Across China on Foot Part 21

CHAPTER XIX.

_Peculiar forebodings of early morning_. _A would-be speaker of English_. _The young men of Yun-nan and the Reform Movement_. _Teachers of English_. _Remarks on methods adopted_. _Disregard of the customs of centuries_. _A rushing Szech-wanese_. _Missionaries and the Educational Movement_. _Christianity and the position of the foreigner_. _Is the Chinese racially inferior to the European? Interesting opinion_. _Peace of Europe and integrity of China_. _Chao-chow cook gets a bad time_.

_The author's levee. Natural "culture" of the people_. _Story of the birth of boys_. _Notes on Hsiakwan_. _Experiences of the non-Chinese-speaking author at the inn_. _How he got the better of an official_. _A magnificent temple_. _Kwan-n and the priests._

This morning, from the foot of a high spur, I saw a couple of gawky fellows shambling along in an imitation European dress, and I p.r.i.c.ked up my ears--it seemed as if Europeans were about. One of the fellows had on a pair of long-legged khaki trousers ludicrously patched with Chinese blue, a tweed coat of London cut also patched with Chinese blue, and a battered Elswood topee. I saw this through my field-gla.s.ses. Soon after, coming out from a cup in the winding pathway, emerged a four-man chair, and I had no doubt then that it was a European on the road, and I began to get as curious as anyone naturally would in a country where in interior travel his own foreign kind are met with but seldom. Hurrying on, I managed to pa.s.s the chair in a place where overhanging foliage shut out the light, so that I could not see through the windows, and as the front curtain was down I concluded that it must be a lady, probably a missionary lady. I pushed on to the nearest tavern--a tea tavern, of course--b.u.t.toned up my coat so that she should not see my dirty shirt, and waited for the presence to approach. From an inner apartment, through a window, I could see all that went on outside, but could not be seen. What is it that makes a man's heart go pit-a-pat when he is about to meet a European lady in mid-China?

Presently the chair approached. From it came a person covered in a huge fur-lined, fur-collared coat many sizes too large for his small body--it was a Chinese. Several men were pushed out of his way as he strode towards me, extending his hand in a cordial "shake, old fellow" style, and yelling in purest accent, "Good morning, sir; _good_ morning, sir!"

"Oh, good morning. You speak English well. I congratulate you. Have you had a good journey? How far are you going? Very warm?" I waited. "It is so interesting when one meets a gentleman who can speak English; it is a pleasant change." I waited again. "Will you--"

"Good morning, morning, morn--he, he, he."

"But pardon me, will--"

"Morning, morning--he, h-e-e."

"Yes, you silly a.s.s, I know it is morning, but--"

"Yes, yes; morning, morning--he-e-e-e-e."

He then made for the door, not the least abashed. Later he came back, and invited me to speak Chinese, probably thinking that I was wondering why he had made such an absolute fool of himself. I learned that this august gentleman possessed a name in happy correspondence with a fowl ("Chi"). He pointed contemptuously to a member of that feather tribe as he told me. Whether he could speak Chinese when he was or was not at Chen-tu, or whether he had a son whose knowledge of my language was vast, and who was at that moment at Chen-tu, I could not quite fathom, and he could not explain. He had a look at my caravan generally, and then turned his scrutiny upon my common tweeds, informing me that the quality bore no comparison with his own. He could travel in a four-man chair; I had to _walk_. It was all very "pub hao."

After some time he cleared out with much empty swagger, and I followed leisurely on behind, feeling--yes, why not publish it?--pleased that this bolt from the blue had not been a lady.

