By the Golden Gate Part 4

This is a Chinese secret society. The Chinese are wont to a.s.sociate themselves together, even if they do not mingle much with men of other nations. They have their gatherings for social purposes and for improvement and pastime, and, like the Anglo-Saxon and the Latin races, they have their mystic signs and pa.s.swords. Of course we were not permitted to enter the _Chee Kung Tong_ Hall, however much we desired to cross its mysterious threshold. The door was well guarded, and Chinamen pa.s.sing in had to give a.s.surance that they were ent.i.tled to the privilege. On the night when the detective from Police Headquarters accompanied us we made an attempt to enter a Chinese gambling house. The entrance even to this was well guarded; although the sentinel unwittingly left the door open for a moment as a Chinaman was pa.s.sing in. The detective seeing his opportunity went in boldly and bade us to follow him. In a few moments all was confusion. We heard hurrying feet in the adjoining room, and then excited men appeared at the head of the pa.s.sage way and waved their arms to and fro while they talked rapidly in high tones. Outside already some fifty men had collected together, and these were also talking and gesticulating wildly. The detective then said to us that it would be wise to retreat and leave the place lest we might meet with violence.

We did so, but the uproar among the Chinese did not subside for some time. We pitied the poor sentinel who had allowed us to slip in, for we knew that he would be severely punished after our departure. The Chinese are noted for their gambling propensities, and there are many gambling houses in Chinatown. This vice is one of their great pastimes, and whenever they are not engaged in business they devote themselves either to gambling, the amus.e.m.e.nts of the theatre, the pleasures of the restaurant, or the seductive charms of the opium pipe.

Later in my saunterings I went into a kind of restaurant, where I saw a number of Chinese men and boys playing cards and dominoes and dice.

They went on with the games as if they were oblivious to us. I noticed there were Chinese coins of small value on the tables, and some of the players were apparently winning while others were losing. The latter, however, gave no indication that they were in the least degree disappointed. Of course, as a rule they play after their own fas.h.i.+on, having their own games and methods. Minister Wu, of Was.h.i.+ngton, when asked recently if he liked our American games, replied that he did not understand any of them. No doubt this is true of the majority of Chinamen in the United States. In thinking of the Chinese and gambling one always recalls Bret Harte's "Plain Language From Truthful James of Table Mountain," popularly known as "The Heathen Chinee," one of the best humorous poems in the English language. You can fairly see the merry eyes of the author of the "Argonauts of '49" dancing with pleasure as he describes the game of cards between "Truthful James,"

"Bill Nye" and "Ah Sin."

"Which we had a small game, And Ah Sin took a hand; It was euchre: the same He did not understand; But he smiled as he sat by the table With a smile that was childlike and bland.

"Yet the cards they were stacked In a way that I grieve, And my feelings were shocked At the state of Nye's sleeve, Which was stuffed full of aces and bowers, And the same with intent to deceive.

"But the hands that were played By that heathen Chinee, And the points that he made.

Were quite frightful to see-- Till at last he put down the right bower, Which the same Nye had dealt unto me.

"Then I looked up at Nye, And he gazed upon me: And he rose with a sigh, And said, 'Can this be?

We are ruined by Chinee cheap labour'-- And he went for that heathen Chinee."

There are all kinds of jugglers in Chinatown and among them are numerous fortune-tellers. This kind of pastime is as old as the human race, and you find the man who undertakes to reveal to you the secrets of the future among all peoples. The Orientals are always ready to listen to the "neby" or the necromancer or the fakir or the wandering minstrel, who improvises for you and sings for you the good things which are in store for you. We see this tendency among our own people who would have their destiny pointed out by means of a pack of cards, by the reading of the palm of the hand, in the grounds in the tea-cup, and by other signs. It was with some interest then that we glanced at the mystic words and signs which adorned the entrance to Sam Wong Yung's fortune-teller's place.

Pa.s.sing on, we next visited a hardware shop, where you could purchase various kinds of Chinese cutlery. Among other things that attracted my attention was a simple-looking Chinese fan, apparently folded up. On examining it I found that inside of the fan-case was a sharp knife or blade like a wide dagger. This could be carried in an unsuspecting manner into the midst of a company of men, and in a moment, if you had in your breast the wicked spirit of revenge, your enemy could be weltering in his life blood at your feet. It suggested all kinds of tragedies, and no doubt its invention had behind it some treacherous impulse. The writer ventured to purchase it, but he hastens to announce to his friends that his purposes are good and innocent.

