Sidelights on Chinese Life Part 1

Sidelights on Chinese Life.

by J. Macgowan.

CHAPTER I

THE CHINAMAN

The Chinaman a puzzle--Oblique methods--Instances given--Mind turbid--Shrewd--A bundle of contradictions--No love of truth in the abstract--Hypnotizing power of the Chinese, in business, in foreign official life--Full of human nature--Inability to be thorough.

The Chinaman's mind is a profound and inexplicable puzzle that many have vainly endeavoured to solve. He is a mystery not simply to the foreigner, who has been trained to more open methods of thought, but also to his own countrymen, who are frequently heard to express their astonishment at some exhibition of character, that has never occurred to them during the whole of their oblique life. A Chinese cook who was living in an English family, and who found life so intolerable through some petty devices and schemes of his fellow-servants that he was compelled to resign his situation, was so taken aback at the ingenuity and skill of the manoeuvres that had been employed to oust him from his employment that, with flashing eyes and a face flushed with excitement, he said, "I know the Englishman well, I can accurately gauge his mind, and I can tell exactly how he will usually act; but my own countrymen are a mystery to me that I do not profess to be able to comprehend."

This of course was an exaggeration, as there must have been a great deal in his own people that he must have been quite familiar with. He merely meant that there were depths in the Celestial mind that even he had never yet fathomed. Any one who has ever studied the Chinese character must have come to the conclusion that the instincts and aims of the people of the Chinese Empire are distinctly the reverse of those that exist in the minds of the men of the West. An Englishman, for example, prides himself upon being straightforward and of saying exactly what he believes. A Chinaman would never dream of taking that position, simply because it is one that he does not understand, and consequently he could never carry out. A straight line is something that his mind recoils from, and when he desires to effect some purpose that he has before him, he prefers an oblique and winding path by which in a more roundabout manner he hopes to attain his end.

It may be laid down as a general and axiomatic truth, that it is impossible from hearing what a Chinaman says to be quite certain of what he actually means. The reason for this no doubt arises from the fact that a speaker hardly ever in the first instance touches upon the subject that he has in his mind, but he will dwell upon two or three others that he believes have an intimate relation with it, and he concludes that this subtle line of thought ought to lead the hearer to infer what he has all the time been driving at. One of my servants, for example, had a grievance against another also in my employ. He did not dare to complain of him to me, for he belonged to a powerful clan bordering on his own in the interior, and if anything unpleasant had happened to this particular member through any accusation that might be laid against him, they would have wreaked their vengeance not only upon the man who had troubled him, but also upon the members of the weaker clan who were connected with him.

The direct method that would have been pursued by a foreigner without any regard to consequence, because he has no dread of hostile clans, and because he has the law to protect him in case of need, evidently cannot be adopted by the aggrieved person here, and so he naturally adopts the method that he believes will secure him a redress of his wrongs without any danger to himself or his clan.

He accordingly appears one morning with that blank expressionless visage with which a Chinaman can conceal his thoughts, and asks permission to return to his home in the country. He had just got news, he says, that a brother of his has suddenly become very ill and is not expected to live, and urgent entreaties have been sent him to come home as speedily as he can. You are rather startled at this sudden demand to be left at a moment's notice without a servant who is necessary to carry on the work of the home; and besides, you have the uncomfortable feeling that this may be one of those obscure but oblique ways by which the Yellow mind is working to secure some end that lies concealed within its fathomless recesses.

You ask particulars, but he has none to give. He simply waves before you a letter covered with strange and weird hieroglyphics, and hands it to you for inspection, though he is aware that you can no more decipher it than you could the wedge-shaped symbols of the a.s.syrian language, and he declares that he knows no more about the illness of his brother than what is contained in it. As you cannot read the letter, and moreover you would get no light from it even if you could, you look him straight in the face to see if you cannot discover some little ray of light on this perplexing question; but no, it is just as impenetrable as the doc.u.ment he holds in his hands as evidence of the bad news he has received from his home. It is perfectly sphinx-like, and gives no clue to the thoughts that lie behind it. The eyes are liquid and childlike, and just that touch of sadness that harmonizes with his sorrowful feelings has laid its lightest shadow over his features, and you begin to feel that you have been doing the man an injustice by doubting him.

