once, but the mausoleum containing
his father's bones was not then completed, and the whole thing was
conducted in a private, unostentatious manner. But on the last occasion
great preparations were made and vast sums spent (on paper), that nothing
might be wanting to render the spectacle as imposing as money could make
it. Royalty was to be seen humbly performing the same hallowed rites which
are demanded of every child, and which can under no circumstances be
delegated to any other person as long as there is a son or a daughter
living. The route along which His Majesty was to proceed was lined with
closely-packed crowds of loyal subjects, eager to set eyes for once in
their lives upon a being they are taught to regard as the incarnation of
divinity; and when the Sacred Person really burst upon their view, the
excitement was beyond description. Young and old, women and children, fell
simultaneously upon their knees, and tears and sobs mingled with the
blessings showered upon His Majesty by thousands of his simple-minded,
affectionate people.
The next epoch in the life of this youthful monarch occurred a few months
ago. The Son of Heaven[*] had not availed himself of western science to
secure immunity from the most loathsome in the long category of diseases.
He had not been vaccinated, in spite of the known prevalence of smallpox
at Peking during the winter season. True, it is but a mild form of
smallpox that is there common; but it is easy to imagine what a powerless
victim was found in the person of a young prince enervated by perpetual
cooping in the heart of a city, rarely permitted to leave the palace, and
then only in a sedan-chair, called out of his bed at three o'clock every
morning summer or winter, to transact business that must have had few
charms for a boy, and possessed of no other means of amusement than such
as he could derive from the society of his wife or concubines. Occasional
bulletins announced that the disease was progressing favourably, and
latterly it was signified that His Majesty was rapidly approaching a state
of convalescence. His death, therefore, came both suddenly and
unexpectedly; happily, at a time when China was unfettered by war or
rebellion, and when all the energies of her statesmen could be employed in
averting either one catastrophe or the other. For one hundred days the
Court went into deep mourning, wearing capes of white fur with the hair
outside over long white garments of various stuffs, lined also with white
fur, but of a lighter kind than that of the capes. Mandarins of high rank
use the skin of the white fox for the latter, but the ordinary official is
content with the curly fleece of the snow-white Mongolian sheep. For one
hundred days no male in the Empire might have his head shaved, and women
were supposed to eschew for the same period all those gaudy head ornaments
of which they are so inordinately fond. At the expiration of this time the
Court mourning was changed to black, which colour, or at any rate
something sombre, will be worn till the close of the year.
[*] Such terms as "Brother of the Sun and Moon" are altogether
imaginary, and are quite unknown in China.
For twelve long months there may be no marrying or giving in marriage,
that is among the official classes; the people are let off more easily,
one hundred days being fixed upon as their limit. For a whole year it is
illegal to renew the scrolls of red paper pasted on every door-post and
inscribed with cherished maxims from the sacred books; except again for
non-officials, whose penance is once more cut down to one hundred days'
duration. In these sad times the birth of a son—a Chinaman's dearest
wish on earth—elicits no congratulations from thronging friends; no
red eggs are sent to the lucky parents, and no joyous feast is provided in
return. Merrymaking of all kinds is forbidden to all classes for the full
term of one year, and the familiar sound of the flute and the guitar is
hushed in every household and in every street.[*] The ordinary Chinese
visiting-card —a piece of red paper about six inches by three,
inscribed with its owner's name in large characters—changes to a
dusky brown; and the very lines on letter paper, usually red, are printed
of a dingy blue. Official seals are also universally stamped in blue
instead of the vermilion or mauve otherwise used according to the rank of
the holder. Red is absolutely tabooed; it is the emblem of mirth and joy,
and the colour of every Chinese maiden's wedding dress. It is an insult to
write a letter to a friend or stranger on a piece of plain white paper
with black ink. Etiquette requires that the columns should be divided by
red lines; or, if not, that a tiny slip of red paper be pasted on in
recognition of the form. For this reason it is that all stamps and seals
in China are red—to enable tradesmen, officials, and others
to use any kind of paper, whether it has already some red about it or not;
and every foreigner in China would do well to exact on all occasions the
same formalities from his employes as they would consider a matter of duty
towards one of their own countrymen, however low he might be in the social
scale.
[*] Mencius. Book v., part ii., ch. 4.
Certain classes of the people will suffer from the observance of these
ceremonies far more severely than others. The peasant may not have his
head shaved for one hundred days—inconvenient, no doubt, for him,
but mild as compared with the fate of thousands of barbers who for three
whole months will not know where to look to gain their daily rice. Yet
there is a large section of the community much worse off than the barbers,
and this comprises everybody connected in any way with the theatres. Their
occupation is gone. For the space of one year neither public nor private
performance is permitted. During that time actors are outcasts upon the
face of the earth, and have no regular means of getting a livelihood. The
lessees of theatres have most likely feathered their own nests
sufficiently well to enable them to last out the prescribed term without
serious inconvenience; but with us, actors are proverbially improvident,
and even in frugal China they are no exception to the rule.
Officials in the provinces, besides conforming to the above customs in
every detail, are further obliged on receipt of the "sad announcement" to
mourn three times a-day for three days in a particular chapel devoted to
that purpose. There they are supposed to call to mind the virtues of their
late master, and more especially that act of grace which elevated each to
the position he enjoys. Actual tears are expected as a slight return for
the seal of office which has enabled its possessor to grow rich at the
expense too often of a poor and struggling population. We fancy, however,
that the mind of the mourner is more frequently occupied with thinking how
many friends he can count among the Imperial censors than in dwelling upon
the transcendent bounty of the deceased Emperor.
We sympathise with the bereaved mother who has lost her only child and the
hope of China; but on the other hand if there is little room for
congratulation, there is still less for regret. The nation has been
deprived of its nominal head, a vapid youth of nineteen, who was content
to lie perdu in his harem without making an effort to do a little
governing on his own responsibility. During the ten years that foreigners
have resided within half a mile of his own apartments in the palace at
Peking, he has either betrayed no curiosity to learn anything at all about
them, or has been wanting in resolution to carry out such a scheme as we
can well imagine would have been devised by some of his bolder and more
vigorous ancestors. And now once more the sceptre has passed into the
hands of a child who will grow up, like the late Emperor, amid the
intrigues of a Court composed of women and eunuchs, utterly unfit for
anything like energetic government.
The splendid tomb which has been for the last twelve years in preparation
to receive the Imperial coffin, but which, according to Chinese custom,
may not be completed until death has actually taken place, will witness
the last scene in the career of an unfortunate young man who could never
have been an object of envy even to the meanest of his people, and who has
not left one single monument behind him by which he will be remembered
hereafter.
THE POSITION OF WOMEN
It is, perhaps, tolerably safe to say that the position of women among the
Chinese is very generally misunderstood. In the squalid huts of the poor,
they are represented as ill-used drudges, drawers of water and grinders of
corn, early to rise and late to bed, their path through the vale of tears
uncheered by a single ray of happiness or hope, and too often embittered
by terrible pangs of starvation and cold. This picture is unfortunately
true in the main; at any rate, there is sufficient truth about it to
account for the element of sentimental fiction escaping unnoticed, and
thus it comes to be regarded as an axiom that the Chinese woman is low,
very low, in the scale of humanity and civilisation. The women of the
poorer classes in China have to work hard indeed for the bowl of rice and
cabbage which forms their daily food, but not more so than women of their
own station in other countries where the necessaries of life are dearer,
children more numerous, and a drunken husband rather the rule than the
exception. Now the working classes in China are singularly sober; opium is
beyond their means, and few are addicted to the use of Chinese wine. Both
men and women smoke, and enjoy their pipe of tobacco in the intervals of
work; but this seems to be almost their only luxury. Hence it follows that
every cash earned either by the man or woman goes towards procuring food
and clothes instead of enriching the keepers of grog-shops; besides which
the percentage of quarrels and fights is thus very materially lessened. A
great drag on the poor in China is the family tie, involving as it does
not only the support of aged parents, but a supply of rice to uncles,
brothers, and cousins of remote degrees of relationship, during such time
as these may be out of work. Of course such a system cuts both ways, as
the time may come when the said relatives supply, in their turn, the daily
meal; and the support of parents in a land where poor-rates are unknown,
has tended to place the present high premium on male offspring. Thus,
though there is a great deal of poverty in China, there is very little
absolute destitution, and the few wretched outcasts one does see in every
Chinese town, are almost invariably the once opulent victims of the
opium-pipe or the gaming-table. The relative number of human beings who
suffer from cold and hunger in China is far smaller than in England, and
in this all-important respect, the women of the working classes are far
better off than their European sisters. Wife-beating is unknown, though
power of life and death is, under certain circumstances, vested in the
husband (Penal Code, S. 293); while, on the other hand, a wife may be
punished with a hundred blows for merely striking her husband, who is also
entitled to a divorce (Penal Code, S. 315). The truth is, that these poor
women are, on the whole, very well treated by their husbands, whom they
not unfrequently rule with as harsh a tongue as that of any western shrew.
In the fanciful houses of the rich, the Chinese woman is regarded with
even more sympathy by foreigners generally than is accorded to her humbler
fellow-countrywoman. She is represented as a mere ornament, or a soulless,
listless machine—something on which the sensual eye of her
opium-smoking lord may rest with pleasure while she prepares the fumes
which will waft him to another hour or so of tipsy forgetfulness. She
knows nothing, she is taught nothing, never leaves the house, never sees
friends, or hears the news; she is, consequently, devoid of the slightest
intellectual effort, and no more a companion to her husband than the stone
dog at his front gate. Now, although we do not profess much personal
acquaintance with the gynecee of any wealthy Chinese establishment,
we think we have gathered quite enough from reading and conversation to
justify us in regarding the Chinese lady from an entirely different point
of view. In novels, for instance, the heroine is always highly educated—composes
finished verses, and quotes from Confucius; and it is only fair to suppose
that such characters are not purely and wholly ideal. Besides, most young
Chinese girls, whose parents are well off, are taught to read, though it
is true that many content themselves with being able to read and write a
few hundred words. They all learn and excel in embroidery; the little
knick-knacks which hang at every Chinaman's waist-band being almost always
the work of his wife or sister. Visiting between Chinese ladies is of
everyday occurrence, and on certain fete-days the temples are crowded to
overflowing with "golden lilies"[*] of all shapes and sizes. They give
little dinner-parties to their female relatives and friends, at which they
talk scandal, and brew mischief to their hearts' content. The first wife
sometimes quarrels with the second, and between them they make the house
uncomfortably hot for the unfortunate husband.﹃Don't you foreigners also
dread the denizens of the inner apartments?﹄said a hen-pecked Chinaman
one day to us—and we think he was consoled to hear that viragos are
by no means confined to China. One of the happiest moments a Chinese woman
knows, is when the family circle gathers round husband, brother, or it may
be son, and listens with rapt attention and wondering credulity to a
favourite chapter from the "Dream of the Red Chamber." She believes it
every word, and wanders about these realms of fiction with as much
confidence as was ever placed by western child in the marvellous stories
of the "Arabian Nights."
[*] A poetical name for the small feet of Chinese women.
ETIQUETTE
If there is one thing more than another, after the possession of the
thirteen classics, on which the Chinese specially pride themselves, it is
politeness. Even had their literature alone not sufficed to place
them far higher in the scale of mental cultivation than the unlettered
barbarian, a knowledge of those important forms and ceremonies which
regulate daily intercourse between man and man, unknown of course to
inhabitants of the outside nations, would have amply justified the
graceful and polished Celestial in arrogating to himself the proud
position he now occupies with so much satisfaction to himself. A few
inquiring natives ask if foreigners have any notion at all of etiquette,
and are always surprised in proportion to their ignorance to hear that our
ideas of ceremony are fully as clumsy and complicated as their own. It
must be well understood that we speak chiefly of the educated classes, and
not of "boys" and compradores who learn in a very short time both to touch
their caps and wipe their noses on their masters' pocket-handkerchiefs.
Our observations will be confined to members of that vast body of men who
pore day and night over the "Doctrine of the Mean," and whose lips would
scorn to utter the language of birds.
And truly if national greatness may be gauged by the mien and carriage of
its people, China is without doubt entitled to a high place among the
children of men. An official in full costume is a most imposing figure,
and carries himself with great dignity and self-possession, albeit he is
some four or five inches shorter than an average Englishman. In this
respect he owes much to his long dress, which, by the way, we hope in
course of time to see modified; but more to a close and patient study of
an art now almost monopolised in Europe by aspirants to the triumphs of
the stage. There is not a single awkward movement as the Chinese gentleman
bows you into his house, or supplies you from his own hand with the cup of
tea so necessary, as we shall show, to the harmony of the meeting. Not
until his guest is seated will the host venture to take up his position on
the right hand of the former; and even if in the course of an excited
conversation, either should raise himself, however slightly, from a
sitting posture, it will be the bounden duty of the other to do so too. No
gentleman would sit while his equal stood. Occasionally, where it is not
intended to be over-respectful to a visitor, a servant will bring in the
tea, one cup in each hand. Then standing before his master and guest, he
will cross his arms, serving the latter who is at his right hand with his
left hand, his master with the right. The object of this is to expose the
palm—in Chinese, the heart—of either hand to each
recipient of tea. It is a token of fidelity and respect. The tea itself is
called "guest tea," and is not intended for drinking. It has a more
useful mission than that of allaying thirst. Alas for the red-haired
barbarian who greedily drinks off his cupful before ten words have been
exchanged, and confirms the unfavourable opinion his host already
entertains of the manners and customs of the West! And yet a little
trouble spent in learning the quaint ceremonies of the Chinese would have
gained him much esteem as an enlightened and tolerant man. For while
despising us outwardly, the Chinese know well enough that inwardly we
despise them, and thus it comes to pass that a voluntary concession on our
part to any of their harmless prejudices is always gratefully
acknowledged. To return, "guest tea" is provided to be used as a signal by
either party that the interview is at an end. A guest no sooner raises the
cup to his lips than a dozen voices shout to his chair-coolies; so, too,
when the master of the house is prevented by other engagements from
playing any longer the part of host. Without previous warning—unusual
except among intimate acquaintances—this tea should never be touched
except as a sign of departure.
Strangers meeting may freely ask each other their names, provinces, and
even prospects; it is not so usual as is generally supposed to inquire a
person's age. It is always a compliment to an old man, who is justly proud
of his years, and takes the curious form of "your venerable teeth?" but
middle-aged men do not as a rule care about the question and their answers
can rarely be depended upon. A man may be asked the number and sex of his
children; also if his father and mother are still "in the hall," i.e.,
alive. His wife, however, should never be alluded to even in the most
indirect manner. Friends meeting, either or both being in sedan-chairs,
stop their bearers at once, and get out with all possible expedition; the
same rule applies to acquaintances meeting on horseback. Spectacles must
always be removed before addressing even the humblest individual—sheer
ignorance of which most important custom has often, we imagine, led to
rudeness from natives towards foreigners, where otherwise extreme courtesy
would have been shown. In such cases a foreigner must yield, or take the
chances of being snubbed; and where neither self-respect or national
dignity is compromised, we recommend him by all means to adopt the most
conciliatory course. Chinese etiquette is a wide field for the student,
and one which, we think, would well repay extensive and methodical
exploration.
ETIQUETTE, NO. II
The disadvantages of ignoring alike the language and customs of the
Chinese are daily and hourly exemplified in the unsatisfactory relations
which exist as a rule between master and servant. That the latter almost
invariably despise their foreign patrons, and are only tempted to serve
under them by the remunerative nature of the employment, is a fact too
well known to be contradicted, though why this should be so is a question
which effectually puzzles many who are conscious of treating their native
dependants only with extreme kindness and consideration. The answer,
however, is not difficult for those who possess the merest insight into
the workings of the Chinese mind; for just as every inhabitant of the
eighteen provinces believes China to be the centre of civilisation and
power, so does he infer that his language and customs are the only ones
worthy of attention from native and barbarian alike. The very antagonism
of the few foreign manners and habits he is obliged by his position to
cultivate, tend rather to confirm him in his own sense of superiority than
otherwise. For who but a barbarian would defile the banquet hour﹃when the
wine mantles in the cups﹄with a white table-cloth, the badge of
grief and death? How much more elegant the soft red lacquer of the
"eight fairy" table, with all its associations of the bridal hour! The
host, too, at the head of his own board, sitting in what should be
the seat of the most honoured guest, and putting the latter on his right
instead of his left hand! Truly these red-haired barbarians are the very
scum of the earth.
By the time he has arrived at this conclusion our native domestic has by a
direct process of reasoning settled in his mind another important point,
namely, that any practice of the civilities and ceremonies which Chinese
custom exacts from the servant to the master, would be entirely out of
place in reference to the degraded being whom an accidental command of
dollars has invested with the title, though hardly with the rights, of a
patron. Consequently, little acts of gross rudeness, unperceived of course
by the foreigner, characterise the everyday intercourse of master and
servant in China. The house-boy presents himself for orders, and even
waits at table, in short clothes —an insult no Chinaman would dare
to offer to one of his own countrymen. He meets his master with his tail
tied round his head, and passes him in the street without touching his
hat, that is, without standing still at the side of the street until his
master has passed. He lolls about and scratches his head when receiving
instructions, instead of standing in a respectful attitude with his hands
at his side in a state of rest; enters a room with his shoes down at heel,
or without socks; omits to rise at the approach of his master, mistress,
or their friends, and commits numerous other petty breaches of decorum
which would ensure his instant dismissal from the house of a Chinese
gentleman. We ourselves take a pride in making our servants treat us with
the same degree of outward respect they would show towards native masters,
and we believe that by strictly adhering to this system we succeed in
gaining, to some extent, their esteem. Inasmuch, however, as foreign
susceptibilities are easily shocked on certain points ignored by Chinamen
of no matter what social standing, we have found it necessary to introduce
a special Bill, known in our domestic circle as the Expectoration Act. Now
it is a trite observation that the Chinese make capital soldiers if they
are well commanded, and what is the head of a large business establishment
but the commander-in-chief of a small army? The efficiency of his force
depends far more upon the moral agencies brought to bear than upon any
system of rewards and punishments human ingenuity can devise; for
Chinamen, like other mortals, love to have their prejudices respected, and
fear of shame and dread of ridicule are as deeply ingrained in their
natures as in those of any nation under the sun. They have a horror of
blows, not so much from the pain inflicted, as from the sense of injury
done to something more elevated than their mere corporeal frames; and a
friend of ours once lost a good servant by merely, in a hasty fit, throwing
a sock at him. We therefore think that, considering the vast extent of
the Chinese empire and its innumerable population, all of whom are
constructed mentally more or less on the same model, their language and
customs are deserving of more attention than is generally paid to them by
foreigners in China.
LITERATURE
It is an almost universally-received creed that behind the suicidal
prejudices and laughable superstitions of the Chinese there is a
mysterious fund of solid learning hidden away in the uttermost recesses—far
beyond the ken of occidentals—of that terra incognita,
Chinese literature. Sinologues darkly hint at elaborate treatises on the
various sciences, impartial histories and candid biographies, laying at
the same time extraordinary stress on the extreme difficulty of the
language in which they are written, and carefully mentioning the number
(sometimes fabulous) of the volumes of which each is composed. Hence,
probably, it results that few students venture to push their reading
beyond novels, and remain during the whole of their career in a state of
darkness as to that literary wealth of China which enthusiasts delight to
compare with her unexplored mines of metal and coal. Inasmuch, however, as
it is not absolutely necessary to read a book from beginning to end to be
able to form a pretty correct judgment as to its value, so, many students
who are sufficiently advanced to read a novel with ease and without the
help of a teacher, might readily gain an insight into a large enough
number of the most celebrated scientific or historical works to enable
them to comprehend the true worth of the whole of this vast literature.
For vast it undoubtedly is, though our own humble efforts to appraise it
justly, in comparison of course with the other literatures of the world,
brought upon us in the first hours of discovery that some years of
assiduous toil had been positively thrown away. Sir W. Hamilton, if we
recollect rightly, said that by so many more languages as a man knows, by
so many more times is he a man—an apophthegm of but a shallow kind
if all he meant to convey was that an Englishman who can speak French is
also a Frenchman by virtue of his knowledge of the colloquial. The opening
up of new fields of thought through the medium of a new literature, is a
result more worthy the effort of acquiring a foreign language than
sparkling in a salon with the purest imaginable accent; and herein
Sir W. Hamilton counted without Chinese. The greater portion of the
"Classics," cherished tomes to which China thinks even now she owes her
intellectual supremacy over the rest of the world, is open through Dr
Legge's translation to all Englishmen, and those who run may read,
weighing it in the balance and determining its status among the ethical
systems either of the past or present. Had we found as much that is solid
in other departments of Chinese literature, as there is mixed up with the
occasional nonsense and obscurity of the Four Books, our protest would
have taken a milder form; as it is, we think it right to condemn any and
all random assertions which tend to strengthen in the minds of those who
have no opportunity of judging, the belief that China is possessed of a
vast and valuable literature, in which, for aught any one knows to the
contrary, there may lie buried gems of purest ray serene. Can it be
supposed that, if true, nothing of all this has yet been brought to light?
There have been, and are now, foreigners possessing a much wider knowledge
of Chinese literature than many natives of education, but, strange to say,
such translations as have hitherto been given to the world have been
chiefly confined to plays and novels! We hold that all those whom tastes
or circumstances have led to acquire a knowledge of the Chinese language
have a great duty to perform, and this is to contribute each something to
the scanty quota of translations from Chinese now existing. Let us see
what the poets, historians, and especially the scientific men of China
have produced to justify so many in speaking as they have done, and still
do speak, of her bulky literature. Many, we think, will be deterred by the
grave nonsense or childish superstitions which they dare not submit to
foreign judges as the result of their labours in this fantastic field; but
to withhold such is to leave the public where it was before, at the mercy
of unscrupulous or crazed enthusiasts.
We were led into this train of thought by an article in the North China
Daily News of 10th July 1874, in which the writer speaks of China as
"a luxuriant mental oasis amidst the sterility of Eastern Asia," and
﹃possessing a literature in vastness and antiquarian value surpassed by no
other.﹄He goes on to say that the translations hitherto made﹃have
conveyed to us a faint notion of the compass, variety, solidity, and
linguistic beauties of that literature.﹄Such statements as these admit,
unfortunately, of rhetorical support, sufficient to convince outsiders
that at any rate there are two sides to the question, a conviction which
could only be effectually dispelled by placing before them a few thousand
volumes translated into English, and chosen by the writer of the article
himself.[*] When, however, our enthusiast deals with more realisable
facts, and says that in China﹃there is no organised book trade, nor
publishers' circulars, nor Quaritch's Catalogues, nor any other catalogues
whether of old or new books for sale,﹄we can assure him he knows nothing
at all about the matter; that there is now lying on our table a very
comprehensive list of new editions of standard works lately published at a
large book-shop in Wu-chang Fu, with the price of each work attached; and
that Mr Wylie, in his "Notes on Chinese Literature," devotes five entire
pages to the enumeration of some thirty well-known and voluminous
catalogues of ancient and modern works.
[*] Baron Johannes von Gumpach. Died at Shanghai, 31st July 1875.
EDUCATIONAL LITERATURE
A ramble through a native town in China must often have discovered to the
observant foreigner small collections of second-hand books and pamphlets
displayed on some umbrella-shaded stall, or arranged less pretentiously on
the door-step of a temple. If innocent of all claims to a knowledge of the
written language, he may take them for cheap editions of Confucius, with
which literary chair-coolies are wont to solace their leisure hours; at
the worst, some of these myriad novels of which he has heard so much, and
read—in translations—so little. It possibly never enters our
barbarian's head that many of these itinerant book-sellers are vendors of
educational works, much after the style of Pinnock's Catechisms and other
such guides to knowledge. Buying a handful the other day for a few
cash,[*] we were much amused at the nature of the subjects therein
discussed, and the manner in which they were treated. The first we opened
was on Ethnology and Zoology, and gave an account of the wonderful types
of men and beasts which exist in far-off regions beyond the pale of China
and civilisation. There was the long-legged nation, the people of which
have legs three chang (thirty feet) long to support bodies of no
more than ordinary size, followed by a short account of a cross-legged
race, a term which explains itself. We are next told of a country where
all the inhabitants have a large round hole right through the middle of
their bodies, the officials and wealthy citizens being easily and
comfortably carried a la sedan chair by means of a strong bamboo
pole passed through it. Then there is the feathered or bird nation, the
pictures of which people remind us very much of Lapps and Greenlanders. A
few lines are devoted to a pygmy race of nine-inch men, also to a people
who walk with their bodies at an angle of 45 degrees. There is the
one-armed nation, and a three-headed nation, besides fish-bodied and
bird-headed representatives of humanity; last but not least we have a race
of beings without heads at all, their mouth, eyes, nose, &c.,
occupying their chests and pit of the stomach!
"And of the cannibals that each other eat,
The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders."
The little work which contains the above valuable information was
published in 1783, and has consequently been nearly one hundred years
before an enlightened and approving public.
[*] About 24 cash go to a penny.
Not to dwell upon the remaining portion, devoted to Zoology, and
containing wonderful specimens of various kinds of animals and birds met
with by travellers beyond the Four Seas, we would remark that the
geography of the world, notwithstanding some very fair existing treatises,
is little studied by Chinese at the present day. More works on topography
have been written in Chinese than in probably any other language, but to
say that even these are read is quite another matter. Geography, properly
so called, is almost entirely neglected, and in a rather extensive circle
of literary acquaintances, it has never been our fortune to meet with a
single scholar acquainted with the useful publications of Catholic or
Protestant missionaries—the latter have not contributed much—except
perhaps the mutilated edition of Verbiest's little handbook.
To describe one is to give a fair idea of all such native works for the
diffusion of knowledge. We found in our little parcel a complete guide
(save the mark!) to the Fauna and Flora of the Celestial
Empire, besides a treatise headed "Philosophy for the Young," in which
children are shown that to work for one's living is better than to be
idle, and that the strength of three men is powerless against Li.
Now as Limeans "abstract right," and as it is an axiom of Chinese
philosophy that "right in the abstract" does exist, we are gravely
informed that neither the moral or physical violence of any three men
acting in concert can hope to prevail against it. So much for the state of
education in China at the present day, the remedy for which unwholesome
condition will by no means readily be found. From time to time a few
scientific treatises are translated by ambitious members of the missionary
body, but such only tend to swell the pastor's fame amongst his own
immediate flock: they do not advance civilisation one single step. The
very fact of their emanating from a missionary would of itself be enough
to deter the better class of Chinese from purchasing, or even accepting
them as a gift.[*]
[*] "The principal priest . . . declined the gift of some Christian
books."—From Glimpses of Travel in the Middle Kingdom,
published in the Celestial Empire of July 3d, 1875.
