A Scene fromRomeo and Juliet.A Scene fromMacbeth.A Scene fromAntony and Cleopatra.A Scene fromThe Fool’s Revenge.
A Scene fromRomeo and Juliet.A Scene fromMacbeth.A Scene fromAntony and Cleopatra.A Scene fromThe Fool’s Revenge.
A Scene fromRomeo and Juliet.
A Scene fromMacbeth.
A Scene fromAntony and Cleopatra.
A Scene fromThe Fool’s Revenge.
At least so the Chinese printer said, but who could expect a Cantonese compositor ever to have heard of Tom Taylor?
I do not know which of the four tragic selections was the funniest.
Picture Romeo, Macbeth, Antony, and Bertuccio in a nice new dress suit, nice new patent-leather shoes, nice new white kid gloves; picture Juliet, Lady Macbeth, Cleopatra, and sweet, simple little Fiordelisa in a long, black, jetted, sleeveless French frock, ridiculously long tan gloves, and shoes that were monstrous Parisian burlesques of the “human foot divine!”
Need I say that there was no scenery? I tried to do my duty as a soldier of the mask should. But my husband, who is a very shameless person, was in an unseemly state of hilarity. And indeed, for all my trying, I cannot say that Juliet’s impassioned words fell “trippingly from my tongue.”
It was over at last, and the kind, patient audience went sadly out. Across the globe I send them my greeting. Perhaps they will forgive me the dire distress I must have inflicted upon them if they ever learn that their misspent yen enabled me to see Canton.
How good, how English they were, those patient people! They would have taught me, had I not known long before, that, whatever an English audience may think, it is incapable of showing disapprobation to a woman.
When the poor audience had escaped we had supper; our editor, Mr. Paulding, my husband, and I. The editor said that he preferred my acting to my reciting. Mr. Paulding said he had enjoyed the entertainment immensely—especially after he left. My husband laughed and laughed, and I ate my supper and suggested a midnight prowl through Canton.
But that, like much I say, was easier said than done. The Canton gate was shut. So we said good-night and retired as nice English people should. I lit a big flare of joss sticks in our chamber, for I had no mind to forget, even in my sleep, that I was in Cathay.
We sat for a few moments on our balcony and spun strange webs of fancied thought about Canton. We struck, with our mental fingers, a thousand copper gongs and weaved big fabrics of Mongolian romance. And all the while Canton was asleep.
The Chinese are a very normal people. Though their industriousness prods them to lamp-lit work, they, as a rule, sleep as soon after sunset as they can.
The next day broke in big Oriental splendour. There was to be no Shakespearian Recital that night. We were going to spend the week in Canton, and I was the happiest woman in Asia.
When we had paid to the Chinese dawn the weak obeisance of buttered toast, fried fish, and superlatively hot coffee, we sallied forth into Canton. How shall I describe that week? I can’t describe it. I can only say, “Go East—go East—go East!”
We found the same chairs awaiting us. Our guide looked brisk and ready; he had not attended our Shakespearian Recital. They carried us first to the Cantonese execution-grounds. We did not go into them. I am a curious, inquisitive, not to say a tautological female, but I did not care to penetrate into that place of slaughter.
Three or four of our boys went from Hong-Kong to Kowloon to see an execution. That was what they said; but revelations over which they had no control led me to believe that they, in part at least, went to pit the hard-earned wages of histrionic genius against the oblong gold pieces of Chinese exchange.
They, knowing what a free-lance I was, asked me to go with them to observe the extinguishment of sinful Chinese life; but my imagination is more than my courage, and I declined. My husband was (what husband would not have been?) madly angry.
I have never known whether the boys were joking or not; but I am inclined to give them and myself the benefit of the doubt and to believe that they were.
At all events, our Cantonese guide was in grim earnest, and evidently felt injured because he was prevented from showing us what he apparently thought the chief glory of his native city.
If you too, good reader, feel deprived of your sanguinary rights, I must refer you to the printed records of more strongly-minded travellers. There have been many such, and in their pages you will find your just due of gory Chinese swords and of ghastly, trunkless Chinese heads in big brown jars.
We spent several hours in a fascinating shop where old Chinese robes and marvellous antique embroideries were sold. My husband bought me a charming, magnificent cape that had belonged very many years before to a mandarin. It was coarsely designed, but superfinely executed open-work. Roses, leaves, and butterflies were the burden of its embroidered song. The points of its irregular edges were finished with queer, silky, crimson knobs and wee golden bells. Last summer I took off the balls and the bells and three of the mostprononcébutterflies, and the former cape of the noble yellow man made an inexpressibly effective zouave on my prettiest house gown.
We were a little disappointed in the temple of the five thousand genii and in the five-storied pagoda. But the flowery pagoda was a marvel of quaint beauty; and the changing, panoramic wonder of the streets never palled upon us.
We had a Chinese lunch with a Chinese dignitary, and he let me prowl about his mansion and the ridiculous courtyard. He introduced me to his wife, and she introduced me to her husband’s concubines, with whom she seemed to be on the best of terms.
In China “concubine” means something very analogous to the “handmaiden” of Biblical times. She is not a wife, but to Occidental ears the term is best understood if it is translated “underwife—lesser wife.”
After lunch we visited the sanctum of a Cantonese editor, and from there we went to one of the large popular markets. Shall I describe it? Shall I try? Yes; there were—black ones and white ones and gray ones. The black ones are considered far the most choice. Isn’t it horrible to think of human creatures eating cats and dogs and rats? Is it not most horrible? And yet—why? Can we allege one single sound reason against it? I think not. And yet as I stood in that Cantonese market I did feel for a moment very much as Hamlet felt when he held Yorick’s earthy skull in his hands. As for my husband; he fled. I wonder why men are in so many ways daintier than women?
