Sidelights on Chinese Life Part 24

Two of us had for some time been planning a trip into the interior. We were anxious to see the tea growing on the mountain sides and to travel up some of the rivers that for ages have been pouring their waters to the plain, and up and down which the tides of life have for long centuries flowed incessantly. The day had at length arrived when we could carry this purpose into effect, and we were looking forward with pleasure to the varied scenes and experiences through which we should have to pa.s.s.

The preparation for a journey differs essentially in this land from the same thing in England. Here we have to provide plates and cups and saucers as well as knives and forks, for such things are never used by the Chinese, as a few bowls and chopsticks are all that are ever seen in any home in China. We must also take our own bedding and blankets, as the Chinese ideas of cleanliness are such as to make us chary of using any of theirs. It is also necessary to lay in a moderate stock of tinned meats, so as to provide for certain contingencies when anything beyond potatoes and rice may not be procurable in some of the districts through which we shall have to pa.s.s.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHINESE LOCOMOTION.]

Having stocked our provision basket with the various articles that were absolutely necessary for our comfort by the way, and having seen to our bedding and inserted amongst the blankets a few choice books to enable us to while away some of the dull hours that we were sure to have on the journey, we had to arrange for the chairs that were to carry us for the next few days.

We accordingly sent for the headman of the nearest chair establishment to settle with him the rates we were to pay for the chair-bearers. This is a question of no small difficulty, for these men have an evil reputation for being dishonest, and unless they are carefully watched, one is certain of being cheated by them. The man who shortly appeared in obedience to our summons well sustained the character that his cla.s.s have everywhere obtained. He had a frowsy look about him as though he had been sleeping all night in his clothes and had not washed for many a long day. That of itself would not be a very serious indictment against him, for the disregard of soap and water is no test whatever of a person's character in China. There was something about the man's face that led us to form no very high opinion of him. In the first place he was an opium smoker. That could be seen from the leaden hue that had driven out nature's colours from his face, and also from something nameless in the eyes that the opium with its subtle alchemy had put into them. In the next there was a low and cunning look about him that made you feel that you were in the presence of a man whose ideas of morality had never been fas.h.i.+oned on the high principles of Confucius and Mencius, or indeed of any of the other sages who have been models to the people of this Empire.

After a considerable discussion and beating down of prices, it was finally settled that we were to pay for one chair with its two bearers at the rate of about five pence a league,[8] with a specified sum for the days when we rested by the way, either because it was Sunday or for any other special reason that might induce us to loiter on the journey. As we were anxious to start early in order to reach a certain stopping-place where there was a well-known Chinese inn, we stipulated that the bearers with their chairs should appear next morning at daylight, when we would have everything ready to make an immediate start.

True to this arrangement we had packed up and had breakfasted before any sign of the coming sun could be seen in the eastern sky, and we kept looking out to see when the dawn would disperse the darkness that lay on the earth, and we could start on our journey. By and by the great banyan-tree near by that looked like a weird and uncanny ma.s.s of shadow, denser and blacker than those that concealed everything from view, suddenly and as if with the touch of an enchanter's hand began to a.s.sume a tangible shape, and great boughs swung into view, and countless branches with their evergreen leaves came out of the night as if to greet the day with their smiles. Soon the light had flashed across the fields and on to the tops of houses, and had touched the summits of the hills with its glory and had driven away the last lingering shadows from the landscape, and another day had broken on the world.

Impatiently we waited for the coming of the chairs, but the minutes pa.s.sed by, and the sun rose higher and higher, and his rays flashed amongst the forest of leaves that sprung from boughs and branches of the venerable banyan, but still no sign of them or the bearers. We had been long enough in China to realize that time to a Chinaman is of no importance whatever, and that the difference of an hour or two in any engagement that is made is a matter so trifling as not to be considered worthy of mention. Still with true Occidental pertinacity and training we clung to the idea that because the daylight had been mentioned and had been agreed to as the time when the men should put in an appearance, the men, of course with the same exact ideas of time that we had, would promptly appear as soon as the first flush tinged the sky in the east.

The foreigner in dealing with the Chinese always forgets that they are usually accustomed to look at things from a different standpoint from ourselves, and that their minds are more turbid and less keen than ours.

