CHINESE FARMERS.
The planting of the rice is not the simple thing that the cultivation of wheat is. This latter is sown in land that has been carefully prepared for it, and after that it is left very much to nature to do the rest. The rain falls, and the sun shines and the dews lay their diamond drops on the growing grain, and the farmer looks at the miracles of changes that are wrought upon it, until golden-hued he puts the sickle in and gathers it into his barns. With the rice there is no such luxurious rest or waiting.
He first of all sows his seed in a plot of land that is full of water, and they fall into the soft oozy mud at the bottom and take root. As the little spires pierce above the surface, they have the most exquisite light-green that the eye has ever been pleased to look upon. They grow up rapidly with an airy look about them as though they were conscious that the farmer is depending upon them for the whole of his rice crop during this season. They do indeed constitute the stock from which he draws the materials to fill his empty fields waiting to be planted with rice plants.
After they have grown to the height of five or six inches they are all pulled up by the roots, and in little bundles of four or five they are replanted in the larger fields that have been prepared for them, each bundle standing apart from the rest about three or four inches. And now the race of life begins with the several little bunches that have their roots submerged in water, and their emerald pointed leaves looking up at the blue sky. They started life together and grew up side by side, and now marshalled in groups theyare not rivals, but friendly competitors in the race to show which shall give the best of beauty and power to the farmer who is caring for them.
From this day until the hour when they are cut down golden-hued, there must be no faltering in the care that is bestowed upon them. The water in the field must always be kept up to a certain level, for should that fail the serried ranks of rice would soon show how keenly they felt its loss, by their drooping heads and distressed-looking manner, as the great sun beat down upon them, and seemed to paralyze them with his scorching rays. Water must be led in some way into the field, or if there is a stream running close by, the endless water-wheel must be set in motion until little rivulets have flowed in, and the gaping cracks in the mud are closed up, and the thirsty roots have drunk their fill, and the drooping stalks once more stand up erect and look the sun in the face without flinching.
Every now and again, too, the farmer must walk between the marshalled ranks and with his hands tenderly feel at the roots of each separate bunch of the growing rice to remove any impediment there may be to the free access of water to them. These roots seem like spoiled children that need petting and coaxing and humouring in order to be willing to send up the vital forces through the stalks above so as to help them to produce the healthy heads of grain that are to give delight to the farmer when he comes to gather in the harvest.
In addition to this precious crop that needs so much attention, the cultivator has others that claim his thoughts and time. These are the beans that are used in the manufacture of soy and in the making of bean curds that are considered so important as condiments to be eaten with the rice. There are also the sweet potatoes which in some of the poorer counties are the staple food of all but the well-to-do. There are also various kinds of vegetables which the Chinese aremost expert in growing, but the cultivation of these is considered as pastime when compared with the incessant care and labour that have to be bestowed on the rice crop from the very first day that the seed is cast upon the waters until the moment when the fields are allowed to run dry, and the golden-hued stalks rear their heads in the air with no more anxiety as to whether the rain shall ever fall again or not.
The one element that causes the farmer most distress in his cultivation of the rice is the uncertainty of the weather. When the rainy season has been one in which abundance of rain has been poured down upon the earth, so that the fountains that lie beneath the wells and close by the ponds are filled to overflowing, then his mind is comparatively at rest. He knows there is a perennial supply that can constantly be drawn upon, when the water begins to ebb away in the fields where the rice is growing. Should the showers that the thunderstorms pour down occasionally from the clouds that gather so quickly in the sky come with any kind of regularity, his mind is still more relieved, and he can think with equanimity of the day that is coming when he will gather his precious crop into his garner.
Such an experience, however, as this is not one that falls very often to the lot of the anxious farmer. The rainy seasons are apt to be capricious, and to withhold the rich stores of rain and moisture without which not only his rice, but his beans and his potatoes will be scorched in the field and will wither and perish before his very eyes. It is pitiful to watch the efforts that he has to make to try and preserve his crops from destruction when the year is a dry one.
The days go by, and every morning his first looks are towards the hills around which the clouds have gathered during the night. There seems a great promise in the dense masses that have gathered around some lofty peak,and it is hoped that to-day at last, after weary days of expecting, the rain that is to save the crops will come down in abundant showers. The sun by and by rises in a great red orb of scorching heat, and his rays flash as though they had come straight from a furnace, and they touch the clouds that have taken refuge on the hills, and slowly they vanish into thin air and are gone.
Another day of heat, and the sun in a cloudless sky draws up the water that is standing at the feet of the rice, and he looks upon the ponds and they dissolve in vapour, and he touches the vines of the sweet potatoes with his breath and they turn pale with anguish, and the tubers within the ridges wither up and die for want of moisture. Days and sometimes weeks of this go by, till one wonders at the vitality of nature that can endure such a fiery ordeal and have anything left to tell the tale.