DENTISTRY
Roaming in quest of novelty through that mine of marvels, a Chinese city,
we were a witness the other day of a strange but not uncommon scene. We
had halted in front of the stall of a street apothecary, surgeon, and
general practitioner, and were turning over with our eyes his stock of
simples, dragons' teeth, tigers'-claws, and like drugs used as ingredients
in the native pharmacopoeia, when along came a man, holding his hand up to
his jaw, and apparently in great pain. He sat down by the doctor and
explained to him that he was suffering with the toothache, to get rid of
which he would like to have his tooth removed. The doctor opened his
patient's mouth and inspected the aching tooth; then he took a small phial
from his stock of medicines, and into the palm of his hand he shook a few
scruples of a pink-coloured powder. He next licked his finger and dipped
it into the powder, and inserting this into the man's mouth, rubbed it on
the aching tooth and gum. He repeated this three or four times, and then
concluded by turning the patient's head upside down; when, to the no small
astonishment of many of the bystanders, among whom was apparently the man
himself, the tooth dropped out and fell upon the ground. The doctor then
asked him if he had felt any pain, to which he replied that he had not,
and the payment of a small fee brought the seance to a close. At
our application the tooth was picked up and very civilly exhibited to us
by the owner himself; it was evidently fresh from a human jaw, though
there had not been the slightest effusion of blood from the man's mouth.
The thought had naturally suggested itself to us that the whole thing was
a hoax, and that the patient was an accomplice; but if so, the doctor was
no novice at sleight of hand, and the expression of astonishment on the
other man's face when he found his tooth gone, was as perfect a specimen
of histrionic emotion as it has ever been our lot to behold.
That night we had visions of a large establishment in Regent Street, with
an enormous placard announcing "Painless Dentistry" over the door, and
crowds of dukes and duchesses mounting and descending our stairs to have
their teeth extracted by some mysterious process imported from China, and
known to ourselves alone. Next day we proceeded to rummage through our
Chinese medical library and see what we could hunt up on the subject of
dentistry. The result of this search we generously offer to our readers,
thus, perhaps, sacrificing the chance of securing a colossal fortune.
In the "New Collection of Tried Prescriptions," a sort of domestic
medicine published for the use of families in cases of emergency when no
physician is at hand, we find the following remarks:—
Method for Extracting Aching Teeth.
"A tooth ought not to be taken out, for by doing so the remaining
teeth will be loosened. If the pain is very acute and interferes
with eating or drinking, then the tooth may be extracted;
otherwise, it should be left. Take a bream about ten ounces in
weight, rip it open and insert 1/10 of an ounce of powdered
arsenic. Then sew up the body and hang it up in the wind where it
is not exposed to the sun or accessible to cats and rats. After
being thus hung for seven days, a kind of hoar-frost will have
formed upon the scales of the fish. Preserve this, using for each
tooth about as much as covers one scale. When required, spread it
on a piece of any kind of plaster, press it with the finger on to
the aching place, and let it stick there. Then let the patient
cough, and the tooth will fall out of itself. This prescription
has been tested by Dr. Wang."
Another Method.
"Take a head of garlic and pound it up to a pulp. Mix it up
thoroughly with one or two candareens' weight of white dragon's
bones, and apply it to the suffering part. In a little while the
tooth will drop out."
It will be noticed that the above descriptions are neither without one or
other of two characteristics always to be found in the composition of
Chinese remedies. In the first recipe, the ingredients are simple enough,
and all this is required is time, seven days being necessary for its
preparation. Now, as it is very unlikely that any one would collect the
"hoar-frost" deposit from the scales of a bream stuffed with arsenic, in
anticipation of a future toothache, and as he would probably have got well
long before the expiration of the seven days if he set to work to make his
medicine only when the tooth began to ache, the genius of the physician
and the efficacy of the recipe are alike secure from attack. In the second
case, the very existence of one of the drugs mentioned is, to say the
least, apocryphal; and although such can be purchased at the shops of
native druggists, any complaint on the part of a duped patient would be
met by the simple answer, that the white dragon's bones he bought could
not possibly have been genuine!
A few days after the above incident, we returned to the dentist's stall,
and asked him if he had any powder that would draw out a tooth by mere
application to the gum or to the tooth itself? He replied that such a
powder certainly existed, and was commonly manufactured in all parts of
China, but that he himself was out of it at the moment. He added, that if
we would call again on the 4th of the 4th moon, before 12 o'clock in the
day, he should be in a position to satisfy our demands.
In conclusion, we append a quotation from the China Review, which
appeared in print after our own sketch was written:—
"Despite the oft-repeated assertion as to painless, or at least
easy, dentistry in China, very few people seem prepared to admit
that teeth are constantly extracted in the way described by (I
think) a former correspondent of the Review. He stated that a
white powder was rubbed on the gums of the patient, after which
the tooth was easily pulled from its socket; and this I can
substantiate, noting, however, that the action of the powder
(corrosive sublimate) is not quite so rapid as represented. A
short time since I witnessed an operation of this kind. The
operator rubbed the powder on the gum as described, but then
directed the patient to wait a little. After perhaps ten minutes'
interval, he again rubbed the gum, and then, introducing his thumb
into the mouth, pressed heavily against the tooth (which was a
large molar). The man winced for a second as I heard the 'click'
of the separation, but almost before he could cry out, the dentist
gripped the tooth with his forefinger and thumb, and with very
little violence pulled it out. The gum bled considerably, and I
examined the tooth so as to satisfy myself that there was no
deception. It had an abscess at the root of the fang, and was
undoubtedly what it professed to be. When the operation was over,
the patient washed his mouth out with cold water, paid fifteen
cash and departed."
MEDICAL SCIENCE
In spite of the glowing reports issued annually from various foreign
hospitals for natives, and the undeniable good, though desultory and
practically infinitesimal, that is being worked by these institutions, we
cannot blind ourselves to the fact that western medical science is not
making more rapid strides than many other innovations in the great
struggle against Chinese prejudice and distrust. By far the majority of
our servants and those natives who come most in contact with foreigners
never dream of consulting a European doctor; or if they do, that is quite
as much as can be said, for we may pronounce it a fact that they never
take either his advice or his medicine. They still prefer to appear with
large dabs of green plaster stuck on either temple, and to drink loathsome
concoctions of marvellous drugs, compounded according to eternal
principles laid down many centuries ago. In serious cases, when they
employ their own doctors, they are apt to mark, as Bacon said, the hits
but not the misses; and failure of human skill is generally regarded as
resulting from the interposition of divine will. Directly, however, a
foreigner comes upon the scene they forget at once that medicine is an
uncertain science, and expect not only a sure but an almost instantaneous
recovery; and, unfortunately, a single failure is quite enough to undo the
good of many months of successful practice. One Chinaman bitterly
complained to us of a foreign doctor, and sweepingly denounced the whole
system of western treatment, because the practitioner alluded to had
failed to cure his mother, aged eighty, of a very severe paralytic stroke.
A certain percentage of natives are annually benefited by advice and
medicine, both of which are provided gratis, and go home to tell the news
and exhibit themselves as living proofs of the foreign devils'
skill; but in many instances their friends either believe that magical
arts have been brought to bear, or that after all a Chinese doctor would
have treated the case with equal success, and accordingly the number of
patients increases in a ratio very disproportionate to the amount of good
really effected. Besides, if faith in European doctors was truly spreading
to any great extent, we should hear of wealthy Chinamen regularly calling
them in and contributing towards the income of those now in full practice
at the Treaty ports. It is absurd to point to isolated cases in a nation
of several hundred millions, and argue that progress is being made because
General This or Prefect That consented to have an abscess lanced by a
foreign surgeon, and sent him a flowery letter of thanks with a couple of
Chinese hams after the operation. The Chinese as a people laugh at our
medical science, and, we are bound to say, with some show of justice on
their side. They have a medical literature of considerable extent, and
though we may condemn it wholesale as a farrago of utter nonsense, it is
not so to the Chinese, who fondly regard their knowledge in this branch of
science as one among many precious heirlooms which has come down to them
from times of the remotest antiquity.
We alluded in the last Sketch to a work in eight small volumes called﹃New
Collection of Tried Prescriptions,﹄a book which answers to our﹃Domestic
Medicine,﹄and professes to supply well-authenticated remedies for some of
the most common ills that flesh is heir to. This book gives a fair idea of
the principles and practice of medical science in China. It is divided
into sections and subdivided into chapters under such headings as the eye,
the teeth, the hand, the leg, &c. &c. We gave
a specimen of the prescriptions herein brought together in our late
remarks upon the methods of extracting teeth, but it would be doing an
injustice to the learning of its author if we omitted to point out that in
this book remedies are provided, not only for such simple complaints as
chilblains or the stomach-ache, but for all kinds of serious complications
arising from the evil influence of demons or devils. One whole chapter is
devoted to "Extraordinary Diseases," and teaches anxious relatives to give
instant relief in cases of﹃the face swelling as big as a peck measure,
and little men three feet long appearing in the eyes.﹄"Seeing one thing
as if it were two," would hardly be classed by London doctors as an
extraordinary disease, and is not altogether unknown even amongst
foreigners in China. "Seeing things upside down after drinking wine,"
belongs in the same category, and may be cited in proof of a position take
up by most observers, namely, that the Chinese are a sober people.﹃Seeing
kaleidoscopic views which turn to beautiful women,﹄"the flesh becoming
hard as a stone and sounding like a bell when tapped,"﹃objecting to eat
in company,﹄and such diseases have each a special prescription offered by
the learned Dr Wang with the utmost gravity, and accepted in good faith by
many a confiding patient.
Chinamen look with suspicion on the sober treatment of the West, where no
joss-stick is burnt, and no paper money is offered on the altar of some
favourite P'u-sa; though, if they knew the whole truth, they would
discover that intercessory prayers for the recovery of sick persons are
considered by many of us to be of equal importance with the administration
of pills and draughts. Further, like our own agricultural classes, they
have no faith in medicine of any kind which does not make its presence
felt not only quickly but powerfully. This last desire was amply fulfilled
in the case of one poor coolie who applied to an acquaintance of ours for
some foreign medicine to cure a sick headache and bilious attack from
which he was suffering. Our friend immediately bethought himself of a
Seidlitz powder; but when all was ready, the acid in one wine-glass of
water and the salt in another, the devil entered into him, and he gave
them to his victim to drink one after the other. The result was
indescribable, for the mixture fizzed inside, and the unfortunate
coolie passed such a mauvais quart d'heure as effectually to cure
his experimenting master from any further indulgence in practical jokes of
so extremely dangerous a nature.
MEDICAL SCIENCE, NO. II
Luxuriating in the "mental oasis" of Chinese literature in general, and
the "New Collection of Tried Prescriptions" in particular, we have been
tempted to carry our researches still further in that last-mentioned
valuable work. It would have been sufficient to establish the reputation
of any European treatise on medical science had it contained one such
simple and efficacious method for extracting teeth as we gave in our
chapter on Dentistry; but Chinese readers are not so easily satisfied, and
it takes something more than mere remedies for coughs, colds, lumbago, or
the gout, to ensure a man a foremost place among the Galens of China. Even
a chapter on "Extraordinary Diseases," marvellous indeed in the eyes of
the sceptical barbarian, is not enough for the hungry native mind; and
nothing less than a whole section of the most miraculous remedies and
antidotes, for and against all kinds of unheard-of diseases and poisons,
would suffice to stamp the author as a man of genius, and his work as the
offspring of successful toil in the fields of therapeutic science. Thus it
comes about that the author of the "New Collection of Tried Prescriptions"
gathers together at the close of his last volume such items of experience
in his professional career as he has not been able to introduce into the
body of his book, and from this chapter we purpose to glean a few of the
most striking passages.
To begin with: Mr Darwin will be delighted to hear, if this should ever
meet his eye, that the growth of tails among mankind in China is not
limited to the appendage of hair which reposes gracefully on the back, and
saturates with grease the outer garment of every high or low born
Celestial. Elongation of the spine is, at any rate, common enough for Dr
Wang to treat it as a disease and specify the remedy, which consists in
tying a piece of medicated thread tightly round it, and tightening the
thread from time to time until the tail drops off. In order, however, to
guard against its growing again, a course of medicine has to be taken,
whereby any little irregularities of the yin or female principle[*]
may be corrected, and the unpleasant tendency at once and for ever
checked.
[*] The symbol of the yin and the yang, or male and female
principles, has been used in the beading of the cover to this
volume. The dark half is the yin, the other the yang.
We then come to elaborate directions for the extirpation of all kinds of
parasites, white ants, mosquitoes, &c.; but judging from the plentiful
supply of such pests in every part of China, we can only conclude that the
natives are apathetic as regards these trifles, and do not suffer the same
inconvenience therefrom as the more delicately-nurtured barbarian. The
next heading would somewhat astonish us, accustomed as we are to the
vagaries of Chinese book-makers, were it not that the section upon which
we are engaged is supposed to contain "miscellaneous" prescriptions, which
may include anything, though it is a somewhat abrupt transition for a
grave medical work to pass from the destruction of insects to a remedy
against fires!
﹃Take three fowl's-eggs, and write at the big end of each the word warm,
at the small end the word beautiful. Then throw them singly to the
spot where the fire is burning brightest, uttering all the time
'fooshefahrun, fooshefahrun.' The fire will then go out.﹄There are
several other methods, but perhaps this one will be found to answer the
purpose.
Further on we find a most practicable way for pedestrians of discovering
the right direction to pursue at a cross road. "Carry with you a live
tortoise, and when you come to a cross road and do not know which one to
choose, put down the tortoise and follow it. Thus you will not go wrong."
For people who are afraid of seeing bogies at night, the following is
recommended:—"With the middle finger of the right hand trace on the
palm of the left hand the words I am a devil, and close your hand
up tight. You will then be able to travel without fear." Sea-sickness may
be prevented by drinking the drippings from a bamboo punt-pole mixed with
boiling water, or by inserting a lump of burnt mortar from a stove into
the hair, without letting anybody know it is there; also by writing the
character earth on the palm of the hand previous to going on board
ship. Ivory may be cleaned to look like new by using the whey of
bean-curd, and rice may be protected from weevils and maggots by inserting
the shell of a crab in the place where it is kept. The presence of bad air
in wells may be detected by letting a fowl's feather drop down; if it
falls straight, the air is pure; if it circles round and round, poisonous.
Danger may be averted by throwing in a quantity of hot vinegar before
descending. A fire may be kept alight from three to five days without
additional fuel by merely putting a walnut among the live ashes; and a
method is also given to make a candle burn many hours with hardly any
perceptible decrease in size.
We close Dr Wang's "New Collection of Tried Prescriptions" with mingled
feelings of admiration and regret: admiration, not indeed for the genius
of its author, or any new light which may have been let in upon us during
our study of this section of the "mental oasis" of Chinese literature, but
for the indomitable energy and skill of those who have helped to
emancipate us from similar trammels of ignorance and folly; regret, that a
nation which carries within its core the germs of a transcendent greatness
should still remain sunk in the lowest depths of superstitious gloom.
LOAN SOCIETIES
In a country where money is only obtainable at such an exorbitant rate of
interest as in China, it is but natural that some attempt should be made
to obviate the necessity of appealing to a professional money-lender.
Three per cent. per month is the maximum rate permitted by Chinese law,
which cannot be regarded as excessive if the full risk of the lender is
taken into consideration. He has the security of one or more "middlemen,"
generally shopkeepers whose solvency is unimpeachable; but these gentlemen
may, and often do, repudiate their liability without deigning to explain
either why or wherefore. His course is then not so plain as it ought to be
under a system of government which has had some two thousand years to
mature. Creditors as well as debtors shun the painted portals of the
magistrate's yamen[*] as they would the gates of hell. Above them is
traced the same desperate legend that frightened the soul of Dante when he
stood before the entrance to the infernal regions. Truly there is no hope
for those who enter here. Both sides are squeezed by the
gate-keeper —a very lucrative post in all yamens—before they
are allowed to present their petitions. It then becomes necessary for
plaintiff and defendant alike to go through the process of (in Peking
slang) "making a slit," i.e., making a present of money to the magistrate
and his subordinates proportionate to the interests involved. In many
yamens there is a regular scale of charges, answering to our Table of
Fees, but this is almost always exceeded in practice. The case is then
heard: occasionally, on its merits. We say occasionally, because nine
times out of ten one of the parties bids privately for the benefit of his
honour's good opinions. Sometimes both suitors do this, and then judgment
is knocked down to the highest bidder. The loser departs incontinently
cursing the law and its myrmidons to the very top of his bent, and perhaps
meditating an appeal to a higher court, from which he is only deterred by
prospects of further expense and repeated failure. As to the successful
litigant, he would go on his way rejoicing, but that he has a duty to
perform before which he is not a free man. The "slit" he made on entering
the yamen needs to be repaired, and on him devolves the necessity of
"sewing it up." The case is then at an end, and the prophecy fulfilled,
which says:—
"The yamen doors are open wide
To those with money on their side."
[*] Official and private residence, all in one.
Wiser and more determined creditors take the law into their own hands.
With a tea-pot, a pipe, and a mattress, they proceed to the shop of the
recalcitrant debtor or security as circumstances may dictate, and there
take up their abode until the amount is paid. If inability to meet the
debt has been pleaded, then this self-made bailiff will insist on taking
so much per cent. out of the daily receipts; if it is a mere case of
obstinacy, a desire to shirk a just responsibility, the place is made so
hot for its owner that he is glad to get rid of his visitor at any price
whatever. Were manual violence resorted to, the interference of the local
officials would be absolutely necessary; and in all cases where personal
injuries are an element, their action is not characterised by the same
tyranny and corruption as where only property is at stake. The chances are
that the aggressor would come off worst.
To protect themselves, however, from such a prohibitive rate of usury as
that mentioned above, Chinese merchants are in the habit of combining
together and forming what are called Loan Societies for the mutual benefit
of all concerned. Such a society may be started in the first instance by a
deposit of so much per member, which sum, in the absence of a volunteer,
is handed over to a manager, elected by a throw of dice, whose business it
is to lay out the money during the ensuing month to the best possible
advantage. Frequently one of the members, being himself in want of funds,
will undertake the job; and he, in common with all managers, is held
responsible for the safety of the loan. At the end of the month there is a
meeting at which the past manager is bound to produce the entire sum
entrusted to his charge, together with any profits that may have accrued
meanwhile. Another member volunteers, or is elected manager, and so the
thing goes on, a running fund from which any member may borrow, paying
interest at a very low rate indeed. Dividends are never declared, and
consequently some of these clubs are enormously rich; but any member is at
liberty to withdraw whenever he likes, and he takes with him his share of
all moneys in the hands of the Society at the moment of his retirement. To
outsiders, the market rate of interest is charged, or perhaps a trifle
less, but loans are only made upon the very best securities.
GUILDS
In every large Chinese city are to be found several spacious buildings
which are generally reckoned among the sights of the place, and are known
by foreigners under the name of guilds. Globe-trotters visit them, and
admire the maximum of gold-leaf crowded into the minimum of space, their
huge idols, and curious carving; of course passing over those relics which
the natives themselves prize most highly, namely, sketches and scrolls
painted or written by the hand of some departed celebrity. Foreign
merchants regard them with a certain amount of awe, for they are often
made to feel keenly enough the influence which these institutions exert
over every branch of trade. They come into being in the following manner.
If traders from any given province muster in sufficient numbers at any of
the great centres of commerce, they club together and form a guild. A
general subscription is first levied, land is bought, and the necessary
building is erected. Regulations are then drawn up, and the tariff on
goods is fixed, from which the institution is to derive its future
revenue. For all the staples of trade there are usually separate guilds,
mixed establishments being comparatively rare. It is the business of the
members as a body to see that each individual contributes according to the
amount of merchandise which passes through his hands, and the books of
suspected defaulters are often examined at a moment's notice and without
previous warning. The guild protects its constituents from commercial
frauds by threatening the accused with legal proceedings which an
individual plaintiff would never have dared to suggest; and the threat is
no vain one when a mandarin, however tyrannical and rapacious, finds
himself opposed by a body of united and resolute men. On the other hand,
these guilds deal fairly enough with their own members, and not only
refuse to support a bad case, but insist on just and equitable dealings
with the outside world. To them are frequently referred questions
involving nice points of law or custom, and one of the chief functions of
a guild is that of a court of arbitration. In addition to this they fix
the market rates of all kinds of produce, and woe be to any one who dares
to undersell or otherwise disobey the injunctions of the guild. If
recalcitrant, he is expelled at once from the fraternity, and should his
hour of need arrive he will find no helping hand stretched out to save him
from the clutches of the law. But if he acknowledges, as he almost always
does, his breach of faith, he is punished according to the printed rules
of the corporation. On a large strip of red paper his name and address are
written, the offence of which he has been convicted, and the fine which
the guild has determined to impose. This latter generally takes the form
of a dinner to all members, to be held on some appointed day and
accompanied by a theatrical entertainment, after which the erring brother
is admitted as before to the enjoyment of those rights and privileges he
would otherwise infallibly have lost.
On certain occasions, such as the birthday of a patron saint, the guild
spends large sums from the public purse in providing a banquet for its
members and hiring a theatrical troupe, with their everlasting tom-toms,
to perform on the permanent stage to be found in every one of these
establishments. The Anhui men celebrate the birthday of Chu Hsi, the great
commentator, whose scholarship has won eternal honours for his native
province; Swatow men hold high festival in memory of Han Wen-Kung, whose
name is among the brightest on the page of Chinese history. All day long
the fun goes on, and as soon as it begins to grow dusk innumerable paper
lanterns are hung in festoons over the whole building. The crowd
increases, farce succeeds farce without a moment's interval, and many a
kettle of steaming wine warms up the spectators to the proper pitch of
enthusiasm and delight. Before midnight the last song has been sung, a
considerable number of people have quietly dispersed without accident of
any kind, and the courtyard of the guild is once more deserted and still.
It is open to any trader to join the particular institution which
represents his own province or trade without being either proposed,
seconded, or balloted for. He is expected to make some present to the
resources of the guild, in the shape of a new set of glass lanterns, a
pair of valuable scrolls, some new tables, chairs, or in fact anything
that may be needed for either use or ornament. Should he be in want of
money, a loan will generally be issued to him even on doubtful security.
Should he die in an impoverished condition, a coffin is always provided,
the expenses of burial undertaken, and his wife and children sent to their
distant home, with money voted for that purpose at a general meeting of
the members. Were it not for the action of these guilds in regard to fire,
life and property in Chinese cities would be more in danger than is now
the case. Each one has its own fire-engine, which is brought out at the
first alarm, no matter where or whose the building attacked. If belonging
to one of themselves, men are posted round the scene of the conflagration
to prevent looting on the part of the crowd, and the efforts of the
brigade are stimulated by the reflection that their position and that of
the present sufferers may at any moment be reversed. Picked men are
appointed to perform the most important task of all, that of rescuing from
the flames relics more precious to a respectable Chinaman than all the
jade that K'un-kang has produced. For it often happens that an obstructive
geomancer will reject site after site for the interment of some deceased
relative, or perhaps that the day fixed upon as a lucky one for the
ceremony of burial may be several months after death. Meanwhile a fire
breaks out in the house where the body lies in its massive, air-tight
coffin, and all is confusion and uproar. The first thought is for the
corpse; but who is to lift such a heavy weight and carry it to a place of
safety without the dreaded jolting, almost as painful to the survivors as
would be cremation itself? Such harrowing thoughts are usually cut short
by the entrance of six or eight sturdy men from the nearest guild, who,
armed with the necessary ropes and poles, bear away the coffin through
flame and smoke with the utmost gentleness and care.
PAWNBROKERS
Few probably among our readers have had much experience on the subject of
the present sketch—a Chinese pawnshop. Indeed, for others than
students of the manners and customs of China, there is not much that is
attractive in these haunts of poverty and vice. The same mighty misery,
which is to be seen in England passing in and out of mysterious-looking
doors distinguished by a swinging sign of three golden balls, is not
wanting to the pawnshop in China, though the act of pledging personal
property in order to raise money is regarded more in the light of a
business transaction than it is with us, and less as one which it is
necessary to conceal from the eyes of the world at large. Nothing is more
common than for the owner of a large wardrobe of furs to pawn them one and
all at the beginning of summer and to leave them there until the beginning
of the next winter. The pawnbrokers in their own interest take the
greatest care of all pledges, which, if not redeemed, will become their
own property, though they repudiate all claims for damage done while in
their possession; and the owner of the goods by payment of the interest
charged is released from all trouble and annoyance.
Pawnshops in China are divided into three classes, one of which has since
the days of the T'ai-p'ings totally disappeared from all parts over which
the tide of rebellion passed. This is the tien tang, where property
could be left for three years without forfeit, and to establish which it
was necessary to obtain special authority from the Board of Revenue in
Peking. At present there are the chih tang and the ssu ya,
both common to all parts of China, and to these we shall confine our
remarks. The former, which may be considered as the pawnshop proper, is a
private institution as far as its business is concerned, but licensed on
payment of a small fee by the local officials, and regulated in its
workings by certain laws which emanate from the Emperor himself. A limit
of sixteen months is assigned, within which pledges must be redeemed or
they become the property of the pawnbroker; and the interest charged,
formerly four per cent., is now fixed at three per cent. per month.
Before the license above-mentioned can be obtained, security must be
provided for the existence of sufficient capital to guard against a sudden
or a fraudulent collapse. For any article not forthcoming when the owner
desires to redeem it, double the amount of the original loan is
recoverable from the pawnbroker. Should any owner of a pledge chance to
lose his ticket by theft or otherwise, he may proceed to the pawnshop with
two substantial securities, and if he can recollect the number, date, and
amount of the transaction, another ticket is issued to him with which he
may recover his property at once, or at any time within the original
sixteen months. Pawn-tickets are not unseldom offered as pledges, and are
readily received, as the loan is never more than half the value of the
deposit; and tickets thus obtained are often sold either to a third person
or perhaps to the pawnbroker who issued them in the first instance.
Formerly, when the interest payable was four per cent. per month, it was a
standing rule that during the last three months in every year, i.e., the
winter season, pledges might be redeemed at a diminished rate, so that
poor people should have a better chance of getting back their wadded
clothes to protect them from the inclemency of frost and cold. But since
the rate of interest has been reduced to three per cent. this custom has
almost passed away; its observance is, however, sometimes called for by a
special proclamation of the local magistrate when the necessaries of life
are unusually dear, and the times generally are bad. The following is a
translation of a ticket issued by one of these shops, which may often be
recognised in a Chinese city by the character for pawn painted on
an enormous scale in some conspicuous position:—"In accordance with
instructions from the authorities, interest will be charged at the rate of
three per cent. [per month] for a period of sixteen months, at the
expiration of which the pledge, if not redeemed, will become the property
of the pawnbroker, to be disposed of as he shall think fit. All damages to
the deposit arising from war, the operations of nature, insects, rats,
mildew, &c., to be accepted by both sides as the will of Heaven.
