Sidelights on Chinese Life Part 23

In all the public thoroughfares tables are set up, where the crowds may gather and throw their dice and venture their cash, and look with their solemn, unemotional faces upon the varying fortunes of the games, as their money that they have h.o.a.rded up for the occasion pa.s.ses into the possession of the winner, and they are left penniless. The chances are all in favour of the man that runs the concerns, but an occasional success where ten times the amount risked is gathered in by the delighted winner, so stirs the gambling instincts that they keep putting down their money on the board, hoping in every throw of the dice to woo fortune to their side.

Another decidedly unpleasant feature about the Chinese is the hazy and indefinite ideas they have generally with regard to _meum_ and _tuum_.

They are wanting in that straightforward honesty that is the characteristic of the typical Englishman. There is no typical Chinaman that corresponds to him. It is quite true that in certain business relationships a Chinaman's word is as good as his bond, and that contracts entered into by leading Chinese firms are faithfully carried out, even though they may be large losers by the transactions. This is not the result of a profound instinct for honesty, but rather the carrying out of a commercial code of honour, the infraction of which would cause them to lose face amongst business men, and thus imperil the credit of their firms. These very men that would be willing to bankrupt themselves rather than disavow some business engagement that had turned out badly, will under other circ.u.mstances act very much like the rest of their countrymen and take advantage of you for their own benefit, and fleece you unmercifully.

The first and most practical experience one has of this deteriorated moral character in the nation is with one's cook, who sets himself systematically to cheat upon every article he has to buy for the home use.[6] As he has the purchasing of everything required from the Chinese market, it may easily be imagined what a field he has for gradually making his fortune out of the unsuspicious foreigner. He will charge just as much per cent. extra upon every article as he thinks he can safely do without raising the ire of his employer. He does not call this stealing.

It goes under the more euphonious designation of earning, for to steal would mean that he was a thief, and that he would never under any circ.u.mstances consent to be. If you were to ask him if in his daily purchases he earns anything upon them, a pleasant smile would flash over his yellow countenance and he could deny that he did, but in such a way as to confess in a shy and ingenuous manner that he did. If, however, you were to ask him if he stole from his master, he would be filled with indignation, and anger would flash from his eyes, whilst he would indignantly repudiate the idea that he had ever stolen from any one in his life. Universal custom and the inbred instinct of the Chinaman to earn an honest penny whenever the opportunity may occur has given the nation decidedly low ideas of morality, and has led the people into huge systems of overreaching each other that have had the effect of dulling the conscience and of lowering the moral standard.

The transition from stealing in what might be called a legitimate and recognized way into downright theft and burglary is not a very difficult one. The fabled days of the times of Confucius have long since pa.s.sed away when no man needed to shut his door at night when the family retired to rest, and no one felt any concern about his purse that he may have accidentally dropped on the road, since he would simply have to go back over the way he had travelled and he would find it on the exact spot where it had accidentally fallen from him. The nation has fallen upon degenerate times since then, for locks and bars and bolts and walls that would seem to be meant to act as fortifications are now all required by those who have any property that would be worth the carrying off.

This fact is most conspicuous in the houses of the rich, who are apt to keep considerable sums of money in them, and who thus tempt the cupidity of the thieves in the neighbourhood, and even of those that live at a distance, who will come suddenly one dark night in considerable force and in one fell swoop carry off all the valuables in them.

The p.a.w.n shops, that are known to contain all kinds of precious property that are held as pledges for money lent on them, have to be built strong enough to resist the organized attack of desperate bands of robbers. They are in fact miniature fortresses, with walls of granite slabs that would resist a battering-ram, and iron plated doors, and jingals placed inside the doors ready to resist an onslaught of the thieving mob of ruffians. As these are under the special protection of the mandarins, it shows the lawless character of the Chinese robber fraternity, that they dare to a.s.semble in such numbers to attack such formidable buildings as they are, and yet such things are by no means uncommon.