It is on such occasions as these that the profoundest grief and sorrow are felt by the farmers. The dried-up ponds are dug still deeper to reach any reserve of the precious fluid that may have sunk below the surface, and in order to secure that none of that shall be absorbed by the sun, they carry on their operations about the hours of midnight, when the air has become slightly cooler, and when every drop of water can be saved for the dying crops near by. It very often occurs that the farmers of a whole district will be out in the dark nights, and with their hoes are busily engaged in turning up every available spot of ground to discover whether there is any water below. Where the ponds border on each other’s fields, the fiercest struggles will frequently take place for the possession of the discovered treasure, and the night air will resound with the noise of battle, and wounded men will be carried to their homes to add to the bitterness and the grief that have already thrown their shadows there.
In the earlier part of this chapter it was stated that inconsequence of the custom of dividing the farms amongst the sons and not handing them over to the eldest, as is done in England, a great many of them are too small to support even a small family, whilst many of what might be called the younger sons are left without any land whatever. It has become the custom with many such people to rent lands from others who have a surplus of such on their hands. It is the custom for rich men to invest their money in the purchase of farms, which they let out to others to cultivate, and taking one year with another they find this is a very profitable way of disposing of the ready money they have at their command.
The system of letting out their lands is thoroughly Oriental and quite different from that which is in vogue in the West. The landlords do not charge any rent, but they share the produce with the tenant. This seems a most equitable arrangement, for when the years are good both tenant and owner mutually reap the benefit, whilst in the seasons when a scarcity of rain prevents the ground from producing as much as it legitimately ought to do, both parties share in the sorrow of diminished crops.
The rule that prevails very generally is for the landlord to take half the crop after it has been gathered. The tenant provides seed, manure, and labour, and for his use of the land he hands over a half of all that it produces. It is very interesting to watch the proceedings that take place when the times comes for harvesting the various kinds of crops during the year. The tenant, with his wife and sons, if he has any, repairs to the field where the grain is ready for the sickle. It is a time of great rejoicing, as it is in all countries, and the months of labour and anxiety are for the time being forgotten in the joy of the golden grain that is now waiting to be gathered.
But another figure is there, who takes no share in the harvesting. He is well dressed and does not have the airof a farmer about him. He has taken his seat on a bank or some place where he can keep his eye upon the whole of the joyous proceedings that are being carried on. Upon inquiry we find that he is an agent of the landlord, and has come to receive his half of the contents of the field. He has bags with him to put his share in, and when the rice is cut and at once threshed on the field, the half is duly measured and handed over to him.
By this arrangement all arrears of rent are avoided, and the distress of feeling in debt to one’s landlord is never experienced by the farmers of China. That their life is an anxious and a troubled one, I have shown very fully, and that sometimes their crops are too small to meet the needs of the family. These are inevitable in the very nature of things, but there is one thing that they are never troubled with, and that is excessive rents. Rack-renting is a thing from which they are mercifully preserved, and it is one sign of the common-sense of the Chinese, and of their instinct for fair play both for landlord and tenant, that the present system was initiated ages ago, and is still carried out all over the country.
A RAMBLE THROUGH A CHINESE CITY
Peculiarities of a Chinese town—Narrow streets—Smells—Mean-looking buildings—One storey—Description of a silk shop—Uncleanness the rule—Sights on the streets—Itinerant kitchen—Crowds on the streets—No rows—A mandarin and his retinue—Beggars—Fish market—Shoe street—No public-houses—An opium den.
Peculiarities of a Chinese town—Narrow streets—Smells—Mean-looking buildings—One storey—Description of a silk shop—Uncleanness the rule—Sights on the streets—Itinerant kitchen—Crowds on the streets—No rows—A mandarin and his retinue—Beggars—Fish market—Shoe street—No public-houses—An opium den.
The sight of a Chinese city is something that one never forgets, for there are so many features about it that are absolutely new, that our minds are so impressed by what we see that a photograph of them is engraven upon our memories that will never be erased. Our conceptions of a city are those that we have gathered from those that we have seen in England, and we picture to ourselves wide streets with pavements on each side, where the foot passengers walk in comfort without having to jostle each other. We see, too, in imagination lofty houses, built with a certain degree of regularity and with taste about them. Cleanliness, too, is one of the things that we remember as being associated with it, whilst policemen day and night patrol the streets and preserve order amongst the people that travel along them. Cabs, and trams, and omnibuses crowded with passengers are the conspicuous objects that are to be met with in any moderate-sized towns in the homeland.