Deposits will be returned on presentation of the proper ticket without
reference to the possession of it by the applicant." Besides this, the
name and address of the pawnshop, a number, description of the article
pledged, amount lent, and finally the date, are entered in their proper
places upon the ticket, which is stamped as a precaution against forgery
with the private stamp of the pawnshop. Jewels are not received as
pledges, and gold and silver only under certain restrictions.
The other class is not recognised by the authorities, and its very
existence is illegal, though of course winked at by a venial executive.
Shops of this kind, which may be known by the character for keep,
are very much frequented by the poor. A more liberal loan is obtainable
than at the licensed pawnbroker's, but on the other hand the rate of
interest charged is very much more severe. Pledges are only received for
three months, and on the ticket issued there is no stipulation about
damage to the deposit. No satisfaction is to be got in case of fraud or
injustice to either side: a magistrate would refuse to hear a case either
for or against one of these unlicensed shops. They carry on their trade in
daily fear of the rowdies who infest every Chinese town, granting loans to
these ruffians on valueless articles, which in many cases are returned
without payment either of interest or principal, thereby securing
themselves from the disturbances which "bare poles" who have nothing to
lose are ever ready to create at a moment's notice, and which would
infallibly hand them over to the clutches of hungry and rapacious
officials. The counters over which all business is transacted are from six
to eight feet high, strongly made, and of such a nature that to scale them
would be a very difficult matter, and to grab anything with the view of
making a bolt for the street utterly and entirely impossible. In a Chinese
city, where there is no police force to look after the safety of life and
property, and where everybody prefers to let a thief pass rather than risk
being called as a witness before the magistrate, it becomes necessary to
guard against such contingencies as these. As things are now, pawnshops
may be considered the most flourishing institutions in the country; and in
these establishments many even of the highest officials invest savings
squeezed from the districts entrusted to their paternal care.
POSTAL SERVICE
Many residents in China are profoundly ignorant of the existence of a
native postal service; and even the few who have heard of such an
institution, are not aware of the comparative safety and speed with which
even a valuable letter may be forwarded from one end of the Empire to the
other. Government despatches are conveyed to their destinations by a staff
of men specially employed for the purpose, and under the control of the
Board of War in Peking. They ride from station to station at a fair pace,
considering the sorry, ill-fed nags upon which they are mounted; important
documents being often carried to great distances, at a rate of two hundred
miles a-day. The people, however, are not allowed to avail themselves of
this means of communication, but the necessities of trade have driven them
to organise a system of their own.
In any Chinese town of any pretensions whatever, there are sure to be
several "letter offices," each monopolising one or more provinces, to and
from which they make it their special business to convey letters and small
parcels. The safety of whatever is entrusted to their care is guaranteed,
and its value made good if lost; at the same time, the contents of all
packets must be declared at the office where posted, so that a
corresponding premium may be charged for their transmission. The
letter-carriers travel chiefly on foot, sometimes on donkeys, to be found
on all the great highways of China, and which run with unerring accuracy
from one station to another, unaccompanied by any one except the hirer.
There is little danger of the donkeys being stolen, unless carried off
bodily, for heaven and earth could no more move them from their beaten
track than the traveller who, desirous of making two stages without
halting, could induce them to pass the door of the station they have just
arrived at. Carrying about eighty or ninety pounds weight of mail matter,
these men trudge along some five miles an hour till they reach the extent
of their tether; there they hand over the bag to a fresh man, who starts
off, no matter at what hour of the day or night, and regardless of good or
bad weather alike, till he too has quitted himself of his responsibility
by passing on the bag to a third man. They make a point of never eating a
full meal; they eat themselves, as the Chinese say, six or seven tenths
full, taking food as often as they feel at all hungry, and thus preserve
themselves from getting broken-winded early in life. Recruited from the
strongest and healthiest of the working-classes, it is above all
indispensable that the Chinese letter-carrier should not be afraid of any
ghostly enemy, such as bogies or devils. In this respect they must be
tried men before they are entrusted with a mail; for an ordinary Chinaman
is so instinctively afraid of night and darkness, that the slightest
rustle by the wayside would be enough to make him fling down the bag and
take to his heels as if all the spirits of darkness had been loosed upon
him at one and the same moment.
The scale of charges is very low. The cost of sending a letter from Peking
to Hankow—650 miles, as the crow flies—being no more than
eight cents, or four pence. About thirty per cent. of the postage is
always paid by the sender, to secure the office against imposition and
loss; the balance is recoverable from the person to whom the letter is
addressed. These offices are largely used by merchants in the course of
trade, and bills of exchange are constantly being thus sent, while the
banks forward the foil or other half to the house on which it is drawn,
receipt of which is necessary before the draft can be cashed. Such
documents, together with small packets of sycee, make up a tolerably
valuable bag, and would often fall a prey to the highwaymen which infest
many of the provinces, but that most offices anticipate these casualties
by compounding for a certain annual sum which is paid regularly to the
leader of the gang. For this blackmail the robbers of the district not
only agree to abstain from pilfering themselves, but also to keep all
others from doing so too. The arrangement suits the local officials
admirably, as they escape those pains and penalties which would be exacted
if it came to be known that their rule was too weak, and their example
powerless to keep the district free from the outrages of thieves and
highwaymen. Large firms, which supply carts to travellers between given
points, are also often in the habit of contracting with the brigands of
the neighbourhood for the safe passage of their customers. In some parts
soldiers are told off by the resident military officials to escort
travellers who leave the inns before daybreak, until there is enough light
to secure them against the dangers of a sudden attack. In others, there
are bands of trained men who hire themselves out in companies of three to
five to convey a string of carts with their dozen passengers across some
dangerous part of the country, where it is known that foot-pads are on the
look-out for unwary travellers. The escort consists of this small number
only, for the reason that each man composing it is supposed to be equal to
five or six robbers, not in mere strength, but in agility and knowledge of
sword-exercise. To accustom themselves to the attacks of numbers, and to
acquire the requisite skill in fighting more than one adversary at a time,
these men practise in the following remarkable manner. In a lofty barn
heavy bags of sand are hung in a circle by long ropes to the roof, and in
the middle of these the student takes up his position. He then strikes one
of the bags a good blow with his fist, sending it flying to a distance
from him, another in the same way, then another, and so on until he has
them all swinging about in every possible direction. By the time he has
hit two or three it is time to look out for the return of the first, and
sometimes two will come down on him at once from opposite quarters; his
part is to be ready for all emergencies, and keep the whole lot swinging
without ever letting one touch him. If he fails in this, he must not
aspire to escort a traveller over a lonesome plain; and, besides, the
ruthless sand-bag will knock him head over heels into the bargain.
SLANG
Although native scholars in China have not deemed it worth while to
compile such a work as the "Slang Dictionary," it is no less a fact that
slang occupies quite as important a position in Chinese as in any language
of the West. Thieves have their argot, as with us, intelligible
only to each other; and phrases constantly occur, even in refined
conversation, the original of which can be traced infallibly to the
kennel. Why so much paint? is the equivalent of What a swell you
are! and is specially expressive in China, where beneath a flowered
blue silk robe there often peeps out a pair of salmon-coloured
inexpressibles of the same costly material. They have put down their
barrows, means that certain men have struck work, and is peculiarly
comprehensible in a country where so much transport is effected in this
laborious way. Barrows are common all over the Empire, both for the
conveyance of goods and passengers; and where long distances have to be
traversed, donkeys are frequently harnessed in front. The traditional sail
is also occasionally used: we ourselves have seen barrows running before
the wind between Tientsin and Taku, of course with a man pushing behind.
The children have official business, is understood to mean they are
laid up with the small-pox; the metaphor implying that their turn
has come, just as a turn of official duty comes round to every Manchu in
Peking, and in the same inevitable way. Vaccination is gradually
dispelling this erroneous notion, but the phrase we have given is not
likely to disappear.
A magistrate who has skinned the place clean, has extorted every
possible cash from the district committed to his charge—a﹃father
and mother﹄of the people, as his grasping honour is called. That horse
has a mane, says the Chinese housebreaker, speaking of a wall well
studded at the top with pieces of broken glass or sharp iron spikes. You'll
have to sprinkle so much water, urges the friend who advises you to
keep clear of law, likening official greed to dust, which requires a
liberal outlay of water in the shape of banknotes to make it lie. A flowery
bill is understood from one end of China to the other as that
particular kind in which our native servants delight to indulge, namely,
an account charging twice as much for everything as was really paid, and
containing twice as much in quantity as was actually supplied. A flowery
suit is a case in which women play a prominent part. You scorched
me yesterday is a quiet way of remarking that an appointment was
broken, and implying that the rays of the sun were unpleasantly hot. Don't
pick out the sugar is a very necessary injunction to a servant sent to
market to buy food, &c., the metaphor being taken from a kind of sweet
dumpling consumed in great quantities by rich and poor alike. Another
phrase is, Don't ride the donkey, which may be explained by the
proverbial dislike of Chinamen for walking exercise, and the temptation to
hire a donkey, and squeeze the fare out of the money given them for other
purposes. That house is not clean inside, signifies that devils and
bogies, so dreaded by the Chinese, have taken up their residence therein;
in fact, that the house is haunted. He's all rice-water, i.e.,
gives one plenty of the water in which rice has been boiled, but none of
the rice itself, is said of a man who promises much and does nothing. One
load between the two is very commonly said of two men who have married
two sisters. In China, a coolie's "load" consists of two baskets or
bundles slung with ropes to the end of a flat bamboo pole about five feet
in length, and thus carried across the shoulder. Hence the expression.
Apropos of marriage, the guitar string is broken, is an elegant
periphrasis by which it is understood that a man's wife is dead, the verb
"to die" being rarely used in conversation, and never of a relative or
friend. He will not put a new string to his guitar is, of course, a
continuation of the same idea, more coarsely expressed as putting on a
new coat. His father has been gathered to the west—a
phrase evidently of Buddhistic import—is no more, has gone for a
stroll, has bid adieu to the world, may all be employed to supply the
place of the tabooed verb, which is chiefly used of animals and plants.
After a few days' illness he kicked, is a vulgar way of putting it
and analogous to the English slang idiom. The Emperor becomes a guest
on high, riding up to heaven on the dragon's back, with flowers of
rhetoric ad nauseam; Buddhist priests revolve into emptiness, i.e.,
are annihilated; the soul of the Taoist priest wings its flight away.
Only a candle-end left is said of an affair which nears completion;
red and white matters are marriages and deaths, so called
from the colour of the clothes worn on these important occasions. A
blushing person fires up, or literally, ups fire, according
to the Chinese idiom. To be fond of blowing resembles our modern
term gassing. A lose-money-goods is a daughter as compared
with a son who can go out in the world and earn money, whereas a daughter
must be provided with a dowry before any one will marry her. A more
genuine metaphor is a thousand ounces of silver; it expresses the
real affection Chinese parents have for their daughters as well as their
sons. To let the dog out is the same as our letting the cat out; to
run against a nail is allied to kicking against the pricks. A man
of superficial knowledge is called half a bottle of vinegar, though
why vinegar, in preference to anything else, we have not been able to
discover. He has always got his gun in his hand is a reproach
launched at the head of some confirmed opium debauchee, one of those few
reckless smokers to whom opium is indeed a curse. They have burnt paper
together, makes it clear to a Chinese mind that the persons spoken of
have gone through the marriage service, part of which ceremony consists in
burning silver paper, made up to resemble lumps of the pure metal. We
have split is one of those happy idioms which lose nothing in
translation, being word for word the same in both languages, and with
exactly the same meaning. A crooked stick is a man whose
eccentricities keep people from associating freely with him; he won't lie
conveniently in a bundle with the other sticks.
We will bring this short sketch to a close with one more example, valuable
because it is old, because the date at which it came into existence can be
fixed with unerring certainty, and because it is commonly used in all
parts of China, though hardly one educated man in ten would be able to
tell the reason why. A jealous woman is said to drink vinegar, and
the origin of the term is as follows:—Fang Hsuan-ling was the
favourite Minister of the Emperor T'ai Tsung, of the T'ang dynasty. He
lived A.D. 578-648. One day his master gave him a maid of honour from the
palace as second wife, but the first or real wife made the place too hot
for the poor girl to live in. Fang complained to the Emperor, who gave him
a bowl of poison, telling him to offer his troublesome wife the choice
between death and peaceable behaviour for the future. The lady instantly
chose the former, and drank up the bowl of vinegar, which the
Emperor had substituted to try her constancy. Subsequently, on his
Majesty's recommendation, Fang sent the young lady back to resume her
duties as tire-woman to the Empress. But the phrase lived, and has
survived to this day.
FORTUNE-TELLING
Everybody who has frequented the narrow, dirty streets of a Chinese town
must be familiar with one figure, unusually striking where all is novel
and much is grotesque. It is that of an old man, occasionally
white-bearded, wearing a pair of enormous spectacles set in clumsy rims of
tortoiseshell or silver, and sitting before a small table on which are
displayed a few mysterious-looking tablets inscribed with characters,
paper, pencils, and ink. We are in the presence of a fortune-teller, a
seer, a soothsayer, a vates; or better, a quack who trusts for his living
partly to his own wits, and partly to the want of them in the credulous
numskulls who surround him. These men are generally old, and sometimes
blind. Youth stands but a poor chance among a people who regard age and
wisdom as synonymous terms; and it seems to be a prevalent belief in China
that those to whom everything in the present is a sealed book, can for
this very reason see deeper and more clearly into the destinies of their
fellows. It is not until age has picked out the straggling beard with
silver that the vaticinations of the seer are likely to spread his
reputation far beyond the limits of the street in which he practises.
Younger competitors must be content to scrape together a precarious
existence by preying on the small fry which pass unheeded through the
meshes of the old man's net. Just as there is no medical diploma necessary
for a doctor in China, so any man may be a fortune-teller who likes to
start business in that particular line. The ranks are recruited generally
from unsuccessful candidates at the public examinations; but all that is
really necessary is the minimum of education, some months' study of the
art, and a good memory. For there really are certain principles which
guide every member of the fraternity. These are derived from books written
on the subject, and are absolutely essential to success, or nativities
cast in two different streets would be so unlike as to expose the whole
system at once. The method is this. A customer takes his seat in front of
the table and consults the wooden tablet on which is engraved a scale of
charges as follows:—
Foretelling any single event . . . . . . . . 8 cash
Foretelling any single event with joss-stick, 16 cash
Telling a fortune . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 cash
Telling a fortune in detail . . . . . . . . . 50 cash
Telling a fortune by reading the stars . . . 50 cash
Fixing the marriage day . . . . . . . According to agreement
In case he merely wants an answer on a given subject, he puts his question
and receives the reply at once on a slip of paper. But if he desires to
have his fortune told, he dictates the year, month, day, and hour of his
birth, which are written down by the sage in the particular characters
used by the Chinese to express times and seasons. From the combinations of
these and a careful estimate of the proportions in which the five elements—gold,
wood, water, fire, and earth—make their appearance, certain results
are deduced upon which details may be grafted according to the fancy of
the fortune-teller. The same combinations of figures, i.e., characters,
will always give the same resultant in the hands of any one who has
learned the first principles of his art; it is only in the reading, the
explanation thereof, that any material difference can be detected between
the reckonings of any two of these philosophers, which amounts to saying
that whoever makes the greatest number of happy hits beyond the mere
technicalities common to all, is esteemed the wisest prophet and will
drive the most flourishing trade.
Fully believing in the Chinese household word which says﹃Ignorance of any
one thing is always one point to the bad,﹄we have several times read our
destiny through the medium of some dirty old Chinaman. On the last
occasion we received the following advice in return for our 50 cash, paid
as per tablet for a destiny in detail:—"Beware the odd months of
this year: you will meet with some dangers and slight losses. Three male
phoenixes (sons) will be accorded to you. Your present lustrum is not a
fortunate one; but it has nearly expired, and better days are at hand.
Fruit cannot thrive in the winter. (We had placed our birthday in the 12th
moon.) Conflicting elements oppose: towards life's close prepare for
trials. Wealth is beyond your grasp; but nature has marked you out to fill
a lofty place." How the above was extracted from the eight characters
which represented the year, month, day, and hour of our birth, is made
perfectly clear by a sum showing every step in the working of the problem,
though we must confess it appeared to us a humbugging jumble, the most
prominent part of which was the answer. We found among other things that
earth predominated in the combination: hence our inability to grasp
wealth. Water was happily deficient, and on this datum we were
blessed in anticipation with three sons, to say nothing of daughters.
And this is the sort of trash that is crammed down the throats of China's
too credulous children—the "babies," as the Mandarins are so fond of
calling them. For this rubbish they freely spend their hard-earned wages,
consulting some favourite prophet on most of their domestic and other
affairs with the utmost gravity and confidence. Few Chinamen make a money
venture without first applying to the oracle, and certainly never marry
without arranging a lucky day for the event. Ignorance and credulity
combine to support a numerous class of the most consummate adepts in the
art of swindling; the supply, however, is not more than adequate to the
demand, albeit they swarm in every street and thoroughfare of a Chinese
city.
GAMES AND GAMBLING
Chinamen suffer horribly from ennui—especially the first of
the four classes into which the non-official world has been subdivided.[*]
They have no rational amusements wherewith to fill up the intervals of
work. They hate physical exercise; more than that, they despise it as fit
only for the ignorant and low. Yet they have not supplied its place with
anything intellectual, and the most casual observer cannot fail to notice
that China has no national game. Fencing, rowing, and cricket, are alike
unknown; and archery, such as it is, claims the attention chiefly of
candidates for official honours. Within doors they have chess, but it is
not the game Europeans recognise by that name, nor is it even worthy of
being mentioned in the same breath. There is also another game played with
three hundred and sixty black and white pips on a board containing three
hundred and sixty-one squares, but this is very difficult and known only
to the few. It is said to have been invented by His Majesty the Emperor
Yao who lived about two thousand three hundred and fifty years before
Christ, so that granting an error of a couple of thousand years or so, it
is still a very ancient pastime. Dominoes are known, but not much
patronised; cards, on the other hand, are very common, the favourite games
being those in which almost everything is left to chance. As to open-air
amusements, youths of the baser sort indulge in battledore and shuttlecock
without the battledore, and every resident in China must have admired the
skill with which the foot is used instead, at this foot-shuttlecock game.
Twirling heavy bars round the body, and gymnastics generally, are
practised by the coolie and horse-boy classes; but the disciple of
Confucius, who has already discovered how "pleasant it is to learn with a
constant perseverance and application,"[+] would stare indeed if asked to
lay aside for one moment that dignified carriage on which so much stress
has been laid by the Master. Besides this, finger-nails an inch and a half
long, guarded with an elaborate silver sheath, are decidedly impedimenta
in the way of athletic success. No,—when the daily quantum of
reading has been achieved, a Chinese student has very little to fall back
upon in the way of amusement. He may take a stroll through the town and
look in at the shops, or seek out some friend as ennuye as himself,
and while away an hour over a cup of tea and a pipe. Occasionally a number
of young men will join together and form a kind of literary club, meeting
at certain periods to read essays or poems on subjects previously agreed
upon by all. We heard of one youth who, burning for the poet's laurel,
produced the following quatrain on snow, which had been chosen as
the theme for the day:—
The north-east wind blew clear and bright,
Each hole was filled up smooth and flat:
The black dog suddenly grew white,
The white dog suddenly grew—
"And here," said the poet,﹃I broke down, not being able to get an
appropriate rhyme to flat.﹄A wag who was present suggested fat,
pointing out that the dog's increased bulk by the snow falling on his back
fully justified the meaning, and, what is of equal importance in Chinese
poetry, the antithesis.
[*] Namely, (1) the literati, (2) agriculturists, (3) artisans, and
(4) merchants or tradesmen.
[+] The first sentence of the Analects or Confucian Gospels.
Riddles and word-puzzles are largely used for the purpose of killing time,
the nature of the written language offering unlimited facilities for the
formation of the latter. Chinese riddles, by which term we include
conundrums, charades, et hoc genus omne, are similar to our own,
and occupy quite as large a space in the literature of the country. They
are generally in doggerel, of which the following may be taken as a
specimen, being like the last a word-for-word translation:—
Little boy red-jacket, whither away?
To the house with the ivory portals I stray.
Say will you come back, little red-coat, again?
My bones will return, but my flesh will remain.
In the present instance the answer is so plain that it is almost insulting
to our readers to mention that it is "a cherry," but this is by no means
the case with all Chinese riddles, many being exceedingly difficult of
solution. So much so that it is customary all over the Empire to copy out
any particularly puzzling conundrum on a paper lantern, and hang it in the
evening at the street door, with the promise of a reward to any comer who
may succeed in unravelling it. These are called "lamp riddles," and
usually turn upon the name of some tree, fruit, animal, or book, the
direction in which the answer is to be sought being usually specified as a
clue.
Were it only in such innocent pastimes as these that the Chinese indulged,
we might praise the simplicity of their morals, and contrast them
favourably with the excitement of European life. But there is just one
more little solace for leisure, and too often business hours, of which we
have not yet spoken. Gambling is, of course, the distraction to which we
allude; a vice ten times more prevalent than opium-smoking, and
proportionately demoralising in its effect upon the national character. In
private life, there is always some stake however small; take it away, and
to a Chinaman the object of playing any game goes too. In public, the very
costermongers who hawk cakes and fruit about the streets are invariably
provided with some means for determining by a resort to chance how much
the purchaser shall have for his money. Here, it is a bamboo tube full of
sticks, with numbers burnt into the concealed end, from which the customer
draws; at another stall dice are thrown into an earthenware bowl, and so
on. Every hungry coolie would rather take his chance of getting nothing at
all, with the prospect of perhaps obtaining three times his money's worth,
than buy a couple of sausage-rolls and satisfy his appetite in the
legitimate way. The worst feature of gambling in China is the number of
hells opened publicly under the very nose of the magistrate, all of which
drive a flourishing trade in spite of the frequent presents with
which they are obliged to conciliate the venal official whose duty it is
to put them down. To such an extent is the system carried that any
remissness on the part of the keepers of these dens in conveying a
reasonable share of the profits to his honour's treasury, is met by a
brutum fulmen in the shape of a proclamation, setting forth how﹃it
having come to my ears that, regardless of law, and in the teeth of my
frequent warnings, certain evil-disposed persons have dared to open public
gambling-houses, be it hereby made known,﹄&c., &c., the whole
document being liberally interspersed with allusions to the men of old,
the laws of the reigning dynasty, and filial piety a discretion.
The upshot of this is that within twenty-four hours after its appearance
his honour's wrath is appeased, and croupiers and gamblers go on in the
same old round as if nothing whatever had happened.
JURISPRUDENCE
Law,[*] as we understand the term, with all its paradoxes and refinements,
is utterly unknown to the Chinese, and it was absolutely necessary to
invent an equivalent for the word "barrister," simply because no such
expression was to be found ready-made in the language. Further, it would
be quite impossible to persuade even the most enlightened native that the
Bar is an honourable profession, and that its members are men of the
highest principles and integrity. They cannot get it out of their heads
that western lawyers must belong to the same category as a certain
disreputable class among themselves, to be met with in every Chinese town
of importance, and generally residing in the vicinity of a magistrate's or
judge's yamen. These fellows are always ready to undertake for a small
remuneration the conduct of cases, in so far as they are able to do this
by the preparation of skilfully-worded petitions or counter-petitions, and
by otherwise giving their advice. Of course they do not appear in court,
for their very existence is forbidden, but their services are largely
availed of by the people, especially the poor and ignorant. At the trial,
prosecutor and accused must each manage his own case, the magistrate
himself doing all the cross-examination. We say prosecutor and accused
advisedly, for as a matter of fact civil cases are rare in China, such
questions as arise in the way of trade being almost invariably referred to
some leading guild, whose arbitration is accepted without appeal. Now, we
know of no such book as "Laws of Evidence" in the whole range of Chinese
literature; yet we believe firmly that the intellects which adorn our own
bench are not more keen in discriminating truth from falsehood, and
detecting at a glance the corrupt witness, than the semi-civilised native
functionary —that is, when no silver influences have been brought to
bear upon his judgment. The Chinese have a penal code which, allowing for
the difference in national customs and habits of thought, stands almost
unrivalled; and with this solitary work their legal literature begins and
ends. It is regarded by the people as an inspired book, though few know
much beyond the title, and seems to answer its purpose well.
[*] Civil law.
But inasmuch as in China as elsewhere summum jus is not
infrequently summa injuria, a clever magistrate never hesitates to
set aside law or custom, and deal out Solomonic justice with an unsparing
hand, provided always he can shew that his course is one which reason
infallibly dictates. Such an officer wins golden opinions from the people,
and his departure from the neighbourhood is usually signalised by the
presentation of the much-coveted testimonial umbrella. In the reign of the
last Emperor but one, less than twenty years ago, there was an official of
this stamp employed as "second Prefect" in the department of Han-yang.
Many and wonderful are the stories told of his unerring acumen, and his
memory is still fondly cherished by all who knew him in his days of power.
We will quote one from among numerous traditions of his genius which have
survived to the present day.
A poor man, passing through one of the back thoroughfares in Hankow, came
upon a Tls. 50[*] note lying in the road and payable to bearer. His first
impulse was to cash it, but reflecting that the sum was large and that the
loser might be driven in despair to commit suicide, the consequences of
which might be that he himself would perhaps get into trouble, he
determined to wait on the spot for the owner and rest content with the
"thanks money" he was entitled by Chinese custom to claim as a right. Very
shortly he saw a stranger approaching, with his eyes bent on the ground,
evidently in search of something; whereupon he made up to him and asked at
once if anything was the matter. Explanations followed, and the Tls. 50
note was restored to its lawful possessor, who, recovering himself
instantaneously, asked where the other one was, and went on to say that he
had lost two notes of the same value, and that on recovery of the
other one he would reward the finder as he deserved, but that unless that
was also forthcoming he should be too great a loser as it was. His
benefactor was protesting strongly against this ungenerous behaviour when
the "second Prefect" happened to come round the corner, who, seeing there
was a row, stopped his chair, and inquired there and then into the merits
of the case. The result was that he took the Tls. 50 note and presented it
to the honest finder, telling him to go on his way rejoicing; while,
turning to the ungrateful loser, he sternly bade him wait till he met some
one who had found two notes of that value, and from him endeavour
to recover his lost property.
[*] Fifty taels, equal to about 15 pounds.
JURISPRUDENCE, NO. II
From the previous sketch it may readily be gathered that the state of
Chinese law, both civil[*] and criminal, is a very important item in the
sum of those obstacles which bar so effectually the admission of China—not
into the cold and uncongenial atmosphere euphuistically known as the
"comity of nations"—but into closer ties of international
intercourse and friendship on a free and equal footing. For as long as we
have ex-territorial rights, and are compelled to avail ourselves thereof,
we can regard the Chinese nation only de haut en bas; while, on the
other hand, our very presence under such, to them abnormal conditions,
will continue to be neither more or less than a humiliating eye-sore. Till
foreigners in China can look with confidence for an equitable
administration of justice on the part of the mandarins, we fear that even
science, with all its resources, will be powerless to do more than pave
the way for that wished-for moment when China and the West will shake
hands over all the defeats sustained by the one, and all the insults
offered to the other.
