Peeps Into China Part 8

"And before it is shipped away it is also very carefully weighed, when I myself, I know, for instance, sit by, watching the process, and taking account of the result."

"I suppose tea isn't ever sent about in wheel-barrows?" then said Leonard, who liked very much indeed the idea of wheel-barrows with sails up, such as he had heard about.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GOING TO MARKET.]

"I never saw it," was the merchant's reply; "but if you are interested in wheel-barrows, you might like to hear about one that I once saw in China. It was conveying not only goods, and the scales wherewith to weigh them, to market, but the family also to whom the goods belonged.

The family party made a great impression upon me. The master of the barrow was pushing it from behind, a donkey was pulling it in front, and on the donkey rode a boy; a woman and two children were driven in the wheel-barrow, besides the goods for market. I thought the man and donkey must have a heavy load between them, but both seemed to work most cheerfully and willingly; and a sail in the centre of the wheel-barrow, gathering the full force of the wind, must have been a great help to them.

"The donkey was guided by no reins, only by the voice of the boy on his back, who carried a stick, but had no occasion to use it, although every now and then he just raised it in the air. Sometimes the boy ran beside the donkey. Anyhow suited the willing little beast, who was as anxious as his master to do his best. A dog completed the number of the party.

"The man told me that he was truly fond of this dog, and gave him 'plenty chow-chow' (plenty to eat), and that he considered he owed all his wealth to him, as he had once come to the house, and had since then remained with the family.

"A strange dog coming to, and remaining at, a house is looked upon by the Chinese as bringing good luck to the family, but a strange cat coming is a bad omen."

The children laughed.

"This man certainly treated his dog very well, as do some few of his countrymen; but, alas! alas! so many poor little faithful dogs in China, as in other countries, lead anything but happy lives!"

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CHAPTER VI.

LITTLE CHU AND WOO-URH.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

NO more story Peep-shows of what might be seen in China, no more wondering what the Celestials would be like, for Sybil and Leonard had now landed on Chinese soil, and were themselves at Shanghai, face to face with its inhabitants.

Shanghai seemed, and was, a very busy place, but not a town of very great importance in itself, owing, really, its recent prosperity to having opened its port to foreign commerce. The custom-house, through which the Grahams' boxes had to be pa.s.sed, struck the children as a very strange and beautiful building, quite different from anything that they had seen before; and there was a great noise of chattering going on outside, which sounded most unintelligible. Coolies were carrying bales of silk and tea to and fro; there were also, ready at hand, some of the sedan-chairs that Sybil had longed to see, and everywhere "pig-tails,"

or cues, as they were called, seemed to meet Leonard's gaze.

But the ships! Watching them was what he enjoyed better than anything else. The town of Shanghai is situated on the River Woosung, a tributary of the Yangtse-kiang, just at that point where it joins the great river, and about one hundred ships were anch.o.r.ed before this busy, commercial city. Many families resident there have their junks and a little home on the river. There were some very pretty buildings to be seen at Shanghai, and at one of these our little party stayed--on a visit to another missionary from the Church of England--for the three days that they remained there.

At some cities and towns, on the banks of rivers, floating hotels are to be seen; and as people generally have to travel by water, and the Chinese are not allowed to keep open their city-gates after nine o'clock at night, these hotels prove very useful to those arriving too late to enter the city. Lighted with lanterns, they look very pretty floating on the water, and both Sybil and Leonard were very pleased to be taken over a large floating hotel before they left Shanghai. Leonard was very anxious to know how long this town had been open to foreign commerce, and was told since the Opium War, which lasted from 1840 to 1842, when the British, having occupied several Chinese cities, and having captured c.h.i.n.kiang in Hoopeh, were advancing to Nanking, and the Chinese suing for peace, a treaty was concluded which opened the ports of Amoy, Foochow, Shanghai, and Ningpo, in addition to Canton, to the British, who were henceforward to appoint consuls to live in these towns.

The Chinese are very polite to foreigners in Shanghai; and as the kind missionary who bade the Grahams welcome to his home endeavoured, during their short stay, to interest and show them sights, they enjoyed themselves very much. Sybil and Leonard could not help noticing how very many people they met in spectacles, but they were told that the Chinese suffer very much from ophthalmia, and that when they wear spectacles, some of which are very large, they often have sore eyes.

"There is one thing I cannot understand the Chinese doing," Leonard said one day to Sybil: "and that is, everybody that we have seen, as yet, spoiling their tea by not taking any milk or sugar in it; and father says all the Chinese drink tea like that, and call milk white blood, and only use it in medicine."

"Tea like that would not suit us," Sybil answered, "as we like plenty of both milk and sugar; but I dare say they think we spoil our tea by putting such things into it."

