Sidelights on Chinese Life Part 11

What Confucius thinks, no literary man, and much less the great unwashed, would ever dare to dispute. In great moral questions the maxims he has transmitted for twenty-five centuries are accepted by all as the very inspirations of Heaven, whilst in matters of government and the guiding of the affairs of the nation, the great principles that he and Mencius have enunciated for the ruling of a people have been accepted by nearly every ruler that has ever sat on the Dragon throne.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A FARM HOUSE.]

It is for this reason that the only aristocracy that exists in China is that of learning. Wealthy tradesmen or artisans have no right to become members of it, and the only possible way by which they can enter the privileged circle is by buying literary degrees and pa.s.sing themselves off as scholars. This is sometimes done when the Government is in want of funds, for the rich merchants are willing to pay fabulous sums for the honour they gain by being allowed to wear the hat and b.u.t.ton of a mandarin, and to attend receptions where only the literati are permitted to be present.

Next in rank and in importance are the farmers, who in their own special line are no less honourable than the scholars. One of the great kings in the remote times of Chinese history was a man who was taken direct from the plough, to be a colleague with the famous Yau, a fact that has shed a l.u.s.tre upon the calling of the husbandman ever since. One of the very greatest names in history was a farmer who subsequently sat upon the Dragon throne, and the rulers of the various dynasties that since his time have governed China, have all seemed to think that the farmer king has left them a legacy in the land which was to be as much one of the glories of the throne as any other that has descended to them through the long range of the past centuries.

Every year, as the spring time comes round, and Nature proclaims to the world in the awakening of tree and herb and flower that she is going to begin her work for the year, the Emperor comes out of his palace with his retinue of ministers and high officials, and guides a plough across a field that has been prepared for his royal coming. By this act he a.s.sumes the leadership in the agricultural work of the nation, and just as he stands on the sacred hill by the Temple of Heaven once in the year and becomes the High Priest for his people, so in this annual ceremony he is for the moment the supreme farmer that would invite the golden harvests that are to be reaped by and by, and which will fill the homes throughout the wide extent of his Empire with abundance and prosperity.

The great ma.s.s of the farmers in China own their own land, which has in the main descended from father to son for many generations, though in consequence of the poverty of the people a very large amount of buying and selling of farms is constantly going on all over the country. The absolutely insolvent character of Chinese society is to the foreigner one of the most remarkable features about it, and one that contains so many perplexing elements, that after many an effort to solve it he drops it as a puzzle to which he can find no answer.

It may be a.s.sumed as an undoubted fact that fully seven-tenths of the whole nation are in hopeless debt, from which they will never be able to release themselves as long as they live. Another tenth owe money, and though these have the means of freeing themselves whenever their bills become due, the tendency to borrow seems to have become so inwrought into the very blood and fibre of a Chinaman that he cannot resist doing so on the least provocation. The remaining fifth are the men of means that have capital at their disposal, and who are the money-lenders to any one that can give the least shred of security that the interest and capital will be forthcoming at the particular times that are agreed upon.

But even these last are borrowers as well as lenders. No Chinaman would ever dream of possessing money and not putting it out to interest. It would be considered the sheerest waste to let it lie idle for a single day, and so they are continually on the look-out for impecunious people to whom they can lend with safety. In addition to this, he will borrow at a certain interest, and then relend at a higher rate, and so money keeps flowing backwards and forwards into his coffers, and though he loses occasionally, his gains are so large and on the whole so certain, that his wealth slowly but surely increases, whilst the seven-tenths I have already spoken of become more and more hopelessly involved.

There are several reasons why the farming population should be so much at the mercy of the money-lenders, though it must be understood that these are not a special cla.s.s of people that get their living by letting out money at any extravagant rate of interest. Every man or woman that has a spare dollar, at once becomes a money-lender, so that the creditors to whom they are in debt are those in the same position in life, but who are fortunate in having a little more spare cash at their disposal.

The smallness of the great ma.s.s of the farms is one great disposing cause why their owners are always in such a perilous financial position. Under ordinary favourable circ.u.mstances, these small farmers can work their holdings so that they can make ends meet. Still, even then there is only a very small margin left for the contingencies that this Eastern climate and its great red-hot fiery sun are always producing. Should there be a deficiency in the rainfall, and the rice be left in a waterless field, or should the great typhoons blow with hurricane force, and the flood-gates of Heaven be opened so that the growing crops shall be beaten down and submerged beneath the deluge of waters, then indeed the condition of the farmer is pitiable in the extreme.