One stormy, cloudy night when the inmates have retired to rest, and there is no suspicion of anything unusual going to take place, the sudden barking of dogs, that seem mad with excitement, arouses the sleepers from their slumbers. Peering through the narrow stone slits of the windows upstairs, they catch a glimpse of a large number of dark figures moving restlessly about. Immediately the whole establishment is alive. The place is going to be attacked, and now with cries of terror and alarm every one hastens to his post to repel the onslaught of these midnight marauders.

The battle is sharp and fierce, and there is none to bring aid to the defenders, for the neighbours, though they hear the sounds of firing, and the shouts of the ruffians and the screams of the terrified women inside the p.a.w.n shop that startle the midnight air, dare not come to the rescue, for the robbers are not in a mood to spare any one that dares to interfere with the carrying out of their plans.

After some hours of conflict, the main door is battered in with axes and the robbers intent only on plunder decamp with their huge spoils, that will enable them to gamble to their hearts' content, and to steep their senses in opium for many a long day to come. They have so effectually concealed their ident.i.ty that all investigations made by the mandarins or by detectives specially employed by the firm, fail entirely to discover who the midnight thieves were that so successfully raided the wealthy establishment.

The processes of law are so uncertain in China that there is a positive temptation to the criminal cla.s.ses to indulge in all manner of nefarious schemes that are for the detriment of society. The mandarin of a certain county, who is declared, in the poetic language so often employed by the Chinese, to be "The Father and Mother of his People," happens to be a weak, vacillating character, or his few senses have been saturated with opium so that he is quite incompetent to see to the government of his district.

The lawless characters within it, who might have been restrained by a firm and vigorous hand, now a.s.sert themselves, and the large clans with their powerful followings domineer and oppress the weaker ones. Travellers are stopped on the highways, or carried off and shut up and tortured until they are redeemed by their friends by the payment of a heavy ransom.

The river that may run through this unhappy region is infested with pirates who sally out at night and capture the trading junks that may be lying at anchor in some snug bay where they have taken refuge for safety.

They also land their men at the villages along the banks and raid and plunder the defenceless inhabitants, and when the morning comes there is despair in the hearts of those who have been deprived of their all, for they know that no redress will ever be obtained from the mandarin, who is the cause of the lawlessness that prevails on the land and along the streams and away down to the river's mouth, where it pours its waters into the ocean.

Wherever there is an efficient executive, the men who prey upon society are compelled for the time being to take to honest courses to earn a living for themselves and their families. It is very interesting to watch how a whole district may be kept in order and laws obeyed and confidence restored by the action of one vigorous mandarin. On one occasion a certain region was in a most disturbed condition. Travellers pa.s.sing through it did so at the greatest risk of being seized and held to ransom. They were compelled to go in companies for the sake of the protection that numbers would give them, and even then they had to pay the headmen of a certain large and turbulent village stipulated fees for pa.s.ses that would carry them for a few miles on their journey without being molested by other blackmailers. Even the very poorest in going from one place to another were called upon to pay a few cash before they were allowed to proceed, and men were stationed outside the village to collect the toll from every one that pa.s.sed by.

There were loud grumblings and complaints at this distressing state of things, but no steps were taken by the local authorities to put an end to it. The lawbreakers were rich enough to bribe the mandarins and every member of their Yamens, so that the story of their misdeeds was quietly ignored and they were allowed to grow rich on their illegal exactions.

After a time a new general was appointed to take military charge of the whole district. He was an exceedingly active and intelligent official, and had the reputation of being impervious to a bribe. A tremor of excitement ran through the ranks of the blackmailers when they heard of his appointment, but they contented themselves with the idea, that if he could not be reached by money, his subordinates, whose livelihood depended upon such perquisites as they were prepared to give them, would certainly not refuse the liberal sums they could have for the asking.

The general soon found what a disgraceful condition his district was in, and he quietly took measures to restore law and order in it. He knew that he could get no reliable information from the members of his own Yamen, so he used to go out every evening after dark in various disguises and mingle with the people. He would sit in the tea shops and hobn.o.b with coolies, or he would enter the restaurants and converse with the more staid and respectable citizens and glean from their conversation information upon all manner of subjects that would be serviceable to him in his government of the people.

