Peeps Into China Part 11

It seemed strange to Sybil and Leonard to think that boat-children never went on sh.o.r.e, might never do so, and would even marry on board their boat homes; but it did not seem at all strange to the little children themselves, who played about on board quite as happily as did children on sh.o.r.e. They looked strong, and seemed to be fond of one another. One woman going along was very angry with one of her children, and for a punishment threw him into the water, but he had a float on his back, and was quickly brought back again. These women often carry their children on their backs, but this is a most usual way of carrying children in China, both amongst the land and water people.

Sybil had already often had her wish fulfilled, of travelling in sedan-chairs, and as that is the regular mode of travelling in Hong-Kong, directly they arrived here coolies were to be seen, standing and sitting, on the pier beside their chairs, waiting for a fare. Very eager they seemed to be to secure either people or their baggage. And Sybil liked being borne along in these chairs even better than she had expected.

The sedans were made of bamboo, covered with oil-cloth, and carried on long poles. A great many sedan-chair-bearers have no fixed homes, living day and night in the open air, and buying their food at stalls on the road. They take care to keep their chairs in very good condition, ready to hire out whenever they are needed. Leonard was charmed with his bearers. They spoke such funny pigeon English to him, and made him wonder why they would put "ee" to the end of so many of their words.

When Leonard once wished to speak to his father, who was on in front, and succeeded in making his bearers understand this, one of them said "My no can catchee." They admired the boy very much, and wanted to persuade him to let them carry him one day to a "handsome face-taking-man," but he could not understand at all, at first, that they wanted him to let them carry him somewhere to have his portrait taken. "My likee," one said, pointing to Leonard's face, "welly much."

The Chinese do not paint pictures very well, and sometimes, instead of a brush, will use their fingers and nails.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VIEW OF HONG-KONG.]

The chair-men called Leonard "Captain" several times, which seemed to be a common way of addressing strange "gentlemen."

They then asked him how Mr. Turner was, but he shook his head to show that he knew n.o.body of this name. They either did not understand or believe him.

"He hab got London-side," they explained.

Thinking that if he tacked a double "e" on to all his words he would be speaking the language they talked so much, he said "No-ee know-ee," and shook his head again. I think it was the expression on his face, and the shake of his head, which made them understand at last what he wished to say to them.

It seems that the natives of Hong-Kong, as well as other parts of China, think that every Englishman must know every other Englishman; having, indeed, such very small ideas of our important country, that they really think our wealth consists in our possessing Hong-Kong.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CLOCK TOWER, HONG-KONG.]

The first view that the Grahams had of this little island was a chain of mountains rising in the background to lofty peaks, and diminishing as they approached the sea into small hills and steep rocks. Not so very long ago, Sybil was told, Hong-Kong used to be a deserted island, though it now contained flower-gardens, orchards, woods, large trees, beautiful gra.s.s slopes, and very many buildings. The English town of Victoria was built along the sea-coast. As Hong-Kong belongs to Great Britain, the Government here was, of course, English; there were Christian temples, as well as Buddhist, and many European edifices were conspicuous in the Chinese streets. Then there were also large European club-houses, and, best of all, the Cathedral. The sea-sh.o.r.e stretched round towards a very beautiful port, which opened out to the west by a pa.s.s called Lyce-moun, and to the east by the Lama Pa.s.s.

"I do think, do you know, Leonard," Sybil said, as she wished her brother "Good-night" the evening after they had arrived at Hong-Kong, "that China is rather a 'Flowery Land' after all. I do not think I shall ever forget Formosa, at all events."

"We have seen pretty sights since we came to China," Leonard said, agreeing with his sister.

The next day Sybil and he were taken into the Queen's Road, which crossed the town from west to east, to the right of which was a regular labyrinth of streets, some leading into very fine roads. In one part of Hong-Kong nothing but shops and houses of business were to be seen. One of its princ.i.p.al ornaments was the tall clock-tower, which made even high trees beside it look quite small.

The most ancient houses of the colony are in a street that leads to the clock-tower, and close by it is also the hotel of Hong-Kong. Into this Sybil and Leonard were taken to have some tiffin, or lunch, whilst their sedans and bearers waited for them not far off, under some trees.

Leonard took a good view afterwards of a man in a turban whom they pa.s.sed, because, as he was so important a person as a policeman, he thought Sybil might like to describe him in one of her letters, and she might perhaps forget what he was like.