Now, all the above things are absent from any part of a Chinese city that one may happen to visit in any portion of the Empire. This statement is made with a good deal of confidence, for, unlike the cities of the West, which all vary more or less one from another, the Chinese towns are very much facsimiles of each other, and when you haveseen one, you may confidently assert you have a very true conception of what all the rest are like.
The ideal city was drawn in the brain of the designers and builders of the first one in the remote and misty past of Chinese History, and the spectacle evidently has seemed so sublime and overpowering to the succeeding generations of Chinese that no original genius has appeared since then to dare to suggest anything better. And so every city is built upon the same model throughout the length and breadth of the land, and whilst some are larger and more imposing than others, the plan of the walls and the configuration of the streets, and the architecture of the houses are pretty much the same everywhere.
But here is a town close at hand, and so, without waiting to discuss the theory of a Chinese city, let us boldly enter in and see with our own eyes exactly what it is like.
The first street we travel along gives us a shock.
Instead of the broad and spacious roadway along which the traffic is carried, we come into a narrow, dingy-looking artery which at its extreme breadth is not wider than twelve feet, and even that is not all available for the use of those that have to pass up and down it. The shopkeepers on both sides have put out their counters, on which they expose their goods, so that only five or six feet are left free for the use of the public.
This particular street which we are now in is not an exceptional one, in fact it is one of the principal ones in the town, and therefore is a very fair sample of what the business quarter is like. If we were to diverge down the side streets that run into it we should find them all much narrower, more forbidding, more dingy and very much dirtier.
We have not advanced far in our walk before we begin to be conscious of peculiar odours that seem to be the heritage of the East. The air is never fresh, but at cornersof the street and indentations in the houses, and on the spots not actually in use, there are always accumulations of refuse and garbage that fester in the sun and send out the most abominable smells. But these are healthy and playful when compared with others that now and again seem to strike one as if with a sledge-hammer and paralyze one for the moment.
These are caused by the foulness of the drain that lies underneath the centre of the street. As the roads are so narrow and are occupied by houses on both sides, the only available place for the drainage of the city is right through the middle of the roadway.
There is no Public Board of Works to superintend the construction of these, and as the Chinese as a race have very hazy and elementary ideas as to the necessity for drains of any kind, it may easily be imagined how badly they make them. The result is that gases generate and evil smells collect for which there is no escape excepting through the cracks of the stone slabs that pave the streets. Never has there yet been a writer with the genius to describe these. It is simply enough to say that they have the concentrated essence of the ages in them. They trace back their ancestry to the times that are lost in myth and fairy tales, and they would look with disdain upon any of the modern smells, just as an aristocrat that holds his title from the times of the Conqueror would gaze with scorn upon some upstart, whose father sold soap and was knighted for the wealth he had amassed.
It is astonishing that the people that live in the houses near by are not carried off by typhoid or other deadly fevers, but they are not. They have, on the other hand, a lively, healthy look about them as though they lived in some country place, where the air comes fresh from the mountain near by and where they breathe a wholesome stock of ozone all the year round.
The fact of the matter is the Chinese have no belief in the word infection. There is nothing in this huge cumbrous language to express the idea of germ, bacillus and such like, and so when some terrible odour from a drain that is seething and frothing in the sun, such as would knock off the head of a water buffalo, the Chinese puckers up his nose for an instant and then puts on that childlike smile with which he so often adorns his countenance, and attends to his business without any more fuss.
Now, this is one of the best streets in the town, and contains goods to the value of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some of the wealthiest merchants in the town have their places of business in it, and yet there is not one to be compared with any ordinary shop that one meets with in any of the ordinary streets that abound in our cities in the West.
They have all a comparatively mean-looking appearance. They are only one storey high and have no fronts in them. When the shutters are taken down in the morning, the whole of the interior is at once laid bare to the public gaze, and as only the poorer shops attempt to display the goods they have for sale, one can see nothing but rolls on the shelves, and drawers tightly closed, and a number of Chinamen lounging about in a free and easy way, who are really clerks, but who act with a freedom that would ensure them being packed off at a moment’s notice by any vigilant shop-walker in a good business house in England.
But here is a silk shop that it will be interesting to visit. It is one of the best in the whole town, and it is said to contain specimens from all the famous silk-producing districts in the Empire. It does not seem to have anything in it, beyond what one sees lying on the shelves, carefully wrapped up in paper as though the great purposewas to conceal everything from the gaze of the public. We find our progress impeded by a large counter within which the clerks lounge about, and as purchasers are never supposed to sit down, we have to stand on the outside of this, as no chairs of any kind have been provided, not even for the women, when they come to buy. Ladies of course never by any chance come out shopping, so the great majority of the customers are men, and occasionally elderly women of the middle class, who are not supposed to need to sit down.
A BARBER AND HIS CUSTOMER.