It was a gruesome sight, that busy market-place, with great piles of meat cut from animals we scarcely mention when we eat. Poor pussies! they looked very pathetic. And I could have cried over the massacre of the puppies. The rats hung in countless numbers upon long, stretched strings. Probably I would better not describe more minutely. It did revolt me. And yet I do not know why it should have done so.
Unless we adopt vegetarianism and abstain from eating aught that has possessed animal life and consciousness, I do not see how we can consistently condemn the Chinaman, because he is less erratic than we in his selection of food, and because he is the creature of a sterner necessity than ours. If we consider the vast numbers of Chinese that must eat to live,—if we consider the proportional density of the population,—I am sure that we shall be just enough to realise that the Chinese must utilise every available atom of wholesome food.
Emperors and heroes have supped off strange flesh in time of war. According to some historians Napoleon’s larder was reduced to cat’s flesh, during the retreat from Moscow.
The most elegant woman I ever knew, a French woman who went through the Commune, told me once, “Ze meat of ze horse, it iz very nasty, but ze meat of ze rat it is nice, if you know not what it iz.”
“The hand of little employment hath the daintier sense.”
We tip-tilt our nice European noses at a great deal, because we have had no usage of it. Sometimes we are condemned as unreasonable. Prejudice and lack of sympathy are near akin to injustice and misjudgment.
We left Canton reluctantly. As we neared Hong-Kong my comrade said to me—
“James, would anything on earth induce you to repeat that recital?”
“My friend,” I said, “if I could have another long day’s prowl about Canton I would stand up and recite the whole play ofHamletall by myself,—and to an audience of three.” And I meant it.
CHAPTER XVI
CHINESE PRISONERS
TheChinese people are law-abiding. With those of their own number who are law-breakers they have but little sympathy, and the Government has none at all. I like China. I like the Chinese. Moreover, I respect them. But in two details of their national life they merit unqualified condemnation. Their hospitals and their prisons are unmitigated national disgraces. On second thought I withdraw the word unmitigated. The Chinese hospitals through which I went were almost everything that hospitals should not be. But the patients themselves would most strenuously have opposed, most feverishly have resented, any improvements along the line of their own comfort. The savants of China are held back by the taut ropes of public opinion, they are enchained by the general ignorance, as savants are everywhere else.
The deplorable condition of the Chinese prisons is justified in the national philosophy. To the Chinese mind a law is a thing to be obeyed. A law concerns millions, and conserves the welfare of millions. It must be held inviolate by the individual, be his whim, his personal bent, whatever it may. The Chinaman who disregards any item of the Chinese law becomes a social leper. Individual tendency, moral ill-health, inherited traits, they are not taken into account at all. This is cruel? Yes! But it renders existence possible in the over-density of Chinese population.
A Chinaman is forgiven nothing because of his ancestry; nor does he suffer for that ancestry. From the moment of his birth, each Chinaman has, theoretically and, as far as possible, practically, an equal chance with every other Chinaman. Rank is nowhere more venerated than in China. Nowhere does it secure to its possessor more benefits, more privileges; but it is not inherited. It is conferred by the Emperor—conferred for personal merit or for personal achievement. No Chinaman is “noble” except through personal fitness. There are but two exceptions to this rule—two only. The direct descendants of Confucius have a rank of their own. It is a high rank. It is respected; but it gives them no power of interference with national affairs. The descendants of an Emperor are never less than royal; but they have not necessarily any power. In brief, then, in China “every man is served according to his deserts,” and it is greatly to the national credit that they who do not “’scape whipping” are so very few.
A Chinese prison is called a “kamlo.” Its outer door is barred with bamboo and is guarded by petty soldiers or policemen. The kamlo contains two rooms and two yards. One room and one yard are for men; the other room and yard are for women. The space set apart for women is very much smaller than that for men; but the women’s quarters and the men’s quarters are alike in being entirely devoid of any provision for personal comfort or for personal decency.
Chinese prisoners are, by the Government, provided with absolutely nothing but the space, beyond which they may not pass. If their friends thrust food to them through the bars of the prison fence the law does not interpose; otherwise the prisoners may starve; the law does not interpose.
I have seen a woman feeding her husband while her six children looked on and laughed. I have seen a boy of nine pushing his hand through the slats of the fence and dropping rice into the open mouths of his father and mother!
I used to take food to the Shanghai prison-yards: I was not jeered at. A Chinese crowd is, I believe, incapable of jeering at a woman. But I was condemned for it, and a high Chinese official remonstrated with my husband. I used to buy Chinese food at a cheap chow-chow shop, and, when I reached a prison fence, hire a coolie to feed the poor starving wretches. I did not quite care to feed them myself, and it was quite impossible for them to feed themselves. No Chinese prisoner, of the class of which I am writing—minor offenders—can reach his own mouth, for his neck is invariably locked into a board which is about three feet square. This board is called a “cangue.” It is very heavy and galls the neck; it blisters or ossifies the shoulders. The “pig-tail” drags heavily over it, and pulls the poor enlocked head uncomfortably to one side. It prevents the hands from lifting rice or water to the craving mouth, and from brushing from the tingling nose one of the myriad insects that infest the prisons and prison-yards of China.
