DESCRIPTION OF A PLAY.Mr. Lay describes a play he saw, in which a medley of celestial and terrestrial personages were introduced. “The first scene was intended to represent the happiness and splendor of beings who inhabit the upper regions, with the sun and moon and the elements curiously personified playing around them. The man who personated the sun held a round image of the sun’s disk, while the female who acted the part of the moon had a crescent in her hand. The actors took care to move so as to mimic the conjunction and opposition of these heavenly bodies as they revolve round in their apparent orbs. The Thunderer wielded an axe, and leaped and dashed about in a variety of extraordinary somersaults. After a few turns the monarch, who had been so highly honored as to find a place,through the partiality of a mountain nymph, in the abodes of the happy, begins to feel that no height of good fortune can secure a mortal against the common calamities of this frail life. A wicked courtier disguises himself in a tiger’s skin, and in this garb imitates the animal itself. He rushes into the retired apartments of the ladies, frightens them out of their wits, and throws the heir-apparent into a moat. The sisters hurry into the royal presence, and casting themselves on the ground divulge the sad intelligence that a tiger has borne off the young prince, who it appears was the son of the mountain nymph aforesaid. The loss the bereaved monarch takes so much to heart, that he renounces the world and deliberates about the nomination of a successor. By the influence of a crafty woman he selects a young man who has just sense enough to know that he is a fool. The settlement of the crown is scarcely finished when the unhappy king dies, and the blockhead is presently invested with the crown, but instead of excelling in his new preferment the lout bemoans his lot in the most awkward strains of lamentation, and cries, ‘O dear! what shall I do?’ with such piteous action, and yet withal so truly ludicrous, that the spectator is at a loss to know whether to laugh or to weep. The courtier who had taken off the heir and broken the father’s heart finds the new king an easy tool for prosecuting his traitorous purposes, and the state is plunged into the depths of civil discord at home and dangerous wars abroad.“In the sequel a scene occurred in which the reconciliation of this court and some foreign prince depends upon the surrender of a certain obnoxious person. The son-in-law of the victim is charged with the letter containing this proposal, and returns to his house and disguises himself for the sake of concealment. When he reaches the court of the foreign prince he discovers that he has dropped the letter in changing his clothes, and narrowly escapes being taken for a spy without his credentials. He hurries back, calls for his garments, and shakes them one by one in an agony of self-reproach, but no letter appears. He sits down, throwing himself with great violence upon the chair, with a countenance inexpressibly full of torture and despair: reality could have added nothing to the imitation. Butwhile every eye was riveted upon him, he called the servant-maid and inquired if she knew anything about the letter; she replied she overheard her mistress reading a letter whose contents were so and so. The mistress had taken her seat at a distance from him and was nursing her baby; and the instant he ascertained the letter was in her possession, he looked toward her with such a smile upon his cheek, and with a flood of light in his eye, that the whole assembly heaved a loud sigh of admiration; for the Chinese do not applaud by clapping and stamping, but express their feelings by an ejaculation that is between a sigh and a groan. The aim of the husband was to wheedle his wife out of the letter, and this smile and look of affection were merely the prelude; for he takes his chair, places it beside her, lays one hand softly on her shoulder, and fondles the child with the other in a style so exquisitely natural and so completely English, that in this dramatic picture it was seen that nature fashioneth men’s hearts alike. His addresses were, however, ineffectual, and her father’s life was not sacrificed.”[386]The morals of the Chinese stage, so far as the sentiments of the pieces are concerned, are better than the acting, which sometimes panders to depraved tastes, but no indecent exposure, as of the persons of dancers, is ever seen in China. The audience stand in the area fronting the stage, or sit in the sheds around it; the women present are usually seated in the galleries. The police are at hand to maintain order, but the crowd, although in an irksome position, and sometimes exposed to a fierce sun, is remarkably peaceable. Accidents seldom occur on these occasions, but whenever the people are alarmed by a crash, or the stage takes fire, loss of life or limb generally ensues. A dreadful destruction took place at Canton in May, 1845, by the conflagration of a stage during the performances, by which more than two thousand lives were sacrificed; the survivors had occasion to remember that fifty persons had been killed many years before in the same place, and while a play was going on, by the falling of a wall.[387]POPULAR AMUSEMENTS.Active, manly plays are not popular in the south, and insteadof engaging in a ball-game or regatta, going to a bowling alley or fives’ court, to exhibit their strength and skill, young men lift beams headed with heavy stones, like huge dumb-bells, to prove their muscle, or kick up their heels in a game of shuttlecock. The out-door amusements of gentlemen consist in flying kites, carrying birds on perches and throwing seeds high in the air for them to catch, sauntering through the fields, or lazily boating on the water. Pitching coppers, fighting crickets or quails, tossing up several balls at once, kicking large leaden balls against each other, snapping sticks, chucking stones, or guessing the number of seeds in an orange, are plays for lads.METHODS AND POPULARITY OF GAMBLING.Gambling is universal. Hucksters at the roadside are provided with a cup and saucer, and the clicking of their dice is heard at every corner. A boy with but two cash prefers to risk their loss on the throw of a die to simply buying a cake without trying the chance of getting it for nothing. Gaming-houses are opened by scores, their keepers paying a bribe to the local officers, who can hardly be expected to be very severe against what they were brought up in and daily practise; and women, in the privacy of their apartments, while away their time at cards and dominoes. Porters play by the wayside when waiting for employment, and hardly have the retinue of an officer seen their superiors enter the house, than they pull out their cards or dice and squat down to a game. The most common game of luck played at Canton is calledfan tan, or ‘quadrating cash.’ The keeper of the table is provided with a pile of bright large cash, of which he takes a double handful, and lays them on the table, covering the pile with a bowl. The persons standing outside the rail guess the remainder there will be left after the pile has been divided by four, whether one, two, three, or nothing, the guess and stake of each person being first recorded by a clerk; the keeper then carefully picks out the coins four by four, all narrowly watching his movements. Cheating is almost impossible in this game, and twenty people can play at it as easily as two. Chinese cards are smaller and more numerous than our own; but the dominoes are the same.Combats between crickets are oftenest seen in the south,where the small field sort is common. Two well-chosen combatants are put into a basin and irritated with a straw until they rush upon each other with the utmost fury, chirruping as they make the onset, and the battle seldom ends without a tragical result in loss of life or limb. Quails are also trained to mortal combat; two are placed on a railed table, on which a handful of millet has been strewn, and as soon as one picks up a kernel the other flies at him with beak, claws, and wings, and the struggle is kept up till one retreats by hopping into the hand of his disappointed owner. Hundreds of dollars are occasionally betted upon these cricket or quail fights, which, if not as sublime or exciting, are certainly less inhuman than the pugilistic fights and bull-baits of Christian countries, while both show the same brutal love of sport at the expense of life.Boys Gambling with Crickets.A favorite amusement is the flying of kites. They are made of paper and silk, in imitation of birds, butterflies, lizards, spectacles, fish, men, and other objects; but the skill shown in flying them is more remarkable than the ingenuity displayed in their construction. The ninth day of the ninth moon is a festival devoted to this amusement all over the land. Doolittledescribes them as sometimes resembling a great bird, or a serpent thirty feet long; at other times the spectator sees a group of hawks hovering around a centre, all being suspended by one strong cord, and each hawk-kite controlled and moved by a separate line. On this day he estimates that as many as thirty thousand people assemble on the hills around Fuhchau to join in this amusement if the weather be propitious. Many of the kites are cut adrift under the belief that, as they float off, they carry away with them all impending disasters.Chinese Chess-board.CHINESE CHESS.The Chinese game of chess is very ancient, for Wu Wang (B.C.1120) is the reputed inventor, and its rules of playing are so unlike the Indian game as to suggest an independent origin, which is confirmed by the peculiar feature of thekiai ho, or river, running across the board. There are seventy-two squares,of which eight are run together to form the river, leaving thirty-two on each side; but as the men stand on the intersection of the lines, there are ninety positions for the sixteen pieces used by each player, or twenty-six more than in the