The Pacific Triangle Part 16

We emerged from this underground chamber upon another thoroughfare, pursuing which we came upon an open, unused plot. Here a circus had attracted a crowd. A three-year-old baby, a pretty little sister, a feminine father, and a masculine mother were the entertainers. They were acrobats. A family row--which, it would seem, is not unknown in China--was enacted without any of the details being omitted; nor did they stop at coa.r.s.e and vulgar acts which would have brought the police down upon them in America. Yet the audience seemed highly amused, while some of the spectators might easily have posed for paintings of Chinese bearded saints, or have been models for some of the sacred effigies which, not more than a block away, were idols in the temple.

These are the high spots in Chinese City, a city into which I was urged not to venture alone. That human life should be considered of little worth here is not marvelous; but that any one there should consider the prolongation of his own a bit worth the taking of mine, is one of the inexplicable marvels of the world.

Is this China? By no means. It is merely the back-wash of the contact with European life which has been imposed on China without sufficient chance for its absorption. It is no more typical of China than our metropolitan slums are really typical of American life. True, they are the result of it, but where the rounding out of relationships and conditions have been accomplished there follows a graduation of elements to where good and evil obtain side by side. And Chinese City is but the worst phase of Chinese slums plastered upon Shanghai.

4

Poverty in Chinese City is one thing; in Shanghai it is another. It is all a matter of the background. Buddha the beggar is still Buddha the Prince.

After I came out of Chinese City I took much greater note of the details of the life of the coolie, the toiler in Shanghai proper. I was out on the Bund. The stone walls hemming in the river Whang-po rise at a level round the city. For five feet more the human wall of coolies shuts out the tide of poverty and despair from a world as foreign to China as water is alien to stone. From both walls a murmur reaches the outer world: the swish of the tide, the hum of coolie consolation. I let myself believe that they chant beneath their burdens to disguise their groans. Up and down the Bund they course, here at exporting, there at importing. Their gathering-places are at the G.o.downs, and in and out they pa.s.s up and down inclined planks, each with a sack, or in couples with two or more sacks hanging from their shoulders, never resting from these rounds.

At another point they are delivering mail to the ship's launch. Two cart-loads arrive. Coolies swarm about the carts, waiting for orders.

Some are mere boys, but already inured to the tread. As each lifts a bag of mail he pa.s.ses a j.a.panese, who hands him a stiletto-shaped piece of wood with some inscription on it,--painted green to the hilt. He takes two steps and is on the gang-plank, two more, and he has burdened himself with three bags of mail, and returns; he received and returns three sticks. That is the way count is kept of the mail. I couldn't understand this close precaution. Could the coolie possibly abscond with a bag of mail under the very eyes of an officer?

Two small boys eagerly rushed a distance on, to pick up some bags that had been left there. They were acting without order,--spontaneously.

They would have saved themselves some labor in that way. But the officer in charge shrieked his reprimand at them. One, in his enthusiasm, ignored the command. The officer rushed after him and boxed his ears.

The boy received the punishment, but went right ahead with his burden.

Hardened little sinner! calloused little soul! poor little ant!

One youngster came up, chanting the sale of some sweet-cakes. Looking into his face, I wondered what he was thinking just then. He must think!

No one could be so young and have such a cramped neck, such sad eyes, such furrowed brows without hard thoughts to make them so.

In the slush and rain, under semi-poverty and dest.i.tution, barefoot, ragged, and in infinite numbers,--still they toil. Yet against the background of st.u.r.dy Shanghai, their labor and their travail does not hurt as much as it does in Chinese City. The perplexities of life--national, racial, of caste--pervaded my thoughts. Why has China remained dormant so long? Why is she now waking? How will she tackle the problem of poverty? To me it seems that nations rise and fall not because fluctuation is the inherent law of life, but simply because universally accepted glory and prestige are positions generally paid for by accompanying poverty and disease. No nation can dominate for a long time with such coolieism as that in China.

China has standards all her own. We come with our ways and claim superiority. China grants it, yet goes her own way. And when we see her sons we like them, though we may criticize, condemn, and try to change them. This is the oneness of China and the consensus of opinion is that it is lovable. People come, employ Chinese as servants, and try to train them. They may take that which they think you do not need, carry out their own and not your ideas. You in turn rave and roar, but in the end they are still there as servants and you as master. But they have educated you, you have not changed them. And when you leave China you long for them as did that American woman I met in Honolulu who fairly wailed her longing aloud to me. China has done this with whole nations, and, to the very end of time, whatever nation sets out to rule and conquer that new republic must make up its mind to be lost.

And so behind Shanghai is Chinese City, and behind that there is China, out upon the flat plains. There is another China yet beyond, and still another and as many as there are billows on the sea. Build modern buildings and cities, and the Chinese take them and turn them inside out, and they are what he wants them to be. This plastic people,--what is their destiny? And what, still, is there awaiting the world as they fulfil that destiny?