[*] That is, local custom.
It is in the happily unfrequent cases of homicide where a native and a
foreigner play the principal parts, that certain discrepancies between
Chinese and Western law, rules of procedure and evidence, besides several
other minor points, stand out in the boldest and most irreconcilable
relief. To begin with, the Penal Code and all its modifications of murder,
answering in some respects to our distinction between murder and
manslaughter, is but little known to the people at large. Nay, the very
officials who administer these laws are generally as grossly ignorant of
them as it is possible to be, and in every judge's yamen in the Empire
there are one or two "law experts," who are always prepared to give
chapter and verse at a moment's notice,—in fact, to guide the judge
in delivering a proper verdict, and one such as must meet with the
approbation of his superiors. The people, on the other hand, know but one
leading principle in cases of murder—a life for a life. Under
extenuating circumstances cases of homicide are compromised frequently
enough by money payments, but if the relatives should steadily refuse to
forego their revenge, few officials would risk their own position by
failing to fix the guilt somewhere. As a rule, it is not difficult to
obtain the conviction and capital punishment of any native, or his
substitute, who has murdered a foreigner, and we might succeed equally
well in many instances of justifiable homicide or manslaughter: it is when
the case is reversed that we call down upon our devoted heads all the
indignation of the Celestial Empire. Of course any European who could be
proved to have murdered a native would be hanged for it; but he may kill
him in self-defence or by accident, in both of which instances the Chinese
would clamour for the extreme penalty of the law. Further, hearsay
is evidence in a Chinese court of justice, and if several witnesses
appeared who could only say that some one else told them that the accused
had committed the murder, it would go just as far to strangling or
beheading him, as if they had said they saw the deed themselves. The
accused is, moreover, not only allowed to criminate himself, but no case
being complete without a full confession on the part of the guilty man,
torture might be brought into play to extort from him the necessary
acknowledgment. It is plain, therefore, that Chinese officials prosecuting
on behalf of their injured countrymen, are quite at sea in an English
court, and their case often falling through for want of proper evidence,
they return home cursing the injustice done to them by the hated
barbarians, and longing for the day which will dawn upon their
extermination from the Flowery Land.
On the other hand, the examination of Chinese witnesses, either in a civil
or criminal case, is one of the most trying tests to which the forbearance
of foreign officials is exposed in all the length and breadth of their
intercourse with the slippery denizens of the middle kingdom. Leaving out
of the question the extreme difficulty of the language, now gradually
yielding to methodical and persevering study, the peculiar bent of the
Chinese mind, with all its prejudices and superstitions, is quite as much
an obstacle in the way of eliciting truth as any offered by the fantastic,
but still amenable, varieties of Chinese syntax. We believe that native
officials have the power, though it does not always harmonise with their
interests to exercise it, of arriving at as just and equitable decisions
in the majority of cases brought before them, as any English magistrate
who knows "Taylor's Law of Evidence" from beginning to end. They
accomplish this by a knowledge of character, unparalleled perhaps in any
country on the globe, which enables them to distinguish readily, and
without such constant recourse to torture as is generally supposed,
between the false and honest witness. The study of mankind in China is,
beyond all doubt—man and his motives for action on every possible
occasion, and under every possible condition. Thus it is, we may remark,
that the Chinese fail to appreciate the efforts made for their good by
missionaries and others, because the motives of such a course are utterly
beyond the reach of native investigation and thought. They are
consequently suspicious of the Greeks—et dona ferentes. The
self-denial of missionaries who come out to China to all the hardships of
Oriental life—though, as a facetious writer in the Shanghai
Courier lately remarked, they live in the best houses, and seem to
lead as jolly lives as anybody else out here—to say nothing of
gratuitous medical advice and the free distribution of all kinds of
medicine—all this is entirely incomprehensible to the narrow mind of
the calculating native. Their observations have been confined to the
characters and habits of thought which distinguish their
fellow-countrymen, and with the result above-mentioned; of the European
mind they know absolutely nothing.
As regards the evidence of Chinese taken in a foreign court of justice,
the first difficulty consists generally in swearing the witnesses. Old
books on China, which told great lies without much danger of conviction,
mention cock-killing and saucer-breaking as among the most binding forms
of Chinese oaths. The common formula, however, which we consider should be
adopted in preference to any hybrid expression invented for the occasion,
is an invocation to heaven and earth to listen to the statements about to
be made, and to punish the witness for any deviation from the truth. This
is sensible enough, and is moreover not without weight among a
superstitious people like the Chinese. The witness then expects the
magistrate to ask him the name of his native district, his own name, his
age, the age of his father and mother (if alive), the maiden name of his
wife, her age, the number and the ages of his children, and many more
questions of similar relevancy and importance, before a single effort is
made towards eliciting any one fact bearing upon the subject under
investigation. With a stereotyped people like the Chinese, it does not do
to ignore these trifles of form and custom; on the contrary, the witness
should rather be allowed to wander at will through such useless details
until he has collected his scattered thoughts, and may be safely coaxed on
to divulge something which partakes more of the nature of evidence. Under
proper treatment, a Chinese witness is by no means doggedly stubborn or
doltishly stupid; he may be either or both if he has previously been
tampered with by native officials, but even then it is not absolutely
impossible to defeat his dishonesty. Occasionally a question will be put
by a foreigner to an unsophisticated boor, never dreamt of in the
philosophy of the latter, and such as would never have fallen from the
lips of one of his own officials; the answers given under such
circumstances are usually unique of their kind. We know of an instance
where a boatman was asked, in reference to a collision case, at what rate
he thought the tide was running. The witness hesitated, looked up, down,
on either side, and behind him; finally he replied:—"I am a poor
boatman; I only earn one hundred and fifty cash a day, and how can you
expect me to know at what rate the tide was running?"
BUDDHIST PRIESTS
There are few more loathsome types of character either in the East or West
than the Buddhist priest of China. He is an object of contempt to the
educated among his countrymen, not only as one who has shirked the cares
and responsibilities to which all flesh is heir, but as a misguided
outcast who has voluntarily resigned the glorious title and privileges of
that divinely-gifted being represented by the symbol man. With his
own hands he has severed the five sacred ties which distinguish him from
the brute creation, in the hope of some day attaining what is to most
Chinamen a very doubtful immortality. Paying no taxes and rendering no
assistance in the administration of the Empire, his duty to his sovereign
is incomplete. Marrying no wife, his affinity, the complement of his
earthly existence, sinks into a virgin's grave. Rearing no children, his
troubled spirit meets after death with the same neglect and the same
absence of cherished rites which cast a shadow upon his parents' tomb.
Renouncing all fraternal ties, he deprives himself of the consolation and
support of a brother's love. Detaching himself from the world and its
vanities, friendship spreads its charms for him in vain. Thus he is in no
Chinese sense a man. He has no name, and is frequently shocked by some
western tyro in Chinese who, thinking to pay the everyday compliment
bandied between Chinamen, asks to his intense disgust—"What is your
honourable name?" The unfortunate priest has substituted a﹃religious
designation﹄for the patronymic he discarded when parents, brethren, home,
and friends were cast into oblivion at the door of the temple.
But it is not on such mere sentimental grounds that the Chinese nation has
condemned in this wholesale manner the clergy of China. Did the latter
carry out even to a limited extent their vows of celibacy and Pythagorean
principles of diet, they would probably obtain a fair share of that
questionable respect which is meted out to enthusiasts in most countries
on the globe. The Chinese hate them as double-dyed hypocrites who extort
money from the poor and ignorant, work upon the fears of, and frequently
corrupt, their wives or daughters; proclaim in bold characters at the
gates of each temple—"no meat or wine may enter here"—while
all the time they dine off their favourite pork as often as most Chinamen,
and smoke or drink themselves into a state of beastly intoxication a great
deal more so. Opium pipes are to be found as frequently as not among the
effects of these sainted men, who, with all the abundant leisure at their
command, are rarely of sufficient education to be mentioned in the same
breath with an ordinary graduate. Occasionally there have been exceptions
to the rule, but the phenomenon is seldom met with in modern times. We
have read of a lame old priest so renowned for self-denying liberality
that the great Emperor Ch'ien Lung actually paid him a visit. After some
conversation Ch'ien Lung presented him with a valuable pearl, which the
old man immediately bestowed upon a beggar he espied among the crowd. His
Majesty was somewhat taken aback at this act of rudeness, and asked him if
he always gave away everything in the same manner. On receiving an
affirmative reply, the Emperor added,﹃Even down to the crutch on which
you lean?﹄"Ah," said the priest,﹃it is written that the superior man
does not covet what his friend cannot spare.﹄"But supposing," said the
Emperor, "he was not a superior man." "In that case," answered the priest,
"you could not expect me to be his friend."
Cleanliness, again, is an especial attribute of Buddhism, and in a few
temples in the south there is an attempt to make some show in this
direction; but as regards the person, priests are dirtier if anything than
the humblest members of their flock. It is laughable indeed to hear them
chant the Ching, ignorant as ninety-nine per cent. are of every
word they are saying, for of late the study of Sanskrit has been utterly
and entirely neglected. Their duties, however, in this respect are as much
curtailed as possible, except when wafting with their prayers some spirit
of the dead to the realms of bliss above. In such cases it is a matter of
business, a question of money; and the unctuous air of solemn faith they
then put on contrasts curiously with the bored and sleepy look apparent on
their faces as they gabble through a midnight mass, in the presence of
some such limited and unimportant audience as a single and perhaps a
red-haired barbarian.
It is pleasant to dismiss from our thoughts this lying, shameless,
debauched class; and we do so, wondering how Buddhism has retained its
hold so long over an intellectual people possessed of an elaborate moral
code, which has been for centuries the acknowledged standard of right and
wrong, and which condemns all fear or hope of an unknown and unseen world.
RESPECT FOR THE WRITTEN CHARACTER
One of the most curious and harmless customs of the Chinese is that of
carefully burning every scrap of paper inscribed with the cherished
characters which, as far as calligraphy goes, justly take precedence of
those of any other language on the globe. Not content with mere reduction
by fire, a conscientious Chinaman will collect the ashes thus produced,
and sealing them up in some earthen vessel, will bury them deep in the
earth or sink them to the bottom of a river. Then only does he consider
that he has fully discharged his duty towards paper which has by mere
accident become as sacred in the eyes of all good men as the most precious
relic of any martyred saint in the estimation of a Catholic priest. Rich
men are constantly in the habit of paying chiffoniers to collect
such remnants of written paper as they may find lying about the streets,
and in all Chinese towns there are receptacles at the most frequented
points where the results of their labours may be burned. The above facts
are pretty generally known to foreigners in China and elsewhere, but we do
not think that native ideas on the subject have ever been brought forward
otherwise than indirectly. We therefore give the translation of a short
essay published in 1870 by an enthusiastic scholar, and distributed gratis
among his erring countrymen:—
"From of old down to the present time our sages have devoted
themselves to the written character—that fairest jewel in heaven
above or earth beneath. Those, therefore, who are stimulated by a
thirst for fame, strive to attain their end by the excellency of
their compositions; others, attracted by desire for wealth, pursue
their object with the help of day-book and ledgers. In both cases
men would be helpless without a knowledge of the art of writing.
How, indeed, could despatches be composed, agreements drawn up,
letters exchanged, and genealogies recorded, but for the
assistance of the written character? By what means would a man
chronicle the glory of his ancestors, indite the marriage deed, or
comfort anxious parents when exiled to a distant land? In what way
could he secure property to his sons and grandchildren, borrow or
lend money, enter into partnership, or divide a patrimony, but
with the testimony of written documents? The very labourer in the
fields, tenant of a few acres, must have his rights guaranteed in
black and white; and household servants require more than verbal
assurance that their wages will not fail to be paid. The
prescription of the physician, about to call back some suffering
patient from the gates of death, is taken down with pen and ink;
and the prognostication of the soothsayer, warning men of evil or
predicting good fortune, exemplifies in another direction the use
of the written character. In a word, the art of writing enriches
and ennobles man, hands him over to life or death, confers upon
him honours and distinctions, or covers him with abuse and shame.
"Of late, however, our schools have turned out an arrogant and
ignorant lot—boys who venture to use old books for wrapping
parcels or papering windows, for boiling water, or wiping the
table; boys, I say, who scribble over their books, who write
characters on wall or door, who chew up the drafts of their poems,
or throw them away on the ground. Let all such be severely
punished by their masters that they may be saved, while there is
yet time, from the wrath of an avenging Heaven. Some men use old
pawn-tickets for wrapping up things—it may be a cabbage or a
pound of bean-curd. Others use lottery-tickets of various
descriptions for wrapping up a picked vegetable or a slice of
pork, with no thought of the crime they are committing as long as
there is a cash to be made or saved. So also there are those who
exchange their old books for pumeloes or ground-nuts, to be
defiled with the filth of the waste-paper basket, and passed from
hand to hand like the cheques of the barbarian. Alas, too, for
women when they go to fairs, for children who are sent to market!
They cannot read one single character: they know not the priceless
value of written paper. They drop the wrapping of a parcel in the
mire for every passer-by to tread under foot. Their crime,
however, will be laid at the door of those who erred in the first
instance (i.e., those who sold their old books to the
shopkeepers). For they hoped to squeeze some profit, infinitesimal
indeed, out of tattered or incomplete volumes; forgetting in their
greed that they were dishonouring the sages, and laying up for
themselves certain calamity. Why then sacrifice so much for such
trifling gain? How much better a due observance of time-honoured
custom, ensuring as it would a flow of prosperity continuous and
everlasting as the waves of the sea! O ye merchants and
shopkeepers, know that in heaven as on earth written words are
esteemed precious as the jade, and whatever is marked therewith
must not be cast aside like stones and tiles. For happiness,
wealth, honours, distinctions, and old age, may be one and all
secured by a proper respect for written paper."
SUPERSTITION
Educated Chinamen loudly disclaim any participation in the superstitious
beliefs which, to a European eye, hang like a dark cloud over an otherwise
intellectually free people. There never has been a State religion in
China, and it has always been open to every man to believe and practise as
much or as little as he likes of Buddhism, Taoism, or Mahomedanism,
without legal interference or social stigma of any kind. Of course it is
understood that such observances must be purely self-regarding, and that
directly they assume—as lately in the case of Mahomedanism—anything
of a political character, the Chinese Government is not slow to protect
the unity of the Empire by the best means in its power. And so, but for
the suicidal zeal of Christian missions and their supporters, who have
effected an unnatural amalgamation of religion and politics, and carried
the Bible into China at the point of the bayonet, the same toleration
might now be accorded to Christianity which the propagators of other
religions have hitherto been permitted to enjoy.
As to religion in China, it is only of the ethics of Confucius that the
State takes any real cognizance. His is what John Stuart Mill alluded to
as "the best wisdom they possess;" and, as he further observed, the
Chinese have secured﹃that those who have appropriated most of it shall
occupy the posts of honour and power.﹄His maxims are entirely devoid of
the superstitious element. He recognises a principle of right beyond the
ken of man; but though he once said that this principle was conscious of
his existence and his work on earth, it never entered his head to endow it
with anything like retributory powers. Allusions to an unseen world were
received by him with scorn; and as regards a future state, he has
preserved a most discreet silence.﹃While you do not know life, how can
you know about death?﹄was the rebuke he administered to a disciple who
urged some utterance on the problem of most interest to mankind. And yet,
in spite of the extreme healthiness of Confucian ethics, there has grown
up, around both the political and social life of the Chinese, such a
tangled maze of superstition, that it is no wonder if all intellectual
advancement has been first checked, and has then utterly succumbed. The
ruling classes have availed themselves of its irresistible power to give
them a firmer hold over their simple-hearted, credulous subjects; they
have practised it in its grossest forms, and have written volumes in
support of absurdities in which they cannot really have the slightest
faith themselves. It was only a year or two ago that the most powerful man
in China, a distinguished scholar, statesman, and general, prostrated
himself before a diminutive water-snake, in the hope that by humble
intercession with the God of Floods he might bring about a respite from
the cruel miseries which had been caused by inundations over a wide area
of the province of Chihli. The suppliant was no other than the celebrated
Viceroy, Lu Hung-chang, who has recently armed the forts at the mouth and
on the banks of the Peiho with Krupp's best guns, instead of trusting, as
would be consistent, the issue of a future war to the supernatural efforts
of some Chinese Mars.
Turning now to the literature of China, we cannot but be astonished at the
mass of novels which are one and all of the same tendency; in fact, not
only throughout the entire stratum of Chinese fiction, but even in that of
the gravest philosophical speculations, has the miraculous been introduced
as a natural and necessary element. The following passage, taken from the
writings of Han Wen-kung, whose name has been pronounced to be﹃one of the
most venerated,﹄is a fair specimen of the trash to be met with at every
turn in that trackless, treeless desert, which for want of a more
appropriate term we are obliged to call the literature of China:—
"There are some things which possess form but are devoid of sound,
as for instance jade and stones; others have sound but are without
form, such as wind and thunder; others again have both form and
sound, such as men and animals; and lastly, there is a class
devoid of both, namely, devils and spirits."
Descending to the harmless superstition of domestic life, we find that the
cat washing her face is not, as with us, a sign of rain, but that a
stranger is coming. On the other hand, "strangers" in tea portend, as with
us, the arrival of some unlooked-for guest, tall or short, fat or lean,
according to the relative proportions of the prophetic twig. Aching corns
denote the approach of wet weather—we do not quote this as a
superstition—and for a girl to spill water on fowls or dogs will
ensure a downpour of rain on her wedding-day. Any one who hears a crow caw
should shatter his teeth three times and blow; and two brooms together
will bring joy and sorrow at the same time, as a birth and a death on the
same day. "Crows' feet" on the face are called "fishes' tails," and in
young men mean what the widower's peak is supposed to signify with us.
Superstition is China's worst enemy—a shadow which only the pure
light of science will be able to dispel. There are many amongst us who
would give her more: but they will not succeed.
NATURAL PHENOMENA
It is a question of more than ordinary interest to those who regard the
Chinese people as a worthy object of study, What are the speculations of
the working and uneducated classes concerning such natural phenomena as it
is quite impossible for them to ignore? Their theory of eclipses is well
known, foreign ears being periodically stunned by the gonging of an
excited crowd of natives, who are endeavouring with hideous noises to
prevent some imaginary dog of colossal proportions from banqueting, as the
case may be, upon the sun or moon. At such laughable exhibitions of native
ignorance it will be observed that there is always a fair sprinkling of
well-to-do, educated persons, who not only ought to know better
themselves, but should be making some effort to enlighten their less
fortunate countrymen instead of joining in the din. Such a hold, however,
as superstition on the minds of the best informed in a Chinese community,
that under the influence of any real or supposed danger, philosophy and
Confucius are scattered to the four winds of Heaven, and the proudest
disciple of the Master proves himself after all but a man.
Leaving the literati to take care of themselves, and confining our
attention to the good-tempered, joyous, hospitable working-classes of
China, we find many curious beliefs on subjects familiar among western
nations to every national school-boy. The earth, for instance, is
popularly believed to be square; and the heavens a kind of shell or
covering, studded with stars and revolving round the earth. We remember
once when out of sight of land calling the notice of our native valet to
the masts of a vessel sinking below the horizon. We pointed out to him
that were the earth a perfectly flat surface its disappearance would not
be so comparatively sudden, nor would the ship appear to sink. But at the
last moment, when we felt that conviction was entering into his soul and
that another convert had been made to the great cause of scientific truth,
he calmly replied that it was written—"Heaven is round, earth is
square," and he didn't very well understand how books could be wrong!
The sun is generally supposed to pass at sunset into the earth, and to
come out next morning at the other side. The moon is supposed to rise from
and set in the ocean. Earthquakes are held to result from explosions of
sulphur in the heart of the earth; rain is said to be poured down by the
Dragon God who usually resides on the other side of the clouds, and the
rainbow is believed to be formed by the breath of an enormous oyster which
lives somewhere in the middle of the sea, far away from land. Comets and
eclipses of the sun are looked upon as special warnings to the throne, and
it is usual for some distinguished censor to memorialise the Emperor
accordingly. The most curious perhaps of all these popular superstitions
are those which refer to thunder, lightning, and hail, regarded in China
as the visitation of an angry and offended god. In the first place it is
supposed that people are struck by thunder and not by lightning—a
belief which was probably once prevalent in England, as evidenced by the
English word thunderstruck. Sir Philip Sydney writes:—"I
remained as a man thunder-stricken." Secondly, death by thunder is
regarded as a punishment for some secret crime committed against human or
divine law, and consequently a man who is not conscious of anything of the
kind faces the elements without fear. Away behind the clouds during a
storm or typhoon sit the God of Thunder armed with his terrible bolts, and
the Goddess of Lightning, holding in her hand a dazzling mirror. With this
last she throws a flash of lightning over the guilty man that the God of
Thunder may see to strike his victim; the pealing crash which follows is
caused by the passage through the air of the invisible shaft—and the
wrongs of Heaven are avenged. Similarly, hail is looked upon as an
instrument of punishment in the hands of the Hail God, directed only
against the crops and possessions of such mortals as have by their wicked
actions exposed themselves to the slow but certain visitation of divine
vengeance.
Each province, nay, each town, has its own particular set of superstitions
on a variety of subjects; the above, however, dealing with the most
important of all natural phenomena, will be found common to every village
and household in the Chinese Empire. The childlike faith with which such
quaint notions are accepted by the people at large is only equalled by the
untiring care with which they are fostered by the ruling classes, who are
well aware of their value in the government of an excitable people. The
Emperor himself prays loud and long for rain, fine weather, or snow,
according as either may be needed by the suffering crops, and never leaves
off until the elements answer his prayers. But here we are ridiculing a
phase of superstition from which nations with greater advantages than
China are not yet wholly free.
CELEBRATION OF THE NEW YEAR
China New Year!—What a suggestive ring have those three words for
"the foreigner in far Cathay."[*] What visions do they conjure up of
ill-served tiffins, of wages forestalled, of petty thefts and perhaps a
burglary; what thoughts of horrid tom-toms and ruthless fire-crackers,
making day hideous as well as night; what apparitions of gaudily-dressed
butlers and smug-faced coolies, their rear brought up by man's natural
enemy in China—the cook, for once in his life clean, and holding in
approved Confucian style[+] some poisonous indigestible present he calls a
cake!
[*] The title of Mr Medhurst's work.
[+] "In presenting gifts, his countenance wore a placid appearance."—
Analects: ch. x.
New Year's Day is the one great annual event in Chinese social and
political life. An Imperial birthday, even an Imperial marriage, pales
before the important hour at which all sublunary affairs are supposed to
start afresh, every account balanced and every debt paid. About ten days
previously the administration of public business is nominally suspended;
offices are closed, official seals carefully wrapped up and given into the
safe keeping of His Honour's or His Excellency's wife.[*] The holidays
last one month, and during that time inaction is the order of the day, it
being forbidden to punish criminals, or even to stamp, and consequently to
write, a despatch on any subject whatever. The dangerous results, however,
that might ensue from a too liberal observance of the latter prohibition
are nearly anticipated by stamping beforehand a number of blank sheets of
paper, so that, if occasion requires, a communication may be forwarded
without delay and without committing an actual breach of law or custom.
[*] A universal custom which may be quoted with countless others
against the degradation-of-women-in-China doctrine.
The New Year is the season of presents. Closely-packed boxes of Chinese
cake, biscuits, and crystallised fruit, are presented as tributes of
respect to the patriarchs of the family; grapes from Shansi or Shan-tung,
hams from Foochow, and lichees from Canton, all form fitting vehicles for
a declaration of friendship or of love. Now, too, the birthday gifts
offered by every official in the Empire to his immediate superior, are
supplemented by further propitiatory sacrifices to the powers that be,
without which tenure of office would be at once troublesome and insecure.
Such are known as dry, in contradistinction to the water
presents exchanged between relatives and friends. The latter are wholly,
or at any rate in part, articles of food prized among the Chinese for
their delicacy or rarity, perhaps both; and so to all appearance are the
baskets of choice oranges, &c., sent for instance by a District
Magistrate with compliments of the season to His Excellency the Provincial
Judge. But the Magistrate and the Judge know better, for beneath that
smiling fruit lie concealed certain bank-notes or shoes of silver of
unimpeachable touch, which form a unit in the sum of that functionary's
income, and enable him in his turn to ingratiate himself with the
all-powerful Viceroy, while he lays by from year to year a comfortable
provision against the time when sickness or old age may compel him to
resign both the duties and privileges of government.
To "all between the four seas," patrician and plebeian[*] alike, the New
Year is a period of much intensity. On the 23rd or 24th of the preceding
moon it is the duty of every family to bid farewell to the Spirit of the
Hearth, and to return thanks for the protection vouchsafed during the past
year to each member of the household. The Spirit is about to make his
annual journey to heaven, and lest aught of the disclosures he might make
should entail unpleasant consequences, it is adjudged best that he shall
be rendered incapable of making any disclosures at all. With this view,
quantities of a very sticky sweetmeat are prepared and presented as it
were in sacrifice, on eating which the unwary god finds his lips tightly
glued together, and himself unable to utter a single syllable. Beans are
also offered as fodder for the horse on which he is supposed to ride. On
the last day of the old year he returns and is regaled to his heart's
content on brown sugar and vegetables. This is the time par excellence
for cracker-firing, though, as everybody knows, these abominations begin
some days previously. Every one, however, may not be aware that the object
of letting off these crackers is to rid the place of all the evil spirits
that may have collected together during the twelve months just over, so
that the influences of the young year may be uncontaminated by their
presence. New Year's eve is no season for sleep: in fact, Chinamen almost
think it obligatory on a respectable son of Han to sit up all night.
Indeed, unless his bills are paid, he would have a poor chance of sleeping
even if he wished. His persevering creditor would not leave his side, but
would sit there threatening and pleading by turns until he got his money
or effected a compromise. Even should it be past twelve o'clock, the
wretched debtor cannot call it New Year's Day until his unwelcome dun has
made it so by blowing out the candle in his lantern. Of course there are
exceptions, but as a rule all accounts in China are squared up before the
old year has become a matter of history and the new year reigns in its
stead. Then, with the first streaks of dawn, begins that incessant round
of visits which is such a distinguishing feature of the whole proceedings.