European game. The pieces are arranged for playing as in the diagram above.The pieces are like chequer-men in shape, each of the seven kinds on each side having its name out on the top, and distinguished by its red or black colors. The four squares near each edge form the headquarters of thetsiang, or ‘general,’ out of which he and his twosz’, or ‘secretaries,’ cannot move. On each side of the headquarters are two elephants, two horses, and two chariots, whose powers are less than our bishop, knight, and castle, though similar; the chariot is the most powerful piece. In front of the horses stand two cannoniers, which capture like our knight but move like our castle. Fivepao, soldiers or pawns, guard the river banks, but cannot return when once across it in pursuit of the enemy, and get no higher value when they reach the last row. Each piece is put down in the point where it captured its man, except the cannoniers; as the general cannot be taken, the object of each player is to check-mate him in his headquarters, therefore, by preventing his moving except into check. The want of a queen and the limited moves of the men restrict the combinations in the Chinese game more than in western chess, but it has its own elements of skill. Literary men and women play it much, and usually for small stakes. There is another game played less frequently but one of the most ancient in the Empire. It is calledwei-kí, which may be rendered ‘blockade chess,’ and was common in the days of the sages, perhaps even earlier than chess. The board contains three hundred and twenty-four squares, eighteen each way, and the number of pieces is three hundred, though both the number of points and of pieces may be less than this size of the full game. The pieces are black and white and stand on the crossings of the lines, three hundred and sixty-one in number. The object of the opponents is to surround each other’s men and take up the crossings they occupy, or neutralize their power over those near them.Each player puts down a piece anywhere on the board, and continues to do so alternately, capturing his adversary’s positions until all the crossings are occupied and the game is ended.[388]If this sketch of the customs and amusements of the Chinese in their social intercourse and public entertainments is necessarily brief, it is perhaps enough to exhibit their character. Dr. Johnson has well remarked that no man is a hypocrite in his amusements. The absence of some of the violent and gladiatorial sports of other countries, and of the adjudication of doubtful questions by ordeals or duels; the general dislike of a resort to force, their inability to cope with enemies of vastly less resources and numbers, and the comparative disesteem of warlike achievements, all indicate the peaceful traits of Chinese character. Duels are unknown, assassinations are infrequent, betting on horse-races is still to begin, and running amuck à la Malay is unheard of. When two persons fall out upon a matter, after a vast variety of gesture and huge vociferation of opprobrium, they will blow off their wrath and separate almost without touching each other. Some contrarieties in their ideas and customs from those practised among ourselves have frequently been noticed by travellers, a few of which are grouped in the following sketch:CONTRARIETIES IN CHINESE AND WESTERN USAGE.On asking the boatman in which direction the harbor lay, I was answered west-north, and the wind, he said, was west-south; he still further perplexed my ideas as to our course by getting out his compass and showing me that the needle pointed south. It was really a needle as to size, weight, and length, about an inch and a half long, the south end of it painted red, and all the time quivering on the pivot. His boat differed from our vessels, too, in many ways: the cooking was done in the stern and the passengers were all accommodated in the bow, while the sailors slept on deck and had their kits stowed in lockers amidships.On landing, the first object that attracted my attention was a military officer wearing an embroidered petticoat, who had a string of beads around his neck and a fan in his hand. His insignia of rank was a peacock’s feather pointing downward instead of a plume turning upward; he had a round knob or button on the apex of his sugar-loaf cap, instead of a star on his breast or epaulettes on his shoulders; and it was with some dismay that I saw him mount his horse on the right side. Several scabbards hung from his belt, whichI naturally supposed must be dress swords or dirks; but on venturing near through the crowd I was undeceived by seeing a pair of chopsticks and a knife-handle sticking out of one, and soon his fan was folded up and put in the other. I therefore concluded that he was going to a dinner instead of a review. The natives around me shaved the hair from the front half of their heads and let it grow long behind: many of them did not shave their faces, and others employed their leisure in diligently pulling the straggling hairs down over their mouths. We arrange our toilets differently, thought I; but could easily see the happy device of chopsticks, which enabled these gentlemen to put their food into the mouth endwise under this natural fringe. A group of hungry fellows, around the stall of a travelling cook, further exhibited the utility of thesekwai-tsz’, or ‘nimble lads’ (as I afterward learned chopsticks were called), for each had put his bowl of rice to his lips, and was shovelling in the contents till the mouth would hold no more. “We keep our bowls on the table,” said I, “do our cooking in the house, and wait for customers to come there instead of travelling around after them;” but these chopsticks serve for knife, fork, and spoon in one.On my way to the hotel I saw a group of old people and graybeards. A few were chirruping and chuckling to larks or thrushes, which they carried perched on a stick or in cages; others were catching flies or hunting for crickets to feed them, while the remainder of the party seemed to be delightfully employed in flying fantastic paper kites. A group of boys were gravely looking on and regarding these innocent occupations of their seniors with the most serious and gratified attention. A few of the most sprightly were kicking a shuttlecock back and forth with great energy, instead of playing rounders with bat and ball as boys would do.As I had come to the country to reside for some time, I made inquiries respecting a teacher, and happily found one who understood English. On entering he stood at the door, and instead of coming forward and shaking my hands, he politely bowed and shook his own, clasping them before his breast. I looked upon this mode as an improvement on our custom, especially when the condition of the hands might be doubtful, and requested him to be seated. I knew that I was to study a language without an alphabet, but was not prepared to see him begin at what I had always considered to be the end of the book. He read the date of its publication, “the fifth year, tenth month, and first day.” “We arrange our dates differently,” I observed, and begged him to read—which he did, from top to bottom, and proceeding from right to left. “You have an odd book here,” remarked I, taking it up; “what is the price?” “A dollar and eight-thirds,” said he, upon which I counted out three dollars and two-thirds and went on looking at it. The paper was printed only on one side; the running title was on the edge of the leaves instead of the top of the page, the paging was near the bottom, the number and contents of the chapters were at their ends, the marginal notes on the top, where the blank was double the size at the foot, and a broad black line across the middle of each page, like that seen in some French newspapers, separated the two works composing the volume, instead of one being printed after the other. The back was open and the sewing outside, and the name neatly written on the bottom edge. “You have given me too much,” said he, as hehanded me back two dollars and one-third, and then explained that eight-thirds meant eight divided by three, or only three-eighths. A small native vocabulary which he carried with him had the characters arranged according to the termination of their sounds,ming,sing,king, being all in a row, and the first word in it beingseen. “Ah! my friend,” said I, “English won’t help me to find a word in that book; please give me your address.” He accordingly took out a red card, big as a sheet of paper, on which was written Ying San-yuen in large characters, and pointed out the place of his residence, written on the other side. “I thought your name was Mr. Ying; why do you write your name wrong end first?” “It is you who are in the wrong,” replied he; “look in your yearly directory, where alone you write names as they should be written, putting the honored family name first.”I could only say, “Customs differ;” and begged him to speak of ceremony, as I gave him back the book. He commenced, “When you receive a distinguished guest, do not fail to place him on your left, for that is the seat of honor; and be careful not to uncover the head, as that would be an unbecoming act of familiarity.” This was a little opposed to my established notions; but when he reopened the volume and read, “The most learned men are decidedly of the opinion that the seat of the human understanding is in the belly,” I cried out, “Better say it is in the feet!” and straightway shut up the book, dismissing him for another day; for this shocked all my principles of correct philosophy, even if King Solomon was against me.On going abroad I met so many things contrary to my early notions of propriety that I readily assented to a friend’s observation, that the Chinese were our antipodes in many things besides geographical position. “Indeed,” said I, “they are so; I shall expect shortly to see a man walking on his head. Look! there’s a woman in trousers and a party of gentlemen in petticoats; she is smoking and they