This young fellow--a mere slip of a boy--wore every indication of perfect self-confidence, borne out in a mult.i.tude of ways common to his cla.s.s. He, I presumed, was one of the fledglings who undertake responsibilities far beyond them, or I should not be surprised if he had been one of the army of young men who, having the merest smattering of English, wholly unable to converse, set up as teachers of English. I have found this quite common among the rising cla.s.ses in Yun-nan. The cool a.s.sumption of unblushing superiority evinced in discussing intellectual and philosophic problems is remarkable. The Chinese, in the area I speak of, are little people with little brain: this was a specimen. Yet, to be fair, in China to-day the work of reform is mainly the work of young men, who although but only partly equipped for their work, approach it with perfect confidence and considerable energy, not knowing sufficient to realize the difficulties they are undertaking. In j.a.pan the same thing was done. The young men there undertook to dispute and doubt everything which came in the way of national reorganization, setting aside--as China must do if she is to take her place alongside the ideal she has set up for herself, j.a.pan--parental teaching, ancestral authority, the customs of centuries. A large proportion of the population of China has a pa.s.sion for reform and progress. This young fellow was a typical example. In the west of China, however, to conform with the spirit of reform and real progress--not the make-believe, which is satisfying them at the present moment--they must needs change their ways.

Seventeen memorial plates were pa.s.sed at the entrance to Chao-chow, a particularly modern-looking place, as one approaches it from the hill.

A remarkably ungainly individual, with a hole in the top of his skull and his body one ma.s.s of sores, came to me here, addressed me as "Sien seng," and then commenced an oration to the effect that he was a Szech'wanese, that he had known the missionaries down by the Yangtze, and that he knew he would be welcome to accompany me to Hsiakwan.[AT] He switched himself on the main line of my caravan. Here was a man who had been brought in contact with the missionary away down in another province, and he knew he was welcome. I liked that. In all my journeyings in Yun-nan I was increasingly impressed with the value of the missionary, that man who of all men in the Far East is the most subject to malicious criticism, and generally, be it said, from those persons who know little or nothing about his work. You cannot measure the missionary's work by conversions, by mere statistics. I venture to a.s.sert that it is through the missionary that the West applied pressure and supplied China with political ideas, and put within her reach the material and instruments which would enable her to carry such ideas into practice--this apart from religious teaching. More particularly is this the case in respect to popular education, perhaps, by means of which the transformation of Old China into New China will be a less long and difficult process. The people may not want the missionary--I do not for a moment say that they do--but they need to know the secret of his power and the power of his kind, and they must study his language, his science, his machinery, his steamboats, his army, his _Dreadnaughts_.

They realize that the foreigner is useful not for what he can do, but for what he can teach--therefore they tolerate the missionary. This is virtually the national policy of China towards foreigners, a policy gaining the acceptance of the people with remarkable quickness.

After having set aside all considerations of national prejudice and patriotism, it is interesting to ask whether it is actually a fact that the Chinese, as a race, are inferior to the peoples of the West? Much has been said on the subject. I give my opinion flatly that the Chinese is _not_ inferior, and the longer I live with him the more numerous become the lessons which he teaches me.

"The question, when we examine it closely, has really very little to do with political strength or military efficiency, or (_pace_ Mr. Benjamin Kidd) relative standards of living, or even the usual material accompaniments of what we call an advanced civilization; it is a question for the trained anthropologist and the craniologist rather than for the casual observer of men and manners. The j.a.panese people are now much more highly civilized--according to western notions--than they were half a century ago, but it would be ludicrously erroneous to say that they are now a higher race, from the evolutionary point of view, than they were then. Evolution does not work quite so rapidly as that even in these days of 'hustle.' The j.a.panese have advanced, not because their brains have suddenly become larger, or their moral and intellectual capabilities have all at once made a leap forward, but because their intercourse with Western nations, after centuries of isolated seclusion, showed them that certain characteristic features of European civilization would be of great use in strengthening and enriching their own country, developing its resources, and giving it the power to resist aggression. If the j.a.panese were as members of the _h.o.m.o sapiens_ inferior to us fifty years ago, they are inferior to us now. If they are our equals to-day--and the burden of proof certainly now rests on him who wishes to show that they are not--our knowledge of the origin and history of Eastern peoples, scanty though it is, should certainly tend to a.s.sure us that the Chinese are our equals, too. There is no valid reason for supposing that the Chinese people are ethnically inferior to the j.a.panese. They have preserved their isolated seclusion longer than the j.a.panese, because until very recently it was less urgently necessary for them to come out of it. They have taken a longer time to appreciate the value of Western science and certain features of Western civilization, because new ideas take longer to permeate a very large country than a small one, and because China was rich within her own borders of all the necessaries of life."[AU]

And the West, too, must learn that the peace of Europe depends upon the integrity of China. For the time is coming--not in the lives of any who read these lines, but coming inevitably--when China will, by her might, by her immense numbers of trained men, by her developed naval and military strength, be able to say to the nations of the earth, "There must be no more war." And she will be strong enough to be able to enforce it.