He found that the greatest disorders existed and that it would require very stern and decided measures to put an end to them. He got a complete history, too, of the particular village that had become so notorious for its exactions, with the names of its leading men and all their cruelties to the victims that had been seized in order to extract large sums out of them. He knew that these very men had spies even in his own Yamen who were ready to report any action that he might be going to take with respect to them, and therefore he had to keep his plans a profound secret even from his most confidential advisers.

At length after weeks of patient waiting, during which the suspicions of the lawbreakers were lulled to sleep, he decided upon immediate action. He had not informed any of his officers what he was going to do, neither had any of his troops the slightest suspicion that anything special was going to take place. Rousing the camp at midnight, he ordered five hundred men to prepare for instantly marching to a destination that he would reveal to no one. Taking the lead, the troops, who had been commanded to keep the most profound silence, glided like spectres through the dark and gloomy streets till they reached one of the great gates of the city. These were thrown open at the command of the general, and the soldiers trooped along the high road wondering what was the meaning of this midnight march and what scheme was working in the fertile brain of their leader.

Ten miles had been travelled and darkness still lay upon the land, and the trees and the houses, as they suddenly loomed up, looked like ghosts that had wandered out of "The Land of Shadows," and were waiting for the dawn to return to their dreary abodes in that sunless world. Suddenly the order was whispered through the ranks to halt, and in tones of stern command the soldiers were ordered to surround the village that lay in the profoundest stillness at their side. They were to see that no one of its people were allowed to escape, and that for every one that managed to do so the life of the soldier on guard would have to pay the forfeit. The men knew too well the temper of their general to imagine that this was an idle threat.

With noiseless tread each man took up the station a.s.signed to him by his officer, and the whole command stood in breathless silence until the dawn in the east lifted up the curtain of the night and revealed the village to them. A detachment of men were marched into it, and half-a-dozen of the leading men of the clan were seized and marched to an open s.p.a.ce outside of it, where the general was standing with some of his officers. The executioner with bared arm and gleaming sword awaited but the word of command, and six heads rolled on to the ground and the tragedy was over.

The bugles sounded and the men fell into their ranks, and almost before the whole of the village had time to rub their eyes to a.s.sure themselves that they were awake, the avengers of law were hurrying back to the city they had left at midnight.

The effect of this stern act of justice was perfectly magical in its effects. The news spread with the rapidity of lightning through the length and breadth of this famous general's jurisdiction. With the fall of those heads, every trace of lawlessness vanished from the great clans that had been terrorizing society. Men could now travel freely without any danger of molestation, and even in the darkness of the night no one dared to lay his hand upon a member even of the weakest of the clans. The fear of the general was in the hearts of the transgressors, for conscience made cowards of them all, and stories were circulated about the almost supernatural knowledge that he had of men's doings, and which every one implicitly believed in.

And so during the term of his office there was an end to blackmailing, and the region became as peaceful as though the gamblers had burnt their cards and had taken to reading religious books, and the opium smokers had become reformed, and the pa.s.sion for unlawful gains had died out of the hearts of the men who had made it impossible for honest men to travel freely either for business or for pleasure very far from their own doors. But whilst this was the case, there was no real reformation in the hearts of a single one of those who had made society unsafe for men and women who wished to live a law-abiding life. They were simply afraid of the man that had the instant power of life and death, and who without trial of judge or jury, and without the fear of any superior court to call in question his decisions, could hand over a person at a moment's notice to the man who held the gleaming sword, and who with one stroke of it could decide in two seconds a matter that lawyers in England would wrangle over for months.