are fanning themselves.” However, on passing them I saw that the latter had on tight leggings. We soon met the steward of the house dressed in white, and I asked him what merry-making he was invited to; with a look of concern he told me he was returning from his father’s funeral. Instead of having crape on his head he wore white shoes, and his dress was slovenly and neglected. My companion informed me that in the north of China it was common for rich people at funerals to put a white harness on the mules and shroud the carts in coarse cotton; while the chief mourners walked next to the bier, making loud cryings and showing their grief by leaning on the attendants. The friends rode behind and the musicians preceded the coffin—all being unlike our sable plumes and black crapes.We next went through a retired street, where we heard sobbing and crying inside a court, and I inquired who was dead or ill. The man, suppressing a smile, said, “It is a girl about to be married, who is lamenting with her relatives and fellows as she bids adieu to the family penates and lares and her paternal home. She has enough to cry about, though, in the prospect of going to her mother-in-law’s house.”I thought, after these unlucky essays, I would ask no more questions, but use my eyes instead. Looking into a shop, I saw a stout fellow sewing lace on a bonnet for a foreign lady; and going on to the landing-place, behold, all the ferry-boats were rowed by women, and from a passage-boat at the wharf Isaw all the women get out of the bow to go ashore. “What are we coming to next?” said I; and just then saw a carpenter take his foot-rule out of his stocking to measure some timber which an apprentice was cutting with a saw whose blade was set nearly at right angles with the frame. Before the door sat a man busily engaged in whitening the thick soles of a pair of cloth shoes. “That’s a shoewhite, I suppose,” said I; “and he answers to the shoeblacks in New York, who cry ‘Shine! shine!’” “Just so,” said my friend; “and beyond him see the poor wretch inchokey, with a board or cangue around his neck for a shirt-collar; an article of his toilet which answers to the cuffs with which the lads in the Tombs there are garnished instead of bracelets. In the prisons in this land, instead of cropping the hair of a criminal, as with us, no man is allowed to have his head shaved.”In the alleys called streets, few of them ten feet wide, the signs stood on their ends or hung from the eaves; the counters of the shops were next the street, the fronts were all open, and I saw the holes for the upright bars which secured the shop at night. Everything was done or sold in the streets or markets, which presented a strange medley. The hogs were transported in hampers on the shoulders of coolies, to the evident satisfaction of the inmates, and small pigs were put into baskets carried in slings, while the fish were frisking and jumping in shallow tubs as they were hawked from door to door.A loud din led us to look in at an open door to see what was going on, and there a dozen boys were learning their tasks, all crying like auctioneers; one lad reciting his lesson out of Confucius turned his back to the master instead of looking him in the face, and another who was learning to write put the copy-slip under the paper to imitate it, instead of looking at it as our boys would do.We next passed a fashionable lady stepping out of her sedan chair. Her head was adorned with flowers instead of a bonnet, her hands gloveless, and her neck quite bare. Her feet were encased in red silk pictured shoes not quite four inches long; her plaited, embroidered petticoat was a foot longer than her gown, and her waist was not to be seen. As she entered the court-yard, leaning on the shoulder of her maid to help her walk on those cramped feet, my friend observed, “There you see a good example of a live walking-stick.”A little after we met one of his acquaintances accompanying a prettily carved coffin, and he asked who was dead.“No man hab catchee die,” replied the Celestial; “this one piecy coffin I just now gib my olo fader. He likee too much counta my numba one ploper; s’pose he someteem catchee die, can usee he.”“So fashion, eh?” rejoined my friend; “how muchee plice can catchee one alla same same for that?”“I tinky can get one alla same so fashion one tousan dollar, so; this hab first chop hansom, lo.”“Do you call that gibberish English or Chinese?” I asked; for the language sounded no less strange than the custom of presenting a coffin to a living father differed from my preconceived notions of filial duty.“That’s the purest pigeon-English,” replied he; “and you must be the Jack Downing of Canton to immortalize it.”“Come, rather let us go home, for soon I shall hardly be able to tell where or who I am in this strange land.”[389]COMMENDABLE TRAITS OF CHINESE CHARACTER.In summing up the moral traits of Chinese character—a far more difficult task than the enumeration of its oddities—we must necessarily compare them with that perfect standard given us from above. While their contrarieties indicate a different external civilization, a slight acquaintance with their morals proves their similarity to their fellow-men in the lineaments of a fallen and depraved nature. Some of the better traits of their character have been marvellously developed. They have attained, by the observance of peace and good order, to a high degree of security for life and property; the various classes of society are linked together in a remarkably homogeneous manner by the diffusion of education in the most moral books in their language and a general regard for the legal rights of property. Equality of competition for office removes the main incentive to violence in order to obtain posts of power and dignity, and industry receives its just reward of food, raiment, and shelter with a uniformity which encourages its constant exertion. If any one asks how they have reached this point, we would primarily ascribe it to the blessing of the Governor of the nations, who has for His own purposes continued one people down to the present time from remote antiquity. The roots of society among them have never been broken up by emigration or the overflowing conquest of a superior race, but have been fully settled in a great regard for the family compact and deep reverence for parents and superiors. Education has strengthened and disseminated the morality they had, and God has blessed their filial piety by fulfilling the first commandment with promise and making their days long in the land which He has given them. Davis lays rather too much stress upon geographical and climatic causes in accounting for their advancement in these particulars, though their isolation has no doubt had much to do with their security and progress.When, however, these traits have been mentioned, the Chinese are still more left without excuse for their wickedness, sincebeing without law, they are a law unto themselves; they have always known better than they have done. With a general regard for outward decency, they are vile and polluted in a shocking degree; their conversation is full of filthy expressions and their lives of impure acts. They are somewhat restrained in the latter by the fences put around the family circle, so that seduction and adultery are comparatively infrequent, the former may even be said to be rare; but brothels and their inmates occur everywhere on land and on water. One danger attending young girls going abroad alone is that they will be stolen for incarceration in these gates of hell. By pictures, songs, and aphrodisiacs they excite their sensuality, and, as the Apostle says, “receive in themselves that recompense of their error which is meet.”MENDACITY OF THE CHINESE.More uneradicable than the sins of the flesh is the falsity of the Chinese, and its attendant sin of base ingratitude; their disregard of truth has perhaps done more to lower their character than any other fault. They feel no shame at being detected in a lie (though they have not gone quite so far as not to know when they do lie), nor do they fear any punishment from their gods for it. On the other hand, the necessity of the case compels them, in their daily intercourse with each other, to pay some regard to truth, and each man, from his own consciousness, knows just about how much to expect. Ambassadors and merchants have not been in the best position to ascertain their real character in this respect; for on the one side the courtiers of Peking thought themselves called upon by the mere presence of an embassy to put on some fictitious appearances, and on the other, the integrity and fair dealing of the hong merchants and great traders at Canton is in advance of the usual mercantile honesty of their countrymen. A Chinese requires but little motive to falsify, and he is constantly sharpening his wits to cozen his customer—wheedle him by promises and cheat him in goods or work. There is nothing which tries one so much when living among them as their disregard of truth, and renders him so indifferent as to what calamities may befall so mendacious a race; an abiding impression of suspicion toward everybody rests upon the mind, which chills the warmest wishes for theirwelfare and thwarts many a plan to benefit them. Their better traits diminish in the distance, and patience is exhausted in its daily proximity and friction with this ancestor of all sins. Mr. Abeel mentions a case of deceit which may serve as a specimen.Soon after we arrived at Kulang su, a man came to us who professed to be the near relation and guardian of the owners of the house in which we live, and presented a little boy as the joint proprietor with his widowed mother. From the appearance of the house and the testimony of others we could easily credit his story that the family were now in reduced circumstances, having not only lost the house when the English attacked the place, but a thousand dollars besides by native robbers; we therefore allowed him a small rent, and