Though in the same category as the sword or dagger hidden in a walking-stick or a concealed weapon, this bloodthirsty knife will repose harmlessly in its fan-case like a sleeping babe in his cradle.

A Chinese boarding house next claimed our inspection. It was rather a forbidding place, but no doubt the Chinaman was well content with its accommodations. It was a long, rambling structure, and it seemed to me as if I were going through an underground pa.s.sage in walking from room to room. The various halls were narrow, indeed so narrow that two persons meeting in them could not without difficulty pa.s.s each other.

The beds, which brought a dollar a month, were one above another in tiers or recesses in the walls. Generally a curtain of a reddish hue depended in front of them. They reminded one of the berths in a s.h.i.+p or of the repositories of the dead in the Roman Catacombs. Two hundred and twenty-five persons were lodged in this dark, mysterious labyrinth. In another house there were five hundred and fifty people lodged in seventy-five rooms. Possibly the owners of tenement houses in our large cities, who crowd men and women into a narrow s.p.a.ce and through unpitying agents reap a rich harvest regardless of the sufferings of their fellow-beings, have been taking lessons from the landlords of Chinatown. I said to myself, as I went to and fro through these narrow pa.s.sages, dimly lighted with a lamp, and the lights were few and far between, if a fire should break out, at midnight, when all are wrapt in slumber, what a holocaust would be here! And whose would the sin and the shame be? There are good and ample fire-appliances for the protection of the city, but the poor Chinamen hemmed in, as in a dark prison-house, would surely be suffocated by smoke or be consumed in the flames. When the old theatre was burned down, twenty-five men, and probably more, perished, although there were means of escape from this building. I was told that the wood from which the largest hotel in Chinatown, its Palace hotel so to speak, was constructed in the early days, was brought around Cape Horn, and cost $350 per thousand feet. This was before saw-mills were erected in the forests among the foothills and on the slopes of the Sierras. The kitchen of the big boarding house was a novelty. It was nothing in any respect like the well-appointed kitchens of our hotels with their great ranges and open fire-places where meats may be roasted slowly on the turnspit. On one side of the kitchen there was a kind of stone-parapet about two feet and a half high, and on the top of this there were eight fire-places.

As the Chinamen cook their own food there might be as many as eight men here at one time. I asked the guide if they ever quarreled. His answer was significant. "No! and it would be difficult to bring eight men of any other nationality together in such close proximity without differences arising and contentions taking place; but the Chinamen never trouble each other." There was only one man cooking at such a late hour as that in which we visited the kitchen, about half-past ten o'clock at night. He used charcoal, and as the coals were fanned the fire looked like that of a forge in a blacksmith's shop.

On our way to the Chinese Restaurant we stepped into a goldsmith's shop. There were a few customers present, and the proprietor waited on them with great diligence. At benches like writing desks, on which were tools of various descriptions, were seated some half a dozen workmen who were busily engaged. They never looked up while we stood by and examined their work, which was of a high order. The filagree-work was beautiful and artistic. There were numerous personal ornaments, some of solid gold, others plaited. The bracelets which they were making might fittingly adorn the neck of a queen. I learned that these skilled men worked sixteen hours a day on moderate wages.

Their work went into first-cla.s.s Chinese bric-a-brac stores and into the jewelry stores of the merchants who supply the rich and cultured with their ornaments.

But it is time that we visit the restaurant. This is located in a stately building and is one of the first cla.s.s. It overlooks the old Plaza, though you enter from the street one block west of the Plaza.