The lawless cla.s.ses in China form a considerable percentage of the whole population. They are ruthless and cruel, and in the carrying out of their fell purposes they show but little consideration for the lives or property of those whom they may select to be their victims. There is a general impression in Western lands that the idolatrous races of people living in the East are a simple-minded folk, with but few pa.s.sions and generous and tender-hearted to each other. They are supposed to lead a sunny life, and imitating the luxuriance of nature that the great sun continually spurs into action by his fiery heat, to have the widest sympathies with everything human. This is an ideal picture that could only have been drawn by the vivid forces of imagination. China is no Eden of this kind, and it may be accepted as a general truth that where men have lost the knowledge of G.o.d, and are not drawn into a n.o.ble life by an impression of His purity and tenderness which He wishes reproduced in the lives of the world, men's own conceptions of what a n.o.ble life ought to be will always fall far short of the Divine.

The best days for China were in the ancient past, according to the sacred books of the nation, when G.o.d and Heaven were the prominent words in the religious life of the people, and when the idols had not yet come from India to lower the conceptions of the Divine. With the gradual disappearance of G.o.d, as a personal Power, from the thinking of the people there came the lower standard of morality that has its legitimate successor in the types we see in modern life.

We are told that three centuries after Confucius wrote his lofty system of ethics, though even he began to give evidence that he was losing touch with a personal G.o.d that the ill.u.s.trious sages whose writings he professed to be editing undoubtedly had, the nation had practically adopted the worship of nature, and made their offerings to the spirits of the mountains and of the streams that flowed through the land and brought fertility in their train. Morality, however, had in the meanwhile degenerated, and one has but to read the history of China[7] to see how the baser pa.s.sions that influence men in the present day were very much in evidence in those primitive times.

An incident in the life of one of the most famous Emperors that lived two centuries before Christ will confirm my statement on this head. Some time before his death he had a tomb built for himself that was constructed on a royal and a magnificent scale. It was really an underground palace and furnished in a style that suited the exalted ideas of the man who was designing it. It was furnished with every necessary for a luxurious life, and vast stores of gold and silver and precious jewels were deposited in strong rooms that no robber bands could break into.

Magnificent suites of apartments were constructed that were fit to entertain a kingly company, for the Emperor when he died and was buried in this great sepulchre did not mean to be the only occupant of it. He had planned that some of his favourites from his harem should accompany him, and that men-servants and maid-servants and hosts of attendants should be shut up with him in the gloomy underground mansion. He could not bear the thought of being alone. He desired that life in some mysterious way should be continued in "The Land of Shadows" very much as it had been in the one he was forced to relinquish.

His one concern in the midst of all this preparation for another life was the feeling that the great wealth that he had stored in the new palace would excite the cupidity of the thieves and the gamblers and blackmailers that had begun to exist in that early stage of the nation's history. He accordingly called in the cleverest and the most cunning artificers in bra.s.s and iron and asked them to make locks of such ingenious and subtle designs that no housebreaker would ever be able to open them. They were also to construct full-sized figures of men in metal, standing with bow and arrow in hand in front of the door by which the palace was to be entered. A touch of the intruder's foot on a secret spring would cause the mechanism of these dumb sentinels to work, and in a moment the deadly arrows would be shot into his body and he would fall lifeless on the very threshold. The safeguards against invasion of the tomb after the Emperor was laid to rest in it were complete, for none knew the secret of the locks or of the silent figures that stood ready with their arrows to slay the robber but the artificer that designed them, and in order to secure that none should ever learn it from him, he was quietly put to death one morning after he had fully explained to the Emperor the details of his wonderful invention.

Another feature about Chinese life that is sadly ill.u.s.trative of its seamy character is the prevalence of the opium habit, and the saddest feature about this is the fact that it is not a native vice, one indigenous to the soil, that has grown up as the result of some peculiarity of temperament of the Chinese, but is an import that was first brought into the country and made an article of trade by an English company of merchants, viz. the East India Company.

One of the most unfortunate days for this old Empire was that on which the ships of that famous Company sailed up the Pearl river with their consignment of a drug that was to prove more disastrous and more fatal to its people than all the revolutions that during the past centuries have deluged this land with blood, or all the epidemics that have at various times swept like destroying angels through the ranks of society.