Daylight, for example, with us has a definite meaning, but with a Chinaman represents a time that begins with the dawn and with the indolence of the East may extend to seven or eight o'clock.

By and by, and just as the clock was striking eight, the men came sauntering up the street smoking their bamboo pipes and chatting and joking with each other. They seemed to be perfectly unconscious that they were fully two hours late, and they tossed the chairs on the ground with an air as though they were in advance of their time and were anxious to be on the road.

They seemed to be mightily taken aback when we asked them, with a good deal of indignation in our tones, why they had not kept to the agreement of coming to us at daylight. "But we have come at daylight," they replied, with amazement in their looks; "what is it now but daylight?" We speedily showed them from the current use of the word daylight, that that event happened more than two hours ago, and that by this time we ought to have been at least five miles on our journey.

They all seemed really surprised that the present moment could not be fairly called daylight, but with the readiness of the Chinese in repartee one of them said, "We really had to rise before daylight to be here now, for we had to cook our rice and have breakfast, for the work before us is no light one, and we dare not undertake it on an empty stomach. Then we had to smoke our usual quant.i.ty of opium. Until we had done that we dare not attempt the long journey that we have before us to-day. You blame us for being late, but just think of what we have had to do before we could come here. We had to cook our own breakfast and eat it, and that took up some time. Then we had to get our opium pipes in working order, and slowly manipulate the opium, and that you know is not like tobacco that you can take a few whiffs of and the thing is finished. We had then to lie on the opium-bench for some time till the drowsiness pa.s.sed away and we had recovered our senses. How could we come earlier with all these things to do? You decided that we should come at daylight, and here we are. Did you expect us to come without having had our breakfast? You are no slight weight to carry, you know, and if we had done so, we should have had to drop you on the road before we had been an hour on our journey."

The Chinaman has a wonderful facility for putting the best face upon a bad argument. He has the most ingenious ways of presenting his view of the matter, so that by and by he will have turned the tables, and he will make it appear that he has been altogether right whilst you have been absolutely in the wrong. His favourite method is to confuse the issues, and the Chinese, with their turbid way of looking at things, continually fall into the snare, and having accepted his premises they must perforce accept also his conclusions. Here were these rough, noisy chair-bearers insisting that they had acted upon our agreement to come at daylight, though the sun was high in the heavens and it was getting close upon nine o'clock. They ignored all our attempts to prove that the hour of daylight had pa.s.sed some hours ago by simply insisting that we were wrong. The hypnotic influence of a.s.sertions made confidently and persistently began to have its effect on our mind. Were we really labouring under a mistake, and were the broad daylight and the great sun that glared down upon us simply visions of the imagination? We felt that if we did not stop the discussion we should soon be consenting to all they said, so we got into our chairs and with a peremptory wave of the hand ordered them to go on.

With smiling faces and with an air of victory in their voices, they lifted the poles on to their shoulders and commenced the long journey of twenty miles that lay before us. When the bearers are strong and know their work, and when they have got into step with each other, the motion of the chair is a very pleasant one and the time pa.s.ses by very quickly.

This latter is in a great measure due to the constantly changing scenes that meet one by the way. After leaving the city we emerged into the open country, where we had ample evidence of the skill with which the farmer cultivates his fields. He seems, indeed, to have penetrated into the secrets of nature and to have learned how to manipulate his fields, and how to coax and win the various kinds of seeds that he plants that they shall all respond to the efforts he puts forth and gladden his heart with their fruitful harvests.

The Chinese farmer is a most unaesthetic, most uninteresting looking character, and strikes one as far inferior to the rosy-cheeked, jolly-looking specimens that till our lands in England. He has altogether a mean appearance and does not at first sight induce us to have any high respect for him. His dress is against him. It is made of sombre-looking blue cotton cloth, slouchily made, and usually anything but clean. He absolutely neglects his toilette, and his face and hands show an ingrained dislike to water. Whether as the result of hard work or of exposure to the sun, which burns like X Rays into his skin, his countenance in a comparatively early stage becomes furrowed with wrinkles, and in time he gets prematurely old looking.

