Changing China Part 3

But story after story was told us always to the same effect--that the quality of mercy is not highly esteemed by the Chinese. The appeal the beggar makes to you as he runs after you is the old Buddhist appeal, which after all is essentially selfish, as he beseeches you "to acquire merit" by helping him; we must remember that even this reason for mercy is despised by the gentry and literati of China as essentially belonging to Buddhism. Perhaps the most lurid stories that we heard were up river. One came from the country of the Lolos. The Chinese were going out to fight the Lolos, and the missionary saw them carrying a handsome young man bound on a plank so that he could not move--so bound that his head was thrown back. After certain ceremonies they cut the man's throat, and scattered the blood on the flags; it was a sort of human sacrifice. Another story we heard from some devoted Franciscan Sisters up at Ichang. They a.s.sured us that if a mother found her children {69} weakly, and she lost one or two, she would make up her mind that the reason they were ill was because an evil spirit had a grudge against her. She would then take one of her remaining children, and, in the hope of propitiating the evil spirit, she would burn that child alive. We could not believe this story was true; but that evening we saw some hard-working Presbyterian ladies, common-sense efficient Scotchwomen, and they a.s.sured us that it was quite true.

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CHAPTER VI

CHINESE CIVILISATION--ITS GOOD SIDE

It would give a very false idea of the Chinese if great stress were not laid on the good side of their civilisation. They have many fine qualities, and in more than one point they are superior to the nominal Christianity of some Western countries. The first thing perhaps that strikes a foreigner when he is brought into contact with the Chinese is their great courtesy; their literati are such gentlefolk. Even the less cultured people have most refined manners; no one is ever rude; and one of the things they cannot understand is how we can esteem a rough, frank, honest man. There is a case when they would not appoint a certain Englishman to a commercial post, preferring a man of far less attainments and of much shorter service, because the former was rude.

That was enough. It was no use telling them that his honesty was above suspicion, that he was a reliable business man, that he was very hard working, that he had many years of hard service behind him; they allowed all this freely, but they shrugged their shoulders and said, "The truth is, he is such a rude fellow, and he will give such very great offence by his bad manners," so they would not have him.

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When a visitor enters a Yamen, he realises that his manners must be those of a most polished diplomat. Before him walks a servant, holding aloft his visiting card. One really ought to have special Chinese cards printed on beautiful sheets of red paper with queer-looking characters on them setting forth one's rank and name. However, in these days of admiration of the West, our poor little white cards are considered adequate. The Viceroy or official meets the visitor, enthusiastically shaking his own hands--the Chinese salutation--and bowing low; the particular door at which he meets his guest marks the amount of respect he wishes to pay him, and is therefore of some importance. In my case, when my host was favourable to higher education, I was received in the outer court. At every door there was a polite contest as to who should go through it first, and at last we found ourselves in a room where tea, dessert, champagne, and cigarettes were offered, although of the two latter I was unworthy. Then began the conversation. I found less stiffness once I had explained that I came to gather opinions about a scheme for education. After the stately interview was over there was an equally ceremonious leave-taking.

Though the methods of the Chinese in doing business may be exasperating to a Western whose time is money and who wants them to come to some immediate decision, they are invariably delightful and courteous in all their negotiations. This courtesy is all the direct result of Confucian teaching. Stress is {72} laid there on courteous behaviour, perhaps even to a degree which may strike the Western traveller as absurd. This courtesy, I understand, extends even to those of lower degree. Your servant in speaking to another calls him brother, and nothing makes the servant despise his master so much as seeing him lose his temper: it is to his mind a mark of our savagery.

The Chinese have higher virtues than courtesy. They are essentially industrious. You have only to look at a Chinaman's garden to realise the extent to which he possesses this quality. I am certain that those people who are proud of the culture of their kitchen gardens would be surprised and ashamed if they could compare them with those of a Chinaman. One pa.s.ses garden after garden with rows of plants placed at even distances and every plant exactly the right distance in those rows, with never a weed to be seen all over the whole plot. Again in handicraft there is the same industry; you buy Chinese embroidery for a song in such a place as Changsha. No one will tell you that Chinamen ever object to length of hours; they are ideal men for work that needs care and accuracy.

