Where Half The World Is Waking Up Part 11

One of the most peculiar things about China is the existence of almost unlimited official corruption side by side with high standards of honesty and morality in ordinary business or private life. I have already referred to the system of "squeeze" or graft by which almost every official gets the bulk of his earnings. In Shanghai it is said that the Taotai, or chief official there, paid $50,000 (gold) for an office for which the salary is only $1500 (gold) a year.

Against this concrete evidence of official corruption place this evidence of a high sense of honor in private life. A young Chinaman, employed in a position of trust in Hankow, embezzled some money. The company, knowing that his family was one of some standing, notified the father. He and his sons, brothers of the thief, went after the young fellow and killed him with an ax. The community as a whole approved the action, because in no other way could the father free his family from the disgrace and ostracism it would have incurred by having an embezzler in it.

{137} [Ill.u.s.tration: FASHIONABLE CHINESE DINNER PARTY.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOW LUMBER IS SAWED IN THE ORIENT--THERE ARE PRACTICALLY NO SAW MILLS.]

{138}

[Ill.u.s.tration: A QUOTATION FROM CONFUCIUS.]

This is the upper part of a scroll kindly written for the author by Mr. Kung Hsiang Koh (or Alfred E. Kung as he signs himself in English). Mr. Kung is a descendant of Confucius (Kung Fut-zu) of the seventy-fifth generation, and the complete quotation of which the scroll is a reproduction in Chinese characters reads as follows:

"Ssu-ma Niu asked for a definition of the princely man."

"The Master said: 'The princely man is one who knows neither grief nor fear.' 'Absence of grief and fear?' said Niu, 'Is this the mark of a princely man?' The Master said, 'If a man look into his heart and find no guilt there, why should he grieve? Or of what should he be afraid?'"

{136 continued}

The Yangtze River trip from Hankow to Shanghai, mentioned in my last letter, I found very interesting. We were three days going the 600 miles. The Yangtze is the third largest river in the world and navigable 400 miles beyond Hankow, or 1000 miles in all. It would be navigable much farther but for a series of waterfalls. Nearly thirty miles wide toward the mouth, its muddy current discolors the ocean's blue forty miles out in the Pacific, I am told. In fact, I think {139} it must have been that distance that I last saw the great turgid stream off the Shanghai harbor. Even as far up as Hankow the river becomes very rough on windy days. Consequently, when I wished to go across to Wuchang, I found that the motor boat couldn't go, so tempestuous were the waves, but a rather rickety looking little native canoe called a "sampan," with tattered sails, bobbing up and down like a cork, finally landed me safely across the three or four miles of sea-like waves. All the way from Hankow to Peking one encounters all sorts of Chinese junks and other odd river-craft. In many cases they look like the primitive Greek and Roman boats of which one sees pictures in the ancient histories. The Chinese are excellent sailors and manage their boats very skilfully. The greatest ca.n.a.l that the world knows was begun by them in the time of Nebuchadnezzar and finished thirteen centuries ago.

Until very recently, however, the Chinese have not wanted railways.

Coming from Hankow to Shanghai I pa.s.sed in sight of the site of the old Woosung-Shanghai Railway, the first one built in China; but before it got well started the people tore it up and threw it into the river.

In Shanghai I met his Excellency Wu Ting Fang, formerly Minister to the United States, and he told me of his troubles in building, under Li Hung Chang's directions, what turned out to be the first permanent railway in China. This was less than twenty-five years ago. Li Hung Chang said to Mr. Wu: "If we ask the authorities to let us build a railway, they'll refuse, so I am going to take the responsibility myself. The only way to overcome the prejudice against railways is to let the people see that a railroad isn't the evil they think it is."

Accordingly, Mr. Wu set to work on the Tongshan Railway. He built first ten miles, then twenty more. Then as the road was working well, and its usefulness demonstrated, he and Li Hung Chang thought they might get permission from the Throne to construct a line from Tientsin to Peking. Successful in this effort, they went ahead with the survey and {140} imported from America the materials for building the line--and then came a new edict forbidding them to proceed! The matter had been taken up by the viceroys and governors, and 80 per cent, of them had opposed building the line!

Now, less than twenty-five years later, John Chinaman is calling for railroads in almost every non-railroad section, and the railroads already built are paying handsome dividends. Everybody seems to travel. Besides the first-cla.s.s and second-cla.s.s coaches, most trains carry box-cars, very much like cattle-cars and without seats of any kind, for third-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers. And I don't recall having seen one yet that wasn't chock full of Chinamen, happy as a similar group of Americans would be in new automobiles. A missionary along the line between Hankow and Peking says that he now makes a 200-mile trip in five hours which formerly took him nineteen days. Before the railway came he had to go by wheelbarrow, ten miles a day, his luggage on one side the wheel, and himself on the other. Thousands of these wheelbarrows, doing freight and pa.s.senger business, are in use in Shanghai and the regions roundabout. A frame about three feet wide and four feet long is built over and around the wheel, and a coolie will carry as much as half a ton on one of them.