I bought a long wooden spoon, to the huge amusement of the Shanghai gamin, and I never found any difficulty in hiring a coolie to dispense my petty charity, until one day, when I took rice to the women’s fence. I had been there often before, but on this day I saw a strange sight. Three women were locked into one long cangue, and the two other women in the kamlo-yard vied with the crowd in hurling abusive epithets at their united heads. They had bad faces, but they looked very hungry and exhausted. I could induce no one to feed them. My amah, who was with me, caught me by the hand and cried, “Clome holme, clome to you mallie man.” I saw that there was something very much amiss; even my ’rickshaw coolies looked ashamed of me, and so I did go home to my “mallie man,” as the amah called my husband. We learned that the three women were procuresses. China does not, I believe, decapitate her female criminals; but the women who assist the downfall of young Chinese womanhood are looked upon as criminals apart, and as, than all other criminals, more vile, and are given the excessive punishment of being locked together by their necks.
Divorce is as facile to a Chinaman as marriage. The concubine of a mandarin takes precedence of a coolie’s wife; but the woman who is general in her immorality, is despised and shunned. As for the older women who trade in the frailty of their own sex, no one in China has the least mercy for them, except, of course, the missionaries.
The position of woman is not, in China, altogether inferior to that of man. It is true of the Chinese, as of every other polygamous people I have known (except perhaps the wretched Mormons), that with them womanhood is in some ways guarded, protected, and reverenced as it is not with us who live in the enlightened West.
A great deal of ignorant nonsense is written about China. Can a people who are so merciless toward crime be largely immoral?
In their treatment of China itself the Chinese have been exemplary. And what proves more the virtue of a nation than the use they make of their own country?
To conserve the physical health and productiveness of China, the Chinese have exercised the most rigid self-sacrifice.
For thousands of years the Chinese have developed the many resources of their wonderful country. They have had the great wisdom of patience. The southern part of the Malay Peninsula and the island of Singapore have been nearly devastated by the mad over-production of nutmeg trees. Thousands and tens of thousands of acres of North America are barren or nearly barren to-day; because the men who owned them, a few years ago, forced from them larger and more frequent crops than Nature had capacitated them to give. The Chinese have made no such mistakes. They have asked no more from their “happy valley of the Seres” than the surplus of her productiveness. Consequently, China is as full to-day of mineral, of vegetable, of animal life as when it was virgin to the husbandry of the first ancestors of the strange yellow people who now live in and cherish China. Sleek, dappled, big-eyed deer roam as fearlessly among the pungent forests, and are as plentiful as when the old Latin writers described the men of Cathay as “great bowmen.” Great silky hares scurry among the ferns. Golden pheasants nest among the wild white roses. Snipe and quail thieve fatness from the rice fields. Teal and pigeons cool their feet in the wet, paddy beds, and wee rice-birds plume themselves and swing and sway on the swinging, swaying branches of the purple-flowered wistaria.
Ah, yes, China has grown more beautiful with every passing year, as a woman grows more beautiful whose home-life is loved and loving! Her children grow up; her soft hair whitens; but the loveliness of content and happiness beautifies her features, and she can defy old age, for love and kindness have kept her young. A happy marriage has made many a plain woman pretty. China has been very happy in the race that has drawn its sustenance from her. Her civilisation is one of the oldest extant. Her architecture is antique. But she, in her own person, is verdant, fresh, and smiling. She has been loved and cared for tenderly.
CHAPTER XVII
THE CHINESE NEW YEAR
Ifone had a great many debtors and no creditors one might well wish on New Year’s Day to be among the Chinese a Chinaman.
Every Chinaman, unless he is a very Mongolian blackleg indeed, pays his debts on New Year’s Day, or on the last day of the old year, that he may start afresh with fresh books. Think what a splendid arrangement if huge sums of money were owing to one! Picture the cruel inconvenience if one were deeply in debt!
I remember one long-ago morning in old Los Angelos. I was a child. Very early I woke with a cry of terror. There certainly was a terrifying din in the town. Out of my window I saw a strange, threatening smoke, and through the window came dire, gunpowdery smells. I remember that I ran, crying, to my father, and sobbed out that the Indians or the Mexicans were coming. But I was assured that it was merely the Chinese celebrating their New Year, and that I might eat my breakfast of fresh figs and cream in the greatest security.
We had a “washee man” in Los Angelos, a long, lank Chinaman with abnormally black eyes. He was a great favourite of mine, and I taught him the alphabet (which I didn’t very well know myself) and the Lord’s Prayer. He always treated me with great ceremony and respect, and my baby mind was puffed out delightfully. I felt that I was quite a missionary light—a friend and an enlightener of the heathen. And I never could understand why my father laughed at me, and seemed unenthusiastic about John.
In America every Chinaman is “John,” or at least it was so in those days; and we were ignorant of the man’s characteristic Mongolian appellations.
He was always in our debt a few dollars. I don’t know how he managed it, but he did manage it most deftly. For one thing he never had any change, and he never came for payment when my father was at home; and as of course, my mother never had any change either, John usually carried some small amount over to “all same next time.”
“There are no roses like the roses of Southern California, and no noise like a Chinese noise,” said my father as we sat on the verandah at breakfast.
As he spoke John came slowly up the garden path. He was dressed more like a mandarin than a washerman, but his face was very sad.
“How do. Halpie New Yeal,” he said rather reluctantly. Then he laid, most reluctantly, two dollars and forty cents beside my mother’s plate.
“What is it, John?” she said.
“Chlange me owey you.”
“You can take it off next month’s bill.”
John’s bright eyes brightened, but he shook his head sadly.