You ascend broad stairs, and then you find yourself in a wide room or dining hall in two sections. Here are tables round and square, and here you are waited on by the sons of the Fiery Flying Dragon clad in well-made tunics, sometimes of silk material. As your eye studies the figure before you, the dress and the physiognomy, you do not fail to notice the long pigtail, the Chinaman's glory, as a woman's delight is her long hair. The tea, which is fragrant, is served to you out of dainty cups, China cups, an evidence that the tea-drinking of Americans and Europeans is derived from the Celestial Empire. The tea-plant is said, by a pretty legend, to have been formed from the eyelids of Buddha Dharma, which, in his generosity, he cut off for the benefit of men. If you wish for sweetmeats they will be served in a most tempting way. You can also have chicken, rice, and vegetables, and fruits, after the Chinese fas.h.i.+on. You can eat with your fingers if you like, or use knives and forks, or, if you desire to play the Chinaman, with the chop-sticks. In Chinatown the men and the women do not eat together. This is also the custom of China, and hence there is not what we look upon as an essential element of home-life--father and mother and children and guests, if there be such, gathered in a pleasant dining-room with the flow of edifying conversation and the exchange of courtesies. Confucius never talked when he ate, and his disciples affect his taciturnity at their meals. Though in scholastic times, in European inst.i.tutions and in religious communities, men kept silence at their meals, yet the hours were enlivened by one who read for the edification of all. The interchange of thought, however,--the spoken word one with another, at the family table, is the better way.

Silence may be golden, but speech is more golden if seasoned with wisdom; and even the pleasant jest and the _bon mot_ have their office and exercise a salutary influence on character and conduct.

The food of Chinamen generally is very simple. Rice is the staple article of consumption. They like fruits and use them moderately. They eat things too, which would be most repulsive to the epicurean taste of an Anglo-Saxon. Even lizards and rats and young dogs they will not refuse. But these things are prepared in a manner to tempt the appet.i.te. After you have partaken of your repast in the Chinese Restaurant, if you request it, tobacco pipes will be brought in, and your waiter will fill and light them for you and your friends. You can even, with a certain degree of caution, indulge in the opium pipe, the joy of the Chinaman. As you draw on this pipe and take long draughts you lapse into a strange state, all your ills seem to vanish, and you become indifferent to the world. The beggar in imagination becomes a millionaire, and for the time he feels that he is in the midst of courtly splendours. But, ah! When one awakes from his dream the pleasures are turned into ashes, and the glory fades as the fires of the pipe die. _Sic transit gloria mundi_! On the walls of the restaurant were various Chinese decorations. The inevitable lantern was in evidence. Here also were tablets with sentences in the language of the Celestials. But there was one thing that struck me forcibly as I examined the various objects in the rooms. In the rear half of the restaurant, on the north side of the room, stood a Chinese safe, somewhat in fas.h.i.+on like our ordinary American safe. It was not, however, secured with the combination lock with which we are all familiar. It shut like a cupboard, and had eight locks on a chain as it were. Every lock represented a man whose money or whose valuables were in the safe. Each of the eight men had a key for his own lock, different from all the other seven. When the safe is to be opened all the eight men must be present. Is this a comment on the honesty of the Chinaman? Is this indicative of their lack of confidence in each other? And yet as a house-servant the Chinaman is trusty and faithful and honest. He is also silent as to what transpires in his master's house and at his employer's table. The writer has conversed with people who have had Chinamen in their service, he has also visited the homes of gentlemen where only Chinese servants are employed in domestic work, and all bear testimony to their excellence and faithfulness and honesty.

No visit to Chinatown would be complete without an inspection of its theatre and a study of the audience. Here you see the Celestials _en ma.s.se_, you behold them in their amus.e.m.e.nts. Let us repair then to the Jackson Street Theatre. The building was once a hotel, now it is a place of pastime; and singularly under the same roof is a small Joss-House,--for the Chinaman couples his amus.e.m.e.nts with his religion. It rather reminds one of those buildings in Christian lands, which, while used for religious services, yet have kitchens and places for theatrical shows and amus.e.m.e.nts under the same roof. But the play has already begun. Indeed it began at six o'clock--and it is now nearly eleven P.M. It will, however, continue till midnight. This is the rule; for the Chinaman does nothing by halves, and he takes his amus.e.m.e.nt in a large quant.i.ty at a time. The theatre had galleries on three sides and these were packed with men and women as well as the main floor. There were altogether a thousand persons present, and it was indeed a strange sight to look into their faces, dressed alike as they were, and all seemingly looking alike. The women were seated in the west gallery on the right hand of the stage by themselves. This is an Eastern custom which Asiatic nations generally observe. Even in their religious a.s.semblies the women sit apart. The custom arose primarily from the idea that woman is inferior to man. In the Jewish temple as well as in the synagogue, the s.e.xes were separated. It is so to-day in most synagogues. Among the Mohammedans, too, woman is ruled out and is kept apart; and so strong is custom it even affected the Christian church in Oriental lands in the early days. You see a trace of it still in the East in church-arrangements.