Along the Yangtze a considerable quant.i.ty of cotton is grown, and I went out into some of the fields in the neighborhood of Shanghai. The stalks were dead, of course, and in some cases women were pulling them up for fuel, but I could see that the Chinese is a poorer variety than our American cotton, and is cultivated more poorly. Instead of planting in rows as we do, the peasants about Shanghai broadcast in "lands" eight or ten feet wide, as we sow wheat and oats. About Shanghai they do not use the heavier two and three horse plows I found about Peking; consequently the land is poorly broken to begin with, and the cultivation while the crop is growing amounts to very little.

No sort of seed selection or variety breeding has ever been attempted.

No wonder that {141} the stalks are small, the bolls small and few in number, and the staple also very short.

From my observation I should say that with better varieties and better cultivation China could easily double her yields without increasing her acreage. There is likely to be some increase in acreage, too, however, because farmers who have had to give up poppy culture are in search of a new money crop, and in most cases will take up cotton.

As I have said before, the coolie cla.s.s wear padded clothes all winter, and as they have no fire in their houses, they naturally have to wear several suits even of the padded sort. I remember a speech Congressman Richmond P. Hobson made several years ago in which he spoke of having seen Chinamen with clothes piled on, one suit on top of another, until they looked like walking cotton bales. Some of his hearers may have thought this an exaggeration, but if so, I wish to give him the support of my own observation and that of a preacher. As a Chinaman came in the street-car in Shanghai Friday my missionary host remarked: "That fellow has on four or five suits already, and he'll put on more as the weather gets colder."

Mr. Currie, the English superintendent of the International Cotton Mills at Shanghai, told me as I went through his factory that the Chinese men and women he employs average about 12 cents a day (American money), but that from his experience in England he would say that English labor at 80 cents or a dollar a day is cheaper. "You'd have more for your money at the week's end. One white girl will look after four sides of a ring spinning frame; it takes six Chinese, as you see. Then, again, the one white girl would oil her own machine; the Chinese will not. In the third place, in England two overseers would be enough for this room, while here we must have seven."

Hong Kong.

{142}

XV

FAREWELL TO CHINA

With this letter we bid farewell to China. When I see it again it will doubtless be greatly changed. Already I have come too late to see poppy fields or opium dens; too late to see the old-time cells in which candidates for office were kept during their examination periods; too late, I am told, to find the flesh of cats or dogs for sale in the markets. If I had waited five years longer, it is likely that I should not have found the men wearing their picturesque queues and half-shaven heads; before five years, too, a parliament and a cabinet will have a voice in the government in which until now the one potent voice has been that of the Emperor, the "Son of Heaven"

divinely appointed to rule over the Middle Kingdom. All over the country the people are athrill with a new life. Unless present signs fail, the century will not be old before the Dragon Empire, instead of being a country hardly consulted by the Powers about matters affecting its own interests, will itself become one of the Powers and will have to be consulted about affairs in other nations.

Be it said, to begin with, that I am just back from Canton, the most populous city in China and supposedly one of the half dozen most populous in the whole world. As no census has ever been taken, it is impossible to say how many people it really does contain. The estimates vary all the way from a million and a half to three millions. Half a million people, it is said, live on boats in the river. Some of them are born, marry, grow old, and die without ever having known a home {143} on land. And these boats, it should be remembered, are no larger than a small bedroom at home. I saw many of them yesterday afternoon, and I also saw many of the women managing them. The women boatmen--or boat-women--of Canton are famous.

Think of a city of two or three million people without a vehicle of any kind--wagon, buggy, carriage, street-car, automobile, or even a rickshaw! And yet this is what Canton appears to be. I didn't see even a wheelbarrow. The streets are too narrow for any travel except that of pedestrians, and the only men not walking are those borne on the shoulders of men who are walking. My guide (who rejoices in the name of Ah c.u.m John) and I went through in sedan chairs--a sort of chair with light, narrow shafts before and behind. These shafts fit over the heads and bare shoulders of three coolies, or Chinese laborers, and it is these human burden-bearers who showed us the sights of Canton.

To get an idea of what the city is like, fancy an area of about thirty square miles crowded with houses as thick as they can stand, every house jam up against its neighbors, with only walls between--no room for yards or parks or driveways--and these houses dense with people!

Then punch into these square miles of houses a thousand winding alleys, no one wide enough to be called a street, and fill up these alleys also with hurrying, perspiring, pig-tailed Chinamen. There are no stores, shops or offices such as would look familiar to an American, but countless thousands of Chinese shops wide open to the streets, with practically no doors in evidence.

Such is Canton: a human hive of industry: a maze of labyrinthine alleys crowded with people, the alleys or streets too narrow to get the full light of day!

Outside this crowded city of Canton's living ma.s.ses is the even larger and more crowded city of Canton's dead. From the highest point on the city wall my guide pointed out an unbroken cemetery extending for ten miles: the hills dotted {144} with mounds until they have the appearance of faces pitted by smallpox.