It is when you become acquainted with him, and chat with him, that these external disadvantages seem to vanish from your thoughts, and you realize that here you have a man who has held deep communion with nature, and who knows her so well that she responds to his touch, and pours with no unwilling hand out of the abundance of her treasury the riches that are to fill the homes with gladness and content.

The fields that we are now pa.s.sing through are an evidence of the skill and ingenuity of the farmers. They are all covered with luxuriant crops of rice, and as the sun s.h.i.+nes down upon the heads that have just issued from their leafy enclosures, and his rays flash upon the water at their feet, making it to sparkle and glisten as so many diamond points that reflect his glory, the sight is one that the eye never gets tired of looking upon.

One is led to reflect in gazing upon these fields with what exquisite beauty and with what marvellous detail G.o.d fas.h.i.+ons the growing grain so that it shall come with as perfect and divine a form as His great Master Mind can devise it.

As far as the eye can reach there is little else to be seen but rice. One sees it down in the hollows where the little rivulets flow, and where they have left their trace in the deeper green and the ranker growth of the crops near by. On the rising ground one's eye is caught with the lifelike, graceful motions that the pa.s.sing breeze with the art of a master makes the stalks that stand so thickly side by side perform. Like the waves breaking on the sh.o.r.e, one never wearies looking at them, for they vary with every gust of wind, so that they never become monotonous.

The only exception to this universal growth of the rice are fields of sweet potatoes that occupy grounds where the water cannot reach. As this is an essential for the cultivation of rice, which must stand in it during the whole time of its growth, until within a few days of its being harvested, other kinds of crops have to be planted in what are called "the dry fields." These are mainly sweet potatoes, though various others are also cultivated in them.

Here, for example, is a small plot of land that we are pa.s.sing by, which ill.u.s.trates not only the ingenuity of the Chinese farmer, but also shows the varied purposes to which "the dry fields" may be put. There are no fewer than three distinct crops growing harmoniously side by side on it.

There are peanuts with their short, insignificant growth and their tiny yellow flowers that seem the very embodiment of retiring modesty. Out of their very midst there spring up the st.u.r.dy millet-stalks, with their lofty ambitions that would make them stretch far beyond the humble leaves and flowers at their feet; and last, but not the least important, there is a crop of sweet potatoes that will quietly survive when the other two have been gathered, and will gladden the hearts of the farmers after the others have been garnered.

As we travel on, we notice how very bad the roads are. We are on what is called the "Great Road," for it is a great thoroughfare, and for more than two thousand miles it runs over great plains, and winds up and down hills and mountains, and crosses great rivers and countless streams, and penetrates great and populous cities, and yet, excepting at occasional places, it never averages more than ten feet wide. It seems, too, to be in a chronic state of disrepair. The rains fall, and the storms and the typhoons spend their fury on it, and try their very utmost to obliterate it. The countless feet, too, of weary travellers, and of coolies with burdened shoulders, and chair-bearers with their weighty fares tread it down and fill it with ruts, and wear away the stones, and disfigure its surface with heights and hollows that make travelling in the rainy season a serious trial to those who have to journey along it.

If this be the case with the "Great Roads" it may easily be imagined what the character of the "Small Roads" must be. These latter are practically but footpaths that exist like a huge network throughout the Empire, and are reserved for the local traffic that goes on between village and village, and between market town and market town, and whilst on the whole they aim at being as straight and as direct as possible, they are from the very nature of the case generally very winding and roundabout. Fields have to be crossed and private property has to be invaded, and so the traveller has to accommodate himself to the necessities of the case, and follow the windings and the turnings by which the least damage may be done to those whose farms or homesteads have been invaded by those who never dream of paying any compensation for the liberty they have taken.

In travelling on these "Great Roads," one finds that about every two miles or so apart there are recognized stages or resting-places where refreshments of a very primitive kind may be obtained, and where men wearied with the strain of walking, or oppressed with the great flaring, scorching sun may find some respite from the strain that has been put upon them.

But here is one of these stages, and as the rule of the road demands that the chair-bearers shall stop at it, we shall be able to see for ourselves exactly what they are like. At first sight it has a very tempting, picturesque appearance. Several magnificent banyan-trees send out huge spreading boughs, which, with their great forest of leaves, cast a most refres.h.i.+ng shade over the road and over the eating-houses that stand by the wayside. These latter are of the simplest and most elementary kind, and consist of one large room that is practically a kitchen, where the rice and the sweet potatoes are cooked and where the owner and his wife carry out the orders that their customers may give them.