A Chinese play takes a number of weeks or even months in which to complete it. It may be founded on domestic life or on some historic scene. Sometimes the history of a province of the Chinese Empire is the theme. The plays are mostly comedy. There are no grand tragedies like those of the old Greek poets. The Chinese have had no such writers as Sophocles or Euripides, no such creators of plays as Shakespeare, and they have no such actors as a Garrick or an Irving.

We were invited to seats on the stage--which had no curtains, everything being done openly. In order to reach the stage the guide conducted us down the pa.s.sageway or aisle through the midst of the audience. Then we ascended a platform at the end of the stage and went behind it into a long room where the actors were putting on costumes of a fantastic shape and painting their faces with bright coloured pigments. Some of them also put on masks that would frighten a person should he meet the wearers suddenly. The majority of the masks were caricatures of the human face and were comical in expression. We felt quite at home on the stage at once; for here, seated on either side with the actors in the midst of the company, were many of our friends lay and clerical, men and women, looking on in wonder at the strange performance. An orchestra of six or seven members was here on the back part of the stage--and the music! It consisted of the beating of drums, the sounding of gongs and other outlandish noises. Now and then above the din you could catch the sound of a clarionet and the feeble strains of a banjo. It was indeed pandemonium! Yet above all the noise and confusion you could hear the high pitched voices of the actors as they shouted and gesticulated. The audience, I noticed, was most attentive and decorous. They were evidently well pleased with the play; and what was quite remarkable they seemed to have neither ears nor eyes for their visitors. Of course they must have seen us, but with an indifference that almost bordered on contempt they paid no attention to us.

In the play one of the actors died on the stage, but the death had nothing of the tragic or heroic in it. After a brief interval he rose up and walked off amid the merriment of the audience.

Many Chinamen come here to spend their evening. The admission is fifty cents, which ent.i.tles one to a seat. As the play runs through six hours at a time, they feel that they get the worth of their money.

They meet their friends there also; and although they are not very demonstrative towards each other, like the warm blooded races of Italy and Greece and Northern Europe and the United States, yet they are very happy in the presence of men of their own race and nation. The theatre is about the only place where they can meet on common ground, at least in large bodies, and then, as we have already intimated, the theatre is something more than a place of amus.e.m.e.nt in their eyes.

Their forefathers liked such plays, and they believe that the spirits of the dead are in a certain sense present to share in the enjoyments of men in the body.

Only men and boys act on the Chinese stage. There are no women, though the female s.e.x is personated. This has its advantages. Woman is kept out of harm; she is not subject to the indignities and temptations which beset her among other peoples who employ her services. Of course there are good and virtuous women on the stage--very many, I trust!

But it will be admitted that the life of an actress is one of trial.

She must of necessity be brought into intercourse with an element whose moral ideals are not the loftiest, and she must have unusual strength of character to preserve her integrity. She can do it! I believe that men and women can resist temptation in all spheres, in all vocations of life; I have great faith in humanity, especially when sustained by divine helps; but we must not subject the bow to too much tension lest it break. The personating of characters which have in them a spice of wickedness, the taking of the part in a play which represents the downfall of a virtuous person, the setting forth of the pa.s.sions of love and hatred, must in time produce a powerful effect on the mind of a young woman, and there is danger that the neophyte on the stage will be contaminated with the base things of life before strength of character is developed. The Chinese are to be commended in this respect, whatever their motive in excluding their women from the stage. The reproduction of Greek plays, in some of our universities, where only men take the parts, shows what could be done among us on the stage, and successfully.

The Chinese actors whom I saw, exhibited a great deal of human nature in their acting. There was the full display of the human pa.s.sions; and they entered into their work with zest as if it were real life. Some of the men in the audience were smoking cigars, others cigarettes. The Asiatic has a fondness for cigarettes. You see the men of the East smoking everywhere, whether in Syria, or Egypt, or Nubia, or Arabia.

And is it not true that men are much the same the world over, in their pastimes and pursuits, their loves and their pleasures?