There is no resource left them but to borrow, and with the fatal facility of the Chinese for adopting this plan to relieve their immediate necessities, they resort to it with a carelessness of spirit that is perfectly astonishing to a Westerner. An Englishman, for example, with an ordinary sense of honour will shrink from borrowing money, unless he has in his mind some definite plan of being able to repay it at some period in the near future. A Chinaman's mind being afflicted with turbidity is not troubled with thoughts of this kind. He seems to be able to grasp but one idea at a time, and that is that he is desperately pressed for money, and that by bringing along the deeds of his farm, and depositing them with a rich neighbour, sufficient money will be advanced him to meet his needs.

Beyond that he does not take the trouble to think, but he hopes that in some indefinite way he will be able to pay the debt and redeem his deeds.

The light and airy way with which a man will borrow sums that he must know he can never hope to repay is most charming for its nave simplicity, especially when the high rate of interest that is demanded everywhere is considered. Twelve per cent. is a moderate charge, and is asked where the securities are of a first-rate character. Where these are slightly doubtful, double amount is demanded and obtained, and even as much as thirty-three per cent. is paid by persons who are in great straits, and who wish to be accommodated for a short period of time. An ordinary farmer that borrows at this ruinous rate of interest, unless he has a series of exceptionally good years during which his crops have been most abundant and luxuriant, can hardly hope to pay anything beyond that, and happy will he be indeed if he has not occasionally to add some of the unpaid interest to the original sum he borrowed, and thus add to the liabilities that he is unable to discharge now.

This widespread existence of debt, which I may say is just as prevalent in the cities as in the rural districts, is the cause of a great deal of suffering, especially amongst the farmers, and comes very heavily upon the girls. A farmer, for example, borrows fifty dollars (5) from a well-to-do man, with the stipulation that fifteen per cent. be paid for the use of the money. When the time comes for the payment of the interest there is not a spare dollar in the house. The year has been a bad one, and sickness has been in the home and medicines have had to be bought. The result is, all the money that had been gradually put aside to give to the money-lender has vanished. The creditor insists, however, upon being paid; he will not be put off, and when he is a.s.sured that they have no possible way of raising money before the taking in of the next crop, he quietly points to their little daughter, that with the guilelessness of childhood is amusing herself in her own childish, simple way, whilst the discussion is going on with her father and mother, about the money that has fallen due.

This child is a sweet-faced little girl of about eight years old. She has large black eyes, and a round fat little face, and a merry smile that flashes across it and that gives it such a sunny look that she seems like a sunbeam as she darts in and out of the house in the course of her childish gambols. Both the father and the mother understand exactly what the money-lender means by that significant motion, and without any further discussion they promise that if he will come again in three days more, they will pay not only the interest due to him, but the fifty dollars they had borrowed from him.

Next morning the little girl, who is their only child, is asked if she would not like to go into the great city a few miles away, and see the sights and buy some rare toys that she knows can be got there. She dances for very joy at the idea, and after breakfast she sets out in high glee with her father to see the wonderful things in that great town and to bring back a present for her mother, who bids good-bye to her with tear-dimmed eyes, and a weight upon her heart as she takes a last lingering look at her little one that she knows she will never set eyes upon again.

Upon their arrival in the city, the father, instead of visiting the toy-shops, makes his way to a large imposing-looking mansion where a wealthy family resides, and after some bargaining the little girl is sold to them to become their slave, and to be their absolute property to treat and dispose of as they may deem right. When this transaction is finished and seventy dollars have been transferred to the father, he tells his little girl, who has been looking with wondering gaze at the glories of the house to which she had been brought, to rest awhile and he will call for her by and by when he has seen to some little business that he has to do in a neighbouring street. She little dreams as he goes out of the great door that she will never see him again, and never more will her mother's eyes look down upon her with the light of affection beaming in them, nor ever again will she see the flash of love illumining her face as she runs to her with some childish grievance or some question that she wishes her to answer. She is a slave now and has lost her freedom, and her new master can dispose of her as he thinks best; and all this she suffers that the debts of the home may be paid and the homestead may be saved from pa.s.sing into other hands.