Sybil had, as yet, only written one of her promised letters, but this had been full of news, and had told of rides in sedan-chairs, little Chu and Woo-urh, and all sorts of things; and before they moved on to Macao, she had determined to write another letter, and tell of Leonard saving himself from the serpent, and what they saw in Hong-Kong. This seemed to be a very busy place. Steamers were always either coming or going; and here, too, telegrams were constantly arriving. Besides English merchants, Chinese, American, French, German, Hindoo merchants, and others also traded with the little island, and shared what wealth she had. Hong-Kong is very English-looking, compared with other places in China, and the people are not only governed by English laws, but their crimes are tried by English judges. But even at Canton, Shanghai, and other ports where the English have settlements, they now claim, and have a voice in trials for crime. It is only because Hong-Kong belongs to the English that telegraph-wires are to be found there, as the Chinese will not have them anywhere else, because they think that they would offend the ghosts, or spirits, of the places through which they would pa.s.s. For the same reason also the Chinese have hardly any railroads. Even children could easily recognise here the introduction of English ways and manners.

Lily Keith was very fond of shopping, therefore in her next letter Sybil not only gave an account of Leonard's bravery, of which she was really more proud than Leonard himself, but also described a visit that she had paid to some shops.

"We went to some of the best of all the shops in Hong-Kong to-day," she wrote, "and as we were going into the door of one, the proprietor came to meet us. Father said he was a merchant. He spoke English, and was very grandly dressed in silk, and wore worked shoes. His shopmen also wore very handsome clothes, and served us standing behind beautifully polished counters. In one part of the shop were all kinds of silk materials, and some stuff called gra.s.s-matting. We went down-stairs to see furniture and beautiful porcelain. The princ.i.p.al curiosities had come from Canton, so I suppose when we get there we shall find still better things; and in Canton people paint on that pretty rice paper. Across the road were meat, fish, vegetable, and puppy-dog shops. Yes, the Chinese do eat dogs: in some shops in Hong-Kong we have seen a number for sale; and they eat cats and rats too. We could tell a shop in which clothes were sold some little distance off, because an imitation jacket, or something of that sort, was hung up outside, as well as the long sign-boards, which told what kind of shops they were. Leonard says I am to tell you that a policeman was outside. He always knows policemen now by turbans that they wear, and they often hold a little cane in their hands; and on the pathway a man sat, wearing a hat just like one of those funny-looking things, with a point, that we wore for fun sometimes in the garden. There are no windows to the shops.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TEMPLE OF KWAN-YIN.]

"Oh! but some of the Chinese do believe such strange things. The other day our amah told Leonard and me to chatter our teeth three times and blow. We could not understand what she meant us to do until she did it first. We had heard a crow caw, so she thought if we did not do this afterwards we should be very unlucky. The other day a coolie fell down and broke a number of things. He had not to replace any of them, but the master had to buy all the things again because it was fine weather. If it had been dirty and slippery, the boy must have bought them. None of us could understand the meaning of this till it was explained to us. If it had been a slippery day, the boy ought to have taken care, and it would have been very careless of him to fall; but if he did so in fine weather, some G.o.d must have made him slip, they think, and therefore he could not help it. The heathen Chinese have such a number of G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SHADOW-SHOW.]

"The other day we pa.s.sed the Temple of Kwan-Yin, the G.o.ddess of mercy. The Hong-Kong people think an immense deal of her, and her temple is in such a pretty place, with many trees round it. She is a Buddhist divinity. A number of beggars were outside begging, and they nearly always get something here. Very many Chinese beggars are blind, and there are also lepers in China.

Barriers were put up to keep visitors, who were not wanted, such as evil spirits, from going in.

People say that evil spirits only care to go through a straight way, and never trouble to go anywhere in a crooked direction. Over the doorway were some characters, which father's teacher has written out for me. They were, being read from right to left, backwards: 'Teen How Kov Meaou,'

and signify, 'The Ancient Temple of the Queen of Heaven.' Tien-How is the G.o.ddess of sailors, and often called 'The Queen of Heaven.' To the right was a doctor's shop, where prescriptions were sold to the priests; and to the left an old priest was selling little tapers which the worshippers were to burn. We looked in for a few moments, and saw people kneeling down and asking the G.o.ddess to cure their sick friends. She was seated at the end of the temple, behind an altar, on which were bronze vases, candles, and lighted sticks of incense. A gong was outside, and on the walls of the temple were different representations of acts of mercy that the G.o.ddess was supposed to have performed. On the roof were dragons. The dragon is the Chinese G.o.d of rain.

"Leonard says I am to tell you that some of the Celestials thought once that he was going to beat them because he carried a walking-stick. Chinamen, excepting policemen and mandarins, are only allowed to carry them when they grow old.