In front of this are small tables and rough wooden benches for the accommodation of those who wish to have refreshment. No sooner do our men drop their chairs on the road, than they stagger to one of these tables, and, at a kind of masonic sign that is easily read, a bowl of smoking-hot rice is put into the hands of each, a pair of chop-sticks are grasped from a hollow bamboo receptacle on the table, and without a word it is quickly being shovelled down their throats. It is not until at least half the basin has been emptied that signs of contentment escape from them, and the innate humour, which has been crushed by the pain and weariness on the road, finds expression in laughter and in humorous conversation that fills the air with merry sounds that linger among the branches and wander down along the road into the great glare beyond where the shadows of the banyan lie.

In order to ease ourselves from the cramped position we have had to maintain in the chair, we get out and stretch our legs, and finally sit down on one of the benches and watch the moving life that pa.s.ses and repa.s.ses in front of us.

Here is a young fellow that has just staggered out of the sunlight into the shadow, and he lets down his burden from his shoulder as though he were tearing off the skin and places it carefully within a few feet of us.

He must be about twenty-five, and is as good a specimen of a man as one would find in a day's journey. His face is flushed and excited, and he has a strained look upon it as though he had been bearing a pressure that had become simply unendurable.

"How far have you travelled with your load?" we asked him.

"One hundred and fifty miles," he replied, "and I have thirty more before I reach the end of my journey."

"What is its weight?" I inquire of him.

"It is a hundred and fifty pounds at the very least," he said, and he cast a wistful, anxious look upon the huge burden that he had carried so far.

"But why engage to bear so heavy a load? A hundred pounds ought to have been your limit, for so long a journey," I continued.

"I could not afford to carry less," he quickly replied; "I am paid so much a pound, and I have to pay my own expenses. I have to eat often," he explained, "or I should break down. I have to pay for my bed at night, and I must have a certain amount over to take home to my wife and family. If I were to reduce the weight I could not do that, and so I am compelled to put every pound into my load that I can possibly carry in order that my family may not suffer."

But here comes a sedan chair that has come in with a rush whilst we have been talking. The bearers are both young strapping fellows, and we can tell from the hot flush on their faces that the strain upon them is a severe one. They are too proud, however, to acknowledge that, and instead of letting the chair down gently, they give it a toss in the air as though it were a plaything, and with a jaunty air they drop it on to the ground.

They then begin to chaff some of the other bearers that are seated on the tables, and in a leisurely, easy way saunter to a seat as though it were a matter of perfect indifference whether they had any refreshment or not.

The keeper of the eating-house, however, knows exactly the requirements of these two brave young fellows, and so he quietly slips a bowl into the hand of each, and, in spite of their feigned unconcern, they are soon shovelling down great mouthfuls of the hot savoury rice.

As we sit looking at the s.h.i.+fting scene that pa.s.ses like a moving panorama before us, we are impressed with the pathetic side that seems to us to be the prominent one. The pa.s.sers-by are nearly all representatives of the working cla.s.ses, and even they come from the poorer stratum. Some of them are men from a distance, as may be seen by their dust-soiled garments and their air of weariness. Others are farmers who have been to the neighbouring city to dispose of their farm produce, whilst not a few are nondescripts, the waifs and strays that heathen society tosses up, whose hold upon life is always a precarious one, and who may any day be landed amongst the beggar cla.s.s to fight and struggle for existence as best they may.

Now and again a man in easier circ.u.mstances may be detected by the independent swing of his walk, and by the jolly look that illumines his broad, but unaesthetic features. There are young fellows, too, who, full of exuberant spirits, lark and joke with each other, and make the air ring with their laughter, but there are only too many with a shadow on their faces that tells of an inner life where the heart throbs with a hidden pain. For one thing, at least, the Chinaman is a man to be greatly admired for the patience and the heroism with which he bears the ills and the disappointments of life. It is not because he is of a callous nature, or that he is insensible to the human touches that sweep over the spirit of other races, and make the heart break down in tears. It is simply because he has a wonderful power of self-restraint; and because pain and distress are inevitable as he considers, he hides within his bosom, under a face that absolutely refuses to let out his secret, the sorrow that amongst us we could not disguise.