You have gone through similar processes before, however, and the memory of them inspires you with caution, so you tell him to go away and you will think over the matter. You call another of the servants whom you know to be on good terms with the other, and you ask him if he has heard of the distressing news that has come to his friend. A flash of surprise like a streak of lightning out of a clear sky shoots across his face, which he instantly suppresses, however, and with a calm and unruffled look he says, "I have not heard that any letter has come, but there may have been one. I have been busy, you know, doing my work, and so have not been told."

This is decidedly suspicious, for if there is one thing that a Chinaman cannot do it is to keep a secret. After a little further conversation with this man he remarks in a very casual off-hand way--

"I have heard that so-and-so had a brother; it is very strange, and I cannot quite understand this business," and after one or two miscellaneous remarks he suddenly looks round, goes to the door, and peers up and down the hall, to a.s.sure himself that there is no one looking about. He then walks on tiptoe to the open window, and gives a rapid glance amongst the flowers and shrubs in the garden to see that none of his fellow-servants are there to catch s.n.a.t.c.hes of the conversation, and, still treading like a cat that scents a rat, he comes up close to you, and whispering in your ear he utters just one word, "Examine," and then with a face full of mystery and with the same cat-like motion he vanishes out of the door with a face covered with smiles, and you feel that you are now on a fair way to find out the secret of the hieroglyphic letter and the alarming sickness of the brother.

You "examine" the matter, and you find that the man never had a brother, that the letter was written by a clansman next door, and that the whole plot was devised to get you to rectify wrongs without arousing in the offender a suspicion that he had been informed against. There is consequently no feud and no vendetta, and after a few strong and forceful words as to what may happen if people do not behave themselves, the household returns to its normal state of order and quietness.

In order thoroughly to understand and appreciate the Chinaman, a man must be possessed of large powers of inference, for it is almost certain that what lies apparent in his conduct is not the real thing that he has in view.

One day a Chinaman walked into my study in the free and easy way with which people enter each other's houses in this land, with a basket of eggs in his hand. He was a complete stranger to me, but he talked as glibly to me as though he had been well acquainted with me. He told me that he had brought me a present, that the eggs had been laid by his own fowls, and that though they were too small a present to be accepted by one so much higher than he was, he hoped that I should still condescend to take them from him. "But I do not know who you are, and moreover I do not see why you should make me any present at all." "Oh, I merely wished to do myself the honour of meeting with you, for I have heard others speak with great respect of you, and my wife and I thought that a few eggs from my own farm, though not worthy of your acceptance, would be a little token of the respect in which we hold you."

In spite of all his professions of devotion and esteem for myself, I felt convinced that he had some favour to ask of me; but, true to the peculiarity of the Chinese mind, he kept it at first in the background, and after talking with him for about an hour, and after I had hinted that I had an engagement that would compel me to leave him, he began to stammer out that he was in great trouble with some persons in his village, and as he knew that I had great influence, he had come to me to help him out of his difficulty. The secret was now out, and the basket of eggs and the hour's conversation about everything in the world, except the one subject that he had come miles to discuss with me, were but oblique methods of leading up to the one important thought that was filling his mind.

The Chinese as a rule are a highly shrewd and thoughtful people. They are keen observers of human life as well as of the natural world that lies around them. It is very striking to notice with what intelligence the uneducated countryman, who has never had any education, and whose life has been spent in labours that never call forth any effort of the imagination, will describe the leaves of the different kinds of trees, the habits and lives of a great variety of birds in the region around, and the peculiarities of insect life which they have never studied scientifically, but simply with that keen power of observation which the Chinese seem intuitively to possess.