A visit to some rice-fields, a little sight-seeing, a little more watching of ships carrying rice and other products away, and then it was time for the Grahams once more to take their seats on board.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CUSTOM-HOUSE, SHANGHAI.]

We can imagine how both children strained their eyes, as they steamed farther and farther away from Shanghai, to see what that port looked like in the distance, and how Sybil examined her map as they left the province of Kiang-su, to see at what port, and in what province, they would next touch.

This was Ningpo, in Che-kiang, but they did not land here; neither did they go on sh.o.r.e at their next halting-place, Foochow, in the province of Fu-kien. It was at Amoy, in the same province, where their father had a missionary friend, who had invited them to pay him a few days' or a week's visit, as would suit them best, that they next purposed landing, and this they did about four days after they left Shanghai.

"Whoever thought," Sybil said one day on board, "that we should actually be on the Yellow Sea ourselves? It seems almost too good to be true now."

"I never knew people like to stare more at anybody than they seem to like to stare at us here," Leonard thought to himself when first at Amoy.

He and Sybil were then being very carefully observed by a group of natives of that place, but Leonard had yet to become accustomed to being stared at in China.

"And, father," he said later, "I wonder why so many of them wear turbans? I did not notice people doing this at Shanghai."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A FLOATING HOTEL AT SHANGHAI.]

Mr. Graham did not know the reason of this either; but he and Leonard were later informed that the men of Amoy adopted the turban to hide the tail when they were made to wear it by their conquerors, and that they never gave it up. Leonard was also told that they were good soldiers, which, he said, he thought they looked. One thing remarkable about the people of Amoy was that the different families seemed to consist almost entirely of boys. A great many of the inhabitants were very poor, living crowded together in dirty houses very barely furnished. Mrs.

Graham had not to be long in China to discover that cleanliness is not a Chinese virtue. Sybil bought some very pretty artificial flowers of some of the inhabitants of Amoy, which they had themselves made. They manufactured them princ.i.p.ally, she heard, to be placed on graves.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PORT OF SHANGHAI.]

Like other Chinese, these people were very superst.i.tious. Here and there large blocks of granite were to be met with, which were regarded by them with reverence, and looked upon as good divinities. On one the Grahams saw inscriptions, which related some history of the place.

Granite seemed to abound here, for the temples and monasteries were, for the most part, erected on the heights between rocks of this description.

Two days after reaching Amoy, Sybil was dreadfully distressed, and shocked, to see a little girl named Chu, of eleven years old, put up for sale by her own parents. At ten dollars (1) only was she valued; and for this paltry sum the parents were ready to sell her to any one who would bid it for her. They were very poor, and could not afford to keep her any longer. She had four sisters and only two brothers; the youngest of all, the baby, was to be drowned by her father, later on in the day, in a tub of water. They had never done anything like this before: this man and woman had never killed a child, although they had had five girls, and many of their neighbours had thought nothing of destroying most of their daughters so soon as they were born; but now, as the man was ill, and able to earn so little, they had resolved to rid themselves of two of them that day. If the baby lived, the mother comforted herself by saying, she must be sold later, or grow up in poverty and misery.

Parents think it very necessary that their children should marry, and sometimes sell, or give them away, to their friends, when they are quite little, to be the future wives of the sons of their new owners.

If sold, they will then fetch about two dollars for every year that they have lived; so a child of five years old would fetch ten dollars; and this little girl, put up for sale, was now eleven years old; therefore she was being offered, poor little thing, below half price. And some little girls of Amoy have been even offered for sale for a few pence!

[Ill.u.s.tration: A FAMILY OF AMOY.]

It seemed incomprehensible to Sybil, as it must to us, that a mother could wish either to kill or to sell her little child, but neither the one nor the other event is uncommon in some parts of China, where the parent is poor; and even amongst the well-to-do cla.s.ses little girls are sometimes put to death, if the parents have more daughters than they care to rear, not only at Amoy, but at other places in the neighbourhood; and even Chinese ladies will sometimes have their poor little daughters put to death.

"Why do people not kill their boys too?" Sybil asked, when she heard all about this.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MISSIONARY'S TEACHER.]

"Because when they grow up they can earn money that girls could not earn; and not only can they help to support their parents when old, but they can worship their ancestral tablets and keep up the family name."

"I am sure a girl would do this too."

"Her doing so would be considered of little use."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A VIEW OF AMOY, WITH A BLOCK OF GRANITE IN THE FOREGROUND.]

It seemed that the very day before Mr. Graham arrived in Amoy, a widow lady there had had her little baby girl destroyed, and then, in her widow's dress, had sat down quietly to talk matters over with her sister-in-law, who thought that she had acted very wisely. Killing a daughter, in China, is hardly looked upon as being sinful. A widow's mourning consists of all white and a band round the head, white being Chinese deepest mourning.