People who have been jealous of English honour have tried to prove that the opium was in common use amongst the Chinese before the ships of England appeared before Canton with their deadly cargoes, but this is an absolute mistake. Isolated travellers from India may have brought some for their own individual consumption, but the drug was unknown and unused by the Chinese people. That this statement is true is proved by the fact that there is no word in the language of this people for opium, for the only one that has ever existed is the one that attempts to give the sound of the foreign name that those who produced it in other lands gave it. If the thing had been an indigenous product, the Chinese would have had a name for it that would have had no flavour of a foreign land.

It has been a most disastrous thing for China that the one nation that has championed opium and has made treaties for its sale in this land, and that in the interests of its merchants and for the sake of its Indian revenue, insisted upon these treaties being carried out, should be England. If it had been a smaller Power the Chinese Government might have successfully resisted the attempt to force upon it a trade that was inevitably bound to degrade and demoralize its people. But England, the mighty power of the West, whose guns had thundered over Canton, and had waked the echoes of the Yangtze, and had even sounded through the capital of the Empire, was one that China dared not contend with, and so it has come to pa.s.s that the country that has always professed to be the refuge of the oppressed and the freer of the slave, has been the one to bind the shackles of opium on a people that, whilst they have fallen under its spell, yet feel the profoundest indignation against the Power whose legislation has helped to enslave them.

Opium in China is sometimes compared to the drinking habit in England, and terrible though the latter is, men have become so accustomed to the sight of it, that it is apt to be looked upon with considerable leniency. People in the highest positions in the land have drink upon their tables, without any one commenting unfavourably, except perhaps the members of the temperance party. Clergymen, highly respectable heads of families, philanthropists, and men who are prominent in society for their benevolence, all feel that they are doing no wrong by using in moderation wines and spirits themselves, and by offering them to their friends or guests who may be visiting them. Many honestly believe that a moderate use of wine is not only allowable, but is also highly beneficial for the health, an idea that is largely believed in by the medical faculty, who are apt to recommend their patients to use it, whenever their health becomes impaired.

Now, supposing that the moderate and daily use of liquors for, say six months, would so enchain and bind a man or woman that they must, at all costs, have their daily allowance of drink that they have been accustomed to, and that if they were denied it they would be mad with pain, and so racked with agony that they could neither rest nor sleep until the awful craving had been dulled by a draught of wine or spirits, how would society look upon the use of beverages that in so brief a time would bring about so terrible a tragedy? It is quite safe to say that in a vast number of homes where to-day they are used with the utmost lightheartedness, they would be excluded with the most feverish and jealous care as enemies with whom there could be no compromise.

Let us suppose, for example, a family of six, the father and mother, two sons and two daughters. Every day, twice a day, at lunch and at dinner, one or two gla.s.ses of wine are drunk at each meal. This goes on steadily for six months, and then it is proposed that for the future there shall be no more drinking. This is agreed to; but, as the evening advances, it is found that a strange and mysterious restlessness has taken possession of the whole family. They cannot sit long, but are impelled to move about.

Gnawing pains rack the bones and render life intolerable.

Retiring to rest for the night is absolutely useless, for it is found impossible to remain for more than a few minutes quiet; and besides, the mental faculties are so active and the eyes so wide awake, that sleep is the very last thing that the imagination can think of. It is soon discovered that the only thing that will restore the normal tone to both body or mind is a copious draught of wine or a b.u.mper of brandy and soda; when, after a few minutes, the restlessness gradually vanishes, the pains and aches slowly subside from the bones and muscles of the body, and a perfect peace reigns where before mind and body were both racked in a fierce conflict with an unseen foe.

Now this is an imaginary and highly impossible picture with regard to the effects of alcohol, but it is one that is extremely applicable to the opium smoker. Let a Chinaman steadily smoke opium for six months and he can no longer call his life his own. He cannot let a single day go by without taking the amount that will relieve the tension and the strain that are put on his physical forces at a certain hour every day when the craving for the drug creeps over him. He must then have the pipe to inhale its fumes, or the agony and oppression will be so great that he will be in the greatest torture.