Dressed out in his very best, official hat and boots, button and peacock's
feather, if lucky enough to possess them,[+] every individual Chinaman in
the Empire goes off to call on all his relatives and friends. With a thick
wad of cards, he presents himself first at the houses of the elder
branches of the family, or visits the friends of his father; when all the
seniors have been disposed of, he seeks out his own particular cronies, of
his own age and standing. If in the service of his country, he does not
omit to call at the yamen and leave some trifling souvenir of his visit
for the officer immediately in authority over him. Wherever he goes he is
always offered something to eat, a fresh supply of cakes, fruit, and wine,
being brought in for each guest as he arrives. While thus engaged his
father, or perhaps brother, will be doing the honours at home, ready to
take their turn as occasion may serve.﹃New joy, new joy; get rich, get
rich,﹄is the equivalent of our "Happy New Year," and is bandied about
from mouth to mouth at this festive season, until petty distinctions of
nationality and creed vanish before the conviction that, at least in
matters of sentiment, Chinamen and Europeans meet upon common ground. Yet
there is one solitary exception to the rule—an unfortunate being
whom no one wishes to see prosperous, and whom nobody greets with the
pleasant phrase, "Get rich, get rich." It is the coffin-maker.
[*] Chinese society is divided into two classes—officials and
non-officials.
[+] No matter whether by merit or by purchase.
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS
A great Chinese festival is the Feast of Lanterns, one which is only
second in importance to New Year's Day. Its name is not unfamiliar even to
persons in England who have never visited China, and whose ideas about the
country are limited to a confused jumble of pigtails, birds'-nest soup,
and the kotow. Its advent may or may not be noticed by residents in
China; though if they know the date on which it falls, we imagine that is
about as much as is generally known by foreigners of the Feast of
Lanterns.
This festival dates from the time of the Han dynasty, or, in round
numbers, about two thousand years ago. Originally it was a ceremonial
worship in the temple of the First Cause, and lasted from the 13th to the
16th of the first moon, bringing to a close on the latter date all the
rejoicings, feastings, and visitings consequent upon the New Year. In
those early days it had no claim to its present title, for lanterns were
not used; pious supplicants performed their various acts of prayer and
sacrifice by the light of the full round moon alone. It was not till some
eight hundred years later that art came to the assistance of nature, and
the custom was introduced of illuminating the streets with many a festoon
of those gaudy paper lanterns, without which now no nocturnal fete is
thought complete. Another three hundred years passed away without change,
and then two more days were added to the duration of the carnival, making
it six days in all. For this it was necessary to obtain the Imperial
sanction, and such was ultimately granted to a man named Ch'ien, in
consideration of an equivalent which, as history hints, might be very
readily expressed in taels. The whole thing now lasts from the 13th of the
moon, the day on which it is customary to light up for the first time, to
the 18th inclusive, when all the fun and jollity is over and the serious
business of life begins anew. The 15th is the great time, work of every
kind being as entirely suspended as it is with us on Christmas Day. At
night the candles are lighted in the lanterns, and crackers are fired in
every direction. The streets are thronged with gaping crowds, and
cut-purses make small fortunes with little or no trouble. There being no
policemen in a Chinese mob, and as the cry of "stop thief" would meet with
no response from the bystanders, a thief has simply to look out for some
simple victim, snatch perhaps his pipe from his hand, or his pouch from
his girdle, and elbow his way off as fast as he can go.
Plenty of lights and plenty of joss-stick would be enough of themselves to
make up a festival for Chinamen; in the present instance there should be
an extra abundance of both, though for reasons not generally known to
uneducated natives. Ask a coolie why he lights candles and burns
joss-stick at the Feast of Lanterns, and he will probably be unable to
reply. The idea is that the spirits of one's ancestors choose this
occasion to come back dulces revisere natos, and that in their
honour the hearth should be somewhat more swept and garnished than usual.
Therefore they consume bundle upon bundle of well-scented joss-stick, that
the noses of the spirits may run no risk of being offended by mundane
smells. Candles are lighted, that these disembodied beings may be able to
see their way about; and their sense of the beautiful is consulted by a
tasteful arrangement of the pretty lamps in which the dirty Chinese dips
are concealed. Worship on this occasion is tolerably promiscuous; the
Spirit of the Hearth generally comes in for his share, and Heaven and
Earth are seldom left out in the cold. One very important part of the fun
consists in eating largely of a kind of cake prepared especially for the
occasion. Sugar, or some sweet mince-meat, is wrapped up in snow-white
rice flour until about the size of a small hen's egg, only perfectly
round, and these are eaten by hundreds in every household. Their shape is
typical of a complete family gathering, for every Chinaman makes an effort
to spend the Feast of Lanterns at home.
Under the mournful circumstances of the late Emperor's death, the 15th of
the 1st Chinese moon was this year (1875) hardly distinguishable from any
other day since the rod of empire passed from the hands of a boy to those
of a baby. No festivities were possible; it was of course unlawful to hang
lamps in any profusion, and all Chinamen have been prohibited by Imperial
edict from wearing their best clothes. The utmost any one could do in the
way of enjoyment was to gorge himself with the rice-flour balls
above-mentioned, and look forward to gayer times when the days of mourning
shall be over.
OPIUM SMOKING
Many writers on Chinese topics delight to dwell upon the slow but sure
destruction of morals, manners, and men, which is being gradually effected
throughout the Empire by the terrible agency of opium. Harrowing pictures
are drawn of once well-to-do and happy districts which have been reduced
to know the miseries of disease and poverty by indulgence in the fatal
drug. The plague itself could not decimate so quickly, or war leave half
the desolation in its track, as we are told is the immediate result of
forgetting for a few short moments the cares of life in the enjoyment of a
pipe of opium. To such an extent is this language used, that strangers
arriving in China expect to see nothing less than the stern reality of all
the horrors they have heard described; and they are astonished at the
busy, noisy sight of a Chinese town, the contented, peaceful look of
China's villagers, and the rich crops which are so readily yielded to her
husbandmen by many an acre of incomparable soil. Where, then, is this
scourge of which men speak? Evidently not in the highways, the haunts of
commerce, or in the quiet repose of far-off agricultural hamlets. Bent on
search, and probably determined to discover something, our seeker after
truth is finally conducted to an opium den, one of those miserable hells
upon earth common to every large city on the globe. Here he beholds the
vice in all its hideousness; the gambler, the thief, the beggar, and such
outcasts from the social circle, meet here to worship the god who grants a
short nepenthe from suffering and woe. This, then, is China, and
travellers' tales are but too true. A great nation has fallen a prey to
the insidious drug, and her utter annihilation is but an affair of time!
We confess, however, we have looked for these signs in vain; but our
patience has been rewarded by the elucidation of facts which have led us
to brighter conclusions than those so generally accepted. We have not
judged China as a nation from the inspection of a few low opium-shops, or
from the half dozen extreme cases of which we may have been personally
cognizant, or which we may have gleaned from the reports of medical
missionaries in charge of hospitals for native patients. We do not deny
that opium is a curse, in so far as a large number of persons would be
better off without it; but comparing its use as a stimulant with that of
alcoholic liquors in the West, we are bound to admit that the comparison
is very much to the disadvantage of the latter. Where opium kills its
hundreds, gin counts its victims by thousands; and the appalling scenes of
drunkenness so common to a European city are of the rarest occurrence in
China. In a country where the power of corporal punishments is placed by
law in the hands of the husband, wife-beating is unknown; and in a country
where an ardent spirit can be supplied to the people at a low price, delirium
tremens is an untranslateable term. Who ever sees in China a tipsy man
reeling about a crowded thoroughfare, or lying with his head in a ditch by
the side of some country road? The Chinese people are naturally sober,
peaceful, and industrious; they fly from intoxicating, quarrelsome
samshoo, to the more congenial opium-pipe, which soothes the weary brain,
induces sleep, and invigorates the tired body.
In point of fact, we have failed to find but a tithe of that real vice
which cuts short so many brilliant careers among men who, with all the
advantages of education and refinement, are euphemistically spoken of as
addicted to the habit of "lifting their little fingers." Few Chinamen seem
really to love wine, and opium, by its very price, is beyond the reach of
the blue-coated masses. In some parts, especially in Formosa, a great
quantity is smoked by the well-paid chair-coolies, to enable them to
perform the prodigies of endurance so often required of them. Two of these
fellows will carry an ordinary Chinaman, with his box of clothes, thirty
miles in from eight to ten hours on the hottest days in summer. They
travel between five and six miles an hour, and on coming to a stage, pass
without a moment's delay to the place where food and opium are awaiting
their arrival. After smoking their allowance and snatching as much rest as
the traveller will permit, they start once more upon the road; and the
occupant of the chair cannot fail to perceive the lightness and elasticity
of their tread, as compared with the dull, tired gait of half an hour
before. They die early, of course; but we have trades in civilised England
in which a man thirty-six years of age is pointed at as a patriarch.
It is also commonly stated that a man who has once begun opium can never
leave it off. This is an entire fallacy. There is a certain point up to
which a smoker may go with impunity, and beyond which he becomes a lost
man in so far as he is unable ever to give up the practice. Chinamen ask
if an opium-smoker has the yin or not; meaning thereby, has he
gradually increased his doses of opium until he has established a craving
for the drug, or is he still a free man to give it up without endangering
his health. Hundreds and thousands stop short of the yin; a few,
leaving it far behind them in their suicidal career, hurry on to premature
old age and death. Further, from one point of view, opium-smoking is a
more self-regarding vice than drunkenness, which entails gout and other
evils upon the third and fourth generation. Posterity can suffer little or
nothing at the hands of the opium-smoker, for to the inveterate smoker all
chance of posterity is denied. This very important result will always act
as an efficient check upon an inordinately extensive use of the drug in
China, where children are regarded as the greatest treasures life has to
give, and blessed is he that has his quiver full.
Indulgence in opium is, moreover, supposed to blunt the moral feelings of
those who indulge; and to a certain extent this is true. If your servant
smokes opium, dismiss him with as little compunction as you would a
drunken coachman; for he can no longer be trusted. His wages being
probably insufficient to supply him with his pipe and leave a balance for
family expenses, he will be driven to squeeze more than usual, and
probably to steal. But to get rid of a writer or a clerk merely because he
is a smoker, however moderate, would be much the same as dismissing an
employe for the heinous offence of drinking two glasses of beer and a
glass of sherry at his dinner-time. An opium-smoker may be a man of
exemplary habits, never even fuddled, still less stupefied. He may take
his pipe because he likes it, or because it agrees with him; but it does
not follow that he must necessarily make himself, even for the time being,
incapable of doing business. Wine and moonlight were formerly considered
indispensables by Chinese bards; without them, no inspiration, no poetic
fire. The modern poetaster who pens a chaste ode to his mistress's
eyebrow, seeks in the opium-pipe that flow of burning thoughts which his
forefathers drained from the wine-cup. We cannot see that he does wrong.
We believe firmly that a moderate use of the drug is attended with no
dangerous results; and that moderation in all kinds of eating, drinking,
and smoking, is just as common a virtue in China as in England or anywhere
else.[*]
[*] Sir Edmund Hornley, after nine years' service as chief judge of
the Supreme Court at Shanghai, delivered an opinion on the anti-
opium movement in the following remarkable terms:—"Of all the
nonsense that is talked, there is none greater than that talked
here and in England about the immorality and impiety of the opium
trade. It is simply sickening. I have no sympathy with it, neither
have I any sympathy with the owner of a gin-palace; but as long as
China permits the growth of opium throughout the length and
breadth of the land, taxes it, and pockets a large revenue from
it,—sympathy with her on the subject is simply ludicrous and
misplaced."—(J. W. Walker v. Malcolm, 28th April 1875.)
But the following extract from a letter to the London and China
Express, of 5th July 1875, part of which we have ventured to
reproduce in italics, surpasses, both in fiction and naivete,
anything it has ever been our lot to read on either side of this
much-vexed question:—"The fact is, that this tremendous evil is
utterly beyond the control of politicians, or even
philanthropists. Nothing but the divine power of Christian life
can cope with it, and though this process may be slow, it is sure.
Christian missions alone can deal with the opium traffic, now that
it has attained such gigantic dimensions, and the despised
missionaries are solving a problem which to statesmen is
insoluble. Those, therefore, who recognise the evils of opium-
smoking will most effectually stay the plague by supporting
Christian Protestant Missions in China.—Yours faithfully,
"An Old Residenter in China.
"London, June 28, 1875."
THIEVING
Nowhere can the monotony of exile be more advantageously relieved by
studying dense masses of humanity under novel aspects than in China, where
so much is still unknown, and where the bulk of which is generally looked
upon as fact requires in most cases a leavening element of truth, in
others nothing more nor less than flat contradiction. The days are gone by
for entertaining romances published as if they were bona fide books
of travel, and the opening of China has enabled residents to smile at the
audacity of the too mendacious Huc. It has enabled them at the same time
to view millions of human beings working out the problem of existence
under conditions which by many persons in England are deemed to be totally
incompatible with the happiness of the human race. They behold all classes
in China labouring seven days in every week, taking holidays as each may
consider expedient with regard both to health and means, but without the
mental and physical demoralisation supposed to be inseparable from a
non-observance of the fourth commandment. They see the unrestricted sale
of spirituous liquors, unaccompanied by the scenes of brutality and
violence which form such a striking contrast to the intellectual
advancement of our age. They notice that charity has no place among the
virtues of the people, and that nobody gives away a cent he could possibly
manage to keep; the apparent result being that every one recognises the
necessity of working for himself, and that the mendicants of a large
Chinese city would barely fill the casual ward of one of our smallest
workhouses. They have a chance of studying a competitive system many
hundred years old, with the certainty of concluding that, whatever may be
its fate in England or elsewhere, it secures for the government of China
the best qualified and most intelligent men. Amongst other points, the
alleged thievishness of the Chinese is well worth a few moments'
consideration, were it only out of justice to the victims of what we
personally consider to be a very mischievous assertion. For it is a not
uncommon saying, even among Europeans who have lived in China, that the
Chinese are a nation of thieves. In Australia, in California, and in
India, Chinamen have beaten their more luxurious rivals by the noiseless
but irresistible competition of temperance, industry, and thrift: yet they
are a nation of thieves. It becomes then an interesting question how far a
low tone of morality on such an important point is compatible with the
undisputed practice of virtues which have made the fortunes of so many
emigrating Celestials. Now, as regards the amount of theft daily
perpetrated in China, we have been able to form a rough estimate, by very
careful inquiries, as to the number of cases brought periodically before
the notice of a district magistrate or his deputies, and we have come to a
conclusion unfavourable in the extreme to western civilisation, which has
not hesitated to dub China a nation of thieves. We have taken into
consideration the fact that many petty cases never come into court in
China, which, had the offence been committed in England, would assuredly
have been brought to the notice of a magistrate. We have not forgotten
that more robberies are probably effected in China without detection than
in a country where the police is a well-organised force, and detectives
trained men and keen. We know that in China many cases of theft are
compromised, by the stolen property being restored to its owner on payment
of a certain sum, which is fixed and shared in by the native constable who
acts as middleman between the two parties, and we are fully aware that
under circumstances of hunger or famine, and within due limits, the
abstraction of anything in the shape of food is not considered theft. With
all these considerations in mind, our statistics (save the mark!) would
still compare most favourably with the records of theft committed over an
area in England equal in size and population to that whence our
information was derived. The above refers specially to professional
practice, but when we descend to private life, and view with an impartial
eye the pilfering propensities of servants in China, we shall have even
less cause to rejoice over our boasted morality and civilisation. In the
first place, squeezing of masters by servants is a recognised system among
the Chinese, and is never looked upon in the light of robbery. It is commission
on the purchase of goods, and is taken into consideration by the servant
when seeking a new situation. Wages are in consequence low; sometimes, as
in the case of official runners and constables, servants have to make
their living as best they can out of the various litigants, very often
taking bribes from both parties. As far as slight raids upon wine,
handkerchiefs, English bacon, or other such luxuries dear to the heart of
the Celestial, we might ask any one who has ever kept house in England if
pilfering is quite unknown among servants there. If it were strictly true
that Chinamen are such thieves as we make them out to be, with our eastern
habits of carelessness and dependence, life in China would be next to
impossible. As it is, people hire servants of whom they know absolutely
nothing, put them in charge of a whole house many rooms in which are full
of tempting kickshaws, go away for a trip to a port five or six hundred
miles distant, and come back to find everything in its place down to the
most utter trifles. Merchants as a rule have their servants secured
by some substantial man, but many do not take this precaution, for an
honest Chinaman usually carries his integrity written in his face.
Confucius gave a wise piece of advice when he said, "If you employ a man,
be not suspicious of him; if you are suspicious of a man, do not employ
him"—and truly foreigners in China seem to carry out the first half
to an almost absurd degree, placing the most unbounded confidence in
natives with whose antecedents they are almost always unacquainted, and
whose very names in nine cases out of ten they actually do not know! And
what is the result of all this? A few cash extra charged as commission on
anything purchased at shop or market, and a steady consumption of about
four dozen pocket-handkerchiefs per annum. Thefts there are, and always
will be, in China as elsewhere; but there are no better grounds for
believing that the Chinese are a nation of thieves than that their own
tradition is literally true which says,﹃In the glorious days of old, if
anything was seen lying in the road, nobody would pick it up!﹄On the
contrary, we believe that theft is not one whit more common in China than
it is in England; and we are fully convinced that the imputation of being
a nation of thieves has been cast, with many others, upon the Chinese by
unscrupulous persons whose business it is to show that China will never
advance without the renovating influence of Christianity-an opinion from
which we here express our most unqualified dissent.
LYING
We have stated our conviction that the Chinese as a nation are not more
addicted to thieving than the inhabitants of many countries for whom the
same excuses are by no means so available. That no undiscerning persons
may be led to regard us as panegyrists of a stationary civilisation, we
hasten to counterbalance our somewhat laudatory statements by the
enunciation of another proposition less startling, but if anything more
literally true. The Chinese are a nation of liars. If innate ideas
were possible, the idea of lying would form the foundation of the Chinese
mind. They lie by instinct; at any rate, they lie from imitation, and
improve their powers in this respect by the most assiduous practice. They
seem to prefer lying to speaking the truth, even when there is no stake at
issue; and as for shame at being found out, the very feeling is unfamiliar
to them. The gravest and most serious works in Chinese literature abound
in lies; their histories lie; and their scientific works lie. Nothing in
China seems to have escaped this taint.
Essentially a people of fiction, the Chinese have given up as much time to
the composition and perusal of romances as any other nation on the globe;
and this phase of lying is harmless enough in its way. Neither can it be
said to interfere with the happiness of foreigners either in or out of
China that Chinese medical, astrological, geomantic, and such works,
pretend to a knowledge of mysteries we know to be all humbug. On the other
hand, they ought to keep their lying to themselves and for their own
special amusement. They have no right to circulate written and verbal
reports that foreigners dig out babies' eyes and use them in their
pharmacopoeia. They have no right to publish such hideous, loathsome
pamphlets, as the one which was some years ago translated into too
faithful English by an American missionary, who had better have kept his
talents to himself, or to post such inflammatory placards as the one which
is placed at the end of this volume. Self-glorification, when no one
suffers therefrom, is only laughable; and we shall take the liberty of
presenting here the translation of an article which appeared in the Shun
Pao of the 19th September 1874, as a specimen of the manner in which
Chinamen delight to deceive even themselves on certain little points
connected with the honour and glory of China. The writer says:—
"I saw yesterday in the Peking Gazette of the 10th September
1874 that the Prince of Kung had been degraded,—a fact received
with mingled feelings of surprise and regret by natives of the
Middle and Western kingdoms alike. For looking back to the last
year of the reign Hsien Feng, we find that not only internal
trouble had not been set at rest when external difficulties began
to spring up around us, and war and battle were the order of the
day. To crown all, His Majesty became a guest in the realm above,
leaving only a child of tender years, unable to hold in his hands
the reins of government. Then, with our ruler a youth and affairs
generally in an unsettled state, sedition within and war without,
although their Majesties the Empresses-Dowager directed the
administration of government from behind the bamboo screen, the
task of wielding the rod of empire must have been arduous indeed.
Since that time, ten years and more, the Eighteen Provinces have
been tranquillised; without, western nations have yielded
obedience and returned to a state of peace; within, the empire
has been fixed on a firm basis and has recovered its former
vitality. Never, even in the glorious ages of the Chou or Hsia
dynasties, has our national prosperity been so boundless as it is
to-day. Whenever I have seen one among the people patting his
stomach or carolling away in the exuberance of his joy, and have
asked the cause of his satisfaction, he has replied, 'It is
because of the loving-kindness of this our dynasty.' I ask what
and whence is this loving-kindness of which he speaks? He answers
me, 'It is the beneficent rule of their Majesties the Empresses-
Dowager; it is the unspeakable felicity vouchsafed by Heaven to
the Emperor; it is the loyalty and virtue of those in high places,
of Tseng Kuo-fan, of Li Hung-chang, of Tso Tsung-t'ang.' These,
however, are all provincial officials. Within the palace we have
the Empresses-Dowager, and His Majesty the Emperor, toiling away
from morn till dewy eve; but among the ministers of state who
transact business, receiving and making known the Imperial will,
working early and late in the Cabinet, the Prince of Kung takes
the foremost place; and it is through his agency, as natives and
foreigners well know, that for many years China has been regaining
her old status, so that any praise of their Imperial Majesties
leads naturally on to eulogistic mention of our noble Premier.
Hearing now that the Prince has incurred his master's displeasure,
there are none who do not fear lest his previous services may be
overlooked, hoping at the same time that the Emperor will be
graciously pleased to take them into consideration and cancel his
present punishment."
Lying, under any circumstances, is a very venial offence in China; it is,
in fact, no offence at all, for everybody is prepared for lies from all
quarters, and takes them as a matter of course.
It is strange, however, that such a practical people should not have
discovered long ago the mere expediency of telling the truth, in the same
way that they have found mercantile honesty to be unquestionably the best
policy, and that trade is next to impossible without it. But to argue, as
many do, that China is wanting in morality, because she has adopted a
different standard of right and wrong from our own, is, mutato nomine,
one of the most ridiculous traits in the character of the Chinese
themselves. They regard us as culpable in the highest degree because our
young men choose their own partners, marry, and set up establishments for
themselves, instead of bringing their wives to tend their aged parents,
and live all together in harmony beneath the paternal roof. We are
superior to the Chinese in our utter abhorrence of falsehood: in the
practice of filial piety they beat us out of the field. "Spartan virtue"
is a household word amongst us, but Sparta's claims to pre-eminence
certainly do not rest upon her children's love either for honesty or for
truth. The profoundest thinker of the nineteenth century has said that
insufficient truthfulness "does more than any one thing that can be named
to keep back civilisation, virtue, everything on which human happiness, on
the largest scale, depends"—an abstract proposition which cannot be
too carefully studied in connection with the present state of public
morality in China, and the general welfare of the people. Dr Legge,
however, whose logical are apparently in an inverse ratio to his
linguistic powers, rushes wildly into the concrete, and declares that
every falsehood told in China may be traced to the example of Confucius
himself. He acknowledges that﹃many sayings might be quoted from him, in
which 'sincerity' is celebrated as highly and demanded as stringently as
ever it has been by any Christian moralist,﹄yet, on the strength of two
passages in the Analects, and another in the "Family Sayings," he does not
hesitate to say that﹃the example of him to whom they bow down as the best
and wisest of men, encourages them to act, to dissemble, to sin.﹄And what
are these passages? In the first, Confucius applauds the modesty of an
officer who, after boldly bringing up the rear on the occasion of a
retreat, refused all praise for his gallant behaviour, attributing his
position rather to the slowness of his horse. In the second, an unwelcome
visitor calling on Confucius, the Master sent out to say he was sick, at
the same time seizing his harpsichord and singing to it,﹃in order that
Pei might hear him.﹄Dr Legge lays no stress on the last half of this
story—though it is impossible to believe that its meaning can have
escaped his notice altogether. Lastly, when Confucius was once taken
prisoner by the rebels, he was released on condition of not proceeding to
Wei. "Thither, notwithstanding, he continued his route," and when asked by
a disciple whether it was right to violate his oath, he replied, "It was a
forced oath. The spirits do not hear such."
We shall not attempt to defend Confucius on either of these indictments,
taken separately and without reference to his life and teachings; neither
do we wish to temper the accusations we ourselves have made against the
Chinese, of being a nation of liars. But when it is gravely asserted that
the great teacher who made truthfulness and sincerity his daily texts, is
alone responsible for a vicious national habit which, for aught any one
knows to the contrary, may be a growth of comparatively modern times, we
call to mind the Horatian poetaster, who began his account of the Trojan
war with the fable of Leda and the swan.
SUICIDE
Suicide, condemned among western nations by human and divine laws alike,
is regarded by the Chinese with very different eyes. Posthumous honours
are even in some cases bestowed upon the victim, where death was met in a
worthy cause. Such would be suicide from grief at the loss of a beloved
parent, or from fear of being forced to break a vow of eternal celibacy or
widowhood. Candidates are for the most part women, but the ordinary
Chinaman occasionally indulges in suicide, urged by one or other of two
potent causes. Either he cannot pay his debts and dreads the evil hour at
the New Year, when coarse-tongued creditors will throng his door, or he
may himself be anxious to settle a long-standing score of revenge against
some one who has been unfortunate enough to do him an injury. For this
purpose he commits suicide, it may be in the very house of his enemy, but
at any rate in such a manner as will be sure to implicate him and bring
him under the lash of the law. Nor is this difficult to effect in a
country where the ends of justice are not satisfied unless a life is given
for a life, where magistrates are venal, and the laws of evidence lax.
Occasionally a young wife is driven to commit suicide by the harshness of
her mother-in-law, but this is of rare occurrence, as the consequences are
terrible to the family of the guilty woman. The blood relatives of the
deceased repair to the chamber of death, and in the injured victim's hand
they place a broom. They then support the corpse round the room, making
its dead arm move the broom from side to side, and thus sweep away wealth,
happiness, and longevity from the accursed house for ever.
The following extract from the Peking Gazette of 14th September
1874, being a memorial by the Lieutenant Governor of Kiangsi, will serve
to show—though in this case the act was not consummated—that
under certain circumstances suicide is considered deserving of the highest
praise. In any case, public opinion in China has every little to say
against it:—
"The magistrate of the Hsin-yu district has reported to me that in
the second year of the present reign (1863) a young lady, the
daughter of a petty official, was betrothed to the son of
an expectant commissioner of the Salt Gabelle, and a day was fixed
upon for the marriage. The bridegroom, however, fell ill and died,
on which his fiancee would have gone over to the family to see
after his interment, and remain there for life as an unmarried
wife. As it was, her mother would not allow her to do so, but
beguiled her into waiting till her father, then away on business,
should return home. Meanwhile, the old lady betrothed her to
another man belonging to a different family, whereupon she took
poison and nearly died. On being restored by medical aid, she
refused food altogether; and it was not until she was permitted to
carry out her first intentions that she would take nourishment at
all. Since then she has lived with her father and mother-in-law,
tending them and her late husband's grandmother with the utmost
care. They love her dearly, and are thus in a great measure
consoled for the loss of their son. Long thorns serve her for
hair-pins;[*] her dress is of cotton cloth; her food consists of
bitter herbs. Such privations she voluntarily accepts, and among
her relatives there is not one but respects her.