In spite of all this it is quite safe to say that the Chinese mind is wanting in lucidity, and in the ability of grasping an idea with the same readiness that a Westerner does. This is specially the case with the uneducated, and therefore with the great ma.s.s of people. You tell a coolie, for example, to take a letter to the post-office. He has gone there perhaps a dozen times before. He stands and gazes at you with a perplexed look, as though you had told him to go to New Zealand. Knowing this peculiarity of the Chinese mind, you repeat your order, and you ask him if he knows where the post-office is? The blank look becomes more confirmed, and he says, "I'll inquire of some one where it is." As you feel anxious about your letter, you say, "Now tell me what I have asked you to do." "Asked me to do?" he exclaims, and the dense look deepens on his face. "Yes, I have asked you to take this letter to the post-office, the place where you have often gone before. Do you know where it is?"

"I'll inquire," he says briskly, as though it was just beginning to dawn upon him that he had some idea where the post-office was. He moves away, and you have doubts in your mind whether your letter may not go astray and never be posted, when the coolie returns with hasty steps and with an anxious look on his yellow face, and inquires of you, "Did you say that I was to take this letter to the post-office?" "I did, and I hope you understand now where it is." "I'll inquire," he says, and vanishes.

This singular feature in an otherwise intelligent mind is a continual source of irritation to a foreigner, who has never had any experience of such turbidity of thought in matters that seem to him to require no exertion to grasp at once. You say to a man, for example, more for the purpose perhaps of having something to say than anything else, "How old are you?" A blank look of amazement comes over his countenance, much as though you had asked him if he had committed murder. "Do you mean me?" he asks. "Yes, I mean you; how old are you?" "How old am I?" and now the idea seems to have filtered into his brain, and the vacant, dazed look is replaced by a slight smile that ripples over his face, and he tells you his age. It is no exaggeration to say that all over this great empire, wherever the above questions have been put, the same comedy has invariably been gone through in getting a reply to them.

This haziness of thought is especially annoying to the medical men who are in charge of general hospitals, where all cla.s.ses of people come for treatment. One day a woman came to one of these to consult the foreign physician about her health. She was tall and severe-looking, with a face that forbade any attempt to trifle with her. She was evidently a person that never indulged in a joke, for the lines on her countenance were hard as though they had never been relaxed by any of the pleasantries or humours of life. You could fancy her being a hard-working, industrious housewife, but one that neither husband nor children would ever approach excepting with a certain diffidence and restraint.

Coming to her turn to be treated, the doctor said to her, "What is your name?" This question always seems to paralyze a Chinaman, so that he never answers it at once. The woman's face was at once convulsed with amazement, and her eyes became staring as she gazed intently on the doctor. "You mean me?" she asked with every line livid with emotion. "Yes, I mean you," he said; "what is your name?" "You mean my name?" she cried, and she struck her breast with her open hand to make sure that she was the person he meant. "Yes, I mean you; so answer me quickly, as I have no time to waste." "I have no name," she answered, with a pathos that seemed to tremble through her voice. "No name!" he said. "What do you mean? You must have a name, everybody has some name or other." "I have no name," she answered deliberately, whilst she slowly shook her head as if to give emphasis to her statement. "May I ask," said the doctor, with a smiling face, "what people generally call you?" "They do not call me anything, for I have no name," she protested. "Well, when you were a girl what did your mother call you?" "She called me 'Pearl,'" she said, and now a flash of sunlight came into her face, as no doubt a vision of by-gone days rose before her. "Very well," said the doctor, "I shall put your name down as 'Pearl' in my register," though if he had only persevered a little longer he would no doubt have got the one by which she was commonly known amongst her neighbours.

One of the reasons that has led the foreigner to entertain the idea that the Chinaman is incomprehensible arises from the fact that he seems to be an absolute bundle of contradictions. It is the existence of totally diverse qualities in the same person that has made one feel that after an intimate knowledge of him for many years there are still surprises in his character that show the complex nature of his being, and the difficulty of predicting what he will do in the future under any circ.u.mstances. He would be a daring man indeed that would take upon himself the _role_ of prophet about any individual, no matter how well he might be acquainted with him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHINESE EATING RICE AND DRINKING SAMSHU (WHISKY).