To face p. 178.
The appearance of a foreigner causes a commotion, and a responsible-looking man steps forward with a hesitating manner, evidently questioning with himself how he is to address you, since he knows nothing but his own mother-tongue. You inform him, however, in Chinese, that you have come to look at his silks, and at once his countenance clears, and a look of pleasure flashes into his eyes and across the wide and expansive area of his Mongolian features.
The clerks, too, without any apparent restraint from their master’s presence, crowd around and make remarks about your personal appearance, and criticize your dress, and give their opinion about the way in which you pronounce Chinese. In the meanwhile two or three have been dispatched to an inner room, where the precious silks are kept, and they soon appear with a dozen rolls or so carefully wrapped in paper, and tied with string to keep the dust and the sunlight from getting to them.
As each one is unrolled, you gaze with absolute delight upon the exquisite colours that flash upon your sight. Here you have one piece of a delicate creamy white, that seems too pure to be touched without being defiled. Next to it is another of a beautiful rose pink, a colour that the designers must have caught from some rose that had just opened its petals to the sun, and so as the men deftlyunwind the various rolls you have displayed before you the whole array of colours that the Chinese weavers have woven into their fabrics, and for the moment the unæsthetic-looking Chinaman becomes sublimed in your imagination, because of the marvellous power with which he has reproduced the various hues of nature in the rolls of silk that are deftly unfolded before you.
The silk you have been examining is of an inferior quality and will not cost more than sixpence a foot, the standard measure with the Chinese, as they know nothing of yards in any of their measurements. You ask to see some of their more expensive articles, and soon the clerks return with specimens from the looms of Canton, Hangchow, and Soochow, each with its own distinctive characteristics, and so exquisitely beautiful that you stand gazing upon them all with admiring looks, and with words that are quite inadequate to express your high sense of the workmanship displayed upon them. The amazing thing is to understand how the weavers, in their poor tumble-down cottages, and with looms so cumbersome and antiquated that they might have come out of the Ark, could have produced such exquisite specimens of art as these rolls of silk undoubtedly are.
We pass along this narrow unsavoury street, when we turn into one of the smaller ones that run into it. The shops here are of a decidedly meaner character, being inhabited by a much poorer class of people. In plan, however, they are very similar to the ones in the street we have already described. There are no fronts to them, and everything that goes on in them can be distinctly seen and heard by the passers-by. There is this decided difference in them, that the back part of the shop is the home of the family that are carrying on the business, which is never the case with the better ones.
Fortunately the Chinese do not believe in the privacyof the home as we do. They do not mind having the whole details of their daily experiences seen by every one that cares to look. How they live, what they eat, and even the family jars that we try and hush up from the public are things that seem to be common property, and not to belong exclusively to this particular family who are most concerned.
The impression one gets from a look into these miserable homes is that the Chinese idea of comfort differs essentially from our own, and that they can put up with a vast amount of discomfort such as would drive an Englishman mad. Their houses are filthily dirty and untidy. The wife after a few weeks of married life loses the trim, neat appearance she had as a young girl. She drops naturally into the slattern ways of the women who are her neighbours, and ere long dust and dirt and cobwebs, and frowsy and untidy garments, are the leading features of the home.
It would be unwise to infer from this state of things that the Chinese are unhappy, or that they are conscious that their surroundings have something in them to induce melancholy or discontent. The ideal of the West is cleanliness, a thing that the East never seems to aim at, or to even dream of. This great city through which we are walking is an example of this latter statement. Its streets are unswept from one year’s end to the other. Heaps of rubbish festering and fermenting in the sun and exhaling the most unpleasant odours meet you at every turn. The drains are badly made and left absolutely to themselves until, choked up, they are opened up for repairs, when the hidden compressed effluvia send their noxious vapours into the homes around.
The people are highly uncleanly in their persons. They never bathe, and even in the homes of the rich the bath tub is an unknown luxury. The face and hands areabout the only parts of the body that on ordinary occasions ever make the acquaintance of water. Their clothes, too, from a Western standpoint, are anything but satisfactory. They are frowsy and wanting in the crisp cleanliness that a liberal supply of soap and water impart to them. There are always certain garments that are worn day after day and week after week, that men never dream of cleansing in any way whatever. The lower you go down in the scale of life, the more conspicuous is this disregard of cleanliness, and yet it does not seem to affect either the general health or spirits of the people. They are a laughter-loving race, and jokes and funny stories and everything that would raise a smile to the face find a ready echo in their hearts. The fact that they are surrounded by dust and dirt and untidiness such as would put the shivers into any ordinary Englishman, and dim for the time being the very light of life, have no seeming effect upon this long-lived race.