『The truth of the above report having been ascertained, I would
humbly recommend this virtuous lady, although the full time
prescribed by law has not yet expired,[+] for some mark[:] of Your
Majesty's approbation.』Rescript:—Granted!
[*] Instead of the elaborate gold and silver ornaments usually worn by
Chinese women.
[+] A woman must be a widow before she is thirty years old, and remain
so for thirty years before she is entitled to the above reward.
This is both to guard against a possible relapse from her former
virtuous resolution, and to have some grounds for believing that
she was prompted so to act more by a sense of right than by any
ungallant neglect on the part of the other sex.
[:] Generally a tablet or banner, inscribed with well-chosen words of
praise.
The only strange part in this memorial is that the girl's mother was not
censured for trying to prevent her from acting the part of a virtuous wife
and filial daughter-in-law. It is also more than probable that her early
attempts at suicide, rather than any subsequent household economy or
dutiful behaviour, have secured for this lady the coveted mark of Imperial
approbation.
Suicide, while in an unsound state of mind, is rare; insanity itself,
whether temporary or permanent, being extremely uncommon in China. Neither
does the eye detect any of the vast asylums so numerous in England for the
reception of lunatics, idiots, deaf-mutes, cripples, and the blind. There
are a few such institutions here and there, but not enough to constitute a
national feature as with us. They are only for the poorest of the poor,
and are generally of more benefit to dishonest managers than to anybody
else. And yet in the streets of a Chinese town we see a far less number of
"unfortunates" than among our own highly civilised communities. Blindness
is the most common of the above afflictions, so many losing their sight
after an attack of small-pox. But a Chinaman with a malformation of any
kind is very seldom seen; and, as we have said before, lunacy appears to
be almost unknown. Such suicides as take place are usually
well-premeditated acts, and are committed either out of revenge, or in
obedience to the "despotism of custom." Statistics are impossible, and we
offer our conclusions, founded upon observation alone, subject to whatever
correction more scientific investigators may hereafter be enabled to
produce.
TORTURE
Torture is commonly supposed to be practised by Chinese officials upon
each and every occasion that a troublesome criminal is brought before
them. The known necessity they are under of having a prisoner's confession
before any "case" is considered complete, coupled with some few isolated
instances of unusual barbarity which have come to the notice of
foreigners, has probably tended to foster a belief that such scenes of
brutality are daily enacted throughout the length and breadth of China as
would harrow up the soul of any but a soulless native. The curious part of
it all is that Chinamen themselves regard their laws as the quintessence
of leniency, and themselves as the mildest and most gentle people of all
that the sun shines upon in his daily journey across the earth—and
back again under the sea. The truth lies of course somewhere between these
two extremes. For just as people going up a mountain complain to those
they meet coming down of the bitter cold, and are assured by the latter
that the temperature is really excessively pleasant—so, from a
western point of view certain Chinese customs savour of a cruelty long
since forgotten in Europe, while the Chinese enthusiast proudly compares
the penal code of this the Great Pure dynasty with the scattered laws and
unauthorised atrocities of distant and less civilised ages.
The Han dynasty which lasted from about B.C. 200 to A.D. 200 has been
marked by the historian as the epoch of change. Before that time
punishments of all kinds appear to have been terribly severe, and the
vengeance of the law pursued even the nearest and most distant relatives
of a criminal devoted perhaps to death for some crime in which they could
possibly have had no participation. It was then determined that in future
only rebellion should entail extirpation upon the families of such
seditious offenders, and at the same time legal punishments were limited
to five, viz.: bambooing of two degrees of severity, banishment to a
certain distance for a certain time or for life, and death. These were,
however, frequently exceeded by independent officers against whose acts it
would have been vain to appeal, and it was not until the Sui dynasty
(589-618 A.D.) that mutilation of the body was absolutely forbidden. It
may, indeed, be said to have survived to the present day in the form of
the "lingering death" which is occasionally prescribed for parricides and
matricides, but that we now know that this hideous fate exists only in
words and form. When it was first held to be inconsistent with reason to
mete out the same punishment to a highway robber who kills a traveller for
his purse, and to the villain who takes away life from the author of his
being, a distinction was instituted accordingly, but we can only rest in
astonishment that any executioner could be found to put such a horrible
law into execution as was devised to meet the requirements of the case.
First an arm was chopped off, then the other; the two legs in the same
way. Two slits were made transversely on the breast, and the heart was
torn out; decapitation finished the proceedings. Now, a slight gash only
is made across each collar-bone, and three gashes across the breast in the
shape of the character meaning one thousand, and indicative of the
number of strokes the criminal ought properly to have received.
Decapitation then follows without delay. The absurd statement in the
Shanghai Daily News of the 16th January last, that this punishment
﹃is the most frightful inflicted, even in any of the darkest habitations
of cruelty, at the present day,﹄is utterly unworthy of that respectable
journal, but only of a piece with the general ignorance that prevails
among foreigners generally on topics connected with China and the Chinese.
At the same time, it may fairly be pleaded that the error in question was
due to disingenuousness on the part of the translator from the Peking
Gazette who, mentioning that such a sentence had been lately passed
upon two unhappy beings, adds that, "they have been publicly sliced to
death accordingly, with the usual formalities,"—which certainly
might lead a mere outsider to conclude that the horrible decree had
actually been put into execution. We may notice in passing that this
so-called "lingering death" is now almost invariably coupled with the name
of some poor lunatic who in a frenzy of passion has killed either father
or mother, sometimes both. Vide Peking Gazette, two or three times
every year. This is one of those pleasant fictions of Chinese official
life, which every one knows and every one winks at. In nine cases out of
ten, the unhappy criminal is not mad at all; but he is always entered as
such in the report of the committing magistrate, who would otherwise
himself be exposed to censure and degradation for not having brought his
district to estimate at their right value the five[*] cardinal
relationships of mankind.
[*] Between, (1) sovereign and subject, (2) husband and wife, (3)
parent and child, (4) brothers, and (5) friends.
Under the present dynasty the use of torture is comparatively rare, and
mutilation of the person quite unknown. Criminals are often thrust into
filthy dungeons of the most revolting description, and are there further
secured by a chain; but except in very flagrant cases, ankle-beating and
finger-squeezing, to say nothing of kneeling on chains and hanging up by
the ears, belong rather to the past than to the present. The wife and
children of a rebel chief may pass their days in peace and quietness;
innocent people are no longer made to suffer with the guilty. A criminal
under sentence of death for any crime except rebellion may save his life
and be released from further punishment, if he can prove that an aged
parent depends upon him for the necessaries of daily existence. The heavy
bamboo, under the infliction of which sufferers not uncommonly died, has
given place to the lighter instrument of punishment, which may be used
severely enough for all practical purposes while it does not endanger
life. The Emperor K'ang Hsi, whose name is inseparably connected with one
of the most valuable lexicons that have ever been compiled, forbade
bambooing across the upper part of the back and shoulders.﹃Near the
surface,﹄said this benign father of his people,﹃lie the liver and the
lungs. For some trivial offence a man might be so punished that these
organs would never recover from the effects of the blows.﹄The ruling
system of bribery has taken away from the bamboo its few remaining terrors
for those whose means are sufficient to influence the hand which lays it
on. Petty offences are chiefly expiated by a small payment of money to the
gaoler, who lets the avenging bamboo fall proportionately light, or
assists the culprit by every means in his power to shirk the degradation
and annoyance of a week in the cangue.[*] These two are the only ordinary
punishments we hear much about; torture, properly so called, is permitted
under certain circumstances, but rarely if ever practised.
[*] A heavy wooden collar, taken off at night only if the sentence is
a long one, or on payment of a bribe.
In further support of this most heterodox position, we beg to offer a
translation of two chapters from "Advice to Government Officials," a
native work of much repute all over the Empire:—
"CHAPTER V.
"The infliction of the bamboo is open to abuse in various ways.
For instance, the knots in the wood may not have been smoothed
off; blows may be given inside the joints, instead of above the
knees; the tip end instead of the flat of the bamboo may be used;
each stroke may be accompanied by a drawing movement of the hand,
or the same spot may be struck again after the skin has been
broken, whereby the suffering of the criminal is very much
increased. Similarly, the 'squeezing' punishment depends entirely
for its severity on the length of the sticks employed, whether
these are wet or dry, as well as upon the tightness of the string.
Such points should be carefully looked to by the magistrate
himself, and not left to his subordinates. At the time of
infliction still greater precautions should be taken to prevent
the possibility of any accident, and where the offence was
committed under venial circumstances, some part of the punishment
may be remitted if it is considered that enough has already been
inflicted. Such punishments as pressing the knees to the ground,
making prisoners kneel on chains, or burning their legs with hot
irons, adopted under the specious pretence of not using the
'squeezing' torture, are among the most barbarous of prohibited
practices, and are on no account to be allowed."
"CHAPTER VI.
"Lu Hsin-wu says, There are five classes of people who must be
exempted from the punishment of the bamboo. (1) The aged. (2) The
young. (3) The sick. [It is laid down expressly by statute that
the aged and the young must not be thus coerced into giving
evidence, but there is a danger of overlooking this in a moment of
anger.] (4) The hungry and naked. [For thus to punish a beggar
half dead with cold and hunger and destitute of friends to nurse
him afterwards, would be equivalent to killing him outright.] (5)
Those who have already been beaten. [Whether in a brawl or by
other officials. A second beating might result in death for which
the presiding magistrate would be responsible.]
"There are five classes of people not to be hastily sentenced to
the bamboo. (1) Members of the Imperial family. [The relatives of
his Majesty, even though holding no rank, are not, says the
statute, to be hastily punished in this way. The case must be laid
before the proper authorities.] (2) Officials. [However low down
in a scale, they are still part of the scheme of government;
besides, it affects their good name ever afterwards.] (3)
Graduates. (4) The official servants of your superiors. [Look out
for the vase when you throw at the rat. Though you may be actually
in the right, yet the dignity of your superiors might be
compromised. A plain statement of the facts should be made out and
privately handed to the official in question, leaving punishment
in his hands. But to refrain from such a course through fear of
the consequences would be weak indeed.] (5) Women.
"There are also five cases in which temporary suspension of
punishment is necessary. (1) When the prisoner is under the
influence of excitement, or (2) anger. [The working classes are an
obstinate lot and beating only increases their passion, so that
they would die rather than yield. Arguments should first be used
to show them their error, and then corporal punishment may be used
without fear.] (3) Or drink. [A drunken man doesn't know heaven
from earth, how can he be expected to distinguish right from
wrong? Besides he feels no pain, and further there is a risk of
his insulting the magistrate. He ought to be confined until he is
sober and then punished; but not in a cold place for fear of
endangering his life.] (4) Or when a man has just completed a
journey, or (5) when he is out of breath with running.
"There are also five instances in which it is well for your own
sake to put off punishment for a time. (1) When you are in a rage.
(2) When you are drunk. (3) When you are unwell. [For in the
latter case the system is heated, and not only would you be more
liable to improper infliction of punishment, but also to lose your
temper; and thus injury would be done both to yourself and the
prisoner.] (4) When you can't see your way clearly as to the facts
of the case. (5) When you can't make up your mind as to the proper
punishment. [For in difficult cases and when the prisoner in
question is no ordinary man, it is just as well to look forward a
little as to how the case is likely to end before you apply the
bamboo. It would never do to take such measures without some
consideration, or you might suddenly find that you had by no means
heard the last of it.]
"There are three classes of people who should not be beaten in
addition to what they are to suffer. (1) Those who are to have
their fingers squeezed. (2) Those who are to have the ankle frame
applied. (3) Those who are to be exposed in the cangue. [For if
previously beaten they might be almost unable to move, or their
sores might not heal, and death might perhaps ensue. The statute
provides that they shall be beaten on release, but this might
easily be forgotten in a moment of anger.]
"There are three instances in which compassion should save the
prisoners from the bamboo. (1) When the weather is extremely cold
or hot. (2) When a festival is being celebrated. (3) When the
prisoner has lately been bereaved. [A man who is mourning for his
father, mother, wife, or child, should not be punished
corporeally; it might endanger his life.]
"There are three cases in which a beating deserved should
nevertheless be remitted. (1) When one of the litigants is
considerably older than the other, he should not be beaten. (2)
When one of the litigants is an official servant, the other should
not be beaten. [For although the former may be in the right, his
opponent should be treated with leniency, for fear of people
saying you protect your Yamen servants; and lest in future, when
the servant is in the wrong, no one will dare come forward to
accuse him.] (3) Workmen and others employed by the magistrate
himself should not be bambooed by him, even if they deserve it.
"Three kinds of bambooing are forbidden. (1) With the greater
bamboo. [One stroke of the greater bamboo is counted as ten;
three with the middle-sized, and five with the smaller.
Officials are often too free with, never too chary of, their
punishments. With the smaller bamboo, used even to excess, life is
not endangered. Besides, if the punishment is spread over a longer
time, the magistrate has a longer interval in which to get calm.
But with the heavy bamboo, there is no saying what injuries might
be done even with a few blows.] (2) It is forbidden to strike too
low down. (3) It is forbidden to allow petty officers to use
unauthorised instruments of punishment. These five preceding
clauses refer to cases in which there is no doubt that punishment
ought to be inflicted, but which officials are apt to punish too
indiscriminately without due investigation of circumstances,
whereby they infallibly stir up a feeling of discontent and
insubordination. As regards those instances where punishment is
deserved but should be temporarily suspended, a remission of part
or the whole of the sentence may be granted as the magistrate sees
fit. The great point is to admit an element of compassion, as
thereby alone the due administration of punishment can be
ensured."
FENG-SHUI
"Feng-shui" has of late years grown to be such a common expression in the
mouths of foreigners resident in China that it stands no poor chance of
becoming gradually incorporated in the languages of more than one nation
of the West. And yet, in spite of Dr Eitel's little hand-book, we may
venture to assert that a very small percentage of those who are constantly
using this phrase really have a distinct and correct idea as to the
meaning of the words they employ. It is vaguely known that Feng-shui is a
powerful weapon in the hands of Chinese officials whereby they
successfully oppose all innovations which savour of progress, and preserve
unbroken that lethargic sleep in which China has been wrapt for so many
centuries: beyond this all is mystery and doubt. Some say the natives
themselves do not believe in it; others declare they do; others again
think that the masses have faith, but that enlightened and educated
Chinese scout the whole thing as a bare-faced imposture. Most Chinamen
will acknowledge they are entirely ignorant themselves on the subject,
though at the same time they will take great pains to impress on their
hearers that certain friends, relatives, or acquaintances as the case may
be, have devoted much time and attention to this fascinating study and are
downright professors of the art. They will further express their
conviction of its infallibility, with certain limitations; and assert that
there are occasions in life, when to call in the assistance of Feng-shui
is not only advisable but indispensable to human happiness.
For those who will not be at the trouble of reading for themselves Dr
Eitel's valuable little book, we may explain that Feng is the Chinese word
for wind and Shui for water; consequently, Feng-shui is
wind-water; the first half of which, wind, cannot be comprehended,
the latter half, water, cannot be grasped. It may be defined as a
system of geomancy, by the science of which it is possible to
determine the desirability of sites whether of tombs, houses, or cities,
from the configuration of such natural objects as rivers, trees, and
hills, and to foretell with certainty the fortunes of any family,
community, or individual, according to the spot selected; by the art
of which it is in the power of the geomancer to counteract evil influences
by good ones, to transform straight and noxious outlines into undulating
and propitious curves, rescue whole districts from the devastations of
flood or pestilence, and "scatter plenty o'er a smiling land" which might
otherwise have known the blight of poverty and the pangs of want. To
perform such miracles it is merely necessary to build pagodas at certain
spots and of the proper height, to pile up a heap of stones, or round off
the peak of some hill to which nature's rude hand has imparted a square
and inharmonious aspect. The scenery round any spot required for building
or burial purposes must be in accordance with certain principles evolved
from the brains of the imaginative founders of the science. It is the
business of the geomancer to discover such sites, to say if a given
locality is or is not all that could be desired on this head, sometimes to
correct errors which ignorant quacks have committed, or rectify
inaccuracies which have escaped the notice even of the most celebrated
among the fraternity. There may be too many trees, so that some must be
cut down; or there may be too few, and it becomes necessary to plant more.
Water-courses may not flow in proper curves; hills may be too high, too
low, and of baleful shapes, or their relative positions one with another
may be radically bad. Any one of these causes may be sufficient in the
eyes of a disciple of Feng-shui to account for the sudden outbreak of a
plague, the gradual or rapid decay of a once flourishing town. The
Feng-shui of a house influences not only the pecuniary fortunes of its
inmates, but determines their general happiness and longevity. There was a
room in the British Legation at Peking in which two persons died with no
great interval of time between each event; and subsequently one of the
students lay there in articulo mortis for many days. The Chinese
then pointed out that a tall chimney had been built opposite the door
leading into this room, thereby vitiating the Feng-shui, and making the
place uninhabitable by mortal man.
From the above most meagre sketch it is easy to understand that if the
natural or artificial configuration of surrounding objects is really
believed by the Chinese to influence the fortunes of a city, a family, or
an individual, they are only reasonably averse to the introduction of such
novelties as railways and telegraph poles, which must inevitably sweep
away their darling superstition—never to rise again. And they do
believe; there can be no doubt of it in the mind of any one who has taken
the trouble to watch. The endless inconvenience a Chinaman will suffer
without a murmur rather than lay the bones of a dear one in a spot
unhallowed by the fiat of the geomancer; the sums he will subscribe to
build a protecting pagoda or destroy some harmful combination; the pains
he will be at to comply with well-known principles in the construction and
arrangement of his private house—all prove that the iron of
Feng-shui has entered into his soul, and that the creed he has been
suckled in is the very reverse of outworn. The childlike faith of his
early years gradually ripens into a strong and vigorous belief against
which ridicule is perhaps the worst weapon that can possibly be used.
Nothing less than years of contact with foreign nations and deep draughts
of that real science which is even now stealing imperceptibly upon them,
will bring the Chinese to see that Feng-shui is a vain shadow, that it has
played its allotted part in the history of a great nation, and is now only
fit to be classed with such memories of by-gone glory as the supremacy of
China, the bow and arrow, the matchlock, and the junk.
MONEY
Few things are more noticeable in China than the incessant chattering kept
up by servants, coolies, and members of the working classes. It is rare to
meet a string of porters carrying their heavy burdens along some country
road, who are not jabbering away, one and all, as if in the very heat of
some exciting discussion, and afraid that their journey will come to an
end before their most telling arguments are exhausted. One wonders what
ignorant, illiterate fellows like these can possibly have to talk about to
each other in a country where beer-shop politics are unknown, where
religious disputations leave no sting behind, and want of communication
limits the area of news to half-a-dozen neighbouring streets in a single
agricultural village. Comparing the uncommunicative deportment of a bevy
of English bricklayers, who will build a house without exchanging much
beyond an occasional pipe-light, with the vivacious gaiety of these
light-hearted sons of Han, the problem becomes interesting enough to
demand a solution of the question—What is it these Chinamen talk
about? And the answer is, Money. It may be said they talk, think,
dream of nothing else. They certainly live for little besides the hope of
some day compassing, if not wealth, at any rate a competency. The temple
of Plutus—to be found in every Chinese city—is rarely without
a suppliant; but there is no such hypocrisy in the matter as that of the
Roman petitioner who would pray aloud for virtue and mutter "gold." And
yet a rich man in China is rather an object of pity than otherwise. He is
marked out by the officials as their lawful prey, and is daily in danger
of being called upon to answer some false, some trumped-up accusation. A
subscription list, nominally for a charitable purpose, for building a
bridge, or repairing a road, is sent to him by a local magistrate, and woe
be to him if he does not head it with a handsome sum. A ruffian may
threaten to charge him with murder unless he will compromise instantly for
Tls. 300; and the rich man generally prefers this course to proving his
innocence at a cost of about Tls. 3000. He may be accused of some trivial
disregard of prescribed ceremonies, giving a dinner-party, or arranging
the preliminaries of his son's marriage, before the days of mourning for
his own father have expired. No handle is too slight for the grasp of the
greedy mandarin, especially if he has to do with anything like a
recalcitrant millionaire. But this very mandarin himself, if compelled by
age and infirmities to resign his place, is forced in his turn to yield up
some of the ill-gotten wealth with which he had hoped to secure the
fortunes of his family for many a generation to come. The young hawks peck
out the old hawks' e'en without remorse. The possession of money is
therefore rather a source of anxiety than happiness, though this doesn't
seem to diminish in the slightest degree the Chinaman's natural craving
for as much of it as he can secure. At the same time, the abominable
system of official extortion must go far to crush a spirit of enterprise
which would otherwise most undoubtedly be rife. Everybody is so afraid of
bringing himself within the clutch of the law, that innovation is quite
out of the question.
Neither in the private life of a rich Chinese merchant do we detect the
same keen enjoyment of his wealth as is felt by many an affluent western,
to whom kindly nature has given the intellect to use it rightly. The
former indulges in sumptuous feasts, but he does not collect around his
table men who can only give him wit in return for his dinner; he rather
seeks out men whose purses are as long as his own, from amongst whose
daughters he may select a well-dowried mate for his dunderheaded son. He
accumulates vast wardrobes of silk, satin, and furs; but he probably could
not show a copy of the first edition of K'ang Hsi, or a single bowl
bearing the priceless stamp of six hundred years ago. These articles are
collected chiefly by scholars, who often go without a meal or two in order
to obtain the coveted specimen; the rich merchant spends his money chiefly
on dinners, dress, and theatrical entertainments, knowing and caring
little or nothing about art. His conversation is also, like that of his
humbler countrymen, confined to one topic; if he is a banker, rates of
exchange haunt him day and night; whatever he is, he lives in daily dread
of the next phase of extortion to which he will be obliged to open an
unwilling purse. How different from the literati of China who live day by
day almost from hand to mouth, eking out a scanty subsistence by writing
scrolls for door-posts, and perhaps presenting themselves periodically at
the public examinations, only to find that their laboured essays are
thrown out amongst the ruck once more! Yet these last are undeniably the
happier of the two. Having no wealth to excite the rapacious envy of their
rulers, they pass through life in rapt contemplation of the sublime
attributes of their Master, forgetting even the pangs of hunger in the
elucidation of some obscure passage in the Book of Changes, and caring
least of all for the idol of their unlettered brethren, except in so far
as it would enable them to make more extensive purchases of their beloved
books, and provide a more ample supply of the "four jewels" of the
scholar. Occasionally to be seen in the streets, these literary devotees
may be known by their respectable but poverty-stricken appearance,
generally by their spectacles, and always by their stoop, acquired in many
years of incessant toil. These are the men who hate us with so deep a
hate, for we have dared to set up a rival to the lofty position so long
occupied by Confucius alone. If we came in search of trade only, they
would tolerate, because they could understand our motives, and afford to
despise; but to bring our religion with us, to oppose the precepts of
Christ to the immortal apophthegms of the Master, this is altogether too
much for the traditions in which they have been brought up.
A DINNER-PARTY
It is a lamentable fact that although China has now been open for a
considerable number of years both to trade and travellers, she is still a
sealed book to the majority of intelligent Europeans as regards her
manners and customs, and the mode of life of her people. Were it not so,
such misleading statements as those lately published by a young gentleman
in the service of H.I.M. the Emperor of China, and professing to give an
account of a Chinese dinner, could never have been served up by
half-a-dozen London newspapers as a piece of valuable information on the
habits of Chinamen. There is so much that is really quaint, interesting,
and worthy of record in the social etiquette observed by the natives of
China, that no one with eyes to see and ears to hear need ever draw upon
his imagination in the slightest degree. We do not imply that this has
been done in the present instance. The writer has only erred through
ignorance. He has doubtless been to a Chinese dinner where he﹃sat inside
a glass door, and cigars were handed round after the repast,﹄as many
other brave men have been before him,—at Mr Yang's, the celebrated
Peking pawn-broker. But had he been to more than that one, or taken the
trouble to learn something about the subject on which he was writing, he
would have found out that glass doors and cigars are not natural and
necessary adjuncts to a Chinese dinner. They are in fact only to be found
at the houses of natives who have mixed with foreigners and are in the
habit of inviting them to their houses. The topic is an interesting one,
and deserves a somewhat elaborate treatment, both for its own sake as a
study of native customs, and also to aid in dispelling a host of absurd
ideas which have gathered round these everyday events of Chinese life. For
it is an almost universal belief that Chinamen dine daily upon rats,
puppy-dogs, and birds'-nest soup; whereas the truth is that, save among
very poor people, the first is wholly unknown, and the two last are
comparatively expensive dishes. Dog hams are rather favourite articles of
food in the south of China, but the nests from which the celebrated soup
is made are far too expensive to be generally consumed.
A dinner-party in China is a most methodical affair as regards precedence
among guests, the number of courses, and their general order and
arrangement. We shall endeavour to give a detailed and accurate account of
such a banquet as might be offered to half-a-dozen friends by a native in
easy circumstances. In the first place, no ladies would be present, but
men only would occupy seats at the square, four-legged "eight fairy"
table. Before each there will be found a pair of chopsticks, a wine-cup, a
small saucer for soy, a two-pronged fork, a spoon, a tiny plate divided
into two separate compartments for melon seeds and almonds, and a pile of
small pieces of paper for cleaning these various articles as required.
Arranged upon the table in four equidistant rows are sixteen small dishes
or saucers which contain four kinds of fresh fruits, four kinds of dried
fruits, four kinds of candied fruits, and four miscellaneous, such as
preserved eggs, slices of ham, a sort of sardine, pickled cabbage, &c.
These four are in the middle, the other twelve being arranged alternately
round them. Wine is produced the first thing, and poured into small
porcelain cups by the giver of the feast himself. It is polite to make a
bow and place one hand at the side of the cup while this operation is
being performed. The host then gives the signal to drink and the cups are
emptied instantaneously, being often turned bottom upwards as a proof
there are no heel-taps. Many Chinamen, however, cannot stand even a small
quantity of wine; and it is no uncommon thing when the feast is given at
an eating-house, to hire one of the theatrical singing-boys to perform
vicariously such heavy drinking as may be required by custom or exacted by
forfeit. The sixteen small dishes above-mentioned remain on the table
during the whole dinner and may be eaten of promiscuously between courses.
Now we come to the dinner, which may consist of eight large and eight
small courses, six large and six small, eight large and four small, or six
large and four small, according to the means or fancy of the host, each
bowl of food constituting a course being placed in the middle of the table
and dipped into by the guests with chopsticks or spoon as circumstances
may require. The first is the commonest, and we append a bill of fare of
an ordinary Chinese dinner on that scale, each course coming in its proper
place.