CHAPTER X

THE JOSS-HOUSE, CHINESE IMMIGRATION AND CHINESE THEOLOGY

In Chinatown--Conception of G.o.d--The Joss House--Chinese Mottoes--The Joss a Chinaman--Greek and Egyptian Ideas of G.o.d--Different Types of Madonnas--Chinese Wors.h.i.+p and Machine Prayers--The Joss-House and the Christian Church--Chinese Immigration--Chinamen in the United States--A Plague Spot--Fire Crackers and Incense Sticks--The Lion and the Hen--The Man with Tears of Blood--Filial Piety--The Joss--Origin of the World--Creation of Man--Spirits of the Dead--Ancestral Rites--The Chinese Emperor--What Might Have Been--The Hand of G.o.d.

Our study of Chinatown and the civilisation of the country of the Yellow Dragon, as seen in the City of the Golden Gate, has thus far brought us in contact with the social and business life of the Chinese and their amus.e.m.e.nts; but we are now to visit one of their temples of wors.h.i.+p, the Joss-House. And here the real man will be revealed; for it is in religious services and ceremonies and beliefs that we get a true knowledge of a race or a nation. The conception of G.o.d which you have is the key to your character. If your views of Deity are low and ign.o.ble you will not achieve any greatness in the world; but if on the other hand you invest the Being Whom you wors.h.i.+p with n.o.ble attributes and look upon Him as just and holy, a G.o.d of mercy and judgment, your breast will be animated with grand thoughts and lofty ideals will impel you to the performance of heroic deeds. The word Joss, which we use for a Chinese idol or G.o.d, seems to be derived from the Portugese, Dios, or rather it is the Pidgin English of Dios. A Joss-House then is a Chinese idol or G.o.d-house. We are now standing before such a place of wors.h.i.+p. This is on the corner of Kearney and Pine Streets, and is built of brick, and as we look up we see that it is three stories high. There is a marble slab over the entrance with an inscription which tells us that this building is the Sze-Yap Asylum. Let us enter.

The lower story, we find, is given up to business of one kind or another connected with the Sze-Yap Immigration Society. This, we note, is richly adorned with valuable tapestries and silken hangings, and the rich colours attract the eye at once. If you wish to sit down you can, and enjoy the novelty of the scene. For here are easy chairs which invite you to rest. In your inspection of the place you venture to peer into the room back of this, and you perceive at once that there is the lounging place of the establishment. You see men on couches perfectly at ease and undisturbed by your presence, smoking cigarettes or opium, the Chinaman's delight. If you desire to penetrate further into the building you will come to the kitchen where the dainty dishes of the Chinese are cooked; but you retreat and ascend a staircase in the southeast corner of the first room, and soon you are in the Joss-House proper. This second story is devoted exclusively to religious purposes. The room to which you are now introduced is about thirty feet square, and as you look around you perceive the hangings on the walls and the rich decorations of the ceiling. Here are placards on the walls, which, your guide will tell you, if you are not conversant with the Chinese tongue, bear on them sentences from the writings of Confucius, Mencius, and others, with exhortations to do nothing against integrity or virtue, to venerate ancestors and to be careful not to injure one's reputation in the eyes of Americans;--all of which is most excellent advice, and worthy of the attention of men everywhere. You then cast your eyes on the gilded spears, and standards and battle-axes standing in the corners of the Temple, and as you look up you almost covet the great Chinese lanterns suspended from the ceiling. Your eyes are finally directed to the altar, near which, and on it, are flowers artificial and natural. At the rear in a kind of a niche in the Joss or G.o.d. The figure of this deity was like a n.o.ble Chinaman, well-dressed, with a moustache, and having in his eyes a far-away expression. He wore a tufted crown, which made him look somewhat war-like. It is but natural that this Joss should be a blind man. The Greek G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses have Greek countenances. The idolatrous nations fas.h.i.+on their deities after their own likeness. And what are these but deified human beings? It is so in Greek and Roman mythology. The Egyptian Osiris is an Egyptian. It is true that some of the ancients outside of Hebrew Revelation had a better conception of G.o.d than others. Even in Egypt where birds and beasts and creeping things received divine honors there were scholars and poets who had an exalted idea of the Deity, as witness the Poems of Pentaur. This is true also of some of the Greek Poets who had a deep insight into divine things. It is not a little interesting to note also that artists of different nations paint the Madonna after the style of their own women. Very few of the pictures in the great art galleries are after the style of face which you see in the Orient.