“Must pay. China New Yeal. Chinaman must pay all tin. Me pay plenty yen. All me owey me pay. Too me pay Joss pidgen.” Then he seemed to shake off his sorrow at having yielded up the coin. He presented me with a box of fire-crackers and went away, with the peaceful air of a Chinaman who had done his duty.
Wherever Chinamen are, the Chinese New Year is observed in the same way. I have seen it in Los Angelos, in San Francisco, and in New York. In Melbourne, on the Australian diggings, in Calcutta, in Burmah, in the Straits Settlements, and in China it is the same. Millions of crackers fizz and explode; that is the most noticeable feature of the day. Friends and acquaintances call on each other. Strangers choose the day to pay visits of respect to Chinese notables. Debts are paid. Feasts are eaten and shops are closed.
No civilised nation keeps so few holidays as does the Chinese. New Year’s Day is the one day of national rest. It is the only day of the year on which all the shops are shut.
The Chinese New Year is not co-occurrent with ours. The festivities begin on New Year’s Eve, which falls on the 30th day of the 12th moon of the old year. All China—men, women, and children—sit up to greet the dawn of the New Year. And they do greet it with the discharge of millions and billions of crackers. I know a man in Hong-Kong who is slightly deaf. He declares that his hearing was seriously injured in Canton on one New Year’s Day. I myself have been in a Chinese city when the smoke from the New Year’s crackers was almost as dense and as disagreeable as the London fog in which I am writing.
From midnight on New Year’s Eve every Chinese house is swept and garnished for the reception of visitors. Joss sticks are lit before the family gods. The black-carved furniture is polished. Newly-cut sugar canes are placed beside the threshold, and an incredible quantity of tea is infused. The master of the house remains at home to do the Celestial honours to whoever may call. The women of the family and all the younger men leave home at an early hour, that they may get through a long list of calls.
Each caller leaves a card. It is a long slip of red Chinese paper. On it are printed the visitors’ names, titles, and addresses. Friends exchange presents of tea, sweetmeats, ornaments, and fruits. They exchange long complimentary letters, the writing of which is in China a fine art. Every guest is regaled with tea and refreshments, which range from absurd-looking sweetmeats to tinsel-decked roast pigs.
On New Year’s Day the Chinese wear their dresses of ceremony and their festival dresses. It is every Chinaman’s ambition to be a mandarin. On New Year’s Day every Chinaman apes the dress of a mandarin as closely as the law will allow. On New Year’s Day in Japan—unless we happen, as we sometimes do, to be in their bad graces—every Japanese man rushes into a frock coat and under a silk hat. But the Chinese are grandly insular always, and they borrow nothing from us in their celebration of their great national holiday. Ah Man’s beau ideal of holiday attire is a conical hat, a long silk cloak, gigantic shoes, and grotesque stockings.
Whatever the Chinese do they do thoroughly. Thoroughness is their chief characteristic. They are the most industrious people in the world and the most tireless. They rarely take a holiday, but when they do, they take it vigorously. There are no half-way measures about their merry-making. If they work, they work with a method and a muscle, a persistence and an exactness, that shames European industry. If they keep accounts, they compute the fraction of a fraction far beyond where we lose sight of it. If they drink tea, they drink it as tea elsewhere never yet was drunk. And if they have a good time, they have it in all its details. Every lantern is lit that can shed one more ray of merry light upon the festivity; every shrill instrument is played that can augment the noise and hubbub. There is only one thing that a Chinaman loves more than hubbub, and that is noise.
After noise and hubbub he adores gambling. At the New Year season he gambles excessively. Gambling is a most deplorable habit; but the Chinese gamble so well, in China gambling is such a fine art, that I must own I loved to watch them play, and could never feel, at their great national weakness, half the horror that I knew I ought to have felt. But gambling certainly is the cause of great misery in China. And the New Year tide is the gamester’s carnival. Ah well, the Chinese have so few faults that I think they can afford to plead guilty to this one—grave though it is. It is a fault born of quick brains, of strong nerves, of active fingers, and of daring natures.
Are you scowling at me because I say the Chinese have few faults? I repeat it. If you go among them as I have gone, if you will win your way with them, if you will come to know them as I have known them, you will, I think, agree with me. The Chinese are not altogether prepossessing to European eyes; but they are, I believe, worthy of all European respect and of great European confidence. You have known some very bad Chinamen, perhaps? So have I. That proves nothing. Why, I have known some bad Englishmen,—I have even known one bad American. Travelling Europeans make no greater mistake than in forming their judgment of a great and peculiar people from the few members they have slightly known of that big, national body. I was recently present when an able and eloquent man said to one of England’s greatest physicians: “I have proof of ten fever cases where the temperature has been reduced by the power of ——,” the remedy he was advocating. “Bring me ten thousand such instances, well authenticated, and I shall think that it deserves scientific investigation,” said the doctor. I thought that the acme of wise, prudent reasoning; and I wish that that eminent physician might make and record a tour of Asia. Whatever he did, he would do well—his calm exactness would make him eminent in anything. Agassiz never laid down as a truth of the swallow family what he had observed on the breast of one swallow! We make ourselves ridiculous if we judge the countless Chinese nation by a handful of inferior Chinamen whom we have known imperfectly. We might as justly say that Florence Nightingale was immoral because there are unfortunate women in London. Shall we call Tennyson illiterate because our dustman is h-less and h-ey? Shall we believe the Lord Chief Justice a murderer because Whitechapel once had a Jack-the-Ripper?