How strange it feels to call her republic! Yet China has taken to republicanism as though it had been brewing in her these thousands of years. From outward appearances one would never know that she is a republic to-day. Some say she really isn't. Coolies still are coolies, and Chinese, Chinese. And I dare say she is both empire and republic, two in one.

For centuries China has lain dormant as though stung by a paralyzing wasp. Centuries have been lost in sleep. But what are centuries, when waking is so simple and is always possible? China has wakened. She is rising. An hour's work has been accomplished in the first fresh flush of the new dawn. Perhaps that is all that will be done that day, the house put in a little better order. To-morrow is time enough for real work. A Chinese junk comes out of its night-mist retreat with its own dim lights. A shrill whistle of a pa.s.sing launch echoes across the flat plains about Shanghai. The rain of yesterday remains only as a sorry mist. A vision of clearer day shimmers through, but soon grows dull again. China seems to have shaped her climate in her own image.

A two-days' steam to Moji, j.a.pan, on the bosom of that heaving mistress the China Sea, and my journey was over for a long while. The sea was black, the sky somber; even the sun was sad as it stooped that evening to kiss the cheek of j.a.pan good night. I did not know just then that I was to say farewell to the sea for two and a half years,--a farewell that resulted in _j.a.pan: Real and Imaginary_.

CHAPTER XII

WORLD CONSCIOUSNESS

_The Third Side of the Triangle_

... For surely once, they feel, we were Parts of a single continent.

Now round us spreads the watery plain-- Oh, might our marges meet again!

1

I had gone out to the _Katori-maru_ to inspect my quarters. I always loved to get away from sh.o.r.e, even if only in a launch or sampan; it was so much cleaner and fresher on the bay. That afternoon it was altogether too attractive out there, and the city of Kobe lay so snugly below the hills that I decided to remain on board till late in the evening, and missed the last launch. I hailed a sampan. In this, with the wind splashing the single sail and the spray scattering all about us, we slipped romantically back to the American Hatoba. It was my last entrance to Kobe.

All of the next day I kept changing trains and creeping over j.a.panese hills and rice-fields in my devious and indirect route to Yokohama by way of j.a.pan's national shrine, Yamada Ise. A few days later I was on board the _Katori-maru_, the newest type of j.a.panese shrine, the modern commercial floating shrine, named after one of the most ancient of shrines in j.a.pan. The Katori shrine is said to have been founded some twenty-five hundred years ago during the reign of the mythical first emperor, Jimmu Tenno. It was dedicated to deities who possessed great military skill and has always been patronized mainly by soldiers.

Transferring shrines from land to sea is a hazardous procedure. For me, however, I was ready to give my offering most willingly as long as it brought me to Seattle. There were too many people willing to patronize floating shrines at that time for me to be too particular about deities.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FUJIYAMA j.a.panese roofs may be monotonous--but never so is Fujiyama Photo from Brown Bros.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SEA, EARTH AND SKY All are one in this glorious Pacific World Photo from Brown Bros.]

For a moment, as we slipped away from the pier, I felt what a dying man is said to feel when the flash-like review of life's experiences course through his sinking consciousness. I saw j.a.pan and all its valleys, its dirt and its sublimity; and with all its past confusions I loved it.

Waiting for a final glimpse of Fuji left me idle enough to observe the little things about me. There was, for instance, the two-by-two-by-five sailor who was showing two j.a.panese girls through the "shrine" he was serving. I followed them about the ship. He was explaining to them various mysteries.

The Sailor: "Kore wa otoko no bath. [This is the men's bath.]" To the minds of these j.a.panese maidens such a distinction was surprising.

The Sailor: "Kore wa second cla.s.s. [This is second cla.s.s.]" This was like treading on sacred ground to these lowly born mites.

The Sailor: "Kore wa kitsu en s.h.i.tsu. [This is the smoking-room.]" Why a special room for so simple a service--and why men only?

He led them above to the hospital. He never made any comments, they asked him no questions, but followed, single file, as is proper for j.a.panese girls, agape with curiosity. They pa.s.sed the life-saving equipment. A tiny voice ventured a question. An amazed member of the j.a.panese Government (it was a government subsidized vessel) said, with semi-scorn:

"Kore wa? _Boat._ [This? _Boat._]" And they went below.

2

All of that forenoon, waiting for the _Katori-maru_ to slip away from the pier, I watched for Fujiyama, that exquisite pyramid (to the summit of which I had climbed twice), but it was veiled in mist. I wanted to see what it looked like from the sea, just as I had seen what the sea and the universe looked like from its peak. All afternoon, as j.a.pan was receding into the past, I tried to distinguish old Fuji, but there was only a glittering edge, like a sword, beneath the low, bright sun. After dinner I went on deck and there in all that simple splendor which has made it the wonder of the world, stood Fujiyama, with a soft, sunset glow beneath its peak. The symbolic sword had vanished. And I felt that in all those years and miles and s.p.a.ce which gather in my memory as that single thing--the Pacific Ocean--nothing transcends in loveliness the last view of Fuji from the sea.