For the Chinaman, however unimportant in actual life, becomes a man of importance as soon as he dies, and his grave must be carefully looked after. The finest place I saw in Canton was the mortuary where the dead bodies of wealthy Chinamen are kept until burial. The handsome coffins I saw ranged in value from $1400 to $2700 Mexican, or half these amounts American money. The lacquered surfacing accounts for the high cost.

Nor are these departed Celestials kept here for a few days only.

Sometimes it is a matter of several years, my guide told me, the geomancers or fortune-tellers being employed all this time in finding a suitable site for a grave. These miserable scoundrels pretend that the soul of the dead man will not rest unless he is buried in just the right spot and in just the right kind of soil. Perhaps no professional man in China earns as much as these fakirs. Sometimes it happens that after a man has been dead two or three years his family suffers a series of misfortunes. A frequent explanation in such cases is that the wrong site has been chosen for the dead man's burial place.

Another geomancer is then hired and told to find a new grave where the soul will rest in peace. Of course, he charges a heavy fee.

In one $1400 coffin I saw was the body of a wealthy young Chinaman who died last spring. Three times a day a new cup of tea is placed on the table for his spirit, and on the walls of the room were scores of silk scrolls, fifteen feet long, expressing the sympathy of friends and relatives. Around the coffin, too, were almost life-size images of servants, and above it a heap of gilded paper to represent gold. When the geomancers finally find a suitable grave for the poor fellow he will be buried, and these paper servants and this paper gold will be burned, in the belief that they will be converted into real servants and real gold for his use in the spirit world.

{145}

A friend of mine in Peking who saw the funeral of the late Emperor and Empress Dowager told me some interesting stories of the truly Oriental ceremonies then celebrated. Tons of clothes and furs were burned, and vast quant.i.ties of imitation money. A gorgeous imitation boat, natural size and complete in every detail from cabins to anchors, steamer chairs, and ample decks, was fitted up at a cost of $36,000 American money, and burned. Furthermore, as my friend was coming home one evening, he was surprised to see in an unexpected place, some distance ahead, a full regiment of soldiers, gorgeous in new uniforms, and hundreds of handsome cavalry horses. Getting closer, what was his amazement to find that these natural-size soldiers and steeds were only make-believe affairs to be burned for the dead monarchs! To maintain their rank in the Beyond they must have at least one full regiment at their command!

Since we are on such gruesome subjects we might as well finish with them now by considering the punishments in China. I went out to the execution grounds in Canton, but it happened to be an off-day when n.o.body was due to suffer the death sentence. I did see the cross, though, on which the worst criminals are stretched and strangled before they are beheaded. The bodies of these malefactors are not allowed ordinary burial, but quick-limed, I believe. There were human bones beside the old stone wall where I walked, and when a Chinese brat lifted for a moment a sort of jute-bagging cover from a barrel the topmost skull of the heap grinned ghastly in the sunlight.

The cruelty of Chinese punishments is a blot upon her civilization.

When I was in Shanghai a friend of mine told me of having been to a little town where two men had just been executed for salt-smuggling.

Salt is a government monopoly in China, or at least is subject to a special revenue duty, so that salt smuggling is about equivalent to blockading whiskey in America.

{146}

Recognized forms of punishment are death by starvation and "death by the seventy-two cuts"--gradually chopping a man to pieces as if he were a piece of wood. This latter punishment is for treason. To let a bad criminal be hanged instead of beheaded is regarded as a favor, the explanation being that the man who has his head cut off is supposed to be without a head in the hereafter.

The worst feature of the whole system is the treatment of prisoners to make them confess. The Chinese theory is that no one should be punished unless he confesses with his own mouth. Consequently the most brutal, sickening tortures are practised to extort confession, and, in the end, thousands and thousands of innocent men, no doubt, rather than live longer in miseries far worse than death, have professed crimes of which they were innocent.

But let us turn now to happier topics--say to an ill.u.s.tration of Chinese humor. Very well; here is the sort of story that tickles a Chinaman: it is one they tell themselves:

A Chinaman had a magic jar. And when you think of a jar here don't think of one of the tiny affairs such as Americans use for preserves and jams. The jar here means a big affair about half the size of a hogshead: I bathed in one this morning. It was in such jars that Ali Baba's Forty Thieves concealed themselves. Well, this magic jar had the power of multiplying whatever was put into it. If you put in a suit of clothes, behold, you could pull out perhaps two or three dozen suits! If you put in a silver dollar, you might get out a hundred silver dollars. There doesn't seem to have been any regularity about the jar's multiplying properties. Sometimes it might multiply by two, while again it might multiply by a hundred.

At any rate, the owner of the magic receptacle was getting rich fairly fast, when a greedy judge got word of the strange affair somehow.

Accordingly he made some kind of false charge against the man and made him bring the jar into court. {149} Then the judge pretended that he couldn't decide about the case, or else pretended that the man needed punishment for something, and so wrongly refused to give the citizen's property back. Instead the magistrate took the jar into his own home and himself began to get rich on its labors.