The Chinese New Year crackers must afford occupation to a vast number of poor people. The varieties of the crackers are legion, and the number fired every New Year’s Day is not to be computed by a small mind or a limited arithmetician. We were walking once in interior China. It was early in the Chinese year. We noticed at some distance a strange scarlet hillock. We went curiously toward it. Not until we were very near did we discover that it was the remnants of many thousands of crackers. The burning crackers had been thrown upon a bed of wild white roses; they had scorched the leaves and seared the stems; but that had been some weeks before. The débris of the crackers was decaying; it manured the rose roots, and the roses were pushing up among the torn scarlet-cracker bits. A thousand fragrant, waxen flowers were backgrounded against the red shreds of the fireworks.
The beauty of China and the excellence of the Chinese are vividly backgrounded by all that is grotesque or faulty in the people of China. Strangely, we seem to be blind to the flower, while we see the background only too clearly.
I have heard that the Chinese roses are scentless. That proves how much I must be the slave of my potent imagination. I thought that I had known no sweeter flower than the wild white rose of China.
There is no country that we misunderstand more grossly than we misunderstand China; but there is no country that can more afford to be indifferent to misconception.
CHAPTER XVIII
ORIENTAL OBSEQUIES
Chinese Coffins
IfI may say so, without appearing over-anxious to advertise my Irish ancestry, the most important event in a Chinaman’s life is his funeral.
A Chinese crowd is the culmination of human noise; and the Chinese are never so noisy as at a funeral. They have hearty appetites at all times, but they never eat so much as they do at a funeral feast. When I first lived in China I used to find it almost impossible to distinguish between a funeral procession and a marriage procession. In the centre of one the coffined corpse is borne on the shoulders of men. In the centre of the other similar men bear upon their shoulders the bride, who is in an enclosed sedan chair, and she is followed by her bridesmaids. But, to the casual observer, the two ends of the two processions are quite alike in every other respect. Tom-toms, red-clothed coolies carrying roasted pigs and other dainties, smaller coolies carrying cheap paper ornaments of a Mongolian theatrical type,—these are the invariable elements of both processions.
China, if you know it at all, is the easiest of the Oriental countries to write about; although it is very difficult to inform yourself about the Chinese, they are so bitterly exclusive. For any scrap of information you once obtain is necessarily exact. The versatile Japanese have a hundred modes of life; the conservative Chinese have one. The Indian peninsula is inhabited by a hundred distinct peoples; peoples of varying origins, speaking different languages, obeying differing laws, wearing dissimilar dress. These Indian tribes intermingle more or less; their country is so over-populated that they must. But they learn almost nothing from each other; they adopt nothing from each other. They so rarely intermarry that for the purposes of general writing I may say they never do it. The narrow prejudice or the magnificent conservatism (whichever it is) that has kept the petty Indian tribes distinctly separated from one another has kept the great unnumbered and almost numberless Chinese nation, a nation apart from all the rest of the human world. But, unlike the rigidly conservative Indians, the Chinese have taken a great many ideas from aliens. We must not think, because as a people they will not mingle with us nor admit us into their national heart, nor into their homes, nor into the bowels of their country, that they never learn anything from us. They have learned a great deal, they are learning, and they will learn. But what they adopt from us they so assimilate with their vividly characteristic national modes of thought and life, that that superficial mammal, the travelling European, never suspects that many of the conveniences of everyday Chinese life are adaptations of Aryan customs or of European tools.
The Chinese are to-day the most unique, the most ancient, and the most misunderstood people on the earth. I say the most ancient because they are the least changed from what they were long centuries ago. The least changed—they are not changed at all! The China of to-day is the China Marco Polo knew. In the thirteenth century commercial intercourse was frequent between China and Europe. A long caravan route extended from the southern provinces of China to Genoa. The men who took a year to go from their Chinese homes to the great Italian mart, taking with them their precious merchandise of silk and ivory, of tissue and of pearls, differed in almost no way from the men that of recent years have flocked to the Australian diggings and the Californian goldfields.
Europe has pierced its aggressive way into China. China, belching with its congested population, has overflowed into Europe. On the whole, we have, I think, been treated better in China than the Chinese have been treated here. We have often been very rude to Ah Foong. Nevertheless he has gained his point: he has earned enough money to return to the Celestial Empire, to live there in affluence, and to be buried there withéclat. And when he has left Europe he has taken with him something more than English gold. A few of us have been in China. (I am not speaking of the missionaries—I regard them as a people apart.) What have we gained in China? A strange experience (to me a pleasant one), a pound of perfumed tea and a bale of flowered crêpe, for both of which we have paid right handsomely. We have been treated in the main politely; but, sooner or later, most of us are bowed out of China, if not by the Emperor, why, then, by the climate.
The Chinese have, at least, three religions—Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism; but the funeral rites of the three sects are almost, if not quite, identical. There are several reasons for this. The three religions are much alike, and are all largely founded upon Indian Buddhism. Moreover, religion is a very second-class affair indeed in China. The priests are not at all an honoured class; they are usually treated with open contumely. There are no religious dissensions in China, it is not a matter of enough importance. The priests of two sects often live together in the chummiest way. Filial devotion is the real religion of China. All China is one huge family, and the Emperor is the “Great Father.” By the way, “Great Father” is what the North American Indians call God; and the Chinese consider their Emperor a god. How we human atoms ring our petty changes on a few poor thoughts! There is one more reason why all Chinese funerals are greatly alike. China is a land of ceremonials, and the smallest details of those ceremonials are prescribed by the Leke orBook of Rites. To disobey the least rule of this great national manual is a crime, and a severely punished one.