The Chinese farms as a rule are small. This is almost entirely due to the custom that prevails in China of the land being divided amongst the sons when the father dies. The constant subdivision that has been going on during the centuries of the past has resulted in the great diminishing in the size of the holdings, and the leaving of many of the rural population without any land at all.

There are of course many rich landowners who have invested their capital in land, and who have a superabundance of it. Where the native banks are uncertain and the modes of investment few and precarious, it has been found that to buy up farms brings in after all the highest interest, and is more to be relied upon than any other method of disposing of surplus funds.

A large number of farms are just large enough to support a family, say, of four or five people, but should the seasons be unfavourable, and the crops be parched by the fiery-faced sun and gradually be scorched to death in the fields, then sorrow comes upon the home, and the money-lender has to be sought to give relief. A still more considerable number of farms are too small even under the very best conditions to support the family. The fields are too few, though cultivated with the deft and cunning hand of the Chinese farmer, to produce food enough for the home, and so plans have to be thought of by which the deficiency may be met, and food and clothes provided for the wife and the little ones.

It is this widespread condition of affairs that has made the farmer in this land one of the handiest men in all the four great divisions into which society has been divided. The pressing needs of his home, and the absolute necessity for some mode of increasing his income if he would keep it together, have taxed his wits to the very utmost, and consequently have developed his thought and his ingenuity.

Some of them open little shops, where they sell miscellaneous articles that do not require a large capital to the neighbours and others who do not care for travelling as far as the neighbouring city to make such small purchases. Others, again, who have no money whatever to invest in even such small enterprises as these, start for some great centre of trade and there act as coolies. They become the beasts of burden of the whole city.

Their muscles have been toughened by toil on their farms and their minds have been developed in their struggle with nature, so that they become valuable auxiliaries in doing the heavy work connected with the business of the town.

The favourite resorts of these farmers that are striving to keep a home above their heads, are the great shipping ports, where foreign vessels bring their cargoes from the four corners of the earth. Here labour is abundant and better paid, and consequently the chances of saving money considerably greater.

In Shanghai, for example, and Hongkong, the two greatest shipping ports in this extreme East, it is intensely interesting to watch how the farmers flock to them, to do the rough and dangerous work of loading and unloading the steamers and sailing ships that come in almost daily from their ocean voyages. Thousands of them congregate on the wharves and jetties waiting to be called off to the ships that are lying in the stream. Usually they are a rough-looking crowd, and, judged by a similar cla.s.s of men that are seen in our home ports, they would seem to be of a much inferior character to those that we are accustomed to see there.

They are poorly clad, and their clothes are of such an unpicturesque description and so badly fitting and usually so full of patches, that they give one the impression that they must be the very refuse of the neighbourhoods from which they have come. If they were Englishmen, we would call them loafers and tramps who had gathered round the dock gates, not really to get work, but to pose as members of the unemployed in order that charity might be doled out to them.

But every man there is a _bona fide_ farmer, who has so studied the mysteries of nature that he is able to wring her secrets out of her, and cause the fields to be covered with luxuriant crops. They nearly all have farms, and the wives and children are working them whilst they are away, and living on the barest subsistence that will keep body and soul together until they return with their hard-earned gains to drive away the wolf from the door, and to satisfy the inexorable money-lender, who will have nothing less than his pound of flesh.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A HARBOUR SCENE (HONG KONG).]

And bravely do the men toil at the work that is to bring independence to their homes. Down in the deep holds of the great ships, with but small intermissions the livelong day, the huge bales of goods are swung by st.u.r.dy arms that seem made of iron into the lighters alongside, and at last as the sun shows signs of setting, the men wipe the dripping perspiration from their faces, and with laughter and jokes that show the unconquerable pluck of these brave fellows they quit their work for the day.