The people of this town appear to be endowed either with very good appetites, or to have very defective arrangements at home for supplying the wants of the inner man, for there seems to be an altogether extravagant number of itinerant kitchens with food already cooked stationed at various corners where the traffic is the greatest, to cater at once to the public appetite.
Here is one close at hand, and as we have a few minutes to spare let us draw near and see what it is like. It consists of two wooden stands which can be slung on to the ends of a stout bamboo pole and carried at a moment’s notice in any direction that suits the owner. Where trade is brisk at any particular spot, he remains there until his customers desert him, and then, shouldering his miniature eating-house, he goes off at a quick trot to the localities where the hungry are most likely to congregate.
On one of the stands there is a large rice pan which is filled with rice that is kept just on the boil by a fire thatburns underneath. The heat must be so modulated that it will never blaze into a flame, for to allow it to do that would be fatal to the success of the enterprise. The Chinese, who are connoisseurs in the art of cooking rice, can never tolerate it being boiled to a pulp. The grains must to a certain extent retain their individuality, and though boiled to the very heart, there must be no loss of that. The man who would wish to be popular must have learned the secret of how to please the taste of the most critical. The other stand is a kind of rough dresser, where the condiments that are to allure a pleasant passage to the rice are tastefully set out. These are salted turnips of a brown, leathery look, and the most popular, because very cheap, of all the various articles that the Chinese eat with their rice. There are also bean curds and cucumbers pickled crisp and juicy, and celery and lettuce, and salted beans and plates of various kinds of fish, and different kinds of soy, which are sprinkled with a sparing hand over the bowl of rice to give it a flavour in order to induce an appetite with the first sip that the customer takes of the savoury compound.
It is interesting to watch the deft way with which the man fulfils the orders that are given him. He first of all ladles out enough rice from the pan to nearly fill one of the bowls that lies turned upside down on the dresser. He then selects with his chopsticks a bit of salted turnip and drops it into the very centre of the steaming rice. Then once more, with the eye of a connoisseur, he picks up a bit of crisp pickled cucumber about the size of a bean and drops it on the top. If his customer is extravagant and is going in for luxuries, he selects a tiny sprat that lies cooked and ready for use, and places it in a tempting position just within the lip of the basin, and resting on the rice as though it were in its native element. A little savoury soy is then sprinkled over the whole, a pair of chopsticks aredaintily laid crosswise over the steaming compound, and the man whose mouth has been watering all the time this process has been going on takes it with eager hands, and without any delay proceeds to satisfy his appetite, and all for the modest sum of a little over a halfpenny.
Several men are seated on their heels round this peripatetic kitchen, shovelling down with their chopsticks the good things contained in their bowls. It does not seem at all strange to any one that they should thus in the sight of all the passers-by and without tables or chairs be willing to be seen eating on the public streets. The free-and-easy methods of Eastern life, as well as the intensely sociable character of the Chinese mind, make many things possible here that would be considered highly improper in the West.
The scene before us is a thoroughly Oriental one and in some respects a very picturesque one. The narrow street only six feet wide, packed as it were with human life, is a splendid place from which to view the various items of which the life of the city is composed. Here is a scholar in his long gown, threadbare and showing signs of decay. Amidst the crowd of passers-by we should never mistake him for anything but what he is. His face has that keen intellectual look that the students of this Empire usually have. Though poor, he has a proud and haughty air, as though he felt himself higher than any of the crowd that brushes up against him. Coming close behind him is a farmer, rough and unsophisticated, with the sun burnt into his face, and with the air of a man who never opened a book in his life except the ancient one of nature which he has studied to such a purpose that he can read her secrets and can extract such crops from her as make his fields laugh for very gladness. Following on is a countryman whose home lies at the foot of the hills in the near distance. He is carrying a huge load of brushwood balanced on theends of a bamboo pole slung across his shoulders, which he is carrying to the market to be sold as firewood. He occupies more than half the roadway, and when he swings his burden from one tired shoulder to the other, the width of the street is only just enough to contain it. He passes along, however, at a steady trot as though the town belonged to him. His loud cries, “Clear the way,” “Get to the side,” “I’ll bump against you,” are uttered with an air of authority as though some royal edict had given him the authority to take possession of the road in this masterful manner.
A REFRESHMENT STALL.
To face p. 184.
It is amusing to watch the good-natured way in which the ebbing and flowing crowds yield to this man from the hills. Every one gets out of his way, and even the scholar, with pride and contempt in his heart for the unlearned masses, stands meekly at the side of the road and crushes himself up against a counter to let the imperious seller of firewood pass by. No thanks are given and none are asked, and as the tide of men close up behind him, we can hear coming down the air, “I’ll bump you,” “I’ll bump you,” “Go to the side,” “Fly, fly,” until the sounds so masterfully given and so meekly obeyed are lost in the distance.