In two respects only does one Chinese funeral differ from another. The first is in the amount of money spent, and the second is in the period after death at which burial takes place.
The first ambition of every Chinaman is to have a splendid coffin. A poor Chinaman will half starve himself and his family for years that he may daily hoard a few cash toward the sum needed for the purchase of the coveted casket. When the coffin is really bought, it is brought home with great ceremony. It is given the place of honour in the house, and is regarded as the most valuable piece of furniture in the establishment. Often a pious son will sell himself into slavery that he may buy and present to his father an exceptionally handsome coffin. Such acts of filial piety rarely go unrewarded by the Government. The obedience of children to parents is so much the central idea of Chinese life, and upon it so largely depends the safety of the Chinese Government, that that Government, being one of the most astute and painstaking in the world, misses no opportunity of strengthening the idea of filial obedience in the Chinese mind, eitheren masseor singly. Among the poorer classes it is customary to buy a very thick coffin. No self-respecting Chinese family (and the Chinese are the most self-respecting of all the nations) will bury a parent until they can do so with more or less Mongolian magnificence; hence, in China, death by no means implies immediate burial. When a Chinaman dies his neighbours come in and help the women of the family to make the shroud. The body is put in its coffin, then the funeral ceremonies begin, if there is money enough. If there is not, the coffin is put back in its place of honour until the family finances look up. That is something that occasionally takes time in Europe. In China money is acquired more slowly; the coffined body often awaits adequately-ceremonied burial for twenty or thirty years. I need not, I think, dwell upon the grave necessity under such circumstances for a very thick, air-tight coffin. Often a Chinese funeral entails the additional expense of a long journey. A Chinaman will leave his father unburied rather than inter him anywhere but in the tombs of his ancestors, which may be in the most distant part of China, for Ah Foong is rather a traveller.
The day of the death or the day after, the relatives not living in the house and the friends come to pay the last duties or respect to the deceased. When the visitors arrive they are shown into a room in which are all the women and children of the establishment. These latter set up a dismal howl, in which the visitors join, or to which they listen sympathetically. When the tympanum of even a Chinese ear begins to ache, the guests are ushered into another apartment, where the men of the house give them tea and refreshment. The refreshment varies according to the means of the family. In the house of the rich it is a dinner. After the visitors have drank and eaten they are bowed out by one of the kinsmen of the dead.
FOOCHOW SINGING GIRLS.Page 169.
FOOCHOW SINGING GIRLS.Page 169.
The dinner of Chinese affluence, wherever, whyever it is served, consists of five courses—
1. A very rich thick soup.2. Salad and meat.3. Birds’ nests, sharks’ fins, and other very nourishing dishes.4. Stews.5. Fruits and sweetmeats.
1. A very rich thick soup.2. Salad and meat.3. Birds’ nests, sharks’ fins, and other very nourishing dishes.4. Stews.5. Fruits and sweetmeats.
1. A very rich thick soup.
2. Salad and meat.
3. Birds’ nests, sharks’ fins, and other very nourishing dishes.
4. Stews.
5. Fruits and sweetmeats.
The first four courses are eaten with chop-sticks, the last course is eaten with the fingers; and is not that the way that fruit always should be eaten? Everything in the first four courses is served superlatively hot. Except a Chinaman is starving he will not eat cooked food unless it is bubbling hot. I except sweetmeats; and yet he eats the most incredible quantities of ice. Wine is served with all the courses—served hot. It is not intoxicating, and has, to my palate, a very pleasant taste. I used to dine in America with some people who were just a bit mad on the temperance question. One day they gave me unfermented wine; it was an awful moment! But the Chinese dinner-giver knows the secret of keeping his guests free from the possible ill effects of alcohol without making himself ridiculous.
At a correct Chinese dinner the women look on from behind a trellis work. The Chinese hold that the seat of the human understanding is the stomach.
A well-conducted Chinese funeral is the most gorgeous sight in Asia. It may seem to us a little tinselly, but that is a mere matter of taste; but I, who make bold to like the Chinese, can’t claim that they have in all things a superabundance of taste.
At the front of the funeral procession walk the noisy, musicless musicians; then come men (they may be friends, they may be coolies) bearing the insignia of the dignity of the dead, if he had any. Next walk more men carrying figures of animals, idols, umbrellas, and blue and white streamers. After them come men carrying pans of perfume. Just before the coffin walk bonzes—Chinese priests. Over the coffin a canopy is usually carried. The casket is borne by about a score of men. Immediately after the coffin walk the children of the deceased. The eldest son comes first. He is dressed in canvas and leans heavily upon a stout stick. He is supposed to be too exhausted by grief and fasting to walk without the aid of this staff. The other children and relatives follow this chief mourner. They are clothed in white linen garments. White is the mourning colour of the Danes and of the Chinese. The women are carried in chairs in the Chinese funeral procession. They sob and wail at intervals and in unison.
A Chinese funeral procession always has a long way to go. The burying-places are invariably some distance from the town or village. Usually they are on a high place. Pines and cypresses are planted about them if possible. The dead are supposed to be pleased at having a pleasant situation for their graves. When a Chinese family has persistent bad luck it is usual for them to shift the bones of their ancestors to a more desirable place.
When the burying-place is reached the bonzes begin chanting a mass for the dead, and the coffin is put into the tomb. When the coffin is laid in its final position, a large, oblong, white marble table is placed before the tomb. On the middle of it is set a censor and two vases and two candlesticks, all of as exquisite workmanship as possible. Then they have a paper cremation; paper figures of men and horses, garments, and a score of other things are burned. These are supposed to undergo a material resurrection and to be useful to the dead in the Chinese heaven. The tomb is sealed up or closed, and an entertainment concludes the ceremony at the grave.