Other farmers, again, have heard of the golden legends that have been wafted to them from the Straits and Java and Borneo, and from Sumatra, which have told of the fortunes that are to be made there by men who are willing to work. Those lands are to the Chinese what the fabled country that was said to contain the Golden Fleece was to the Grecian heroes that set sail to gain possession of it for themselves. They feel that if they linger in their homes, poverty and hunger must be the lot from which there is no escape, and so, leaving their farms to be worked by the women, they set their faces towards the setting sun, and with their brains dancing with visions of fortunes that they are to discover there, they start on the long journey, in the hopes that in a very few years they will return with money sufficient to pay off their debts, and with enough left to enable them to live in comfort the rest of their lives. And so the lands that lie about the equator, and the countless islands that look straight up at the sun, and the Malay Peninsula, where the forests cover the land and countless myriads of mosquitoes sing their high-keyed songs, men from the great Empire of China abound throughout them all. They make the roads, and they dig in the tin mines, and they pull the jinrickshaws, and they seem to be the great workers everywhere. Who are these men that thrust themselves so prominently upon the notice of the stranger and the traveller? They surely must be the refuse of the land from which they have come, for here they are the hewers of wood and the drawers of water. They are nothing of the kind, for nearly every man you see is a farmer in that great Empire of China, and through the stress of poverty and the desire to save his home from distress, he has come to do any work, no matter how menial, that will enable him to acc.u.mulate enough to return to his beloved home to bring succour to those who are enduring whilst he is away.

The farmer is truly the handy man of China, for he seems to be able to turn his hand to almost anything, and to succeed fairly well in whatever he touches. He can turn sailor at a moment's notice, and he seems as familiar amongst the ropes and in the management of the helm as he is amongst the growing grain, that appears to recognize his presence and to rustle and whisper with gladness as he pa.s.ses unconcernedly with the air of a master down through its midst. All the great fleets of boats that cast their shadows upon the mighty rivers of China are manned and worked by farmers, who, when their voyages are over, return home it may be for a shorter or longer period, and aid the wives in the management of the few fields, that they manage with the same tact and cunning touch of hand as their husbands would do were they not compelled to go afield to earn something to eke out the scanty produce that they are able to get out of their farms.

The stranger from abroad travelling by the native boats that sail, say, up the Yangtze for a thousand miles or more, is struck with the intelligence and activity and pleasant, sociable character of the men that work the boat. He is with them for weeks together, and he admires the quiet, efficient way in which they manage the sails, or get out on the bank and tow her against the stream when there is a head wind or perhaps a dead calm. He never once suspects that they never spent any time as apprentices in learning their business, but that every one of them, even including the captain, is a born farmer, and that his real vocation is to till the lands that his fathers have transmitted to him.

A picnic party is organized to ascend a mountain that rears its lofty head above the plain that lies at its feet. The gentlemen can walk, but the ladies must have sedan chairs to carry them up the narrow pathways trodden by the feet of the buffaloes, and by those of the woodcutters who climb up high on the hillsides to cut down fuel for the homes in the villages below. The ordinary chair-bearers accustomed to carry on the level roads would be no use on these rough and rocky ribands of pathways, that only men who are surefooted and have the wind to mount up steep inclines could travel with safety.

In this emergency a number of farmer lads are engaged, and though they do not carry the chair as scientifically as the regular carriers, they will fly up the steepest hill, and jump over chasms, and surmount boulders in a way that these latter would never attempt. The process is a little rough and one is apt to get somewhat shaken, but there is never any danger of the men falling or of their precipitating their fare over the edge of a precipice into the yawning ravine beneath.

Where the villages are near the great thoroughfares, the carrying of sedan chairs is a very favourite method with the farmers of earning a few extra cash to help to meet the expenses of the home. After the crops have been gathered in, and the rush of work is over, they are accustomed to stand at various points on the roadside, and watch for the coming of sedan chairs that may be pa.s.sing up or down. No sooner do they come opposite them than they call out and ask the bearers whether they do not wish to engage some one to give them a rest for a few miles and to carry their burden for them. If the men they address have been carrying for some hours and have grown weary, negotiations ensue which end in their dropping the chair on the road, and its being hoisted on to the shoulders of the new men, who, full of vigour and anxious to get their job finished, rush on like racehorses over the rough, uneven road.