_To face p. 9._]

A coolie, for example, is engaged by you to do general household work. He comes to you from an inland country where poverty is the prevailing characteristic of the whole population. Sweet potatoes are the staple food three times a day, year in, year out, helped down perhaps by salted turnip, bean curds and pickled beans--for it is only on special occasions that they have the rare happiness of indulging in the luxury of rice.

He has absolutely nothing excepting what he stands in, and so few cash that no sooner have you agreed to employ him than he at once asks for an advance to buy his next meal. The sum you promised him is princely when compared with what he could earn in his own country, and his mode of living is on a most luxurious scale, when contrasted with the meagre food he had in his native village. Now he has rice every day and fish, and luxuries brought from northern seas, no longer a vision of dreams, but realities that he indulges in every day.

Now, judging from an English standpoint, one would imagine that this poverty-stricken Chinaman, whose experience of want has been so real, would hold on like grim death upon a situation where life has been made so easy for him. But here comes in one of the surprises that often makes the Chinese character so inexplicable. A month goes by, and one day with the silent tread of his shoeless feet he sidles up to you, and he says he wants to tell you that he is going to leave you. You are astonished, and you ask him, with a look of wonder on your face, what he means and what he intends doing? He is not going to do anything, he declares, and he gives you nine reasons for his conduct, not one of which is the true one, the tenth and real one being hidden away in that mysterious brain of his, and he leaves you. A few days hence you see him loafing about with no apparent means of livelihood, and he is fast reverting to the original potatoes-fed type that he was when he left his country home.

Another point that is inexplicable in the Chinese is his amazing credulity. His character is naturally a strong one, his common-sense of the broad and robust kind. There is hardly any subject in common life where his opinion is not of a healthy, breezy description. It is one of the mysteries of the inscrutable Chinaman that at times he seems to be as credulous as the most unenlightened African that trembles before the decision of the Obi doctor.

In the early years, when the foreigner was an unknown and dreaded character, the wildest and most improbable stories were circulated amongst the common people, and more believed in. A mandarin in a large city in the northern part of the Empire, where the people were inspired with a dread lest they were going to be attacked by the English, took advantage of their credulity by putting out proclamations all over his district, which informed them that they had no reason whatever to fear the foreigners, because, as they had no knee-joints, when they fell down they could not rise up again. This was at once accepted as a truth, and the agitation and alarm from that time pa.s.sed entirely away.

About the same time, in a very wide and extended district, a rumour arose that the missionaries, when any of their converts died, took out their eyes and made them into opium. The thing was so utterly absurd and the number of Christians then so very small, that it seemed as though the monstrous report must speedily die a natural death. But this was not the case. It spread with remarkable rapidity through towns and villages and hamlets, and was implicitly believed in not merely by coolies and rough, uncultivated labourers, but also by scholars of high degree and by great mandarins, and for more than twenty years it was a prime article of faith with millions of people.

It is the unexpected that so often happens in Chinese life that has given such an air of mystery to this strange and wonderful people. The very opposite virtues and vices seem to flourish and exist in the same individuals. The Chinese, for example, in ordinary and everyday life have no sense of truth. It is not that they are any worse than other nations of the East. The moment you pa.s.s through the Suez Ca.n.a.l and have come upon the confines of the Orient, you realize that truth as it is looked upon in the West does not exist in all the vast and glowing regions beyond.

You are in a new land, and the atmosphere of straightforward honest expression of thought has vanished, and now it seems that, except in the most trivial affairs of life, where concealment is unnecessary, you are in a world where every one has a mask on, and the great aim is to conceal the face that lies behind.