gave the dollars to the man, who put them into the hands of the child. The next month he made his appearance, but our servant, whom we had taken to be peculiarly honest for a heathen, suggested the propriety of inquiring whether the money was ever given to those for whom it was professedly received; and soon returned with the information that the mother had heard nothing of the money, the man who received it not living in the family, but had now sent a lad to us who would receive it for her, and who our servants assured us would give it to the proper person. A day or two afterward our cook whispered to me that ourhonestservant, who had taken so much pains to prevent all fraud in the matter, had made the lad give him one-half of the money for his disinterestedness in preventing it from falling into improper hands; and further examination showed us that this very cook had himself received a good share to keep silent.Thieving is exceedingly common, and the illegal exactions of the rulers, as has already been sufficiently pointed out, are most burdensome. This vice, too, is somewhat restrained by the punishments inflicted on criminals, though the root of the evil is not touched. While the licentiousness of the Chinese may be in part ascribed to their ignorance of pure intellectual pleasures and the want of virtuous female society, so may their lying be attributed partly to their truckling fear of officers, and their thievery to the want of sufficient food or work. Hospitality is not a trait of their character; on the contrary, the number and wretched condition of the beggars show that public and private charity is almost extinct; yet here too the sweeping charge must be modified when we remember the efforts they make to sustain their relatives and families in so densely peopled a country. Their avarice is not so distinguishing a feature as their loveof money, but the industry which this desire induces or presupposes is the source of most of their superiority to their neighbors. The politeness which they exhibit seldom has its motive in good-will, and consequently, when the varnish is off, the rudeness, brutality, and coarseness of the material is seen; still, among themselves this exterior polish is not without some good results in preventing quarrels, where both parties, fully understanding each other, are careful not to overpass the bounds of etiquette.On the whole, the Chinese present a singular mixture: if there is something to commend, there is more to blame; if they have some glaring vices, they have more virtues than most pagan nations. Ostentatious kindness and inbred suspicion, ceremonious civility and real rudeness, partial invention and servile imitation, industry and waste, sycophancy and self-dependence, are, with other dark and bright qualities, strangely blended. In trying to remedy the faults of their character by the restraints of law and the diffusion of education, they have no doubt hit upon the right mode; and their shortcomings show how ineffectual both must be until the Gospel comes to the aid of ruler and subject in elevating the moral sense of the whole nation. Female infanticide in some parts openly confessed, and divested of all disgrace and penalties everywhere; the dreadful prevalence of all the vices charged by the Apostle Paul upon the ancient heathen world; the alarming extent of the use of opium (furnished, too, under the patronage, and supplied in purity by the power and skill of Great Britain from India), destroying the productions and natural resources of the people; the universal practice of lying and dishonest dealings; the unblushing lewdness of old and young; harsh cruelty toward prisoners by officers, and tyranny over slaves by masters—all form a full unchecked torrent of human depravity, and prove the existence of a kind and degree of moral degradation of which an excessive statement can scarcely be made, or an adequate conception hardly be formed.END OF VOLUME I.
DESCRIPTION OF A PLAY.
Mr. Lay describes a play he saw, in which a medley of celestial and terrestrial personages were introduced. “The first scene was intended to represent the happiness and splendor of beings who inhabit the upper regions, with the sun and moon and the elements curiously personified playing around them. The man who personated the sun held a round image of the sun’s disk, while the female who acted the part of the moon had a crescent in her hand. The actors took care to move so as to mimic the conjunction and opposition of these heavenly bodies as they revolve round in their apparent orbs. The Thunderer wielded an axe, and leaped and dashed about in a variety of extraordinary somersaults. After a few turns the monarch, who had been so highly honored as to find a place,through the partiality of a mountain nymph, in the abodes of the happy, begins to feel that no height of good fortune can secure a mortal against the common calamities of this frail life. A wicked courtier disguises himself in a tiger’s skin, and in this garb imitates the animal itself. He rushes into the retired apartments of the ladies, frightens them out of their wits, and throws the heir-apparent into a moat. The sisters hurry into the royal presence, and casting themselves on the ground divulge the sad intelligence that a tiger has borne off the young prince, who it appears was the son of the mountain nymph aforesaid. The loss the bereaved monarch takes so much to heart, that he renounces the world and deliberates about the nomination of a successor. By the influence of a crafty woman he selects a young man who has just sense enough to know that he is a fool. The settlement of the crown is scarcely finished when the unhappy king dies, and the blockhead is presently invested with the crown, but instead of excelling in his new preferment the lout bemoans his lot in the most awkward strains of lamentation, and cries, ‘O dear! what shall I do?’ with such piteous action, and yet withal so truly ludicrous, that the spectator is at a loss to know whether to laugh or to weep. The courtier who had taken off the heir and broken the father’s heart finds the new king an easy tool for prosecuting his traitorous purposes, and the state is plunged into the depths of civil discord at home and dangerous wars abroad.
“In the sequel a scene occurred in which the reconciliation of this court and some foreign prince depends upon the surrender of a certain obnoxious person. The son-in-law of the victim is charged with the letter containing this proposal, and returns to his house and disguises himself for the sake of concealment. When he reaches the court of the foreign prince he discovers that he has dropped the letter in changing his clothes, and narrowly escapes being taken for a spy without his credentials. He hurries back, calls for his garments, and shakes them one by one in an agony of self-reproach, but no letter appears. He sits down, throwing himself with great violence upon the chair, with a countenance inexpressibly full of torture and despair: reality could have added nothing to the imitation. Butwhile every eye was riveted upon him, he called the servant-maid and inquired if she knew anything about the letter; she replied she overheard her mistress reading a letter whose contents were so and so. The mistress had taken her seat at a distance from him and was nursing her baby; and the instant he ascertained the letter was in her possession, he looked toward her with such a smile upon his cheek, and with a flood of light in his eye, that the whole assembly heaved a loud sigh of admiration; for the Chinese do not applaud by clapping and stamping, but express their feelings by an ejaculation that is between a sigh and a groan. The aim of the husband was to wheedle his wife out of the letter, and this smile and look of affection were merely the prelude; for he takes his chair, places it beside her, lays one hand softly on her shoulder, and fondles the child with the other in a style so exquisitely natural and so completely English, that in this dramatic picture it was seen that nature fashioneth men’s hearts alike. His addresses were, however, ineffectual, and her father’s life was not sacrificed.”[386]
The morals of the Chinese stage, so far as the sentiments of the pieces are concerned, are better than the acting, which sometimes panders to depraved tastes, but no indecent exposure, as of the persons of dancers, is ever seen in China. The audience stand in the area fronting the stage, or sit in the sheds around it; the women present are usually seated in the galleries. The police are at hand to maintain order, but the crowd, although in an irksome position, and sometimes exposed to a fierce sun, is remarkably peaceable. Accidents seldom occur on these occasions, but whenever the people are alarmed by a crash, or the stage takes fire, loss of life or limb generally ensues. A dreadful destruction took place at Canton in May, 1845, by the conflagration of a stage during the performances, by which more than two thousand lives were sacrificed; the survivors had occasion to remember that fifty persons had been killed many years before in the same place, and while a play was going on, by the falling of a wall.[387]
POPULAR AMUSEMENTS.
Active, manly plays are not popular in the south, and insteadof engaging in a ball-game or regatta, going to a bowling alley or fives’ court, to exhibit their strength and skill, young men lift beams headed with heavy stones, like huge dumb-bells, to prove their muscle, or kick up their heels in a game of shuttlecock. The out-door amusements of gentlemen consist in flying kites, carrying birds on perches and throwing seeds high in the air for them to catch, sauntering through the fields, or lazily boating on the water. Pitching coppers, fighting crickets or quails, tossing up several balls at once, kicking large leaden balls against each other, snapping sticks, chucking stones, or guessing the number of seeds in an orange, are plays for lads.
METHODS AND POPULARITY OF GAMBLING.