There is no such a thing as temperance in opium as there is in the indulgence of intoxicating liquors. Unless a man is a confirmed drunkard he can abstain for a longer or a shorter time from them without any very serious inconvenience, but such liberty is never accorded to the opium smoker. After a daily use for six months, he may never have a day off, but as the hours pa.s.s by he is reminded by the enemy that creeps over him, and that fills him with pains and languor, that he must light his pipe.

Sometimes in cases of severe illness his usual dose must be doubled before his torture is relieved, and when it comes to pa.s.s that he does not wish to smoke, it is then known that a stronger than opium is going to claim him as its victim.

If a man has plenty of means he lays in a supply, and when the time comes round for him to take it, which it does with the inflexibility and cruelty of fate, he reclines on a couch and fills and refills his pipe, and draws in one volume of fume after another until the pains that have gripped every bone in his body loose their hold, and the craving that has brought a shadow over his life, and blotted out sun and moon and stars, and that has shut out of his heart his home and his wife and his children, and has given him a vision only of his own wretched self, slowly disappears, and he finally drops into a childlike sleep. He rises perfectly free from pain or weariness, but he is oppressed with the thought that twice every day he has to go through this terrible experience, and that never as long as he lives will he ever be a free man again. There is a release for every one that desires it; but the price to be paid is so great and the agony to be endured so intolerable that but very few of those upon whom opium has laid its grip would dare to attempt to free himself from its shackles.

If the opium smoker is a poor man, then indeed the lot of the home is a miserable one. At all costs he must have his pipe at the regular time, no matter who else may suffer. His wife and children may go without food, but he must be supplied. One article after another is sold to buy the opium, until the house is so bare that there is nothing left to be disposed of.

Then one of the children disappears, for a childless man in another part of the city has bought it, and it now belongs to him. One after another vanishes in the same way, till no one is left except his wife. At last when all the funds have gone and there are no more little ones to dispose of, negotiations are entered into with a middle-woman, and his wife too is no longer to be found in her wretched home, for she has become the spouse of another man, and the miserable opium smoker is left alone, content with the thought that for the present, at least, he has got the funds to enable him to satisfy the craving and to keep off the horrors that would make his life one long torture.

In the middle cla.s.ses where the husband is an opium smoker, and where the means are at hand to supply the daily needs of this cruel and exacting tyrant, things go on tolerably smoothly, for opium does not send men into wild and insane fits such as alcohol does, but it deadens the senses and puts them to sleep, and it tends on the whole to repress the fighting pa.s.sions of a man.

The indirect influence of opium is very disastrous in its results, for it is in a large measure the producer of some of the dangerous cla.s.ses that prey upon society. When a man has spent all and sold any little property that he may have possessed, he then joins the ranks of the thieves and of the gamblers, and henceforth he seems to live only for the one great purpose of grasping from any quarter that may be ready to his hand, the means of satisfying the inexorable craving that comes upon him twice every day.

This terrible evil exists throughout the length and breadth of the Empire, and there is no power outside of Christianity that seems to be able to cope with it. Human affection, and sense of honour, and pride of race, all succ.u.mb before the touch of opium. The Church of Christ in China alone possesses the one motive that will enable the victim to bear the agony of giving up the habit, or that will restrain the man that is tempted from indulging in it, and that is supreme affection and fidelity to Christ his Saviour. The same mysterious power that has touched the men of other lands into the most intense and unwavering devotion to Him, has in countless instances kept men in this old Empire of China from the seductions of the pipe, and has made them bear heroically and without flinching the bitter pains that opium makes its victims endure before it will loose its grasp upon them.

CHAPTER XVI

A TRIP THROUGH THE COUNTRY

Preparations for the journey--Headman of sedan--chair shop--Fares settled--Morning scene--Chinese disregard of time--Start on journey--Scenery--Rice-fields--Great roads and small roads--Refreshment places by roadside--Villages on line of travel--Crops--Arrive at river--Description of a famous bridge--River boat--Gorges--Sugar canes--Sugar factory--Anchor boat.