The oblique and angular way by which a Chinese loves to express the intention he has in his mind has no doubt intensified the Oriental disposition to lie, until now he seems to have absolutely no conscience on the subject. A Chinese coolie one day made some statement to me that I knew to be false. I was exceedingly annoyed at this, and so told him, and yet I could not help being amused, for the look of childish simplicity and artlessness that beamed over his face was so real and natural that I could not but admire the perfect acting of this rough, uncultivated fellow. "You are mistaken," he said to me, "when you accuse me of telling you a falsehood, for I a.s.sure you that I never told a lie in all my life."

I instinctively thought of a picture that appeared in _Punch_ many years ago, where two rough miners stood by the roadside, one of them having a kettle in his hand, which was to be given to the one that could tell the greatest lie. A person comes along who asks them what they are talking about? When told, he was shocked, and declared that he had never told a lie in his life, and he was rather taken aback when the kettle was handed to him, and he was told that he rightly earned it. I thought if only I had had a kettle at hand I would have pa.s.sed it over to him and told him the legend.

Now the contradictory element in the Chinaman's character comes out particularly strong in connection with this national defect of untruthfulness. A lie to him has no moral side, it is simply a display of cleverness, and the more perfectly it succeeds the greater is the applause it elicits; and yet there are occasions when the Chinaman's word is as good as his bond, and is as much to be relied upon as that of an Englishman who may have gained a reputation for integrity and honour.

A Chinese merchant, for example, makes a contract months before to deliver so many chests of tea at a certain rate. The market in the meanwhile rises, a dearth has suddenly occurred in the foreign trade, and the buyer finds that if he keeps his engagements he will lose thousands of dollars.

He never for a moment hesitates as to what he shall do; he does not even attempt to get the purchaser to make an advance upon the terms agreed to.

The tea comes down the river from the mountain side on which it is grown, over rapids and down through whirling gorges, and away from the pure breezes of the hillside, and it is brought to the city where the merchant lives, and is handed over to him with as scrupulous a care as though he were being paid the advanced price that the later teas are getting.

It is no uncommon thing for foreign merchants to bear testimony to the perfect honesty of the Chinese with whom they may have large business transactions, and one manager of a banking concern even declared in public that, though business extending over hundreds of millions of taels had been transacted with Chinese, the bank had never suffered by one single defaulter. This is all the more extraordinary, and is one of the startling perplexities in the Chinese character, since we know that in ordinary business life one has to keep one's weather eye open or he will find himself cheated most unmercifully.

In spite of the complex nature of the Chinese, and the veiled way in which that mysterious brain of his works, there is no doubt but that there is a fascination about him to the men of the West such as none of the other nations of the East possesses. It is not because he is handsome, for, taking the ordinary run of Chinese that one sees in the streets, they are entirely wanting in all the elements of beauty that const.i.tute the standard of the West.

The features of the face, with the exception of the eyes, have not a single good one amongst them. The cheek-bones of the typical Chinaman are high and protruding; the nose is flat, as though the original progenitor had had his bruised by falling on a fender and had transmitted it flattened and disfigured through successive generations, and the mouth, too, is large and sensuous looking. In addition to all this there is a yellow strain that lies as a foundation colour through all the others that nature or the burning sun lays on, and the effect is not at all a pleasing one. That there are really handsome women in common life and amongst the more refined cla.s.ses, and that there are good-looking men in all grades of society is undoubtedly true, but they are by no means common. The great ma.s.s of the people are exceedingly plain-featured and unattractive, and they are wanting, too, in those delicate and refined graces that of themselves are sufficient to give a charm even to a personality that is otherwise anything but pleasing.

The attraction lies in the people themselves, and without any effort on their side the foreigner feels himself drawn by a kind of hypnotism towards them. You cannot explain this and you cannot tell the reason why.