The chair-bearers have had their bowl of rice. They have seized a handful of peanuts which lie in little mounds on the table, and are hastily cracking their sh.e.l.ls, and as they pick their kernels out they propel them with a jerk into their mouths. Finally they fill their diminutive bamboo pipes with tobacco, and after three or four good long whiffs, they call out in a cheery voice, "Now let us go." The chair is swung up on to their shoulders, they shuffle their feet until they get into step, and then, with a steady trot, they start for the next stage that lies two or three miles ahead.

Our way lies across a plain that is thickly dotted with villages. These at a distance have a very charming appearance, and remind one very much of similar places in the homeland. They are nearly always embowered amongst great stately trees, that the forefathers planted when the foundations of the new home were laid. They have grown since then, and now beneath their spreading branches only a pointed roof or a whitewashed gable can be caught sight of through the rifts in the foliage of the trees.

The plain is a populous one, and the road on which we are travelling being a great thoroughfare, little market towns have sprung up on it. If there is one thing more than another that these impress upon a stranger from the West it is the absolute want of taste that the Chinese show in the building of their houses and in the laying out of their streets.

Broken-down shanties, badly kept houses, streets that reek with smells, people dressed in an untidy and slovenly manner, and with hands and faces that very rarely become acquainted with soap and water; these are the common sights that meet one wherever he travels in this great land of China. The country has an old and worn-out look about it, and seems as though it needed whitewas.h.i.+ng and renovating; whilst the people as a whole require was.h.i.+ng and scrubbing and a liberal use of "Sunlight Soap," to remove the grimy, dusty acc.u.mulations that rest upon them wherever you meet them.

Our journey so far has taken us through a very fertile district, and luxuriant crops of rice testify not only to the excellence of the land, but also to the skill of the farmers in the wise methods they have learned to employ in the cultivation of the land. That they succeed so well is no doubt due to the long and a.s.siduous care that the nation has given to agriculture. From time immemorial the farmer has held a high position in the estimation of the nation. One of the most honoured amongst their ancient kings was a man that was taken from the plough, and was made a co-ruler with a man that, for the probity of his reign, has always been spoken of in the annals of the empire as a sage.

The Chinese, therefore, have had long experience in the art of cultivating the soil, and out of this has been developed the touch in their fingers that nature recognizes and responds to so readily. They seem to have no trouble in making things grow. Apparently without any effort they plough their land and scatter their seed with careless hand, and granting that the rain falls with tolerable regularity, everything springs up just as they have planned.

After pa.s.sing through a number of villages and hamlets, and small market towns, all frowsy and slattern-looking, and pervaded with the Oriental bad smells wherever a human habitation exists, we came late in the afternoon to the mouth of a wide river, where our land journey was to end, and where we were to continue it by boat until we should reach our destination.

In order to get to our boat, which we had arranged should meet us at this place, we had to cross the bridge that spanned the river here to get to the other side where it lay awaiting us. This bridge is a famous one, and is a very fine specimen of what the Chinese builders can do in the construction of such. It consists of about twenty-five spans, the widest of which is sixty-five feet, whilst the others vary somewhat in their measurements.

As the river flows here with a very rapid current, and moreover is liable to sudden rises after heavy rains in the interior, it was essential, in the erecting of this bridge, that it should be built so strongly that it would be able to stand not only the wear and tear of the ever-flowing river, but also the mighty strain of the deluge of waters that comes roaring down the gorges that lie above it either after some tempest, or in consequence of an unusual downpour during the rainy season in the spring.

The great width between each pier was not a matter of choice but of necessity. To have placed them any nearer to each other might have risked their being swept away by the river tide, which when swollen by the storms of summer rolls down with prodigious volume and force over the very spot where the bridge had to be built. It was also equally necessary that the slabs of stone that composed the roadway of the bridge should be enormously heavy, so that they might be able to resist the impetus of the flood that would at times roll over them and yet not be strong enough to lift them from their positions and hurl them down the river.