The payment for this toilsome labour is of the most meagre and unsatisfactory description. One day I was travelling over one of these great thoroughfares, and the men that were carrying me were becoming somewhat exhausted. The road, which had been very much left to nature to repair, was in a shockingly bad condition. It ran, moreover, through a very hilly country, and sometimes it wound up the sides of hills, and again it descended by rough, circuitous windings into the valley far beneath. The men had the greatest difficulty in keeping from falling. The chair on their shoulders was heavy, and the road was strewed with stones, and tiny waterways that the rains and the streams from the hills had cut into it had to be jumped. Very often I had to hold my breath in terror lest in pa.s.sing over the face of a sloping rock the men's feet should slip, and I should find myself rolling down the hillside into a miniature rapid that fretted and foamed as it whirled and tossed in its wild career towards the plain below.

My two bearers, who would have trotted along on an even road with only an occasional grunt, or a muttered expression as to the hardness of their lot in life, broke into expressions of disgust as the various difficulties of the way came one by one upon them; still they struggled manfully on, till finally we reached a small oasis in the hills, where a few houses embowered amid splendid banyan-trees offered refreshments to the travelling public as well as to our panting, perspiring chair-bearers, who dragged their weary limbs under the shadow of the great boughs of the trees, and dropping the chair in the middle of the road, threw themselves utterly exhausted and worn out on the benches that had been provided for those who intended to purchase refreshments before they proceeded further on their journey.

After sitting for a moment listless and drooping, with apparently no strength to utter a word, one of my men held up his hand deftly fashioned into the shape of a bowl, when the shopkeeper, who had kept a keen eye upon the newcomers as possible customers, at once dipped out a bowlful of steaming rice from a huge cauldron that was kept on the boil, and placed it within the bowl-shaped fingers with a pair of chopsticks laid across it, ready for the immediate use of the weary coolie. At the same time he placed before him a tiny little platter in which were some nicely browned strips of fried bean curds to act as appetizer to the rice, and to arouse his flagging appet.i.te.

After a few minutes of solemn stillness, when the only sounds that were heard from the weary men were the music of the chopsticks and the satisfied sighs as the rice was driven down their throats by the two "nimble boys" (a pleasant t.i.tle given by the Chinese to the chopsticks), the faces of the men began to lighten up. The weary look vanished, smiles covered the yellow visages, and soon jokes were cracked and bantering language was tossed from table to table, until the air rang with the echoes of their laughter.

At this juncture two farmers stepped out from a number who were hanging about in a listless fashion, and asked my men if they did not wish to hire for the next stage, which was about three miles long. At first they pretended that they did not, but that was simply bluff and intended to knock the price down. After some noisy discussion, the men said they would carry for forty-five cash. It must be remembered here that one cash is the thousandth part of two shillings. My men objected that the sum asked was extravagant, and offered ten less. Another wordy contest ensued, when the farmers came down to forty, whilst my men came up to thirty-eight.

Both sides refused to budge an inch, so my chair was once more hoisted upon the shoulders of the chair coolies, and we issued from beneath the branches of the banyan into the glare of the great sun, and the weary march along the toilsome roads was once more begun. We had proceeded on our journey fully a third of a mile, and the whole incident had pa.s.sed from my mind, when loud sounds of voices calling out were heard behind. In an instant my men let the chair slip from their shoulders on to the road, and stood quietly within the bamboo poles, as though they were expecting some one. "What is the matter," I asked, "and why do you stop?" "Oh," one of them replied, with a twinkle in his eyes, "the farmers have consented to carry you this stage for thirty-eight cash, and so we are going to have a rest."

By this time the men had come up, and putting on their straw sandals to protect their feet from the rough stones, tightened their girdles, twisted their tails round the crowns of their heads, and tossing the chair on to their brawny shoulders, they started with a run on their three-mile race.

They might have been chair coolies all their lives, considering the easy manner in which they manipulated the chair, and the perfect way in which they kept step, and yet they were simple farmers, whose lives are spent in the cultivation of the soil, but whose poverty has compelled them to devise some rough methods to enable them to drive the wolf from their doors. Some idea of the strain that has been put upon them may be gathered from the fact that these men were willing to carry me for three miles and walk back the same distance for the trifling sum of thirty-eight cash, which was to be equally divided between the two, and which would thus give each one a little under a halfpenny.