A rude, rough-looking coolie comes in, and you do not feel repelled by him as you would were the person a countryman of your own who had suddenly appeared out of the slums. A man has cheated you, and you know that he has, and though you may at first feel indignant, it is not long ere you are laughing at the whole affair because of the grotesque side that almost invariably accompanies such a transaction. A person comes to see you about whom you are suspicious. You stand on your guard, and you put on your coldest and most reserved air, as you ask him to be seated. The Chinaman acts as though he were quite oblivious of your state of mind. There is a smile upon his face that travels over the rough hollows of his expansive countenance, and spreads to the back of his neck, and seems in some mysterious way to vanish down his long tail. No amount of coldness can long resist the eyes that are flashing with good humour and the features that are lighted up with such a pleasant look. Insensibly you begin to thaw, and before you are aware of it you are talking with him on the most friendly terms. You laugh and chat with him, and when he leaves, you accompany him to the door, and with the usual polite phrase to the parting guest, you entreat him "to walk slowly, and come again as soon as he can."

Ten minutes after he has gone, your old suspicions revive, and you wonder at yourself in being such an egregious fool as to give yourself away as you have done. The fact is, it was the nameless something about the man that worked the miracle, and now that the bright black eyes have gone, and the moorland of smile has vanished, and the hypnotism no longer works, you come back to the old thoughts that you had before, which you are certain after all are right.

Circ.u.mstances of this kind are of exceedingly frequent occurrence. You go into a bank that has a large business. The manager is an energetic, shrewd business man. He is full of schemes and plans to promote the interests of the establishment, and people speak of him as being the cause of the prosperity that is now giving it a golden reputation. The real man who lies at the back of all this success is the Chinese compradore. He is a most unpretentious man, and if you visit him in the little room that he uses as an office, you would be anything but struck by him. His clothes are of a very common description, rather slovenly and untidy, and his shoes are slipshod. He is perhaps smoking a long bamboo pipe of vile-smelling native tobacco, but this quiet, una.s.suming Chinaman is the force that lies behind the business that brings in such large dividends to the shareholders. He has the whole of the markets in his brain, he knows which of the clients of the bank are prosperous and which are tottering on the brink of bankruptcy. He finds out to whom amongst his countrymen loans may be made with safety, and he will know by a single glance at doc.u.ments that have been drawn up in the hieroglyphic language of the Chinese of what value they are for the purpose of negotiating large monetary transactions. No bank in China, and no large business firm could exist for a month without its compradore.

The hypnotic influence of the Chinaman is seen in almost any direction in which you like to turn. The mistress of a home is as wax in the hands of her cook, whose words, as far as the table is concerned, are a law that even she would be very chary of opposing. A foreigner engages a Chinese teacher, and ere long he comes so thoroughly under his influence that he will accept every word that he says about Chinese subjects, will repeat his very mistakes, and will refuse to listen to any criticism that outsiders may make either regarding his scholarship or his methods of teaching.

Perhaps the most conspicuous instance of the dominating influence of the Chinaman is seen in the foreign Consulates. In each of these there is a Chinese official employed that is called a writer. He is a gentleman and a member of the literary cla.s.s. His duties are to write dispatches in Chinese to the mandarins and to be the one connecting link between the native authorities and the particular foreign Consul in whose service he happens to be. All pet.i.tions or complaints from the Chinese have to go through his hands, so that his position is one of great responsibility and power.

If the Consul happens to be a man of strong, independent character he will hold his own, and the business of the Consulate will be in a large measure under his own control. If he is, however, easy-going or of average intellectual ability, he comes at once under the hypnotizing influence of the wily self-contained Chinaman, who before long becomes the master spirit in the office. This fact is so far realized by the leading mandarin of the place that he actually subsidizes him to influence the policy of the Consul to be favourable to him. A hostile writer could so easily influence his mind against the former, and cause such strained diplomatic relations, that he would incur the resentment of his superiors and be dismissed from his office.

I have known a case where the whole policy of a Consulate was dictated by the writer, who was a clever, intriguing scamp. All Chinese doc.u.ments had to pa.s.s through his hands, and it depended upon the amount of the bribes received whether any of them got a dispa.s.sionate investigation at the hands of the Consul. His reputation became so bad that he was finally asked to resign, but he did so with a very comfortable fortune that enabled him to take a commanding position amongst the leading men in his neighbourhood.