"We saw a very strange sort of show the other day, called a shadow-show. A man, inside a kind of Punch and Judy house, made, with the help of a lantern, all sorts of figures, or rather, shadows, appear on the top of the Punch and Judy. It looked so strange, but Leonard said he thought the people looking at it were stranger still, what with the hats they wore and the funny way they did their hair. He declared one woman had horns. I never saw such pretty lanterns as the Chinese have. Father says that on the fifteenth day of their first month (which is not always the same, as their New Year's Day, like our Easter, is a movable feast regulated by the moon) there is a feast of lanterns, when all people, both on land and on the water, hang up most beautiful lamps, some being made to look like animals, b.a.l.l.s of fire, or even like Kwan-Yin herself holding a child.

"Is it not strange New Year's Day next year will be on the twenty-ninth of January, and in 1882 on February eighteenth?

"I seem to have ever so much more to tell you, but I am too tired now to write it. I am glad you liked mother's pictures that I sent last time. I could only write that one short letter in Formosa.

We are going on to Macao (it is p.r.o.nounced Macow) the day after to-morrow, then we stay at Canton, and then come back here. It will be so dreadful when that time comes, but I try not to think about it. Dear mother does sometimes, I can see. We all went to the Cathedral on Sunday.

"I hope I shall soon have a long letter from you.

"Believe me, dear Lily, "Always your affectionate friend, "SYBIL GRAHAM.

"_Hong-Kong, December, 1880._"

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CHAPTER IX.

AT CANTON.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

A Pa.s.sENGER-BOAT conveyed our little travellers, and their parents, in three days, from Hong-Kong to Macao, a pretty little sea-side place at the entrance of the Bocca Tigris, a little gulf, to the head of which is the city of Canton.

Macao was not as full now as it had been during the summer months, when many people resort thither from Canton for change of air and to enjoy the fresh sea-breezes. A beautiful walk, called the Grand Parade, surrounds its picturesque bay.

As Macao belongs to the Portuguese, a great many of the inhabitants speak that language.

Mr. and Mrs. Graham and their children stayed, whilst at Macao, at the Grand Hotel, which was situated on the Parade, where was also a very pretty jetty, on which Sybil and Leonard liked very much to walk. Here, again, the houses were painted. In a pretty street close by the Grand Parade, protected on both sides by walls, the Grahams were shown houses whose windows used to have barriers of iron. These houses, they were told, were a kind of prison, called Emigration Agencies, but where in reality poor coolies were kept for sale. This traffic had, happily, now been done away with.

Some of the houses in Macao seemed to be painted all colours, and many of the windows were bordered with red, the favourite colour. Most of the houses could boast of large rooms. Not very much commerce seemed to be carried on here. Leonard was one day taken to pay the European troops a visit in their garrison.

At four o'clock in the afternoon many people walked upon the Parade.

Most of the Christians here were Roman Catholics, which was natural, considering that the place belonged to the Portuguese. Bells, calling people to church, rang two or three times a day, and these, and the bugle-call from the garrison, were the princ.i.p.al sounds heard. It was interesting to visit Macao, because here, in its quiet prettiness, the poet Camoens, when banished, spent some of his lonely years, and wrote a great part of his epic poem "Lusiad;" and here also a French painter, named Chinnery, had produced some of his pretty paintings and sketches.

Sybil was old enough to care about such things, and to find both pleasure and interest in visiting any places once made memorable by the footprints left there of either good or great men; and when she had heard the poet's story, she was very sorry for him!

[Ill.u.s.tration: MACAO.]

Camoens, who was the epic poet of Portugal, was born in Lisbon in 1524.

An epic poet is one who writes narratives, or stories, which often relate heroic deeds. When banished by royal authority to Santarem, Camoens joined the expedition of John III. against Morocco, and lost his right eye in an engagement with the Moors in the Straits of Gibraltar.

People in Lisbon, who would not admire his poetry, now thought nothing of his bravery. Sad and disappointed, he went to India in 1553; but being offended by what he saw the Portuguese authorities doing in India, he wrote a satire about them, called "Follies in India," and made fun of the Viceroy. For doing this, he was banished to Macao in 1556, where he lived for six years, writing "The Lusiad." On being recalled, he was shipwrecked, and lost everything that he had in the world but this epic poem, which he held in one hand above the waves, while he swam to sh.o.r.e with the other; and after suffering many misfortunes, he arrived in Lisbon in 1569, possessed of nothing else. He dedicated his poem to the young king Sebastian, who allowed him to stay at the court, and gave him a pension. But when Sebastian died he had nothing at all, and a faithful Indian servant begged for him in the streets. At last he died in the hospital at Lisbon, in 1579. Sixteen years later Camoens was appreciated, and people hunted for his grave, to erect a monument to his memory, but had much difficulty even in finding it.

The "Lusiad" celebrates the chief events in Portugal's history, and has been called "a gallery of epic pictures, in which all the great achievements of Portuguese heroism are represented." The poem has been translated into English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, and Polish.