The forms of Chinese tombs vary somewhat, according to the province in which they are built, and very much according to the means of the relative who undertakes the expense. With the very poor the coffin is placed upon the ground, earth and lime are packed about it, and a rude grave is formed. With the rich a vault is built, in the form of a horse-shoe. If the dead was of note or position, the decorations of the grave and of the coffin are very elaborate. There are a thousand interesting things to be said about Chinese mourning, about the ceremonies commemorative of the dead, and about the funerals of the Chinese Royal Family. But they can’t be put into a paragraph, nor on to a page. So I leave them.
Chinese religion is so secondary an affair that it is inconsistent. Theoretically, some of them believe in immortality. In reality, I believe them to be the veriest materialists, quite devoid of a belief in an after-life. And yet they periodically carry food to the graves of their ancestors.
The Chinese are touchingly fanatic in their love of home. China is so over-productive of human life that a fearful number of the Chinese are uncomfortable from their birth till their death. That is the only reason that we sometimes see, as I did yesterday, a red-button mandarin on the streets of London, and the sole reason that half San Francisco’s soiled linen is washed by Chinamen. But wherever they go, they carry their coffins with them. They hope to die in China, but, if by accident or misfortune, they die in Europe, in America, or in Australia, their last prayer is that they may rest in a Chinese grave.
CHAPTER XIX
ORIENTAL NUPTIALS
Chinese Espousals
Thereare no marriages in China for a hundred days following the death of an Emperor. But on all other days, marriage processions of various degrees of gorgeousness follow each other along the streets in interminable succession.
Theoretically the Emperor is the only Chinaman who sees the face of his wife before their marriage. As a matter of fact, in the poorer classes, boys and girls grow up together, play together, work together, and fall in love with each other. And even in the richer classes, where poverty does not drive the girls into public view, love matches are not so very uncommon. Chinese literature is replete with love stories. And the love poems of China are remarkable from a human point as much as from a Mongolian.
The most important marriages that ever take place in China are the marriages of the Emperor. To those marriages every daughter of every Chinese grandee aspires. When the Emperor ascends the throne, the grandees of the court bring to him all their unmarried daughters. He selects all that please him, and the chosen girls rejoice together.
The Emperor of China never allies himself, directly or indirectly, with any foreign prince. The Chinese Royal Family is purely Chinese. The daughters of the Emperor are often given in marriage to favourite mandarins. The family that can furnish his Majesty with one of his many wives—the family that can form an alliance with one of the sovereign’s daughters—is sure to gain great influence and power, and to be loaded with many honours. There is no limit to the number of an Emperor’s wives, except the limit placed by his own apathy. He is a very absolute monarch indeed, is the Emperor of China. There is, among the countless millions of his subjects, one person only who may dare to differ from him, to admonish him, or even to urgently advise him,—his mother. There are two things in China mightier than the Emperor of China: the mother of the Emperor and public opinion. He must heed both, if they speak emphatically enough.
But among his Majesty’s many wives there is one who is chief. She is called Hrang-Hou. She is the Empress; she enjoys peculiar prerogatives; she is usually a person of vast influence. The wives of a Chinese Emperor are securely shut in a palace of their own. They hold no communication with the outer world. The outer world sees nothing of them; but they see China, very much as the people of a country village often see the world—through a cheap stereoscope. If a wife of the Emperor expresses curiosity about some famous city, a miniature representation of that city is probably built in the palace park. Which is one way of making the mountain come to Mohammed, is it not? The wives of the Emperor are often allowed to sit behind gratings and watch ceremonies and feasts. They are lavishly supplied with everything except freedom, general society, and feet. I fancy that they are all well educated. I have never known the wife of a Chinese Emperor; but I have known Chinese women of lesser rank who were positively highly educated. And nowhere is education more valued—its power more understood—than in China. Nowhere is education more valuable, for in China a man’s rank depends solely upon what he can do or has done. It is most probable that the grandees, who may aspire to bestow their daughters upon the Emperor, give those daughters—from whose influence they hope so much—every possible advantage of education.
Chinese widows re-marry, but the practice is not held in high repute. The widows of the Emperor can never re-marry. Upon his death they are removed to a building which stands within the palace precincts. It is called the Palace of Chastity. There the widows of the Emperor—with the possible exception of her who is now the Empress Mother—must live and die. But they are held in the greatest honour, treated with the greatest respect and consideration.
The favourite wife of a Chinese Emperor is a very potential lady, and she is rather apt to retain her power. She is beautiful, according to Chinese standards of beauty, or the Emperor would never have chosen her. She is most probably a woman of unusual culture and education. She is very possibly a woman of intellect; for she is a grandee’s daughter, and no meagrely-minded man attains to grandeeship in China. And it goes without saying that she is the best-dressed woman in China. She has nothing to do but welcome the suzerain and to please him. She belongs to no society for the advancement of her own sex. She may not even write to the daily papers; but she is rather warmly liked by her royal master-husband for all that. And many a Chinese Emperor has been in despair at the death of his favourite wife. In the middle of the seventeenth century, the Emperor Chun-Chee, who was the founder of the present dynasty, sacrificed, at the tomb of his favourite wife, thirty odd slaves. That was a nice littlepost-mortemcustom; but it has died out. Paper men are now burnt at Chinese graves, that the spirit of the dead may not lack servants in the after-life. And yet, as far as I could find out, but few Chinamen really believe in an after-life. What a strange inconsistency on the part of a people usually so consistent!