As with individuals, so with nations, and a people who are marked by such rare physical vitality, such remarkable powers of endurance against great odds, are surely designed for some n.o.bler purpose than merely to bear with fort.i.tude the ills of life and the misery of starvation. It is the easiest thing in the world to criticise--the West criticises the Chinese because he is a heathen, because they do not understand him.

Hundreds of millions of the Chinese race hate and fear the man of the West for exactly the same reason as would cause us to hate the Chinese were the situation reversed.

I do not need to go into history from the days when the Chinese first began to show their suspicion, contempt, and fear of foreigners, and their interpretation of the motives and purposes which took them to the Celestial Empire; it would take too much s.p.a.ce. But if we of the West did our part to-day, as we rub up against the Chinese everywhere, in charitably taking him at his best, things would alter much more speedily that they are doing. Because the Chinese bristles with contradictions and seemingly unanswerable conundrums, we immediately dub him a barbarian, do not endeavor to understand him, do not understand enough of his language to listen to him and learn his point of view. However, it is all slowly pa.s.sing--so very slowly, too. But still China is progressing, and now this oldest man in the world is becoming again the youngest, but has all the acc.u.mulations and advantages of age in all countries to lean upon and learn from.

Chao-chow gave me a very decent inn, the top room in front of which was provided with a well-paved courtyard, with every convenience for the traveler--that is, for China.

The inn cook and water-carrier was out playing on the street when we put in an early appearance. My men lost their temper, ground their teeth, foamed at the mouth, and got desperate. The only man on the premises was a poor old fellow, who foolishly b.u.mped his uncovered head on the ground on which I stood, as an act of great servility and a secret sign that I should throw him a few cash, and then resumed his occupation in the sun of wiping his already inflamed eyes with the one unwashed garment which covered him. I pitied him; he knew it, and traded upon my pity until I invoked a few choice words from Lao Chang to fall upon him. When the cook did put in an appearance, he and everybody dead and living placed anywhere near his genealogical tree underwent a rough quarter of an hour from the anathematical tongues of my companions. The Old Man--by virtue of the growth on my chin, this epithet of respect was commonly used towards me--wanted to wash his face and drink his tea. He was tired with walking. He was a foreign mandarin. Did the blank, blank, blank cook, the worm and no man, not know that a foreigner was among them? And then they fell to piling up the ignominy again and placing to the cook's dishonor various degrees of lowliest origin common among the Chinese proletariat, which, thank Heaven, I did not quite understand.

That evening all Chao-chow came to honor me in my room, and to admire and ask to be given all I had in my boxes. That it was all a huge revelation to many who came and inquired who I might be, and whence I might have come, was quite evident. One fellow, dressed gaudily in expensive silks and satins--probably borrowed--came with pomp and pride; and disappointment was writ large upon his ugly face when he learned that I could not, or would not, speak with him. He mentioned that he was one of the cultured of the city. But the Chinese are all more or less cultured. My own coolies, although not knowing a character, are really "cultured"--they are the most polite men I have ever traveled with. The culture, at any rate, although more apparent than real, has a universality in China which the foreigner must observe in moving among the people, and which as a sort of lubrication, makes the wheels of society run smoother. This man was not cultured in the matter of taste in the choice of colors. He was altogether frightfully lacking in sense of harmony, and when one saw the little boy who trotted along with him, one might have thought that Joseph's coat had been revived for my especial edification. He was a peculiar being, this highly-colored man. He would persist in sitting down on his haunches, despite frequent invitations to use a chair--how is it all Orientals can do this, and not one European out of fifty?