Gambling is universal. Hucksters at the roadside are provided with a cup and saucer, and the clicking of their dice is heard at every corner. A boy with but two cash prefers to risk their loss on the throw of a die to simply buying a cake without trying the chance of getting it for nothing. Gaming-houses are opened by scores, their keepers paying a bribe to the local officers, who can hardly be expected to be very severe against what they were brought up in and daily practise; and women, in the privacy of their apartments, while away their time at cards and dominoes. Porters play by the wayside when waiting for employment, and hardly have the retinue of an officer seen their superiors enter the house, than they pull out their cards or dice and squat down to a game. The most common game of luck played at Canton is calledfan tan, or ‘quadrating cash.’ The keeper of the table is provided with a pile of bright large cash, of which he takes a double handful, and lays them on the table, covering the pile with a bowl. The persons standing outside the rail guess the remainder there will be left after the pile has been divided by four, whether one, two, three, or nothing, the guess and stake of each person being first recorded by a clerk; the keeper then carefully picks out the coins four by four, all narrowly watching his movements. Cheating is almost impossible in this game, and twenty people can play at it as easily as two. Chinese cards are smaller and more numerous than our own; but the dominoes are the same.
Combats between crickets are oftenest seen in the south,where the small field sort is common. Two well-chosen combatants are put into a basin and irritated with a straw until they rush upon each other with the utmost fury, chirruping as they make the onset, and the battle seldom ends without a tragical result in loss of life or limb. Quails are also trained to mortal combat; two are placed on a railed table, on which a handful of millet has been strewn, and as soon as one picks up a kernel the other flies at him with beak, claws, and wings, and the struggle is kept up till one retreats by hopping into the hand of his disappointed owner. Hundreds of dollars are occasionally betted upon these cricket or quail fights, which, if not as sublime or exciting, are certainly less inhuman than the pugilistic fights and bull-baits of Christian countries, while both show the same brutal love of sport at the expense of life.
Boys Gambling with Crickets.
Boys Gambling with Crickets.
Boys Gambling with Crickets.
A favorite amusement is the flying of kites. They are made of paper and silk, in imitation of birds, butterflies, lizards, spectacles, fish, men, and other objects; but the skill shown in flying them is more remarkable than the ingenuity displayed in their construction. The ninth day of the ninth moon is a festival devoted to this amusement all over the land. Doolittledescribes them as sometimes resembling a great bird, or a serpent thirty feet long; at other times the spectator sees a group of hawks hovering around a centre, all being suspended by one strong cord, and each hawk-kite controlled and moved by a separate line. On this day he estimates that as many as thirty thousand people assemble on the hills around Fuhchau to join in this amusement if the weather be propitious. Many of the kites are cut adrift under the belief that, as they float off, they carry away with them all impending disasters.
Chinese Chess-board.
Chinese Chess-board.
Chinese Chess-board.
CHINESE CHESS.
The Chinese game of chess is very ancient, for Wu Wang (B.C.1120) is the reputed inventor, and its rules of playing are so unlike the Indian game as to suggest an independent origin, which is confirmed by the peculiar feature of thekiai ho, or river, running across the board. There are seventy-two squares,of which eight are run together to form the river, leaving thirty-two on each side; but as the men stand on the intersection of the lines, there are ninety positions for the sixteen pieces used by each player, or twenty-six more than in the European game. The pieces are arranged for playing as in the diagram above.
The pieces are like chequer-men in shape, each of the seven kinds on each side having its name out on the top, and distinguished by its red or black colors. The four squares near each edge form the headquarters of thetsiang, or ‘general,’ out of which he and his twosz’, or ‘secretaries,’ cannot move. On each side of the headquarters are two elephants, two horses, and two chariots, whose powers are less than our bishop, knight, and castle, though similar; the chariot is the most powerful piece. In front of the horses stand two cannoniers, which capture like our knight but move like our castle. Fivepao, soldiers or pawns, guard the river banks, but cannot return when once across it in pursuit of the enemy, and get no higher value when they reach the last row. Each piece is put down in the point where it captured its man, except the cannoniers; as the general cannot be taken, the object of each player is to check-mate him in his headquarters, therefore, by preventing his moving except into check. The want of a queen and the limited moves of the men restrict the combinations in the Chinese game more than in western chess, but it has its own elements of skill. Literary men and women play it much, and usually for small stakes. There is another game played less frequently but one of the most ancient in the Empire. It is calledwei-kí, which may be rendered ‘blockade chess,’ and was common in the days of the sages, perhaps even earlier than chess. The board contains three hundred and twenty-four squares, eighteen each way, and the number of pieces is three hundred, though both the number of points and of pieces may be less than this size of the full game. The pieces are black and white and stand on the crossings of the lines, three hundred and sixty-one in number. The object of the opponents is to surround each other’s men and take up the crossings they occupy, or neutralize their power over those near them.Each player puts down a piece anywhere on the board, and continues to do so alternately, capturing his adversary’s positions until all the crossings are occupied and the game is ended.[388]
If this sketch of the customs and amusements of the Chinese in their social intercourse and public entertainments is necessarily brief, it is perhaps enough to exhibit their character. Dr. Johnson has well remarked that no man is a hypocrite in his amusements. The absence of some of the violent and gladiatorial sports of other countries, and of the adjudication of doubtful questions by ordeals or duels; the general dislike of a resort to force, their inability to cope with enemies of vastly less resources and numbers, and the comparative disesteem of warlike achievements, all indicate the peaceful traits of Chinese character. Duels are unknown, assassinations are infrequent, betting on horse-races is still to begin, and running amuck à la Malay is unheard of. When two persons fall out upon a matter, after a vast variety of gesture and huge vociferation of opprobrium, they will blow off their wrath and separate almost without touching each other. Some contrarieties in their ideas and customs from those practised among ourselves have frequently been noticed by travellers, a few of which are grouped in the following sketch:
CONTRARIETIES IN CHINESE AND WESTERN USAGE.