I have said that only the Emperor’s mother dare cross the Emperor’s will. But only the God of Marriage knows what battles are fought and won within those closely-guarded palace gardens, when the sovereign visits his wives. I have very little faith in the powerlessness of lock-and-keyed wives. In India I knew a Maharajah who was abjectly afraid of his purdahed Maharanee’s sharp little tongue.
China is a huge place. Though customs are essentially the same all over China, some of them are greatly differentiated in detail. This is probably one reason that almost all English written accounts of Chinese weddings differ markedly. I fancy that a greater reason is that the almost impregnable reticence of the Chinese makes it very difficult for an Occidental to definitely learn much concerning the fundamental customs of Chinese life.
The age is very variable at which Chinese marriages are contracted. I have seen Chinese brides of very tender years, and I have seen Chinese brides who looked positively mature.
Ordinarily a Chinaman buys his wife. He does not see her (or is supposed not to see her) until the marriage; but his women representatives have a good long look at her and report to him, or to his parents, if those are still living. If all the preliminary details are satisfactorily arranged, the bargain is concluded. The bridegroom pays the bride’s parents the stipulated “wife-price.” He retires to his own house and there awaits his unseen bride. She is placed in a closed palanquin, a fantastic sedan chair, which is carried at the end or in the centre of the bridal procession. This procession is as elaborate as the means of the contracting families will permit, and as grotesque as Chinese fancy can invent. In it are lanterns, musical instruments, fans, umbrellas, insignia of rank, and covered tables on which are roast pigs and a hundred and one Chinese dainties. The bearers of all these ornaments and symbols are clad in bright red, or at least wear red jackets. The musicians play, the crowd shouts, in sing-song Chinese fashion, and the two bridesmaids proudly follow the sedan chair. The chair is locked and the key is carried by a trusted servant. The bridegroom waits at his own gate, clad in his dress of ceremony. A Chinese dress of ceremony is a most remarkable collection of remarkable garments; its colours and many of its details depend entirely upon the rank of its wearer. The key of the palanquin is handed to the bridegroom. He presses forward; the crowd draws back; the bridegroom unlocks the palanquin and looks at its contents. If he is pleased, he leads his bride into his house and the marriage is celebrated. If the bridegroom is disappointed, the bride is sent back to her parents and there is no wedding. But in that case the bridegroom that was to have been, must pay the girl’s parents a sum equal to the sum for which he bought her. Even after the marriage the wife can be divorced and returned to her parents upon payment of a sum identical with the “wife money” which was her first price. The causes for divorce with which the Chinese popular mind is most sympathetic are those that arise from the misrepresentation of the bride by her parents. If she is less attractive in face or figure than she was said to be—above all, if she has larger feet—every Chinaman is justified, to the popular mind, in divorcing his wife.
If the bridegroom is pleased and the bride goes in, the friends follow and a gigantic feast is offered and accepted. The marriage ceremony itself is far less important, I believe, to the Chinese mind than the marriage feast. The marriage ceremonies of almost all the Oriental peoples are strangely alike. The chief detail of the Chinese marriage ritual is, I understand, the tying together of bride and bridegroom. Scarlet strings fasten them together, waist to waist and foot to foot.
Nothing seems to me more difficult of description than the position of woman in China. As I have so often said, reliable and precise information is so hard to obtain. But more than that, the position of woman in China is so complex. As a wife she is placed beneath her husband and is subservient to him, because the Chinese regard the female as inferior to the male. As a mother she is placed above her son, and he is subservient to her, because the Chinese regard the parent as superior to the child. But with the Chinese the superiority of parentage is far greater than any possible superiority of sex.
My observation in China was, necessarily, limited, but it was very earnest. It was my observation that the Chinese men were not unkind to the Chinese women. I spent some time among the water populations of Hong-Kong and Canton. In both of those cities incredible thousands live in the crudest native boats,—live in sampans. They seemed very happy, contented little families, despite their dire poverty. The women worked hard, but they were certainly consulted about every family matter. I never saw a race of women who struck me as being less cowed. I often used to watch them at their wretched meals; it was share and share alike, with the nicer share for the wife and the tidbits for the baby. It is true that among the poorer classes of the Chinese the women do tremendously hard work; but it is also true that they are tremendously strong. It is as true that women are forced to stupendous labour wherever poverty is more the rule than the exception. The Chinese women of the coolie class labour in the fields, they break stones on the streets of Hong-Kong, they carry heavy boxes on and off the boats that anchor in the Canton river,—but they are not ciphers in their own families. I do not believe that they are ever cuffed; I doubt if they are ever cursed.
A Chinese gentleman is superlatively polite. This may not be generally known, because the upper classes in China are so reluctant to know us or to let us know them. But it is true. We know one Chinese family of rank rather well; we have eaten with the men of the family and with the women. Truth compels me to mention that the gentleman of the house had two wives. Whether they ordinarily ate with him I do not know. I fancy that their doing so when we were there was an act of consideration for me; yet I am not sure, for they were easy and self-possessed. And this I do know, that the men of the house were most unfailingly courteous to them. I believe that, on the whole, Mongolian married life is very fairly satisfactory to the Mongolians. If they are satisfied, why, in the name of reasonableness, should they be disturbed? If the women of the upper classes are not always, or even often, supreme in their home lives, they are at least secure of deferential and courteous treatment. One of the chief proverbs of China—and I thought it a delightful one—is, “You must listen to your wife, but not believe her.”