Lao Chang afterwards informed me that this man's wife had just presented him with a second son, and great jubilation was taking place. The birth of a child, especially of a boy, is a great event in any Chinese household, and considerable anxiety is felt lest demons should be lurking about the house and cause trouble. A sorcerer is called in just before the birth, to exorcise all evil influences from the house and secure peace. This is the "Exorcism of Great Peace." Simultaneously comes the midwife. Should the birth be attended with great pain and difficulty, recourse is had to crackers, the firing of guns, or whatever similar device can be thought of to scare off the demons. Solicitude is often felt that the first visit to the house after the birth of the child should be made by a "lucky" person, for the child's whole future career may be blighted by meeting with an "ill-starred" person. No outsider will enter the room where the birth took place for forty days.

On the anniversary of a boy's birth the relatives and friends bring presents of clothes, hats, ornaments, playthings, and red eggs. The baby is placed on the floor--the earth, which is the first place he touches; he is born into a hole in the ground--and around him are placed various articles, such as a book, pencil, chopsticks, money, and so on. He will follow the profession which has to do with the articles he first touches.[AV]

This was the fortieth day, and so my visitant honored me by thrusting his contemptible presence upon me, and he would not go until late at night, when a man with a diseased hip and one eye--and a ghastly thing at that--called to see whether I could treat him with medicine.

Hsiakwan in days to come will probably have a big industry in brick and tile making. Fifteen li from the town, on the Chao-chow side, many people now get their living at the business, and one could easily dream of a "Hsiakwan Brick and Tile Company Limited," with the children's children of the present pioneers running for the morning papers to have a look at the share market reports, with light railways connected up with the main line, which has not yet been built, and so on, and so on.

Hsiakwan is perhaps the busiest town on the main trade route from Yun-nan-fu to Burma. Tali-fu, although growing, is only the official town, of which Hsiakwan is the commercial entrepot. It was here that I stayed one Sunday some time after this, at one of the biggest inns I have ever been into in China. It had no less than four buildings, each with a paved rectangular courtyard which all the rooms overlooked. A military official, who was on his way to Chao-t'ong to deal with the rebellion, of which the reader has already learnt a good deal, was expected soon after I arrived. My room was already arranged, however, when the landlord came to me and said--

"Yang gwan, you must please go out!"

Now the yang gwan, as was expected, stayed where he was, smiled in magnanimous acquiescence, invited the proprietor--a stout, jolly person with one eye--to be seated, and remained quiet. Again and again was I told that I should be required to clear out, and give up the best room to the official and his aide-de-camp, but unfortunately the inquirer did not improve the situation by persisting in the foolish belief that the foreigner was hard of hearing. He shouted his request into my ear in a stentorian ba.s.so, he waved his hands, he pointed, he made signs. The Chinese langage and manner, however, are difficult to an addle-pated foreigner. I, poor foolish fellow, endeavoring to treat the Chinese in a manner identical to that which he would have employed had conditions been reversed, stared vacantly and woodenly into a seemingly bewildering infinite, and timidly remarked, "O t'ing puh lai." Knowing then that my "hearing had not come," he requisitioned my boy, for the aide-de-camp by this time was glumly peering into my doorway; but to his disgust Lao Chang also was equally unsuccessful in making me tumble to their meaning. The best room, therefore, continued to be mine.

Soon after the official came, and my dog began by mauling his canine guardian, tearing away half his ear; and in the middle of the night one of my horses got loose and had a stand-up fight with a mule attached to the official party, laming him seriously; and as the foreigner emerged in his night attire to prevent further damage, he encountered the mandarin himself, and pinned him dead against the wall in the dark, after having stepped on his corn. My pony had pulled several morsels of flesh from the mule's carcase. The yang gwan certainly came off best, and the following morning, as the Chinese gwan with his retinue of six chairs and about one hundred and fifty men departed, the yang gwan smiled a happy farewell which was not effusively reciprocated.

As I came out of the inn I met a Buddhist priest, worn with general dilapidation and old age, with a huge festering wound in the calf of his leg, so that he could hardly hobble along with a stick--he was probably on his way to the medical missionary at Tali-fu for treatment. This spiritual guide was certainly on his last legs, and has probably by this time handed over the priestly robes and official perquisites to more vigorous young blood.