Again they are very patient. A monotonous task is not at all unpleasing to them. An acute French observer used the word _routiniere_ in describing this characteristic. Even in intellectual work this liking for monotonous repet.i.tion will show itself. One of the doctors told us that he had the very greatest {73} difficulty in inducing his pupils not to perpetuate his most casual gestures when he was demonstrating. For instance, when teaching bacteriology, quite unconsciously he might from time to time put an instrument down on the table, and just touch it again. Months after he would find one of his pupils when doing the same experiment repeating every gesture he had accidentally made with careful imitation. It was clear that the student had monotonously continued to practice these gestures for no other reason but that he had seen his master make them. All those words which our writers on social subjects are so fond of inditing against the modern factory system have no meaning to the Chinaman.

Those complaints about long hours at mechanical work rendering the worker little better than a machine are doubtless true of the white race, but are quite beside the point as applied to the Chinese. If the Chinaman is well paid in the factory he will prefer rather than otherwise that the work should be mechanical; he will not mind if the hours are long.

Again, he is cheerful and contented under very adverse circ.u.mstances.

When we were being rowed in a native boat up the Yangtsze, and the men were straining every nerve against the current, while they were chilled by a drizzling rain, there was never a word of discontent; they were always cheerful and bright, good-tempered and merry.

Their highest quality is obedience, which is the result of their Confucian culture. The central virtue {74} of that teaching is obedience to parents, and they hold that doctrine to a degree which to the Western mind seems exaggerated. One of the grown-up sons of a Chinese clergyman did something which he considered unbecoming in a Christian; to the surprise of the missionary, he did not hesitate to administer a sound thrashing to his son, which the young man took without the slightest resistance, and in this action the clergyman was supported by the public opinion of the congregation. This quality gives to China its great power, and it is one of the points in which there is the greatest divergence between the teaching of the West and of the East. Every Chinaman points out to you how little Westerns care for their parents. I remember a Chinese gentleman explaining in a patronising way to the other Chinese that, strange though it seemed, he knew it as a fact that one of the commandments of our religion really was that we should honour our parents.

Were it not for this principle of obedience which is implanted in the mind of every Chinaman, the government of China would scarcely endure for a day; but he is taught from his earliest youth to obey his father, not as we teach in the West because the child is unable to think and understand, so that obedience to parents is a virtue which must fall into disuse as knowledge increases, but as an absolute duty, a duty equally inc.u.mbent on a man of forty as on a child of four. This principle is extended to that of civil government; the local {75} official is in their quaint phrase "the father and mother of his people," and the obedience to parents taught in childhood is therefore extended to those who govern. No Chinaman has any doubt but that the first duty of man is obedience to authority. Let us hope these qualities will ever endure.

What may happen, and, alas, I am afraid, is at the present moment happening, is that the two civilisations may be so blended together that the qualities of each may be lost and its peculiar virtues destroyed while its characteristic vices are preserved. The great qualities of obedience to parents, of courtesy to strangers, are being forgotten. The Chinaman educated in the States is rude and abrupt; he fancies that it is Western and business-like. Every Chinese gentleman to whom I talked, allowed that one of the worst results of Western teaching had been that a Westernised Chinaman was less obedient and respectful to his parents. On the other hand, the Westernised Chinaman does not acquire the peculiar virtues of the Englishman.

The superficial Chinese thinker wants China to learn only the material side of our civilisation, to profit by our mechanical excellence without learning anything of our ethics. His view is that the West is immoral but wealthy; he regards Europe as the place where there is no principle excepting money-worship, and therefore he argues that if you would Westernise China you must despise morality and seek for money.

Chang-Chih-Tung voiced this thought when he said, {76} "Western education is practical, Chinese education is moral." If you try to argue with a thoughtless Chinaman who has perhaps never left China, and whose only experience of Western life is what he has seen in a treaty port, you will find that it is hard to convince him that Western education produces a high moral tone. After all we may, to a certain extent, be to blame for their want of appreciation of the morality of the West, for too often we show to the Chinese a very degraded side of our civilisation; and though I do not think that Shanghai at the present merits the term that was applied to it fifty years ago of being a "moral sink," yet undoubtedly the treaty ports, both by their const.i.tution and by their geographical position, collect very unpleasant specimens of white civilisation. There are a certain number of men who spend a great part of their existence being deported from Shanghai to Hong-Kong, and from Hong-Kong to Shanghai.