Then for two days the world seemed to swoon in mist. The fog-horn kept blowing drearily every two minutes; yet the steamer never slackened its speed for a moment; in fact, we made more miles those two days than during the clear days that followed. We had taken the extreme northern route and were soon in a cold lat.i.tude. The fog became crisp, as though threatening to crystallize, and when I stood on the forward deck it was almost like being out in a blizzard. The siren continued to emit its melancholy wail across a wilderness of waves lost in mist. One could not see the length of the ship. At midnight I woke, startled by the sudden cessation of the propellers. For three hours we were stationary, owing to engine trouble. The steamer barely rocked, giving me the sensation of the deep as nothing ever did before. It was at once weird and lovely, and in the darkness I could imagine our vessel as lone and isolated, a thing lost in an open wilderness of s.p.a.ce. The siren continued moaning like the wail of a child in the night, and once I thought I heard another siren off in the distance. We started off again and from then on didn't once slacken our speed in the least, so large, so s.p.a.cious, so unfrequented is the Pacific in these days.

The fog hung close for so many days that a rumor went round that the captain was unable to get his bearings. With neither sun nor stars to rely on men's best instruments are altogether inadequate. At half-past nine o'clock one evening, however, the steel blinds were closed over the port-holes. The ship began to pitch and roll. The waves rushed at us and broke against the iron cheek of the vessel. The fittings on deck rolled back and forth, and those pa.s.sengers unused to the sea clung to their berths.

Only when we were within three days of the American coast did the sun come out. For over a week we had been in a dull-gray world which was becoming terribly depressing. We were considerably farther north than I had expected to be.

Five days after our departure, I was again at the 180th meridian, and enjoyed what only a very eager, active person could enjoy,--a forty-eight-hour day. This time, going eastward, we gained a day. I also had the pleasure of being within fifty degrees of the north pole just as three years before I had been within fifty degrees of the south pole. In other words, I had touched two points along the 180th meridian which were six thousand miles away from each other, or twice the distance from New York to San Francisco.

Calculations are somewhat misleading at times. For instance, when we were near the Aleutian Islands, I chanced to compare the records of that day's run as posted in the first saloon with those posted in the second saloon. The first read 4,240 miles from Yokohama; the second, 4,235 miles. j.a.panese handling of figures made the prow of the ship five miles nearer its destination than the stern. j.a.panese historians also have a tendency to make such innocent mistakes in their imperialistic calculations. j.a.pan's feet do not seem to be able to keep pace with her desires.

As though to investigate this phenomenon, a little bird,--slightly larger than a sparrow, with the same kind of feathered back, but with a white breast, flitted down upon the deck before me,--and began hopping about. It approached to within two feet of me, then sneaked into a warm place out of sight. A stowaway from birdland, stealing a ride and planning, most likely, to enter America without a pa.s.sport. Perhaps it thought that being near the stern of the boat, according to the calculations above quoted, it could still remain beyond the three-mile limit.

Then the homeward-bound spirit took possession of me,--that selfsame realization of my direction which had come over me upon sight of the Australian coast three years previously, a psychological twisting which baffled me for a time. Another day and we were within the last square marked off by the lat.i.tudinal and longitudinal lines,--the nearest I had been to America in nearly five years. To remind me of my wanderings, the flags of the nations hung in the dining-saloon: under nearly every one of them I had at some time found hospitality.

3

The reader who has followed me thus far has been with me about three months on the sea. What to the Greeks and the Romans was the Mediterranean, the Pacific will be to us seventy times over. Already there is a wealth of literature and of science which has come to us through the inspiration of that great waterway. For Darwin and Stevenson and O'Brien the Pacific has been mother of their finest pa.s.sions. In the near future, our argosies will cross and recross those tens of thousands of miles as numerously as those of the Phoenicians on the Mediterranean in antiquity. They will bring us back the teas and spices and silks of the Orient. But there are those of us who have watched the "White Shadows" of the Pacific who would wish that something were brought away besides the ephemeral materials. For there is in the sea a kinship with the infinite and the absolute, and who studies its moods comes nearer understanding life.

I wandered along one night with a New Zealand man, without knowing where he was leading me. Suddenly we came, by way of a narrow pathway, against a wall of darkness. We were at the seash.o.r.e. It was as though we had come to the world's end and the white glistening breakers arrived as messengers from eternity, warning us against venturing farther. I strained my eyes to see into that pitch-black gulch, but I might just as well have shut my eyes and let the persistent breakers tell the story of the sea in their own way. Afterward I often made my way out to that beach and sat for hours, or trod the sands till night left of the sea nothing but mournful whisperings.