In looking at this moving panorama there is one thing that is strikingly conspicuous, and that is the good-natured, easy, tolerant way with which they treat each other on the street. It would seem as though every man, the moment he got on it, had determined that forbearance shall be the word that should guide his conduct in his treatment of every one that he meets. Just think of it: a roadway of five or six feet wide, along which constant cross currents of people, of all kinds and conditions, are travelling, and yet no collisions, or at least so rarely that they are not enough to be quoted. Business men, clerks, coolies, opium-smokers, thieves and vagabonds, country bumpkins andelegant and refined scholars, all with an instinctive sense of the rights of others, yield to the necessities of the road, and bear with infinite good nature whatever inconveniences may arise, and treat each other with patience and courtesy.
As we have been watching the motley crowds passing and repassing before us, the man with the kitchen has been doing a roaring business. Customers have come and gone with most pleasing succession, and the heap of cash that he has received in payment for the savoury bowls of rice has grown into a little mound, and as he looks at it his eyes glisten with pleasure. All at once there is a sudden and mysterious change in his attitude. Instead of standing with a benevolent look upon the group sitting on their haunches round his eating-house, he becomes agitated, and hastily bidding his customers to hurry up, he begins to make preparations for an immediate move. The men gulp down their rice, the bowls are hurriedly piled up on the dresser, and before one can hardly realize what is taking place the kitchen has been shouldered, and he has disappeared at a jog-trot amid a stream of people that have engulfed him and his belongings.
Whilst we are wondering what it is that has caused this sudden panic and collapse in a business that was so prosperous, we hear the clang of the slow and measured beatings of gongs. Higher, too, than the voices around us there comes trailing on the air, as though unwilling to leave the locality from which it started, the sound of the word I-O in a crescendo note, but which finally dies away in a slowly decreasing volume till it finally vanishes in silence. There is now an agitated movement amongst the crowds in the street before us. Some seem full of hesitation, as though undecided what to do; others assume a perplexed air and look about for some opening into which they may escape. A sedan chair, that comes lumbering up with the shouts that the bearers usually indulge in to get the peopleto make way for them, comes up, but no sooner is the sound of I-O heard than the men hastily retrace their steps and disappear in the opposite direction from which they were coming.
The beating of the gongs, and the prolonged wailing sound I-O, in the meanwhile advance rapidly in our direction, when all at once, all indecision on the part of the passers-by vanishes, and every man flattens himself up against the outstanding shop counters, drops his queue that has been twisted round his head, lets fall his hands by his side and assumes a look of humility and respect. The centre of the street is in a moment deserted, and there bursts into view a mandarin with his retinue.
The first members of it who come swaggering down the empty lane are the men that fill the air with the sound of I-O, in order to warn the crowds ahead of the coming of the great man. They are a most villainous-looking set of men, and seem as though they might have been picked up out of the slums and gutters for the special duty of to-day. At first sight one is inclined to burst into a loud fit of laughter, for to a Westerner they have a most comical and ludicrous appearance. Each one has a tall hat on his head, shaped very much like a fool’s cap, but set on awry to meet the contingencies of their tails that are twisted round their heads. This makes them look like clowns that have come on to the street from some neighbouring circus to amuse the populace. A closer look at them, however, soon dispels that idea, for in their hands they carry long rattans, which they wield menacingly as though waiting for a chance to let them fall heavily on the shoulders of some unwary one who is transgressing the rules of the road and thus showing disrespect to his Excellency. They have a truculent look as they furtively glance over the silent walls of human beings that line the roadway, and a discontented, sullen frown overcasts their faces as they find no chance touse their despotic power on the person of any unfortunate one.
Immediately behind them comes another set of men, quite as evil-looking, with chains in their hands. These have a proud and haughty mien, as though the supreme authority of the town rested in their hands. Should any one be unwise enough to dispute that for a moment, he would find himself instantly bound and shackled, and bundled off to prison, where ample time would be given him to review his temerity.
Coming closely behind these scamps, the luxurious chair of the mandarin, carried by eight bearers, fills the vacant space in the street. He is the mayor of the town, and for all practical purposes the supreme power in it. He is an ideal-looking official, for he is large and massive in appearance, whilst he has that stern and uncompromising look that is supposed to be necessary in any magistrate who would hope to keep his subjects in order. He has a stern and forbidding aspect, as though he were on his way to the execution ground to have some criminal decapitated. This is the kind of air that the mandarins put on when they appear in public. In the course of many years’ experience, I have never once seen any one of them, from the highest to the lowest, with a smile on his face or a look of sympathy for the people whilst he was being carried officially through the streets. In a few seconds the procession has passed by, and the human stream again flows along its ancient channel, and the life of the street is once more resumed.