One of the comedies in the tragedy of the extinction of the independence of Korea is ill.u.s.trative of this point. The Emperor of Korea heard that the Western races were far more trustworthy than those of the East, and so fearing a.s.sa.s.sination after the murder of the Queen, he determined to enrol a corps of Europeans as a body-guard; he sent over officers to Shanghai with orders to enlist Europeans.

Unfortunately for himself he did not take the precaution of sending with them any Western to help in the selection of the men. To Korean eyes all Westerns {77} look alike, and as they were offering good pay, they soon had their corps complete; they returned to Seoul, and the corps was installed with suitable uniforms, and, alas, rifles and ammunition. The moment the corps was paid, the greater bulk of them got drunk, and for the next few hours Seoul was distinctly an undesirable place of residence, filled with drunken men of all nationalities shouting and shrieking and firing loaded rifles recklessly in every direction. The poor Emperor trembled as he looked from his palace windows at his body-guard out on the drink, and he made up his mind that it would be better to take a reasonable chance of a.s.sa.s.sination by the j.a.panese than to risk the danger of being guarded by this inebriate troop of Westerns. With the help of the Consul the body-guard when sober were returned to Shanghai, and let us trust the Chinese heard the story and were convinced that in accepting Western civilisation they must be careful to avoid accepting the vices of the West.

At Changsha I heard a similar story, but with a tragic side, which one felt exonerated the Chinese for being rather incredulous as to the morality of our civilisation. Changsha, I should explain, is reputed one of the most bigoted cities in China; even at the present moment white women are advised not to walk through the streets. The Hunanese have a bold independent character, which makes them rather hostile to any foreigner or to foreign ways, and I am afraid that the story I am going to repeat will have {78} confirmed them in their conviction that foreigners are undesirable. Two white men belonging to one of the South European races--Greeks, I think--settled themselves down in defiance of treaty rights in Changsha, and at once opened a gambling h.e.l.l. Very soon they taught the Chinese, who are as a race very addicted to gambling, new and most pernicious forms of that hateful vice. The Governor complained to the Consul; the Consul sent his officer down, accompanied by the police, to arrest the Greeks; the Private Secretary to the Governor informed the Consul of the tragedy that followed. The Consular officer warned the Greeks that they must give up their gambling establishment and go back to Hankow. They said they would not. He told them that if they refused he would arrest them, take them to the boat, and send them down by force to Hankow.

They still refused, and he advanced, upon which one of the Greeks shot the officer dead. The Chinese police after their manner vanished, while the Governor's Private Secretary, according to his own account, spent most of the time of the interview under the table. The Greeks, seeing the coast clear, and realising that vengeance must come, took to the open country. The Chinese were told to arrest them if they could.

Of course they had no difficulty in finding them, but to arrest them was a different matter. They mobilised two or three regiments, and surrounding the house in which the Greeks had taken refuge, they kept on firing at long range till they judged, from there being no signs of life, that they {79} must have killed them. They then carried off the bodies, but thought it better to describe the incident in an official doc.u.ment as a case of suicide from fear of arrest, lest they should be held responsible for the death of these murderers. The next Greeks that came up the river were sent down with a guard of forty men, and so terrified were the Chinese that they had to put them first-cla.s.s, as no Chinese would have dared to have travelled with them.

There were several other stories told at Changsha to the same effect.

The European that the Chinaman sees in that sort of place is too often one of those worthless men who has found his own country impossible to live in, and who hopes that his vices and crimes may escape unnoticed in distant China. Can one wonder that the Chinese are liable to misunderstand the West, and were it not for the saintly life of many missionaries, the high character and strict justice of our Consuls--yes, and the admirable discipline and management of such great undertakings as that of b.u.t.terfield and Swire--the evil would be incurable; but though there are many specimens of the bad, there are also not a few men who by their lives have testified before the Chinese to the greatness of our social and moral traditions and to the religion by which they are inspired.