The Chinese farmer stands second to none in all the world. It would seem, indeed, as though nature recognized in him a master hand, and that she responded to his touch, and poured out her riches in willing obedience to a mind that understood her and had learned her secrets. There is nothing in the world of agriculture that a Chinese farmer does not understand--that is, as far as the products of this land are concerned--and he seems to know the peculiarities of each, and their moods and their whims, and to be able to coax them to show their best face when the time of the harvesting comes round.

This is all the more remarkable since he has really so few implements with which to work the marvels he produces. These are the hoe, the plough, and the harrow, and beyond these the Chinese farmer never dreams of desiring any other. The first of these seems never to be out of his hands, for it is the one upon which he relies the most, and the one that is really the most effective implement that he possesses for the cultivation of the soil. It really takes the place of the spade in England, though the latter is never put to such extensive and general uses as the hoe. The Chinaman can do anything with it but make it speak. A farmer well on in years can easily be recognized amidst a number of working men by the curve his hands have taken from holding the hoe in the many years of toil in his fields with it.

With it, if he is a poor man and has no oxen to plough the ground, he turns up the soil where he is going to plant his crops, and with it he deftly, and with a turn of his wrist, levels out the surface so that it is made ready for the seed. With a broad-bladed hoe he dips to the bottom of a stream or of a pond, and he draws up the soft mud that had gathered there, and with a dexterous swing he flings the dripping hoeful on to his field near by to increase its richness by this new deposit. The stump of a tree will send out its roots wandering for moisture underneath a choice little plot where his potatoes are growing, and the farmer feels that these are an infringement upon the rights of the plants that look to him for protection. He seizes his hoe, and with a few st.u.r.dy strokes of its keen, sharp edge driven into its very heart in a short time the stump has vanished, and the roots have ceased tapping the moisture that the potato tubers require for their own growth.

But it would take up too much s.p.a.ce to describe all the thousand and one ways in which this truly national implement is used by the farmers of China. It is quite enough to say that without it they would be left quite helpless, and if the agriculture of the country was to be carried on, some other implement equally serviceable would have to be devised to take its place. The plough and the harrow are of secondary importance to the hoe, but still they occupy a prominent position in the agricultural economy of the nation. They are of course antiquated, for they have come down from the remote past untouched by any inventive genius during the long centuries that have elapsed since they were devised in the early dawn of Chinese history. To alter them, or even to make a suggestion that they could be improved in any way, would be such a monstrous heresy that the nation's hair would turn grey, and would cause the spirits of their ancestors such misery and shame that there is no knowing what calamities they might send upon the Empire to avenge their wrongs.

The ability of the farmer in this country is measured by the crops he is able to produce. China is an old country, and for countless generations the teeming populations have had to get their living out of the land.

There is no rest given it, for one rarely sees any of the fields being allowed to lie fallow in order to give them time for recuperation. The pressure of the hungry mouths is upon it, and to satisfy the needs of the people they must go on indefinitely producing sustenance for them. It is here where the genius of the Chinese farmer comes in. If hungry stomachs can only be satisfied by a supply of food, so the impoverished, famished land can be made to bear the strain upon its resources by putting into it a liberal supply of manures.

This, after all, is the true secret of abundant crops. The land, in the South of China at least, is mostly of a poor and indifferent character.

Along the courses of rivers and in the alluvial valleys it is rich enough, and produces splendid crops year after year. But when you get beyond these, and come into the hilly regions, you touch upon territories that are exceedingly reluctant, excepting when they are liberally supplied with manures, to produce crops that are worth the gathering.

The Chinese farmer has no scientific knowledge as to how he should best develop his farm, but he knows by experience that unless the land is coaxed and petted with an ample supply of manures, no acquaintance with the art of farming will avail to cover it with the harvests that will keep his family from hunger, and that will still leave a margin to be sold in the market to bring enough to meet the incidental expenses of the home.

The list of fertilizers in China is a very brief one, and bones and beancake are two important ones in it, but the one that stands the first and foremost in the estimation of the farmers throughout the country is nightsoil. This is the one that is universally used because it is the cheapest, and also because it is the only really available one. The system by which that important manure is collected and distributed is a thoroughly perfect one, and ages of practice has made the managers of this intricate business so well up in it that there is never any hitch in it.