On asking the boatman in which direction the harbor lay, I was answered west-north, and the wind, he said, was west-south; he still further perplexed my ideas as to our course by getting out his compass and showing me that the needle pointed south. It was really a needle as to size, weight, and length, about an inch and a half long, the south end of it painted red, and all the time quivering on the pivot. His boat differed from our vessels, too, in many ways: the cooking was done in the stern and the passengers were all accommodated in the bow, while the sailors slept on deck and had their kits stowed in lockers amidships.On landing, the first object that attracted my attention was a military officer wearing an embroidered petticoat, who had a string of beads around his neck and a fan in his hand. His insignia of rank was a peacock’s feather pointing downward instead of a plume turning upward; he had a round knob or button on the apex of his sugar-loaf cap, instead of a star on his breast or epaulettes on his shoulders; and it was with some dismay that I saw him mount his horse on the right side. Several scabbards hung from his belt, whichI naturally supposed must be dress swords or dirks; but on venturing near through the crowd I was undeceived by seeing a pair of chopsticks and a knife-handle sticking out of one, and soon his fan was folded up and put in the other. I therefore concluded that he was going to a dinner instead of a review. The natives around me shaved the hair from the front half of their heads and let it grow long behind: many of them did not shave their faces, and others employed their leisure in diligently pulling the straggling hairs down over their mouths. We arrange our toilets differently, thought I; but could easily see the happy device of chopsticks, which enabled these gentlemen to put their food into the mouth endwise under this natural fringe. A group of hungry fellows, around the stall of a travelling cook, further exhibited the utility of thesekwai-tsz’, or ‘nimble lads’ (as I afterward learned chopsticks were called), for each had put his bowl of rice to his lips, and was shovelling in the contents till the mouth would hold no more. “We keep our bowls on the table,” said I, “do our cooking in the house, and wait for customers to come there instead of travelling around after them;” but these chopsticks serve for knife, fork, and spoon in one.On my way to the hotel I saw a group of old people and graybeards. A few were chirruping and chuckling to larks or thrushes, which they carried perched on a stick or in cages; others were catching flies or hunting for crickets to feed them, while the remainder of the party seemed to be delightfully employed in flying fantastic paper kites. A group of boys were gravely looking on and regarding these innocent occupations of their seniors with the most serious and gratified attention. A few of the most sprightly were kicking a shuttlecock back and forth with great energy, instead of playing rounders with bat and ball as boys would do.As I had come to the country to reside for some time, I made inquiries respecting a teacher, and happily found one who understood English. On entering he stood at the door, and instead of coming forward and shaking my hands, he politely bowed and shook his own, clasping them before his breast. I looked upon this mode as an improvement on our custom, especially when the condition of the hands might be doubtful, and requested him to be seated. I knew that I was to study a language without an alphabet, but was not prepared to see him begin at what I had always considered to be the end of the book. He read the date of its publication, “the fifth year, tenth month, and first day.” “We arrange our dates differently,” I observed, and begged him to read—which he did, from top to bottom, and proceeding from right to left. “You have an odd book here,” remarked I, taking it up; “what is the price?” “A dollar and eight-thirds,” said he, upon which I counted out three dollars and two-thirds and went on looking at it. The paper was printed only on one side; the running title was on the edge of the leaves instead of the top of the page, the paging was near the bottom, the number and contents of the chapters were at their ends, the marginal notes on the top, where the blank was double the size at the foot, and a broad black line across the middle of each page, like that seen in some French newspapers, separated the two works composing the volume, instead of one being printed after the other. The back was open and the sewing outside, and the name neatly written on the bottom edge. “You have given me too much,” said he, as hehanded me back two dollars and one-third, and then explained that eight-thirds meant eight divided by three, or only three-eighths. A small native vocabulary which he carried with him had the characters arranged according to the termination of their sounds,ming,sing,king, being all in a row, and the first word in it beingseen. “Ah! my friend,” said I, “English won’t help me to find a word in that book; please give me your address.” He accordingly took out a red card, big as a sheet of paper, on which was written Ying San-yuen in large characters, and pointed out the place of his residence, written on the other side. “I thought your name was Mr. Ying; why do you write your name wrong end first?” “It is you who are in the wrong,” replied he; “look in your yearly directory, where alone you write names as they should be written, putting the honored family name first.”I could only say, “Customs differ;” and begged him to speak of ceremony, as I gave him back the book. He commenced, “When you receive a distinguished guest, do not fail to place him on your left, for that is the seat of honor; and be careful not to uncover the head, as that would be an unbecoming act of familiarity.” This was a little opposed to my established notions; but when he reopened the volume and read, “The most learned men are decidedly of the opinion that the seat of the human understanding is in the belly,” I cried out, “Better say it is in the feet!” and straightway shut up the book, dismissing him for another day; for this shocked all my principles of correct philosophy, even if King Solomon was against me.On going abroad I met so many things contrary to my early notions of propriety that I readily assented to a friend’s observation, that the Chinese were our antipodes in many things besides geographical position. “Indeed,” said I, “they are so; I shall expect shortly to see a man walking on his head. Look! there’s a woman in trousers and a party of gentlemen in petticoats; she is smoking and they are fanning themselves.” However, on passing them I saw that the latter had on tight leggings. We soon met the steward of the house dressed in white, and I asked him what merry-making he was invited to; with a look of concern he told me he was returning from his father’s funeral. Instead of having crape on his head he wore white shoes, and his dress was slovenly and neglected. My companion informed me that in the north of China it was common for rich people at funerals to put a white harness on the mules and shroud the carts in coarse cotton; while the chief mourners walked next to the bier, making loud cryings and showing their grief by leaning on the attendants. The friends rode behind and the musicians preceded the coffin—all being unlike our sable plumes and black crapes.We next went through a retired street, where we heard sobbing and crying inside a court, and I inquired who was dead or ill. The man, suppressing a smile, said, “It is a girl about to be married, who is lamenting with her relatives and fellows as she bids adieu to the family penates and lares and her paternal home. She has enough to cry about, though, in the prospect of going to her mother-in-law’s house.”I thought, after these unlucky essays, I would ask no more questions, but use my eyes instead. Looking into a shop, I saw a stout fellow sewing lace on a bonnet for a foreign lady; and going on to the landing-place, behold, all the ferry-boats were rowed by women, and from a passage-boat at the wharf Isaw all the women get out of the bow to go ashore. “What are we coming to next?” said I; and just then saw a carpenter take his foot-rule out of his stocking to measure some timber which an apprentice was cutting with a saw whose blade was set nearly at right angles with the frame. Before the door sat a man busily engaged in whitening the thick soles of a pair of cloth shoes. “That’s a shoewhite, I suppose,” said I; “and he answers to the shoeblacks in New York, who cry ‘Shine! shine!’” “Just so,” said my friend; “and beyond him see the poor wretch inchokey, with a board or cangue around his neck for a shirt-collar; an article of his toilet which answers to the cuffs with which the lads in the Tombs there are garnished instead of bracelets. In the prisons in this land, instead of cropping the hair of a criminal, as with us, no man is allowed to have his head shaved.”In the alleys called streets, few of them ten feet wide, the signs stood on their ends or hung from the eaves; the counters of the shops were next the street, the fronts were all open, and I saw the holes for the upright bars which secured the shop at night. Everything was done or sold in the streets or markets, which presented a strange medley. The hogs were transported in hampers on the shoulders of coolies, to the evident satisfaction of the inmates, and small pigs were put into baskets carried in slings, while the fish were frisking and jumping in shallow tubs as they were hawked from door to door.A loud din led us to look in at an open door to see what was going on, and there a dozen boys were learning their tasks, all crying like auctioneers; one lad reciting his lesson out of Confucius turned his back to the master instead of looking him in the face, and another who was learning to write put the copy-slip under the paper to imitate it, instead of looking at it as our boys would do.We next passed a fashionable lady stepping out of her sedan chair. Her head was adorned with flowers instead of a bonnet, her hands gloveless, and her neck quite bare. Her feet were encased in red silk pictured shoes not quite four inches long; her plaited, embroidered petticoat was a foot longer than her gown, and her waist was not to be seen. As she entered the court-yard, leaning on the shoulder of her maid to help her walk on those cramped feet, my friend observed, “There you see a good example of a live walking-stick.”A little after we met one of his acquaintances accompanying a prettily carved coffin, and he asked who was dead.“No man hab catchee die,” replied the Celestial; “this one piecy coffin I just now gib my olo fader. He likee too much counta my numba one ploper; s’pose he someteem catchee die, can usee he.”“So fashion, eh?” rejoined my friend; “how muchee plice can catchee one alla same same for that?”“I tinky can get one alla same so fashion one tousan dollar, so; this hab first chop hansom, lo.”“Do you call that gibberish English or Chinese?” I asked; for the language sounded no less strange than the custom of presenting a coffin to a living father differed from my preconceived notions of filial duty.“That’s the purest pigeon-English,” replied he; “and you must be the Jack Downing of Canton to immortalize it.”“Come, rather let us go home, for soon I shall hardly be able to tell where or who I am in this strange land.”[389]
On asking the boatman in which direction the harbor lay, I was answered west-north, and the wind, he said, was west-south; he still further perplexed my ideas as to our course by getting out his compass and showing me that the needle pointed south. It was really a needle as to size, weight, and length, about an inch and a half long, the south end of it painted red, and all the time quivering on the pivot. His boat differed from our vessels, too, in many ways: the cooking was done in the stern and the passengers were all accommodated in the bow, while the sailors slept on deck and had their kits stowed in lockers amidships.