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CHAPTER VII

RAILWAYS AND RIVERS

The rivers and railways of China form a very marked contrast. The rivers represent the old means of communication, the railways the new, and the comparison between the river and the railway enables the traveller to compare new with old China and to realise the great changes that are taking place there and the transitional character of the phase through which the country is now pa.s.sing.

Ancient China, as compared to ancient Europe, was a most progressive country, a very essential point to remember when we have to consider what will be the att.i.tude of the Chinese with regard to modern progress. Theoretically they have always been progressive; practically they have pa.s.sed through an age of progress and reached the other side.

That age of progress improved very much their means of communication.

China is naturally well endowed with rivers, and those rivers were infinitely extended by a system of ca.n.a.ls. Of these the Grand Ca.n.a.l is the most perfect example. The traveller cannot sail along the Grand Ca.n.a.l and look at the masonry walls of that great work, or the high bridges that span it, without realising that in its time it was one {81} of the greatest works the world had ever seen. That ca.n.a.l, typical of modern China, is now in disrepair, but the spirit of the men who built it is not gone; it is the same spirit that now welcomes railways all over China.

The greatest of China's natural waterways is the Yangtsze-Kiang; it cuts right through the centre of China from the sea to Chungking and further; it has many important tributaries, which lead through great lakes and afford a very useful means of communication to vast districts in Central China.

Along that great river for six hundred miles, ships of the largest size can sail in the summer; battleships, though not of the largest cla.s.s, can ascend to Hankow. Beyond Hankow the river is much shallower, and communication with Ichang is often interrupted in the winter by want of water. A thousand miles from the sea begin those wonderful gorges of the Yangtsze which are among the greatest wonders of the world.

Up to Ichang, the Yangtsze is still a big, rather dull yellow river, a vastly overgrown Thames, a ma.s.s of sandbanks, running through almost consistently uninteresting country; but after that thousand miles, it develops into a sort of huge Rhine. The river is still yellow, but it runs through green mountains and grey rocks. At times it swirls along with an oily surface dented here and there by whirlpools which tell of some sunken rock; at other times the grey rocks creep closer together and the yellow {82} Yangtsze foams itself white in its effort to squeeze through the narrow opening left. In quieter reaches of the river a house-boat or luban can be rowed or sailed. The rowing is rather jerky, the sailing delightful, and so the advance of the traveller is pleasant and uneventful; but when the boat reaches the rapids, the only way to get her through is by towing.

There is a temptation always to delay putting men ash.o.r.e to tow--a temptation which ended in our house-boat being b.u.mped upon a rock.

Our captain (we call him "lowdah" in China) had cleverly devised, by creeping along the side of the river under shelter of projecting rocks and then by dodging round the points, everybody shrieking and yelling as they strained at the oar, to avoid the necessity of towing; but a more malign whirlpool than the rest twisted us round till the oars on one side of the boat could not row because they were fouled on the rocks, and then another twisted us sideways on to a submerged rock, and there the current held us till the police-boat the Chinese Government supplies to foreign travellers kindly took our rope ash.o.r.e and we were hauled off without apparently having suffered any damage.

These police-boats, or "red boats," are a great feature in travelling on the Yangtsze. They add enormously, to begin with, to the artistic effect, as they are furnished with an art-blue sail, which would rejoice the heart of an artist, but the nervous traveller {83} regards them with feelings of a warmer nature than those their aesthetic effect would arouse. They guarantee, if not the safety of boats and goods, at least the safety of his person amidst the terrible rapids of the river.

If his boat should be wrecked and his goods become the property of the fishes, he knows that the "red boat" will dart into the rapids, and owing to its peculiar construction and the skill of the boatmen, will be able to rescue and return him, a washed and grateful traveller, to Ichang.

The excitement of pa.s.sing the rapids is intense. It is a pleasurable sensation when you watch from the sh.o.r.e some one else pa.s.sing through them; it is more exciting but less pleasurable to be on the boat itself at that moment. The excitement is largely a question of the size of the boat, whence the wisdom of taking a small boat even if it is less comfortable. To watch an eighty-ton junk being hauled through a narrow pa.s.sage of foaming water is intensely thrilling. It is a matter of great difficulty owing to the rocky nature both of the channel and the sh.o.r.e.