We saunter along again closer to humanity than the most crowded city in the West, except on some great festival, could let one have. The sensation is not in every respect a pleasant one. The ancient odours of China assert themselves and will be felt, whilst the aroma of unwashed garments and persons that never used a bath, gives a delicate taint to the air that is purely Oriental.
But whilst moving slowly on and carefully guarding lest our feet should trip against the uneven slabs of stone with which the road is so badly paved, a strange procession of men catches our eye and at once arrests our footsteps. We count them one by one, and there are just ten of them, as gruesome and unsavoury a collection of human beings as could be made were the whole city to be ransacked to find their equal.
They are beggarmen, and are taking advantage of the privilege allowed them by a custom that goes back into the remote past, of soliciting alms from the shopkeepers on the days of the new and full moon. They are perambulating the streets and visiting every shop that lies in their way, and almost demanding from each their accustomed toll of one cash each. A cash, I may remind the reader, is the one-thousandth part of two shillings.
They walk in a string, each man behind the other. The leading one in this particular set is an old man, with wrinkled face and hair turned to grey. His clothes are in rags and tatters, and so dirty that one would not care to touch them even with a long pole. He is a thorough gipsy in look, and there is a vigour about his sharp-set features and a flash in his coal-black eyes that show him to be a person of considerable independence of thought.
Close behind him is another with his hand resting on his shoulder, and depending upon him to guide him through the streets. He is quite blind, and it is most pathetic to see how he raises his head up towards the sky, as though the sun in some mysterious way could impart light to the deep sockets where his eyeballs ought to be. Following close on his heels is a jolly musical beggar, whose soul, amidst all his dirt and squalor, is touched with the spirit of music. He has an old banjo, with two strings, that he uses in his profession, and as he moves along his fingers strike the chords, and the first notes of a Chinese ballad sound outwith a lilt that for a moment seems to relieve the tragic look that this weird procession has.
Behind this Orpheus of the band come several ragamuffin degraded specimens of the begging fraternity, the last of whom holds a bamboo stick, which a blind man, who brings up the rear, holds in his left hand to act for him in the place of eyes. As each one comes to the shop door the owner stands ready with a cash for each one, which he hastily puts into his hand and motions him on.
There is no attempt to evade this poor-rate which custom has decided shall be paid. Were any man so mad as to defy the unsavoury crowd, he would soon be brought to his senses in a way that he would not forget for many a long day. They would stand around his counter till the cash was paid, and they would in turns appeal to his pity, and then call down the imprecations of Heaven upon his head because of the hardness of his heart.
No one in the meantime would dare to come near his shop. His customers would be so terrified by the dirt and smells of the diseased and unwashed crowd that they would take their custom for the time being elsewhere, and when, finally worn out by the noise and disorder at his door, he gave the cash, he would find perhaps that some of his wares had been so damaged by the mere presence of these filthy beggars, that he had lost far more than he would have gained if he had come out victorious in his contest with them.
It is only on two days in the month that the beggars are allowed the privilege of collecting their tax from the shopkeepers, for these latter have originally compounded with their king for a regular payment, which prevents them from being annoyed with their visits at any other time. As soon as the amount has been settled a printed form, with the picture of a gourd on it, is pasted over the door, and no beggar will dare to approach it for the purpose of asking alms. There are many specimens of humanity in Chinathat, through destitution and in the bare struggle for existence, have to go through want and hunger and intense suffering both of mind and body, but for real degradation and acute acquaintance with the pains and penalties of poverty there is no one to be compared with the beggarman in this land. The beggar in the West is a royal personage when compared with him, clothed in purple and fine linen, and living sumptuously. He is often able to lay by money, and cases have been not infrequent that when he has died sovereigns and bank-notes have been found stitched in various parts of his garments.
Such an experience in China is absolutely unknown. A beggar here is really poor, and always close up to the border line across which is starvation. Besides, he is nearly always diseased. A beggar, except he is a wandering minstrel, would fail to charm the solitary cash that is usually thrown at him, unless he had some glaring disease that would excite pity. The stock-in-trade of the begging fraternity is some hideous sore, or twisted legs or sightless eyes, or some abnormal deformity that disqualifies the person from gaining a living by manual labour. And then, too, the hovel into which he crawls when night drives him from the streets is something unspeakable for its wretchedness and discomfort. The beggars’ camp is filthy, and so unsavoury that it may never be pitched within the precincts of the city, but is always erected in some open space outside its walls, where its smells and abominations may not contaminate the rest of society.