On landing, the first object that attracted my attention was a military officer wearing an embroidered petticoat, who had a string of beads around his neck and a fan in his hand. His insignia of rank was a peacock’s feather pointing downward instead of a plume turning upward; he had a round knob or button on the apex of his sugar-loaf cap, instead of a star on his breast or epaulettes on his shoulders; and it was with some dismay that I saw him mount his horse on the right side. Several scabbards hung from his belt, whichI naturally supposed must be dress swords or dirks; but on venturing near through the crowd I was undeceived by seeing a pair of chopsticks and a knife-handle sticking out of one, and soon his fan was folded up and put in the other. I therefore concluded that he was going to a dinner instead of a review. The natives around me shaved the hair from the front half of their heads and let it grow long behind: many of them did not shave their faces, and others employed their leisure in diligently pulling the straggling hairs down over their mouths. We arrange our toilets differently, thought I; but could easily see the happy device of chopsticks, which enabled these gentlemen to put their food into the mouth endwise under this natural fringe. A group of hungry fellows, around the stall of a travelling cook, further exhibited the utility of thesekwai-tsz’, or ‘nimble lads’ (as I afterward learned chopsticks were called), for each had put his bowl of rice to his lips, and was shovelling in the contents till the mouth would hold no more. “We keep our bowls on the table,” said I, “do our cooking in the house, and wait for customers to come there instead of travelling around after them;” but these chopsticks serve for knife, fork, and spoon in one.
On my way to the hotel I saw a group of old people and graybeards. A few were chirruping and chuckling to larks or thrushes, which they carried perched on a stick or in cages; others were catching flies or hunting for crickets to feed them, while the remainder of the party seemed to be delightfully employed in flying fantastic paper kites. A group of boys were gravely looking on and regarding these innocent occupations of their seniors with the most serious and gratified attention. A few of the most sprightly were kicking a shuttlecock back and forth with great energy, instead of playing rounders with bat and ball as boys would do.
As I had come to the country to reside for some time, I made inquiries respecting a teacher, and happily found one who understood English. On entering he stood at the door, and instead of coming forward and shaking my hands, he politely bowed and shook his own, clasping them before his breast. I looked upon this mode as an improvement on our custom, especially when the condition of the hands might be doubtful, and requested him to be seated. I knew that I was to study a language without an alphabet, but was not prepared to see him begin at what I had always considered to be the end of the book. He read the date of its publication, “the fifth year, tenth month, and first day.” “We arrange our dates differently,” I observed, and begged him to read—which he did, from top to bottom, and proceeding from right to left. “You have an odd book here,” remarked I, taking it up; “what is the price?” “A dollar and eight-thirds,” said he, upon which I counted out three dollars and two-thirds and went on looking at it. The paper was printed only on one side; the running title was on the edge of the leaves instead of the top of the page, the paging was near the bottom, the number and contents of the chapters were at their ends, the marginal notes on the top, where the blank was double the size at the foot, and a broad black line across the middle of each page, like that seen in some French newspapers, separated the two works composing the volume, instead of one being printed after the other. The back was open and the sewing outside, and the name neatly written on the bottom edge. “You have given me too much,” said he, as hehanded me back two dollars and one-third, and then explained that eight-thirds meant eight divided by three, or only three-eighths. A small native vocabulary which he carried with him had the characters arranged according to the termination of their sounds,ming,sing,king, being all in a row, and the first word in it beingseen. “Ah! my friend,” said I, “English won’t help me to find a word in that book; please give me your address.” He accordingly took out a red card, big as a sheet of paper, on which was written Ying San-yuen in large characters, and pointed out the place of his residence, written on the other side. “I thought your name was Mr. Ying; why do you write your name wrong end first?” “It is you who are in the wrong,” replied he; “look in your yearly directory, where alone you write names as they should be written, putting the honored family name first.”
I could only say, “Customs differ;” and begged him to speak of ceremony, as I gave him back the book. He commenced, “When you receive a distinguished guest, do not fail to place him on your left, for that is the seat of honor; and be careful not to uncover the head, as that would be an unbecoming act of familiarity.” This was a little opposed to my established notions; but when he reopened the volume and read, “The most learned men are decidedly of the opinion that the seat of the human understanding is in the belly,” I cried out, “Better say it is in the feet!” and straightway shut up the book, dismissing him for another day; for this shocked all my principles of correct philosophy, even if King Solomon was against me.
On going abroad I met so many things contrary to my early notions of propriety that I readily assented to a friend’s observation, that the Chinese were our antipodes in many things besides geographical position. “Indeed,” said I, “they are so; I shall expect shortly to see a man walking on his head. Look! there’s a woman in trousers and a party of gentlemen in petticoats; she is smoking and they are fanning themselves.” However, on passing them I saw that the latter had on tight leggings. We soon met the steward of the house dressed in white, and I asked him what merry-making he was invited to; with a look of concern he told me he was returning from his father’s funeral. Instead of having crape on his head he wore white shoes, and his dress was slovenly and neglected. My companion informed me that in the north of China it was common for rich people at funerals to put a white harness on the mules and shroud the carts in coarse cotton; while the chief mourners walked next to the bier, making loud cryings and showing their grief by leaning on the attendants. The friends rode behind and the musicians preceded the coffin—all being unlike our sable plumes and black crapes.
We next went through a retired street, where we heard sobbing and crying inside a court, and I inquired who was dead or ill. The man, suppressing a smile, said, “It is a girl about to be married, who is lamenting with her relatives and fellows as she bids adieu to the family penates and lares and her paternal home. She has enough to cry about, though, in the prospect of going to her mother-in-law’s house.”
I thought, after these unlucky essays, I would ask no more questions, but use my eyes instead. Looking into a shop, I saw a stout fellow sewing lace on a bonnet for a foreign lady; and going on to the landing-place, behold, all the ferry-boats were rowed by women, and from a passage-boat at the wharf Isaw all the women get out of the bow to go ashore. “What are we coming to next?” said I; and just then saw a carpenter take his foot-rule out of his stocking to measure some timber which an apprentice was cutting with a saw whose blade was set nearly at right angles with the frame. Before the door sat a man busily engaged in whitening the thick soles of a pair of cloth shoes. “That’s a shoewhite, I suppose,” said I; “and he answers to the shoeblacks in New York, who cry ‘Shine! shine!’” “Just so,” said my friend; “and beyond him see the poor wretch inchokey, with a board or cangue around his neck for a shirt-collar; an article of his toilet which answers to the cuffs with which the lads in the Tombs there are garnished instead of bracelets. In the prisons in this land, instead of cropping the hair of a criminal, as with us, no man is allowed to have his head shaved.”
In the alleys called streets, few of them ten feet wide, the signs stood on their ends or hung from the eaves; the counters of the shops were next the street, the fronts were all open, and I saw the holes for the upright bars which secured the shop at night. Everything was done or sold in the streets or markets, which presented a strange medley. The hogs were transported in hampers on the shoulders of coolies, to the evident satisfaction of the inmates, and small pigs were put into baskets carried in slings, while the fish were frisking and jumping in shallow tubs as they were hawked from door to door.
A loud din led us to look in at an open door to see what was going on, and there a dozen boys were learning their tasks, all crying like auctioneers; one lad reciting his lesson out of Confucius turned his back to the master instead of looking him in the face, and another who was learning to write put the copy-slip under the paper to imitate it, instead of looking at it as our boys would do.
We next passed a fashionable lady stepping out of her sedan chair. Her head was adorned with flowers instead of a bonnet, her hands gloveless, and her neck quite bare. Her feet were encased in red silk pictured shoes not quite four inches long; her plaited, embroidered petticoat was a foot longer than her gown, and her waist was not to be seen. As she entered the court-yard, leaning on the shoulder of her maid to help her walk on those cramped feet, my friend observed, “There you see a good example of a live walking-stick.”
A little after we met one of his acquaintances accompanying a prettily carved coffin, and he asked who was dead.
“No man hab catchee die,” replied the Celestial; “this one piecy coffin I just now gib my olo fader. He likee too much counta my numba one ploper; s’pose he someteem catchee die, can usee he.”
“So fashion, eh?” rejoined my friend; “how muchee plice can catchee one alla same same for that?”
“I tinky can get one alla same so fashion one tousan dollar, so; this hab first chop hansom, lo.”
“Do you call that gibberish English or Chinese?” I asked; for the language sounded no less strange than the custom of presenting a coffin to a living father differed from my preconceived notions of filial duty.
“That’s the purest pigeon-English,” replied he; “and you must be the Jack Downing of Canton to immortalize it.”