The Yangtsze rises and falls some hundreds of feet in the year, and at low water the banks are a ma.s.s of rough rocks which remind one more of the sea than of a river. The men who tow are called trackers, and they have to climb over these rocks tugging and straining at the rope while a certain number of them, stripped to nudity, try to keep the rope clear of the rocks which constantly entangle it both on sh.o.r.e and in the water. It is splendid to {84} watch these men as they bound from rock to rock to disengage the rope from some projecting point, or as, leaping into the stream, they swim across to isolated rocks and extricate it from all sorts of impossible situations. Meanwhile the junk creeps up inch by inch, at times standing almost still while the water surges past her and makes a wave at her bow which would not misbecome a torpedo-destroyer in full steam. Woe betide the junk if the rope should foul and break in spite of the efforts of these men, for then she would be at the mercy of the current, and if it should so happen that there was no wind, the mariners on board have no command over her, and she must drift as chance will guide her till quieter water is reached. Of course if there is a wind they can haul up their sail, and then, though they will descend backwards down the stream, they will do it with dignity and safety. We pa.s.sed a junk doing this.

Her rope had apparently broken, her huge sails were set to a stiff breeze; as you watched her by the water she seemed to be sailing at a good rate forwards; as you watched her by the land she was travelling a good steady pace down stream. If she cannot hoist her sail because the wind is unfavourable, then she will rush back, inadequately guided by three huge strange-looking oars. The one at the bow, worked by six men, can twist her round like a teetotum, so that as she dashes down stream, the captain can select which part of her shall b.u.mp against the submerged rocks, which after all is but a poor {85} privilege, when you remember that eighty tons of woodwork banged against ma.s.sive granite rock must be resolved into its const.i.tuent boards, whatever part of it strikes the rock first. The two other oars are even less helpful.

With eight men at each, they can propel the boat at the rate of about three miles an hour; but what use is that when the stream is bearing the junk to destruction at twenty miles an hour. If the rope breaks, it is rather a question of good luck than good guidance. If there is no rock in the way, the junk happily sails down and is brought up in the quieter waters below the rapids. If there is a rock in the way, the junk arrives at the end of the rapid in a condition which would please firewood collectors but no one else. Those of the crew who can swim get ash.o.r.e, and those who cannot are either picked up by the "red boat," or if there is not one there, they disappear; their bodies are recovered several days later lower down the river. From a Chinese point of view this is all a small matter; what is important is that a junk containing a valuable cargo has been lost. So frequent have been these losses that five per cent. insurance is demanded for cargoes going above Ichang.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GORGES OF THE YANGTSZE: AN AWKWARD MOMENT. JUNK NEGOTIATING RAPIDS. (Notice coils of bamboo rope)]

Perhaps I ought to say one word about the rope on which the safety of the junk depends. It is made of plaited bamboo, which is extraordinarily light, and does not fray, though it is so stiff that it behaves like a wire rope. Its great lightness {86} allows of the use of ropes of enormous length. I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that some of them are a quarter of a mile long. They are very strong, and therefore can be of wonderfully narrow diameter, but apparently they last but a short time, and every boat is furnished with coil after coil of bamboo rope ready for all emergencies. A horrible accident happens when owing to bad steering the trackers are pulled back off the narrow ledges cut into the face of the precipices, which at times border the river, so that they fall into the rapid.

They are an attractive body of men, these trackers. They leap over the most incredible chasms in the rocks, they climb like cats up the precipices, they pull like devils, while one master encourages them by beating a drum on board the junk, and another belabours them on sh.o.r.e with a bit of bamboo rope, which makes an excellent subst.i.tute for a birch rod, and yet withal they are cheerful. When it rains or snows they are wet through; when the sun is hot--and remember the Yangtsze is in the same lat.i.tude as North Africa--they expose their bent backs to the scorching sun; yet apparently they never grumble, but they wile away the hours of their labour with cheerful song. When they row or pull easily, the song is a weird antiphonal chant--it seems to be sometimes a solo and a chorus, sometimes two equally balanced choruses; but when the work becomes hard, the song changes into a wild snarl and they laugh a savage laugh as they strain and sweat to the {87} uttermost. I will complete their description by saying that their views of decency are those of Adam before the Fall, and that they preserve their strength by a diet of rice and beans with a handful of cabbages as a relish. At night they sleep on the deck of the junk on their rough Chinese bedding with only a mat roofing to keep the rain off them. And as I watched their cheerful demeanour, I felt more convinced than ever that the natural virtues of the Chinese are of the very highest order.