I. Sharks' fins with crab sauce.
1. Pigeons' eggs stewed with mushrooms.
2. Sliced sea-slugs in chicken broth with ham.
II. Wild duck and Shantung cabbage.
3. Fried fish.
4. Lumps of pork fat fried in rice flour.
III. Stewed lily roots.
5. Chicken mashed to pulp, with ham.
6. Stewed bamboo shoots.
IV. Stewed shell-fish.
7. Fried slices of pheasant.
8. Mushroom broth.
Remove—Two dishes of fried pudding, one sweet and the other salt,
with two dishes of steamed puddings, also one sweet and one
salt. [These four are put on the table together and with them
is served a cup of almond gruel.]
V. Sweetened duck.
VI. Strips of boned chicken fried in oil.
VII. Boiled fish (of any kind) with soy.
VIII. Lumps of parboiled mutton fried in pork-fat.
These last four large courses are put on the table one by one and are not
taken away. Subsequently a fifth, a bowl of soup, is added, and small
basins of rice are served round, over which some of the soup is poured.
The meal is then at an end. A rince-bouche is handed to each guest
and a towel dipped in boiling water but well wrung out. With the last he
mops his face all over, and the effect is much the same as half a noggin
of Exshare diluted with a bottle of Schweppe. Pipes and tea are now handed
round, though this is not the first appearance of tobacco on the scene.
Many Chinamen take a whiff or two at their hubble-bubbles between almost
every course, as they watch the performance of some broad farce which on
grand occasions is always provided for their entertainment. Opium is
served when dinner is over for such as are addicted to this luxury; and
after a few minutes, spent perhaps in arranging the preliminaries of some
future banquet, the party, which has probably lasted from three to four
hours, is no longer of the present but in the past.
FEMALE CHILDREN
A great deal of trash has been committed to writing by various foreigners
on the subject of female children in China. The prevailing belief in
Europe seems to be that the birth of a daughter is looked upon as a
mournful event in the annals of a Chinese family, and that a large
percentage of the girls born are victims of a wide-spread system of
infanticide, a sufficient number, however, being spared to prevent the
speedy depopulation of the Empire. It became our duty only the other day
to correct a mistake, on the part of a reverend gentleman who has been
some twelve years a missionary in China, bearing on this very subject. He
observed that﹃the Chinese are always profuse in their congratulations on
the birth of a son; but if a girl is born, the most hearty word
they can afford to utter is, 'girls too are necessary.'﹄Such a statement
is very misleading, and cannot, in these days of enlightenment on Chinese
topics, be allowed to pass unchallenged.﹃I hear you have obtained one
thousand ounces of gold,﹄is perhaps the commonest of those flowery
metaphors which the Chinese delight to bandy on such an auspicious
occasion; another being, "You have a bright pearl in your hand," &c.,
&c. The truth is that parents in China are just as fond of all their
children as people in other and more civilised countries, where male
children are also eagerly desired to preserve the family from extinction.
The excess in value of the male over the female is perhaps more strongly
marked among the Chinese, owing of course to the peculiarity of certain
national customs, and not to any want of parental feeling; but, on the
other hand, a very fair share both of care and affection is lavished upon
the daughters either of rich or poor. They are not usually taught to read
as the boys are, because they cannot enter any condition of public life,
and education for mere education's sake would be considered as waste of
time and money by all except very wealthy parents. Besides, when a
daughter is married, not only is it necessary to provide her with a
suitable dowry and trousseau, but she passes over to the house of her
husband, there to adopt his family name in preference to her own, and
contract new obligations to a father- and mother-in-law she may only have
seen once or twice in her life, more binding in their stringency than
those to the father and mother she has left behind. A son remains by his
parents' side in most cases till death separates them for ever, and on him
they rely for that due performance of burial rites which alone can ensure
to their spirits an eternal rest. When old age or disease comes upon them,
a son can go forth to earn their daily rice, and protect them from
poverty, wrong, and insult, where a daughter would be only an additional
encumbrance. It is no wonder therefore that the birth of a son is hailed
with greater manifestations of joy than is observable among western
nations; at the same time, we must maintain that the natural love of
Chinese parents for their female offspring is not thereby lessened to any
appreciable degree. No red eggs are sent by friends and relatives
on the birth of a daughter as at the advent of the first boy, the hope and
pride of the family; but in other respects the customs and ceremonies
practised on these occasions are very much the same. On the third day the
milk-name is given to the child, and if a girl her ears are pierced for
earrings. A little boiled rice is rubbed upon the lobe of the ear, which
is then subjected to friction between the finger and thumb until it gets
quite numb: it is next pierced with a needle and thread dipped in oil, the
latter being left in the ear. No blood flows. Boys frequently have one ear
pierced, as some people say, to make them look like little girls; and up
to the age of thirteen or fourteen, girls often wear their hair braided in
a tail to make them look like little boys. But the end of the tail is
always tied with red silk—the differentiating colour between
youths and maids in China. And here we may mention that the colour of the
silk which finishes off a Chinaman's tail differs according to
circumstances. Black is the ordinary colour, often undistinguishable from
the long dresses in which they take such pride; white answers to
deep crape with us, and proclaims that either the father or mother of the
wearer has bid adieu to this sublunary sphere;[*] green, yellow,
and blue, are worn for more distant relatives, or for parents after
the first year of mourning has expired.
[*] The verb "to die" is rarely used by the Chinese of their
relatives. Some graceful periphrasis is adapted instead.
We will conclude with a curious custom which, as far as our inquiries have
extended, seems to be universal. The first visitor, stranger, messenger,
coolie, or friend, who comes to the house where a new-born baby lies,
ignorant that such an event has taken place, is on no account allowed to
go away without having first eaten a full meal. This is done to secure to
the child a peaceful and refreshing night's rest; and as Chinamen are
always ready at a moment's notice to dispose of a feed at somebody else's
expense, difficulties are not likely to arise on a score of a previous
dinner.
TRAVEL
Books of travel are eagerly read by most classes of Chinese who have been
educated up to the requisite standard, and long journeys have often been
undertaken to distant parts of the Empire, not so much from a thirst for
knowledge or love of a vagrant life, as from a desire to be enrolled among
the numerous contributors to the deathless literature of the Middle
Kingdom. Such travellers start with a full knowledge of the tastes of
their public, and a firm conviction that unless they can provide
sufficiently marvellous stories out of what they have seen and heard, the
fame they covet is not likely to be accorded. No European reader who
occupies himself with these works can fail to discover that in every
single one of them invention is brought more or less into play; and that
when fact is not forthcoming, the exigencies of the book are supplemented
from the convenient resources of fiction. Of course this makes the
accounts of Chinese travellers almost worthless, and often ridiculous;
though strange to say, amongst the Chinese themselves, even to the
grossest absurdities and most palpable falsehoods, there hardly attaches a
breath of that suspicion which has cast a halo round the name of Bruce.
We have lately come across a book of travels, in six thin quarto volumes,
written by no less a personage than the father of Ch'ung-hou. It is a very
handsome work, being well printed and on good paper, besides being
provided with numerous woodcuts of the scenes and scenery described in the
text. The author, whose name was Lin-ch'ing, was employed in various
important posts; and while rising from the position of Prefect to that of
Acting Governor-General of the two Kiang, travelled about a good deal, and
was somewhat justified in committing his experiences to paper. We doubt,
however, if his literary efforts are likely to secure him a fraction of
the notoriety which the Tientsin Massacre has conferred upon his son. He
never saw the moon shining upon the water, but away he went and wrote an
ode to the celestial luminary, always introducing a few pathetic lines on
the hardships of travel and the miseries of exile. One chapter is devoted
to the description of a curious rock called the Loom Rock. It is
situated in the Luhsi district of the Chang-chou prefecture in Hunan, and
is perfectly inaccessible to man, as it well might be, to judge from the
drawing of it by a native artist. From a little distance, however, caves
are discernible hollowed out in the cliff, and in these the eye can detect
various articles used in housekeeping, such as a teapot, &c.; and
amongst others a loom. On a ledge of smooth rock a boat may be
seen, as it were hauled up out of the water. How these got there, and what
is the secret of the place, nobody appears to know, but our author
declares that he saw them with his own eyes. We have given the above
particulars as to the whereabouts of the rock, in the hope that any
European meditating a trip into Hunan may take the trouble to make some
inquiries about this wonderful sight. The late Mr Margary must have passed
close to it in his boat, probably without being aware of its existence—if
indeed it does exist at all.
We cannot refrain from translating verbatim one passage which has
reference to the English, and of which we fancy Ch'ung-hou himself would
be rather ashamed since his visit to the Outside Nations. Here it is:—
"When the English barbarians first began to give trouble to the
Inner Nation, they relied on the strength of their ships and the
excellence of their guns. It was therefore proposed to build large
ships and cast heavy cannon in order to oppose them. I
represented, however, that vessels are not built in a day, and
pointed out the difficulties in the way of naval warfare. I showed
that the power of a cannon depends upon the strength of the
powder, and the strength of the powder upon the sulphur and
saltpetre; the latter determining the explosive force forwards and
backwards, and the former, the same force towards either side.
Therefore to ensure powder being powerful, there should be seven
parts saltpetre out of ten. The English barbarians have got rattan
ash which they can use instead of sulphur, but saltpetre is a
product of China alone. Accordingly, I memorialised His Majesty to
prohibit the export of saltpetre, and caused some thirty-seven
thousand pounds to be seized by my subordinates."
PREDESTINATION
Theoretically, the Chinese are fatalists in the fullest sense of the word.
Love of life and a desire to enjoy the precious boon as long as possible,
prevent them from any such extended application of the principle as would
be prejudicial to the welfare of the nation; yet each man believes that
his destiny is pre-ordained, and that the whole course of his life is
mapped out for him with unerring exactitude. Happily, when the occasion
presents itself, his thoughts are generally too much occupied with the
crisis before him, to be able to indulge in any dangerous speculations on
predestination and free-will; his practice, therefore, is not invariably
in harmony with his theory.
On the first page of a Chinese almanack for the current year, we have a
curious woodcut representing a fly, a spider, a bird, a sportsman, a
tiger, and a well. Underneath this strange medley is a legend couched in
the following terms:—"Predestination in all things!" The letterpress
accompanying the picture explains that the spider had just secured a fat
fly, and was on the point of making a meal of him, when he was espied by a
hungry bird which swooped down on both. As the bird was making off to its
nest with this delicious mouthful, a sportsman who happened to be casting
round for a supper, brought it down with his gun, and was stooping to pick
it up, when a tiger, also with an empty stomach, sprang from behind upon
the man, and would there and then have put an end to the drama, but for an
ugly well, on the brink of which the bird had dropped, and into which the
tiger, carried on by the impetus of his spring, tumbled headlong, taking
with him man, bird, spider, and fly in one fell career to the bottom. This
fable embodies popular ideas in China with regard to predestination, by
virtue of which calamity from time to time overtakes doomed victims, as a
punishment for sins committed in their present or a past state of
existence. Coupled with this belief are many curious sayings and customs,
the latter of which often express in stronger terms than language the
feelings of the people. For instance, at the largest centre of population
in the Eighteen Provinces, there is a regulation with regard to the
porterage by coolies of wine and oil, which admirably exemplifies the
subject under consideration. If on a wet and stormy day, or when the
ground is covered with snow, a coolie laden with either of the above
articles slips and falls, he is held responsible for any damage that may
be done; whereas, if he tumbles down on a fine day when the streets are
dry, and there is no apparent cause for such an accident, the owner of the
goods bears whatever loss may occur. The idea is that on a wet and
slippery day mere exercise of human caution would be sufficient to avert
the disaster, but happening in bright, dry weather, it becomes indubitably
a manifestation of the will of Heaven. In the same way, an endless run of
bad luck or some fearful and overwhelming calamity, against which no
mortal foresight could guard, is likened to the burning of an ice-house,
which, from its very nature, would almost require the interposition of
Divine power to set it in a blaze. In such a case, he who could doubt the
reality of predestination would be ranked, in Chinese eyes, as little
better than a fool. And yet when these emergencies arise we do not find
the Chinese standing still with their hands in their sleeves (for want of
pockets), but working away to stop whatever mischief is going on, as if
after the all the will of Heaven may be made amenable to human energy. It
is only when an inveterate gambler or votary of the opium-pipe has seen
his last chance of solace in this life cut away from under him, and feels
himself utterly unable any longer to stem the current, that he weakly
yields to the force of his destiny, and borrows a stout rope from a
neighbour, or wanders out at night to the brink of some deep pool never to
return again.
There is a charming episode in the second chapter of the﹃Dream of the Red
Chamber,﹄where the father of Pao-yu is anxious to read the probable
destiny of his infant son. He spreads before the little boy, then just one
year old, all kinds of different things, and declares that from whichever
of these the baby first seizes, he will draw an omen as to his future
career in life. We can imagine how he longed for his boy to grasp the
manly bow, in the use of which he might some day rival the immortal
archer Pu:—the sword, and live to be enrolled a fifth among
the four great generals of China:—the pen, and under the
favouring auspices of the god of literature, rise to assist the Son of
Heaven with his counsels, or write a commentary upon the Book of Rites.
Alas for human hopes! The naughty baby, regardless alike of his father's
wishes and the filial code, passed over all these glittering instruments
of wealth and power, and devoted his attention exclusively to some
hair-pins, pearl-powder, rouge, and a lot of women's head-ornaments.
JOURNALISM
Were any wealthy philanthropist to consult us as to the disposal of his
millions with a view to ensure the greatest possible advantages to the
greatest possible number, we should unhesitatingly recommend him to
undertake the publication of a Chinese newspaper, to be sold at a merely
nominal figure per copy. Under skilled foreign guidance, and with the
total exclusion of religious topics, more would be effected in a few years
for the real happiness of China and its ultimate conversion to western
civilisation, than the most hopeful enthusiast could venture to predict.
The Shun-pao, edited in Shanghai by Mr Ernest Major, is doing an
incredible amount of good in so far as its influence extends; but the
daily issue of this widely-circulated paper amounts only to about four
thousand copies, or one to every hundred thousand natives! Missionary
publications are absolutely useless, as they have a very limited sale
beyond the circle of converts to the faith; but a colporteur of
religious books informed us the other day that he was continually being
asked for the Shun-pao. Now the Shun-pao owes its success so
far to the fact that it is a pure money speculation, and therefore an
undertaking intelligible enough to all Chinamen. Not only are its columns
closed to anything like proselytising articles, but they are open from
time to time to such tit-bits of the miraculous as are calculated to
tickle the native palate, and swell the number of its subscribers.
Therefore, to avert suspicion, it would be necessary to make a charge,
however small, while at the same time such bogy paragraphs as occasionally
appear in the columns of the Shun-pao might be altogether omitted.
Our attention was called to this matter by a charming description in the
Shun-pao of a late balloon ascent from Calais, which was so nearly
attended with fatal results. Written in a singularly easy style, and going
quite enough into detail on the subject of balloons generally to give an
instructive flavour to its remarks, this article struck us as being the
identical kind of "light science for leisure hours" so much needed by the
Chinese; and it compared most favourably with a somewhat heavy
disquisition on aeronautic topics which appeared some time back in the Peking
Magazine, albeit the latter was accompanied by an elaborate woodcut of
a balloon under way. There is so much that is wonderful in the healthy
regions of fact which might with mutual advantage be imparted to a reading
people like the Chinese, that it is quite unnecessary to descend to the
gross, and too often indecent, absurdities of fiction. Much indeed that is
not actually marvellous might be put into language which would rivet the
attention of Chinese readers. The most elementary knowledge, according to
our standard, is almost always new, even to the profoundest scholar in
native literature: the ignorance of the educated classes is something
appalling. On the other hand, all who have read their Shun-pao with
regularity, even for a few months, are comparatively enlightened. We heard
the other day of a Tao-t'ai who was always meeting the phrase
"International Law" in the above paper, and his curiosity at length
prompted him to make inquiries, and finally to purchase a copy of Dr
Martin's translation of "Wheaton." He subsequently complained bitterly
that much of it was utterly unintelligible; and judging from our own
limited experience of the translation, we think His Excellency's objection
not altogether groundless.
Of the domestic life of foreigners, the Chinese, with the exception of a
few servants, know absolutely nothing; and equally little of foreign
manners, customs, or etiquette. We were acquainted with one healthy Briton
who was popularly supposed by the natives with whom he was thrown in
contact to eat a whole leg of mutton every day for dinner; and a high
native functionary, complaining one day of some tipsy sailors who had been
rioting on shore, observed that﹃he knew foreigners always got drunk on
Sundays, and had the offence been committed on that day he would have
taken no notice of it; but,﹄&c., &c. They have vague notions that
filial piety is not considered a virtue in the West, and look upon our
system of contracting marriages as objectionable in the extreme. They
think foreigners carry whips and sticks only for purposes of assault, and
we met a man the other day who had been wearing a watch for years, but was
in the habit of never winding it up till it had run down. This we
afterwards found out to be quite a common custom among the Chinese, it
being generally believed that a watch cannot be wound up whilst going;
consequently, many Chinamen keep two always in use, and it is worth
noticing that watches in China are almost invariably sold in pairs. The
term "foreign devil" is less frequently heard than formerly, and sometimes
only for the want of a better phrase. Mr Alabaster, in one of his journeys
in the interior, was politely addressed by the villagers as His
Excellency the Devil. The Chinese settlers in Formosa call themselves
"foreign men," but they call us "foreign things;" for, they argue, if we
called you foreign men, what should we call ourselves? The Shun-pao
deserves much credit for its unvarying use of western instead of outside
nations when speaking of foreign powers, but the belief is still very
prevalent that we all come from a number of small islands scattered round
the coast of one great centre, the Middle Kingdom.
And so we might go on multiplying ad nauseam instances of Chinese
ignorance in trivial matters which an ably-conducted journal has it in its
power to dispel. We are so dissimilar from the Chinese in our ways of
life, and so unlike them in dress and facial appearance, that it is only
many years of commercial intercourse on the present familiar footing which
will cause them to regard us as anything but the barbarians they call us.
Red hair and blue eyes may make up what Baron Hubner would euphemistically
describe as the "beau type d'un gentleman anglais," but when worn with a
funny-shaped hat, a short coat, tight trousers, and a Penang lawyer, the
picture produced on the retina of a Chinese mind is unmistakably that of a
"foreign devil."
FUNERALS
Of all their cherished ceremonies, there are none the Chinese observe with
more scrupulous exactness than those connected with death and mourning. We
have just heard of the Governor of Kiangsu going into retirement because
of the decease of his mother; and so he will remain, ineligible to any
office, for the space of three years. He will not shave his head for one
hundred days. For forty-nine nights he will sleep in a hempen garment,
with his head resting on a brick and stretched on the hard ground, by the
side of the coffin which holds the remains of the parent who gave him
birth. He will go down upon his knees and humbly kotow to each friend and
relative at their first meeting after the sad event—a tacit
acknowledgment that it was but his own want of filial piety which brought
his beloved mother prematurely to the grave. To the coolies who bear the
coffin to its resting-place on the slope of some wooded hill, or beneath
the shade of a clump of dark-leaved cypress trees, he will make the same
obeisance. Their lives and properties are at his disposal day and night;
but he now has a favour to ask which no violence could secure, and pleads
that his mother's body may be carried gently, without jar or concussion of
any kind. He will have her laid by the side of his father, in a coffin
which cost perhaps 100 pounds, and repair thither periodically to appease
her departed spirit with votive offerings of fruit, vegetables, and pork.
Immediately after the decease of a parent, the children and other near
relatives communicate the news to friends living farther off, by what is
called an "announcement of death," which merely states that the father or
mother, as the case may be, has died, and that they, the survivors, are
entirely to blame. With this is sent a "sad report," or in other words a
detailed account of deceased's last illness, how it originated, what
medicine was prescribed and taken, and sundry other interesting
particulars. Their friends reply by sending a present of money to help
defray funeral expenses, a present of food or joss-stick, or even a
detachment of priests to read the prescribed liturgies over the dead.
Sometimes a large scroll is written and forwarded, inscribed with a few
such appropriate words as—"A hero has gone!" When all these have
been received, the members of the bereaved family issue a printed form of
thanks, one copy being left at the house of each contributor and worded
thus:—"This is to express the thanks of . . . the orphaned son who
weeps tears of blood and bows his head: of . . . the mourning brother who
weeps and bows his head: of . . . the mourning nephew who wipes away his
tears and bows his head."
It is well known that all old and even middle-aged people in China like to
have their coffins prepared ready for use. A dutiful son will see that his
parents are thus provided, sometimes many years before their death, and
the old people will invite relatives or friends to examine and admire both
the materials and workmanship, as if it were some beautiful picture or
statue of which they had just cause to be proud. Upon the coffin is carved
an inscription with the name and titles of its occupant; if a woman, the
name of her husband. At the foot of the coffin are buried two stone
tablets face to face; one bears the name and title of the deceased, and
the other a short account of his life, what year he was born in, what were
his achievements as a scholar, and how many children were born to him.
Periods of mourning are regulated by the degrees of relationship to the
dead. A son wears his white clothes for three years—actually for
twenty-eight months; and a wife mourns her husband for the same period.
The death of a wife, however, calls for only a single year of grief; for,
as the Sacred Edict points out, if your wife dies you can marry another.
The same suffices for brother, sister, or child. Marriages contracted
during these days of mourning are not only invalid, but the offending
parties are punished with a greater or lesser number of blows according to
the gravity of the offence. Innumerable other petty restrictions are
imposed by national or local custom, which are observed with a certain
amount of fidelity, though instances are not wanting where the whole thing
is shirked as inconvenient and a bore.
Cremation, once the prevailing fashion in China, is now reserved for the
priest of Buddha alone,—that self-made outcast from society, whose
parting soul relies on no fond breast, who has no kith or kin to shed
"those pious drops the closing eye requires;" but who, seated in an iron
chair beneath the miniature pagoda erected in most large temples for that
purpose, passes away in fire and smoke from this vale of tears and sin to
be absorbed in the blissful nothingness of an eternal Nirvana.
INQUESTS
Inquests in China serve, unfortunately, but to illustrate one more phase
of the folly and ignorance which hopelessly overshadow the vast area of
its Empire. For although the Chinese justly regard such investigations as
matters of paramount importance, and the office of coroner devolves upon a
high functionary—the district magistrate—yet the backward
state of science on the one hand, and the necessity the ruling classes
have been under of supplying this deficiency on the other, have combined
to produce at once the most deplorable and the most laughable results. Two
good-sized volumes of "Instructions to Coroners," beautifully printed on
white paper and altogether handsomely got up, are published under the
authority of the Government, and copies of this book are to be found in
the offices of every magistrate throughout the Empire. It is carefully
studied even by the underlings who play only subordinate parts on such
occasions, and the coroner himself generally carries his private copy with
him in his sedan-chair to the very scene of the inquest. From this work
the following sketch has been compiled, for though it has been our fate to
be present at more than one of the lamentable exhibitions thus dignified
by the name of inquest, and to have had ocular demonstration of the
absurdities there perpetrated, it will be more satisfactory to stick
closely to the text of an officially-recognised book, the translation of
which helped to while away many a leisure hour.
The first chapter opens as follows:—
"There is nothing more sacred than human life: there is no
punishment greater than death. A murderer gives life for life: the
law shows no mercy. But to obviate any regrets which might be
occasioned by a wrong infliction of such punishment, the validity
of any confession and the sentence passed are made to depend on a
satisfactory examination of the wounds. If these are of a bona
fide nature [i.e., not counterfeit], and the confession of the
accused tallies therewith, then life may be given for life, that
those who know the laws may fear them, that crime may become less
frequent among the people, and due weight be attached to the
sanctity of human existence. If an inquest is not properly
conducted, the wrong of the murdered man is not redressed, and new
wrongs are raised up amongst the living; other lives may be
sacrificed, and both sides roused to vengeance of which no man can
foresee the end."
On this it is only necessary to remark that the "validity" of a confession
is an important point in China, since substitutes are easily procurable at
as low a rate as from 20 to 50 pounds a life.
The duties of a Chinese coroner are by no means limited to post mortem
examinations; he visits and examines any one who has been dangerously
wounded, and fixes a date within which the accused is held responsible for
the life of his victim.
"Murders are rarely the result of premeditation, but can be
traced, in the majority of cases, to a brawl. The statute which
treats of wounding in a brawl attaches great weight to the 'death-
limit,' which means that the wounded man be handed over to the
accused to be taken care of and provided with medical aid, and
that a limit of time be fixed, on the expiration of which
punishment be awarded according to circumstances. Now the
relatives of a wounded man, unless their ties be of the closest,
generally desire his death that they may extort money from his
slayer; but the accused wishes him to live that he himself may
escape death, and therefore he leaves no means untried to restore
his victim to health. This institution of the 'death-limit' is a
merciful endeavour to save the lives of both."
One whole chapter is devoted to a division of the body into vital and
non-vital parts. Of the former there are twenty-two altogether, sixteen
before and six behind; of the latter fifty-six, thirty-six before and
twenty behind. Every coroner provides himself with a form, drawn up
according to these divisions, and on this he enters the various wounds he
finds on the body at the inquest.
"Do not," say the Instructions, "deterred by the smell of the
corpse, sit at a distance, your view intercepted by the smoke of
fumigation, letting the assistants call out the wounds and enter
them on the form, perhaps to garble what is of importance and to
give prominence to what is not."
The instructions for the examination of the body from the head downwards
are very explicit, and among them is one sentence by virtue of which a
Chinese judge would have disposed of the Tichborne case without either
hesitation or delay.
"Examine the cheeks to see whether they have been tattooed or not,
or whether the marks have been obliterated. In the latter case,
cut a slip of bamboo and tap the parts; the tattooing will then
re-appear."
In cases where the wounds are not distinctly visible, the following
directions are given:—
"Spread a poultice of grain, and sprinkle some vinegar upon the
corpse in the open air. Take a piece of new oiled silk, or a
transparent oil-cloth umbrella, and hold it between the sun and
the parts you want to examine. The wounds will then appear. If the
day is dark or rainy, use live charcoal [instead of the sun].
Suppose there is no result, then spread over the parts pounded
white prunes with more grains and vinegar, and examine closely. If
the result is still imperfect, then take the flesh only of the
prune, adding cayenne pepper, onions, salt, and grains, and mix it
up into a cake. Make this very hot, and having first interposed a
sheet of paper, lay it on the parts. The wound will then appear."
Hot vinegar and grains are always used previous to an examination of the
body to soften it and cause the wounds to appear more distinctly.
"But in winter, when the corpse is frozen hard, and no amount of
grains and vinegar, however hot, or clothes piled up, however
thick, will relax its rigidity, dig a hole in the ground of the
length and breadth of the body and three feet in depth. Lay in it
a quantity of fuel and make a roaring fire. Then dash over it
vinegar, which will create dense volumes of steam, in the middle
of which place the body with all its dressings right in the hole;
cover it over with clothes and pour on more hot vinegar all over
it. At a distance of two or three feet from the hole on either
side of it light fires, and when you think the heat has thoroughly
penetrated, take away the fire and remove the body for
examination."