As we wander aimlessly along, only anxious to witness the sights that an Oriental town gives in such striking contrast to the cities of the West, we come upon a street where there is an unusual bustle, and a sound of many voices and loud tones, as though men were quarrelling. One accustomed to Chinese life would never make the mistake of imagining from these signs that there was anytrouble going on. They are simply evidences of increased activity. The Chinese are fond of noise and high-toned speaking, and clash of voice, and bawling to each other. They have absolutely never properly learned the art of whispering. Two men are carrying a heavy burden on a common bamboo pole through the streets, and they shout in a rhythmical strain that can be heard a hundred yards in the distance. A play is being performed, and from the very beginning to the end, the drum keeps beating and the cymbals clash, and drown the actors’ voices at those points where it would be supposed the greatest silence would be required. And so in many other things, it would seem as though noise were an essential for the performance of any effective work in China.
The sounds we hear are evidences that we have come upon one of the busiest streets in the town. It is the fish market for the whole city, and as we move slowly along it we begin to understand how it is that such loud tones caught our ear a minute or two ago. Here are great brawny fellows with sleeves tucked up, and the sea breezes, as it would seem, blowing on their faces. In loud voices, as though they were trying to outbellow the roar of the storm where the fishes were caught, they cry up the superior quality of the catch they are displaying for sale. Others are chaffering with their customers, for no true Chinaman ever gives the price that is first asked of him, and with jest and banter he gradually comes down to the sum which he finally means to take.
The very best fish in the whole town are to be found in this street, for the moment that the fishing boats come in from sea, the very choicest of their catch is hurried off by men who are interested in the trade and brought to the dealers here. It is interesting to stroll along and watch the ingenious way in which the fish is presented in the most attractive way to the various kinds of purchasers.
Here is a heap of the less expensive kind such as the poorer classes can afford to buy. They look like magnified sprats, and a man stands by and continues to sprinkle them with salt water, and he does this in such a deft way that they present a sparkling appearance as though they had just been brought out of the sea and were fresh and full of life. Close by are some splendid mackerel that were caught this morning, and they lie with a stiff and dignified air, as though they resented being laid out here to the public gaze. Some of them have already been cut into slices and customers are trying to beat down the dealer to a more reasonable price. It is noticeable that the most of those who are bargaining for the fish have brought their own steelyards to weigh their purchases, as they evidently have no faith in the honesty of the one belonging to the shop.
Further on we notice a young shark, that seems very much out of place, and altogether plays a mean and inglorious part for an animal that takes so conspicuous a place amongst the dwellers in the sea. Close beside it is a native fish that evidently has been too long out of the water to add to its market value, and so it has to be doctored to induce customers to look upon it with favour. To carry out this idea, it has been cut in two, and the ends have been ingeniously smeared with pig’s blood to make it appear to the uninitiated that it has only just ceased to live, and the red streaks show where its own life-blood has just ceased to ebb out. Yet this simple and childlike deception is plain to every one that comes to buy, and no one is taken in by it. It is one of the devices of the trade, that some clever scamp invented in the past when the forefathers of the race were more ingenuous and more easily taken in than men are to-day, and so the trick is kept up, in order that the inventor of it, wherever he may be to-day, may not “lose face” in the eyes of his descendants.
After we emerge from this busy and unsavoury market, where the odour of decaying fish mingles with the national and purely Chinese exhalations of the drains, which here are peculiarly foul, we turn into a narrow street, where the passengers are few, and the shops have a dull, semi-respectable look about them. They have no counters outside of them, and so the whole street, which is about five feet in width, is entirely available for foot passengers. We discover to our astonishment that every shop in it sells shoes. It is in fact the great centre of the shoe trade for the town, and also for the country districts for many miles outside of it.
At first sight it would seem that this placing of a considerable number of shoe shops side by side would interfere with the trade of each, but the Chinese think differently, and the result has proved that they are right. Instead of diminishing the business of each it has had actually the very opposite effect. When people want shoes, they have not to wander all over the city in search of a shoemaker. They make their way to this particular street, the first shop that takes their fancy they step into, and they are soon served with what they require.
This plan is especially serviceable to the countryman, who looks upon the town very much as a country bumpkin does at home, when he leaves his fields and green lanes for the busy streets of a great city. He wants a pair of shoes, say, for his wedding day, and the village shoemaker has not sufficient style to suit him for such a great occasion. He must go away to the great city where the latest fashions in shoes are to be found, and where he can purchase a pair that will be the envy of every young man who shall attend the joyful ceremony. But how amid the maze of narrow streets shall he find a shop where he shall be able to make his selection? He would be lost in the windings and intricacies of the labyrinths along which the streams ofhuman life pour incessantly the livelong day, and in inquiring for such he might be recognized as a greenhorn by some sharper, who would soon relieve him of his spare cash. The fact that the shoe shops are all in one street renders it easy for him to inquire his way there, where without delay he will be served with the very article he requires.