Perhaps I ought to say one word about the beauty of the gorges. I think in two points they excel. First, in the height of the ma.s.sive cliffs, through which the Yangtsze has cut its way like a knife; the size of the river and the size of the cliffs are so much in proportion that the eagle circling above the gorge looks like a swallow, and the crowd of trackers appears as a disturbed ant colony. The other way in which the gorges excel in beauty is in colouring; at one point especially it was most remarkable--the rocks were red, the mountains when we saw them were purple, and the purple and red harmonising with the fresh green foliage of early summer and the deep yellow of the river, made a rich combination of tints in the landscape which could hardly be surpa.s.sed. It is typical of the state in which China is at the present day that a scheme should be on foot for building a railway which no doubt will render the gorges of the Yangtsze a silent highway, and, instead of hearing the wild song of the tracker or the savage beating of the tom-tom, {88} the lonely eagle will circle above a silent river on which the fisherman's bark alone will sail in the future.

For all schemes to tame the wild and fierce Yangtsze are clearly impossible. The river rises and falls more than a hundred feet with great rapidity, and no human hand could ever throw a dam across this ma.s.s of surging water. Possibly it might be used as a source of power for electrical work, but it is far more probable that the smaller rivers which fall into the Yangtsze will be chosen for that purpose.

This district may be a tourist resort, and dwellers in the plains of China may seek coolness and beauty on one of the crags that overhang the river; the modern hotel may perch itself beside the ancient Buddhist temple; but the days of the river as a great commercial route of China are numbered as soon as the railway linking far-western Szechuan to the rest of China is completed. One wild scheme proposes that the railway should come from Russia straight down from Szechuan, in which case more than probably Szechuan will fall completely under the influence of the Russian Government.

One of the results of Westernising China must be to produce an industrial revolution. All those men, for instance, who make a living by leaping from crag to crag, from rock to rock, and swimming, struggling, rowing in that river Yangtsze will find their living gone.

But not only will the railway make many poor who had a competence, but it must make many rich {89} who before were poor. In this case, for instance, all those commodities which are now extremely dear in Szechuan, because of the cost of transit, will fall in price, and there will be a period when there will be a wide margin of profit between the cost of importation and the conventional price the people are used to pay, and those who live by trade will grow rich.

What has happened in the West must also happen in the East. The introduction of steam did not make the official cla.s.ses or even the working cla.s.ses immediately rich. The people who immediately profited by improved means of production and communication were the great middle cla.s.s; afterwards as the working cla.s.s realised that the margin of profit would allow of larger wages, they compelled the masters to share these advantages with them. So it will probably happen in China. With the railway will come a rich middle cla.s.s who will be a factor of growing importance in future China.

A great contrast between the Yangtsze and its wild gorges is the great trunk line from Peking to Canton which runs at right angles through the Yangtsze north and south, and must make Hankow, the place where it crosses the Yangtsze, one of the greatest cities in the whole world.

The railway is only completed as far as Hankow. It runs from Peking right across the plains of China, which are so desolate in the spring and so fertile in the summer, and which depend for their fertility on the July rains. At every station a great Chinese inn is erected--that {90} is to say, a big courtyard with rooms round. At first, of course, trade was small; the Chinese village community has but little that it wants either to buy or sell; each community is to a great extent self-supporting. A farmer reckoned, I was told by a Chinese official, that if he had made 30s. a year, he had done well. That does not mean that he lived on 30s. a year, though in a country where men are paid threepence a day, one would almost have been ready to believe it; but it means that he had fifteen dollars a year to spend on things outside his daily food. His farm supplies him with food and drink and his vicious luxury, opium; his women make his clothes; it only remains for him to buy material for the clothes and the little extras that they cannot make, besides salt. He pays for the few things that he has bought, probably with the opium he produces, or in Manchuria with beans; but the trade has been of microscopical dimensions owing to the difficulties of transit.