“Come, rather let us go home, for soon I shall hardly be able to tell where or who I am in this strange land.”[389]
COMMENDABLE TRAITS OF CHINESE CHARACTER.
In summing up the moral traits of Chinese character—a far more difficult task than the enumeration of its oddities—we must necessarily compare them with that perfect standard given us from above. While their contrarieties indicate a different external civilization, a slight acquaintance with their morals proves their similarity to their fellow-men in the lineaments of a fallen and depraved nature. Some of the better traits of their character have been marvellously developed. They have attained, by the observance of peace and good order, to a high degree of security for life and property; the various classes of society are linked together in a remarkably homogeneous manner by the diffusion of education in the most moral books in their language and a general regard for the legal rights of property. Equality of competition for office removes the main incentive to violence in order to obtain posts of power and dignity, and industry receives its just reward of food, raiment, and shelter with a uniformity which encourages its constant exertion. If any one asks how they have reached this point, we would primarily ascribe it to the blessing of the Governor of the nations, who has for His own purposes continued one people down to the present time from remote antiquity. The roots of society among them have never been broken up by emigration or the overflowing conquest of a superior race, but have been fully settled in a great regard for the family compact and deep reverence for parents and superiors. Education has strengthened and disseminated the morality they had, and God has blessed their filial piety by fulfilling the first commandment with promise and making their days long in the land which He has given them. Davis lays rather too much stress upon geographical and climatic causes in accounting for their advancement in these particulars, though their isolation has no doubt had much to do with their security and progress.
When, however, these traits have been mentioned, the Chinese are still more left without excuse for their wickedness, sincebeing without law, they are a law unto themselves; they have always known better than they have done. With a general regard for outward decency, they are vile and polluted in a shocking degree; their conversation is full of filthy expressions and their lives of impure acts. They are somewhat restrained in the latter by the fences put around the family circle, so that seduction and adultery are comparatively infrequent, the former may even be said to be rare; but brothels and their inmates occur everywhere on land and on water. One danger attending young girls going abroad alone is that they will be stolen for incarceration in these gates of hell. By pictures, songs, and aphrodisiacs they excite their sensuality, and, as the Apostle says, “receive in themselves that recompense of their error which is meet.”
MENDACITY OF THE CHINESE.
More uneradicable than the sins of the flesh is the falsity of the Chinese, and its attendant sin of base ingratitude; their disregard of truth has perhaps done more to lower their character than any other fault. They feel no shame at being detected in a lie (though they have not gone quite so far as not to know when they do lie), nor do they fear any punishment from their gods for it. On the other hand, the necessity of the case compels them, in their daily intercourse with each other, to pay some regard to truth, and each man, from his own consciousness, knows just about how much to expect. Ambassadors and merchants have not been in the best position to ascertain their real character in this respect; for on the one side the courtiers of Peking thought themselves called upon by the mere presence of an embassy to put on some fictitious appearances, and on the other, the integrity and fair dealing of the hong merchants and great traders at Canton is in advance of the usual mercantile honesty of their countrymen. A Chinese requires but little motive to falsify, and he is constantly sharpening his wits to cozen his customer—wheedle him by promises and cheat him in goods or work. There is nothing which tries one so much when living among them as their disregard of truth, and renders him so indifferent as to what calamities may befall so mendacious a race; an abiding impression of suspicion toward everybody rests upon the mind, which chills the warmest wishes for theirwelfare and thwarts many a plan to benefit them. Their better traits diminish in the distance, and patience is exhausted in its daily proximity and friction with this ancestor of all sins. Mr. Abeel mentions a case of deceit which may serve as a specimen.
Soon after we arrived at Kulang su, a man came to us who professed to be the near relation and guardian of the owners of the house in which we live, and presented a little boy as the joint proprietor with his widowed mother. From the appearance of the house and the testimony of others we could easily credit his story that the family were now in reduced circumstances, having not only lost the house when the English attacked the place, but a thousand dollars besides by native robbers; we therefore allowed him a small rent, and gave the dollars to the man, who put them into the hands of the child. The next month he made his appearance, but our servant, whom we had taken to be peculiarly honest for a heathen, suggested the propriety of inquiring whether the money was ever given to those for whom it was professedly received; and soon returned with the information that the mother had heard nothing of the money, the man who received it not living in the family, but had now sent a lad to us who would receive it for her, and who our servants assured us would give it to the proper person. A day or two afterward our cook whispered to me that ourhonestservant, who had taken so much pains to prevent all fraud in the matter, had made the lad give him one-half of the money for his disinterestedness in preventing it from falling into improper hands; and further examination showed us that this very cook had himself received a good share to keep silent.
Soon after we arrived at Kulang su, a man came to us who professed to be the near relation and guardian of the owners of the house in which we live, and presented a little boy as the joint proprietor with his widowed mother. From the appearance of the house and the testimony of others we could easily credit his story that the family were now in reduced circumstances, having not only lost the house when the English attacked the place, but a thousand dollars besides by native robbers; we therefore allowed him a small rent, and gave the dollars to the man, who put them into the hands of the child. The next month he made his appearance, but our servant, whom we had taken to be peculiarly honest for a heathen, suggested the propriety of inquiring whether the money was ever given to those for whom it was professedly received; and soon returned with the information that the mother had heard nothing of the money, the man who received it not living in the family, but had now sent a lad to us who would receive it for her, and who our servants assured us would give it to the proper person. A day or two afterward our cook whispered to me that ourhonestservant, who had taken so much pains to prevent all fraud in the matter, had made the lad give him one-half of the money for his disinterestedness in preventing it from falling into improper hands; and further examination showed us that this very cook had himself received a good share to keep silent.
Thieving is exceedingly common, and the illegal exactions of the rulers, as has already been sufficiently pointed out, are most burdensome. This vice, too, is somewhat restrained by the punishments inflicted on criminals, though the root of the evil is not touched. While the licentiousness of the Chinese may be in part ascribed to their ignorance of pure intellectual pleasures and the want of virtuous female society, so may their lying be attributed partly to their truckling fear of officers, and their thievery to the want of sufficient food or work. Hospitality is not a trait of their character; on the contrary, the number and wretched condition of the beggars show that public and private charity is almost extinct; yet here too the sweeping charge must be modified when we remember the efforts they make to sustain their relatives and families in so densely peopled a country. Their avarice is not so distinguishing a feature as their loveof money, but the industry which this desire induces or presupposes is the source of most of their superiority to their neighbors. The politeness which they exhibit seldom has its motive in good-will, and consequently, when the varnish is off, the rudeness, brutality, and coarseness of the material is seen; still, among themselves this exterior polish is not without some good results in preventing quarrels, where both parties, fully understanding each other, are careful not to overpass the bounds of etiquette.
On the whole, the Chinese present a singular mixture: if there is something to commend, there is more to blame; if they have some glaring vices, they have more virtues than most pagan nations. Ostentatious kindness and inbred suspicion, ceremonious civility and real rudeness, partial invention and servile imitation, industry and waste, sycophancy and self-dependence, are, with other dark and bright qualities, strangely blended. In trying to remedy the faults of their character by the restraints of law and the diffusion of education, they have no doubt hit upon the right mode; and their shortcomings show how ineffectual both must be until the Gospel comes to the aid of ruler and subject in elevating the moral sense of the whole nation. Female infanticide in some parts openly confessed, and divested of all disgrace and penalties everywhere; the dreadful prevalence of all the vices charged by the Apostle Paul upon the ancient heathen world; the alarming extent of the use of opium (furnished, too, under the patronage, and supplied in purity by the power and skill of Great Britain from India), destroying the productions and natural resources of the people; the universal practice of lying and dishonest dealings; the unblushing lewdness of old and young; harsh cruelty toward prisoners by officers, and tyranny over slaves by masters—all form a full unchecked torrent of human depravity, and prove the existence of a kind and degree of moral degradation of which an excessive statement can scarcely be made, or an adequate conception hardly be formed.
END OF VOLUME I.