It is always a great point with the coroner to secure as soon as possible
the fatal weapon. If a long time has elapsed between the murder and the
inquest, and no traces of blood are visible on the knife or sword which
may have been used, "heat it red hot in a charcoal fire, and pour over it
a quantity of first-rate vinegar. The stains of blood will at once
appear."
The note following this last sentence is still more extraordinary:—
"An inquest was held on the body of a man who had been murdered on
the high road, and at first it was thought that the murder had
been committed by robbers, but on examination the corpse was found
to be fully clothed and bearing the marks of some ten or more
wounds from a sickle. The coroner pointed out that robbers kill
their victims for the sake of booty, which evidently was not the
case in the present instance, and declared revenge to be at the
bottom of it all. He then sent for the wife of the murdered man,
and asked her if her husband had lately quarrelled with anybody.
She replied No, but stated that there had been some high words
between her husband and another man to whom he had refused to lend
money. The coroner at once despatched his runners to the place
where this man lived, to bid the people of that village produce
all their sickles without delay, at the same time informing them
that the concealment of a sickle would be tantamount to a
confession of guilt. The sickles were accordingly produced, in
number about eighty, and spread out upon the ground. The season
being summer there were a great quantity of flies, all of which
were attracted by one particular sickle. The coroner asked to whom
this sickle belonged, and lo! it belonged to him with whom the
murdered man had quarrelled about a loan. On being arrested, he
denied his guilt; but the coroner pointed to the flies settling
upon the sickle, attracted by the smell of blood, and the murderer
bent his head in silent acknowledgment of his crime."
Inquests are often held in China many years after the death of the victim.
Give a Chinese coroner merely the dry and imperfect skeleton of a man
known to have been murdered, and he will generally succeed in fixing the
guilt on some one. To supplement thus by full and open confession of the
accused is a matter of secondary difficulty in a country where torture may
at any moment be brought to bear with terrible efficacy in the cause of
justice and truth. Its application, however, is extremely rare.
"Man has three hundred and sixty-five bones, corresponding to the
number of days it takes the heavens to revolve. The skull of a
man, from the nape of the neck to the top of the head, consists of
eight pieces—that of a Ts'ai-chow man, of nine; women's skulls
are of six pieces. Men have twelve ribs on either side; women have
fourteen."
The above being sufficient to show where the Chinese are with regard to
the structure of the human frame, we will now proceed to the directions
for examining bones, it may be months or even years after death.
"For the examination of bones the day should be clear and bright.
First take clean water and wash them, and then with string tie
them together in proper order so that a perfect skeleton is
formed, and lay this on a mat. Then make a hole in the ground,
five feet long, three feet broad, and two feet deep. Throw into
this plenty of firewood and charcoal, and keep it burning till the
ground is thoroughly hot. Clear out the fire and pour in two pints
of good spirit and five pounds of strong vinegar. Lay the bones
quickly in the steaming pit and cover well up with rushes, &c. Let
them remain there for two or three hours until the ground is cold,
when the coverings may be removed, the bones taken to a convenient
spot, and examined under a red oil-cloth umbrella.
"If the day is dark or rainy the 'boiling' method must be adopted.
Take a large jar and heat in it a quantity of vinegar; then having
put in plenty of salt and white prunes, boil it altogether with
the bones, superintending the process yourself. When it is boiling
fast, take out the bones, wash them in water, and hold up to the
light. The wounds will be perfectly visible, the blood having
soaked into the wounded parts, marking them with red or dark blue
or black.
"The above method is, however, not the only one. Take a new yellow
oil-cloth umbrella from Hangchow, hold it over the bones, and
every particle of wound hidden in the bones will be clearly
visible. In cases where the bones are old and the wounds have been
obliterated by long exposure to wind and rain or dulled by
frequent boilings, it only remains to examine them in the sun
under a yellow umbrella, which will show the wounds as far as
possible.
"There must be no zinc boiled with the bones or they will become
dull.
"Bones which have passed several times through the process of
examination become quite white and exactly like uninjured bones;
in which case, take such as should show wounds and fill them with
oil. Wait till the oil is oozing out all over, then wipe it off
and hold the bone up to the light; where there are wounds the oil
will collect and not pass; the clear parts have not been injured.
"Another method is to rub some good ink thick and spread it on the
bone. Let it dry, and then wash it off. Where there are wounds,
and there only, it will sink into the bone. Or take some new
cotton wool and pass it over the bone. Wherever there is a wound
some will be pulled out [by the jagged parts of the bone]."
A whole chapter is devoted to counterfeit wounds, the means of
distinguishing them from real wounds, and the manner in which they are
produced. Section 2 of the thirteenth chapter is on a cognate subject,
namely, to ascertain whether wounds were inflicted before or after death:—
"If there are several dark-coloured marks on the body, take some
water and let it fall drop by drop on to them. If they are wounds
the water will remain without trickling away; if they are not
wounds, the water will run off. In examining wounds, the finger
must be used to press down any livid or red spot. If it is a wound
it will be hard, and on raising the finger will be found of the
same colour as before.
"Wounds inflicted on the bone leave a red mark and a slight
appearance of saturation, and where the bone is broken there will
be at either end a halo-like trace of blood. Take a bone on which
there are marks of a wound and hold it up to the light; if these
are of a fresh-looking red, the wound was afflicted before death
and penetrated to the bone; but if there is no trace of saturation
from blood, although there is a wound, if was inflicted after
death."
In a chapter on wounds from kicks, the following curious instructions are
given regarding a "bone-method" of examination:—
"To depend on the evidence of the bone immediately below the wound
would be to let many criminals slip through the meshes of the law.
Where wounds have been thus inflicted, no matter on man or woman,
the wounds will be visible on the upper half of the body, and not
on the lower. For instance, they will appear in a male at the
roots of either the top or bottom teeth, inside; on the right hand
if the wound was on the left, and vice versa; in the middle of
the wound was central. In women, the wounds will appear on the
gums right or left as above."
The next extract needs no comment, except perhaps that it forms the most
cherished of all beliefs in the whole range of Chinese medical
jurisprudence:—
"The bones of parents may be identified by their children in the
following manner. Let the experimenter cut himself or herself with
a knife and cause the blood to drip on to the bones; then, if the
relationship is an actual fact the blood will sink into the bone,
otherwise it will not. N.B. Should the bones have been washed with
salt water, even though the relationship exists, yet the blood
will not soak in. This is a trick to be guarded against
beforehand.
"It is also said that if parent and child, or husband and wife,
each cut themselves and let the blood drip into a basin of water
the two bloods will mix, whereas that of two people not thus
related will not mix.
"Where two brothers who may have been separated since childhood
are desirous of establishing their identity as such, but are
unable to do so by ordinary means, bid each one cut himself and
let the blood drip into a basin. If they are really brothers, the
two bloods will congeal into one; otherwise not. But because fresh
blood will always congeal with the aid of a little salt or
vinegar, people often smear the basin over with these to attain
their own ends and deceive others; therefore, always wash out the
basin you are going to use or buy a new one from a shop. Thus the
trick will be defeated.
"The above method of dropping blood on the bones may be used even
by a grandchild, desirous of identifying the remains of his
grandfather; but husband and wife, not being of the same flesh and
blood, it is absurd to suppose that the blood of one would soak
into the bones of the other. For such a principle would apply with
still more force to the case of a child, who had been suckled by a
foster-mother and had grown up, indebted to her for half its
existence. With regard to the water method, if the basin used is
large and full of water, the bloods will be unable to mix from
being so much diluted; and in the latter case where there is no
water, if the interval between dropping the two bloods into the
basin is too long, the first will get cold and they will not mix."
Not content with holding an inquest on the bones of a man who may have
been murdered five years before, a Chinese coroner quite as often proceeds
gravely to examine the wounds of a corpse which has been reduced to ashes
by fire and scattered to the four winds of heaven. No mere eyewitness
would dare to relate the singular process by which such a result is
achieved; but directions exist in black and white, of which the following
is a close translation:—
"There are some atrocious villains who, when they have murdered
any one, burn the body and throw the ashes away, so that there are
no bones to examine. In such cases you must carefully find out at
what time the murder was committed and where the body was burnt.
Then, when you know the place, all witnesses agreeing on this
point, you may proceed without further delay to examine the
wounds. The mode of procedure is this. Put up your shed near where
the body was burnt, and make the accused and witnesses point out
themselves the very spot. Then cut down the grass and weeds
growing on this spot, and burn large quantities of fuel till the
place is extremely hot, throwing on several pecks of hempseed. By
and by brush the place clean, and then, if the body was actually
burnt in this spot, the oil from the seed will be found to have
sunk into the ground in the form of a human figure, and wherever
there were wounds on the dead man, there on this figure the oil
will be found to have collected together, large or small, square,
round, long, short, oblique, or straight, exactly as they were
inflicted. The parts where there were no wounds will be free from
any such appearances. But supposing you obtain the outline only
without the necessary detail of the wounds, then scrape away the
masses of oil, light a brisk fire on the form of the body and
throw on grains mixed with water. Make the fire burn as fiercely
as possible, and sprinkle vinegar, instantly covering it over with
a new well-varnished table. Leave the table on for a little while
and then take it off for examination. The form of the body will be
transferred to the table and the wounds will be distinct and clear
in every particular.
"If the place is wild and some time has elapsed since the deed was
done, so that the very murderer does not remember the exact spot,
inquire carefully in what direction it was with regard to such and
such a village or temple, and about how far off. If all agree on
this point, proceed in person to the place, and bid your
assistants go round about searching for any spots where the grass
is taller and stronger than usual, marking such with a mark. For
where a body has been burnt the grass will be darker in hue, more
luxuriant, and taller than that surrounding it, and will not lose
these characteristics for a long time, the fat and grease of the
body sinking down to the roots of the grass and causing the above
results. If the spot is on a hill, or in a wild place where the
vegetation is very luxuriant, then you must look for a growth
about the height of a man. If the burning took place on stony
ground, the crumbly appearance of the stones must be your guide;
this simplifies matters immensely."
Such, then, are a few of the absurdities which pass muster among the
credulous people of China as the result of deep scientific research; but
whether the educated classes—more especially those individuals who
devote themselves in the course of their official duties to the theory and
practice of post mortem examinations—can be equally gulled
with the gaping crowd around them, we may safely leave our readers to
decide for themselves.
INQUESTS, NO. II
Section IV. of the valuable work which formed the basis of our preceding
sketch, is devoted to the enumeration of methods for restoring human life
after such casualties as drowning, hanging, poisoning, &c., some hours
and even days after vitality has to all appearances ceased. We shall quote
as before from our own literal translation.
"Where a man has been hanging from morning to night, even though
already cold, a recovery may still be effected. Stop up the
patient's mouth tightly with your hand, and in a little over four
hours respiration will be restored. Or, Take equal parts of
finely-powdered soap-bean and anemone hepatica, and blow a
quantity of this—about as much as a bean—into the patient's
nostrils.
"In all cases where men or women have been hanged, a recovery may
be effected even if the body has become stiff. You must not cut
the body down, but, supporting it, untie the rope and lay it down
in some smooth place on its back with the head propped up. Bend
the arms and legs gently, and let some one sitting behind pull the
patient's hair tightly. Straighten the arms, let there be a free
passage through the wind-pipe, and let two persons blow
incessantly into the ears through a bamboo tube or reed, rubbing
the chest all the time with the hand. Take the blood from a live
fowl's comb, and drop it into the throat and nostrils—the left
nostril of a woman, the right of a man; also using a cock's comb
for a man, a hen's for a woman. Re-animation will be immediately
effected. If respiration has been suspended for a long time, there
must be plenty of blowing and rubbing; do not think that because
the body is cold all is necessarily over.
"Where a man has been in the water a whole night, a recovery may
still be effected. Break up part of a mud wall and pound it to
dust; lay the patient thereon on his back, and cover him up with
the same, excepting only his mouth and eyes. Thus the water will
be absorbed by the mud, and life will be restored. This method is
a very sure one, even though the body has become stiff.
"In cases of injury from scalding, get a large oyster and put it
in a basin with its mouth upwards somewhere quite away from
anybody. Wait till its shell opens, and then shake in from a spoon
a little Borneo camphor, mixed and rubbed into a powder with an
equal portion of genuine musk. The oyster will then close its
shell and its flesh will be melted into a liquid. Add a little
more of the above ingredients, and with a fowl's feather brush it
over the parts and round the wound, getting nearer and nearer
every time till at last you brush it into the wound; the pain will
thus gradually cease. A small oyster will do if a large one is not
to be had. This is a first-rate prescription.
"Where a man has fallen into the water in winter, and has quite
lost all consciousness from cold, if there is the least warmth
about the chest, life may still be restored. Should the patient
show the slightest inclination to laugh, stop up his nose and
mouth at once, or he will soon be unable to leave off, and it will
be impossible to save him. On no account bring a patient hastily
to the fire, for the sight of fire will excite him to immoderate
laughter, and his chance of life is gone.
"In cases of nightmare, do not at once bring a light, or going
near call out loudly to the sleeper, but bite his heel or his big
toe, and gently utter his name. Also spit on his face and give him
ginger tea to drink; he will then come round. Or, Blow into the
patient's ears through small tubes, pull out fourteen hairs from
his head, make them into a twist and thrust into his nose. Also,
give salt and water to drink. Where death has resulted from seeing
goblins, take the heart of a leek and push it up the patient's
nostrils—the left for a man, the right for a woman. Look along
the inner edge of the upper lips for blisters like grains of
Indian corn, and prick them with a needle."
The work concludes with an antidote against a certain dangerous poison
known as Ku, originally discovered by a Buddhist priest and
successfully administered in a great number of cases. Its ingredients,
which comprise two red centipedes—one live and one roasted—must
be put into a mortar and pounded up together either on the 5th of the 5th
moon, the 9th of the 9th moon, or the 8th of the 12th moon, in some place
quite away from women, fowls, and dogs. Pills made from the paste produced
are to be swallowed one by one without mastication. The preparation of
this deadly Kupoison is described in the last chapter but one of
Section III. in the following words:—
"Take a quantity of insects of all kinds and throw them into a
vessel of any kind; cover them up and let a year pass away before
you look at them again. The insects will have killed and eaten
each other until there is only one survivor, and this one is
Ku."
In the next chapter we are informed that spinach eaten with tortoise is
poison, as also is shell-fish eaten with venison; that death frequently
results from drinking pond-water which has been poisoned by snakes, from
drinking water which has been used for flowers, or tea which has stood
uncovered through the night, from eating the flesh of a fowl which has
swallowed a centipede, and wearing clothes which have been soaked with
perspiration and dried in the sun. Finally,
"A case is recorded of a man who tied his victim's hands and feet,
and forced into his mouth the head of a snake, applying fire at
the same time to its tail. The snake jumped down the man's throat
and passed into his stomach, but at the inquest held over the body
no traces of wounds were found to which death could be attributed.
Such a crime, however, may be detected by examination of the bones
which, from the head downwards, will be found entirely of a bright
red colour, caused by the dispersion of the blood; and moreover,
the more the bones are scraped away, the brighter in colour do
they become."
It is difficult to speak of such a book as "Instructions to Coroners" with
anything like becoming gravity, and yet it is one of the most widely-read
and highly-esteemed works in China; so much so, that native scholars
frequently throw it in the teeth of foreigners as one of their many
repertories of real wonder-working science, equal to anything that comes
from the West, if only foreigners would take the trouble to consult it. To
satisfy our own curiosity on the subject we bought a copy and translated
it from beginning to end; but our readers will perhaps be able to
determine its scientific value from the few quotations given above, and
agree with us that it would hardly be worth while to learn Chinese for the
pleasure or profit to be derived from reading "Instructions to Coroners"
in the original character.
CHRISTIANITY
The extraordinary feeling of hatred and contempt evinced by the Chinese
nation for missionaries of every denomination who settle in their country,
naturally suggests the question whether Christianity is likely to prove a
boon to China, if, indeed, it ever succeeds in taking root at all. That
under the form of Roman Catholicism, it once had a chance of becoming the
religion of the Empire, and that that chance was recklessly sacrificed to
bigotry and intolerance, is too well known to be repeated; but that such
an opportunity will ever occur again is quite beyond the bounds, if not of
possibility, at any rate of probability. Missionary prospects are anything
but bright in China just now, in spite of rosily worded "reports," and
annual statistics of persons baptized. A respectable Chinaman will tell
you that only thieves and bad characters who have nothing to lose avail
themselves of baptism, as a means of securing﹃long nights of indolence
and ease﹄in the household of some enthusiastic missionary at from four to
ten dollars a month. Educated men will not tolerate missionaries in their
houses, as many have found to their cost; and the fact cannot be concealed
that the foreign community in China suffers no small inconvenience and
incurs considerable danger for a cause with which a large majority of its
members has no sympathy whatever. It would, however, be invidious to dwell
upon the class of natives who allow themselves to be baptized and pretend
to accept dogmas they most certainly do not understand, or on the mental
and social calibre of numbers of those gentlemen who are sent out to
convert them; we will confine ourselves merely to considering what
practical benefits Christianity would be likely to confer upon the Chinese
at large. And this we may fairly do, not being of those who hold that all
will be damned but the sect of that particular church to which they
themselves happen to belong; but believing that the Chinese have as good a
chance as anybody else of whatever happiness may be in store for the
virtuous, whether they become Christians or whether they do not.
In the course of eight years' residence in China, we have never met a
drunken man in the streets. Opium-smokers we have seen in all stages of
intoxication; but no drunken brawls, no bruised and bleeding wives. Would
Christianity raise the Chinese to the standard of European sobriety? Would
it bring them to renounce opium, only to replace it with gin? Would it
cause them to become more frugal, to live more economically than they do
now on their bowl of rice and cabbage, moistened with a drink of tea, and
perhaps supplemented with a few whiffs of the mildest possible tobacco?
Would it cause them to be more industrious than—e.g., the
wood-carvers of Ningpo who work daily from sunrise to dusk, with two short
intervals for meals? Would it make them more filial?—justly renowned
as they are for unremitting care of aged and infirm parents. More
fraternal?—where every family is a small society, each member
toiling for the common good, and being sure of food and shelter if thrown
out of work or enfeebled by disease. More law-abiding?—we appeal to
any one who has lived in China, and mixed with the people. Would it make
them more honest?—when many Europeans confess that for
straightforward business they would sooner deal with Chinamen than with
merchants of certain Christian nationalities we shall not take upon
ourselves to name. Should we not run the risk of sowing seed for future
and bloody religious wars on soil where none now rage? To teach them
justice in the administration of law would be a glorious task indeed, but
even that would have its dark side. Litigation would become the order of
the day, and a rapacious class would spring into existence where lawyers
and barristers are now totally unknown. The striking phenomenon of extreme
wealth side by side with extreme poverty, might be produced in a country
where absolute destitution is at present remarkably rare, and no one need
actually starve; and thus would be developed a fine field for the practice
of that Christian charity which by demoralisation of the poorer classes so
skilfully defeats its own end. We should rejoice if anything could make
Chinamen less cruel to dumb animals, desist from carrying ducks, geese,
and pigs, hanging by their legs to a pole, feed their hungry dogs, and
spare their worn-out beasts of burden. But pigeon-shooting is unknown, and
gag-bearing reins have yet to be introduced into China; neither have we
heard of a poor heathen Chinaman "skinning a sheep alive." (Vide Daily
Papers of July 12, 1875.)
Last of all, it must not be forgotten that China has already four great
religions flourishing in her midst. There is Confucianism, which,
strictly speaking, is not a religion, but a system of self-culture with a
view to the proper government of (1) one's own family and of (2) the
State. It teaches man to be good, and to love virtue for its own sake,
with no fear of punishment for failure, no hope of reward for success. Is
it below Christianity in this?
Buddhism, Taoism, and Mahomedanism, share the
patronage of the illiterate, and serve to satisfy the natural craving in
uneducated man for something supernatural in which to believe and on which
to rely. The literati are sheer materialists: they laugh at the
absurdities of Buddhism, though they sometimes condescend to practise its
rites. They strongly object to the introduction of a new religion, and
successfully oppose it by every means in their power. They urge, and with
justice, that Confucius has laid down an admirable rule of life in harmony
with their own customs, and that the conduct of those who approximate to
this standard would compare not unfavourably with the practice, as
distinguished from the profession, of any religion in the world.
ANTI-CHRISTIAN LYRICS
The following inflammatory placard, which was posted up last year at a
place called Lung-p'ing, near the great tea mart of Hankow, will give a
faint idea of native prejudice against the propagation of Christianity in
China. The original was in verse, and evidently the work of a
highly-educated man:—
Strange doctrines are speedily to be eradicated:
The holy teaching of Confucius is now in the ascendant.
There is but one most sacred religion:
There can be but one Mean.
By their great virtue Yao and Shun led the way,
Alone able to expound the "fickle" and the "slight;"[*]
Confucius' teachings have not passed away,
Yet working wonders in secret[+] has long been in vogue.
Be earnest in practising the ordinary virtues:
To extend filial piety, brotherly love, loyalty, and
considerateness, is to benefit one's-self.
Be careful in your speech,
And marvels, feats of strength, sedition, and spirits,[:] will
disappear from conversation.
I pray you do not listen to unsubstantiated words:
Then who will dare to deceive the age with soft-sounding phrases.
Our religion is for all who choose to seek it;
But we build no chapels to beguile the foolish.
Our true religion has existed from of old, up to the present day,
undergoing no change.
Its true principles include in their application those of the middle
and outside nations alike.
Great is the advantage to us!
Great is the good influence on this generation!
Of all religions the only true one,
What false doctrine can compare with it?
The stillness and cleanliness of Buddhism,
The abstruseness and hollow mockery of Taoism—
These are but side-doors compared with ours;
Fit to be quitted, but not to be entered.
These are but by-paths compared with ours;
Fit to be blocked up, but not to be used.
How then about this one, stranger than Buddhist or Taoist creed?
With its secret confusion of sexes, unutterable!
More hurtful than all the dogmas of the other two;
Spreading far and wide the unfathomable poison of its mysteries.
Herein you must carefully discriminate,
And not receive it with belief and veneration.
Those who now embrace Christ
Call him Lord of heaven and earth,
Worshipping him with prayer,
Deceiving and exciting the foolish,
Dishonouring the holy teaching of Confucius.
I laugh at your hero of the cross,
Who, though sacrificing his life, did not preserve his virtue
complete.
Missions build chapels,
But the desire to do good works is not natural to them.
The method of influencing the natures of women
Is but a trick to further base ends.
They injure boys by magical arts,
And commit many atrocious crimes.
They say their religion is the only true one,
But their answers are full of prevarication.
They say their book is the Holy Book,
But the Old and New Testaments are like the songs of Wei and
Cheng.[!]
As to the people who are gradually being misled,
I compassionate their ignorance;
As to the educated who are thus deceived,
I am wroth at their want of reflection.
For these men are not of us;
We are like the horse and the cow;[@]
If you associate with them,
Who will expel these crocodiles and snakes?
This is a secret grievance of the State,
A manifest injury to the people!
Truly it is the eye-sore of the age.
You quietly look on unconcerned!
I, musing over the present state of men's hearts,
Desire to rectify them.
Alas! the ways of devils are full of guile!
But man's disposition is naturally pure.
How then can men willingly walk with devils?
You, like trees and plants, without understanding,
Allow the Barbarians to throw into confusion the Flowery Land.
Is it that no holy and wise men have appeared?
Under the Chow dynasty, when the barbarians were at the height of
their arrogance,
The hand of Confucius and Mencius was laid upon them!
Under the T'ang when Buddhism was poisoning the age,
Han and Hsi exterminated them.
Now these devils are working evil,
Troubling the villages and market-places where they live.
Surely many heroes must come forward
To crush them with the pen of Confucius.
Turn then and consider
That were it not for my class[#]
None would uphold the true religion.
I say unto you,
And you should give heed unto me,
Believe not the nonsense of Redemption,
Believe not the trickery of the Resurrection.
Set yourselves to find out the true path,
And learn to distinguish between man and devil.
Pass not with loitering step the unknown ford,
Nor bow the knee before the vicious and the depraved.
Wait not for Heaven to exterminate them
To find out that earth has a day for their destruction.
The shapeless, voiceless imp—
Why worship him?
His supernatural, unprincipled nonsense
Should surely be discarded.
Ye who think not so,
When the devils are in your houses
They will covet your homes,
And they will take the fingers and arms of your strong ones
To make claws and teeth for imps.
They excite people at first by specious talk,
Not one jot of which is intelligible;
Then they destroy your reason,
Making you wander far from the truth.
You throw over ancestral worship to enjoy none yourselves;
Your wives and children suffer pollution,
And you are pointed at with the finger.
Thus heedlessly you injure eternal principles,
Embracing filth and treasuring corruption,
To your endless shame
And to your everlasting misfortune.
Finally, if in life your heads escape the axe,
There will await you the excessive injury of the shroud.[$]
Judging by the crimes of your lives,
Your corpses will be cast to scorpions and snakes.
The devils introduce this doctrine,
Which grows like plants from seeds;
Some one must arise to punish them,
And destroy their religion root and branch.
Hasten, all of you, to repent,
And walk in the way of righteousness;
We truly pity you.
A warning notice to discard false doctrines!
[*] The fickle nature of men's minds, and slight regard for the true
doctrine.
[+] Forbidden by Confucius.
[:] Avoided by Confucius as topics.
[!] Licentious.
[@] The Chinese say horses prefer going against, cows with, the wind.
[#] The literati.
[$] Missionaries are said to keep the corpses of converts concealed
from public view between death and interment, that the absence of
the dead man's eyes may not be detected.
CONCLUSION
"Surely it is manifest enough that by selecting the evidence, any society
may be relatively blackened, and any other society relatively
whitened."[*] We hope that no such principle of selection can be traced in
the preceding pages. Irritation against traducers of China and her
morality[+] may have occasionally tinged our views with a somewhat rosy
hue; but we have all along felt the danger of this bias, and have
endeavoured to guard against it. We have no wish to exalt China at the
expense of European civilisation, but we cannot blind ourselves to the
fact that her vices have been exaggerated, and her virtues overlooked.
Only the bigoted or ignorant could condemn with sweeping assertions of
immorality a nation of many millions absolutely free, as the Chinese are,
from one such vice as drunkenness; in whose cities may be seen—what
all our legislative and executive skill cannot secure—streets quiet
and deserted after nine or ten o'clock at night. Add to this industry,
frugality, patriotism,[:] and a boundless respect for the majesty of
office: it then only remains for us to acknowledge that China is after all
"a nation of much talent, and, in some respects, even wisdom."[!]
[*] Spencer's Sociology: The Bias of Patriotism.
[+] "The miseries and horrors (?) which are now destroying (?) the
Chinese Empire are the direct and organic result of the moral
profligacy of its inhabitants."—Froude's Short Studies on Great
Subjects.
[:] "Every patriotic Chinese—and there are millions of such."—Dr
Legge to London and China Telegraph, July 5, 1875.
[!] Mill's Essay on Liberty.
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