Hsiakwan's High Street reminded me of the main street of Totnes, with its arch over the roadway, and the scenery might have deluded one into the belief that he was in Switzerland in spring, as he gazed upon the glorious spectacle of snow-covered mountains with the world-famed lake at the foot. Tali-fu deserves its name of the Geneva of West China.

In the chapter devoted to Yun-nan-fu I have referred to the military of Tali-fu, but here I saw the men actually at drill, and a finer set of men I have rarely seen in Europe. The military Tao-tai lives here.

Progress is phenomenal. At Yung-chang, the westernmost prefecture of the Empire, the commanding officer could even speak English.

In the famous temple ten li from Tali-fu is an effigy to the Yang Daren who figured conspicuously during the Mohammedan Rebellion. My men somehow got the false information that he was a native of Tong-ch'uan-fu, so they all went down on their knees and b.u.mped their heads on the ground before the image. This Yang, however, was such a brute of a man that no young girl was safe where he was; however, as a soldier he was indomitable. The temple in which he is deified is called the Kwan-n-tang,[AW] and there is no place in all China where Kwan-n is worshipped with such relentless vigor. Some years ago, so the wags say, when Tali-fu was threatened by rebels, Kwan-n saved the city by transforming herself into a Herculean creature, and carrying upon her back a stone of several tons weight, presumably to block the path. The amazement of the rebels at the sight of a woman performing such a feat made them wonder what the men could be like, so they turned tail and fled. The story is believed implicitly by the residents of the city, and the priests, with an open eye to the main chance, work upon the public imagination with capital tact. I saw the stone in the center of a lotus pond, over which is the structure in which the Kwan-n sits, not as a weight-lifting woman, but as a tender mother, with a tiny babe in her arms, and none in the whole of the Empire enjoys such favor for being able to direct the birth of male children into those families which give most money to the priests. Women desiring sons come and implore her by throwing cash, one by one, at the effigy, the one who hits being successful, going away with the belief that a son will be born to her.

When the deluded females are cleared out, the priest, divesting himself of his shoes, and rolling up his trousers, goes into the water, scoops up the money and uses it for his personal convenience--sometimes as much as thirty thousand cash.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote AT: The commercial center of Tali-fu, the official city is 30 li further on--E.J.D]

[Footnote AU: _From Peking to Mandalay_, by R.F. Johnston, London, John Murray. I am indebted to this racily-written work for other ideas in this chapter.--E.J.D.]

[Footnote AV: From inquiries I find this custom is not general in some parts of Western China--E.J.D.]

[Footnote AW: Temple to the G.o.ddess of Mercy.

"Kwan-n was the third daughter of a king, beautiful and talented, and when young loved to meditate as a priest. Her father, mother and sisters beseech her not to pa.s.s the 'green spring,' but to marry, and the king offers the man of her choice the throne. But no, she must take the veil. She enters the 'White Sparrow Nunnery,'

and the nuns put her to the most menial offices; the dragons open a well for the young maidservant, and the wild beasts bring her wood.

The king sends his troops to burn the nunnery, Kwan-n prays, rain falls, and extinguishes the conflagration. She is brought to the palace in chains, and the alternative of marriage or death is placed before her. In the room above where the court of the inquisition is held there is music, dancing, and feasting, sounds and sights to allure a young girl; the queen also urges her to leave the convent, and accede to the royal father's wish. Kwan-n declares that she would rather die than marry, so the fairy princess is strangled, and a tiger takes her body into the forest.

She descends into h.e.l.l, and h.e.l.l becomes a paradise, with gardens of lilies. King Yama is terrified when he sees the prison of the lost becoming an enchanted garden, and begs her to leave, in order that the good and the evil may have their distinctive rewards. One of the genii gives her the 'peach of immortality.' On her return to the terrestrial regions she hears that her father is sick, and sends him word that if he will dispatch a messenger to the 'Fragrant Mountain,' an eye and a hand will be given him for medicine; this hand and eye are Kwan-n's own, and produce instant recovery.

"She is the patron G.o.ddess of mothers, and when we remember the value of sons, we can understand the heartiness of worship."--_The Three Religions of China,_ by H.G. Du Bose.

THIRD JOURNEY

TALI-FU TO THE MEKONG VALLEY