Hence there are Dutch Madonnas, and Italian and French and English types. There were no wors.h.i.+ppers in the Joss-House at the hour when I visited it. Wors.h.i.+p is not a prominent feature of Chinese religious life. The good Chinaman comes once a year at least, perhaps oftener, and burns a bit of perforated paper before his Joss, in order to show that he is not forgetful of his deity. This bit of paper is about six inches long and two inches wide. He also puts printed or written papers in a machine which is run like a clock. Well, this is an easy way to say prayers. And are there not many prayers offered, not merely by Chinamen, that are machine prayers, soulless, heartless, meaningless, and faithless, and which bring no answer? But how simple, how beautiful, how sublime, the golden Prayer which the Divine Master taught His disciples! Lord, teach us how to pray. If the n.o.ble Liturgy of the Church is properly rendered,--for it is the expansion of the Lord's Prayer,--there will be no machine-praying, and the answer to prayer will be rich and abundant. The contrast between the wors.h.i.+p of the Joss and the wors.h.i.+p of the true G.o.d in a Christian Church is striking and affords reflection. The former is of the earth earthy, the latter transports the devout wors.h.i.+pper to the throne of the Most High. There is no fear that the religion of the Joss-House will ever usurp the religion of the Christian altar. Men have expressed the fear that if the Chinese came in overwhelming numbers to America they would endanger the Christian faith by their idolatry. But would this be true? Has Christianity anything to dread? What impression has the Joss-House made all these years on the life of San Francisco outside of Chinatown? None whatever, except to make the reflecting man value the Christian faith with its elevating influences and its blessed hopes all the more. It is a mistake then to exclude Chinamen from our sh.o.r.es on the ground that they will do harm to Christianity. On the contrary the Church will do them good. The Gospel is the leaven which will be the salvation of heathen men. Did it not go forth into the Gentile world on its glorious mission, and did it not convert many nations in the first ages? Has it lost its potency to-day? No! It is as powerful as ever to win men from their idols and their evil lives.

The question of Chinese immigration is a large one. It has its social and its political aspects. It is found all along the Pacific coast that Chinamen make good and faithful servants. The outcry against them as competing with white laborers and artisans is more the result of political agitation for political purposes than good judgment. Where they have been displaced on farms, in mills, in warehouses, in domestic life, white men and women have not been found to take their places and do the work which they can do so well. Under the Geary Act immigration has been restricted and the numbers of the Chinese in the United States have been gradually decreasing. In the year 1854 there were only 3,000 Chinese in the City of San Francisco; but even then there was agitation against them. It was Governor Bigler who called them "coolies," and this term they repudiated with the same abhorrence which the negro or black man has for the term "n.i.g.g.e.r." They kept on increasing, however, until in 1875 there were in the whole State of California 130,000. Of this number 30,000 were in San Francisco.

To-day there are only about 46,000 in California and there are not more than thirty thousand of these in the City of San Francisco. There are only 110,000 Chinese altogether in the United States proper. Even the most ardent exclusionist can see from this that there is nothing to dread as to an overwhelming influx that will threaten the integrity and existence of our civilisation. The labour-question and the race-question and the international question, aroused by the presence of the Chinese within our borders, will from time to time cause agitation and provoke discussion and heated debate and evoke oratory of one kind or another; but the question which should be uppermost in the minds of wise statesmen is how shall they be a.s.similated to our life? How shall we make them Christians? The answer will be the best solution of the whole matter, if it has in mind the spiritual interests of the Chinaman and of all other heathen on our sh.o.r.es.

There is indeed a plague spot in Chinatown, the social fester, which can and ought to be removed. But this is true of American San Francisco as well as of Chinatown. What, we may ask, are the men and women of as beautiful a city as ever sat on Bay or Lake or Sea-Sh.o.r.e or River, doing for its purgation, for its release from moral defilement and "garments spotted with the flesh?" This indeed is one of the searching questions to be asked of any other City, such as New York, Chicago, St. Louis, London, Paris, Cairo, Constantinople, as well as San Francisco. Among the other noticeable things in the Joss-House were two immense lanterns, as much for ornament as for utility. Then I saw a big drum and a bell, used in some of the processions of the Temple; for the Chinese take special delight in noises, indeed the more noise the better satisfied they are. During my visit some of the Joss-House attendants were shooting off fire crackers; and I was told that this was an acceptable offering to the Chinese G.o.d. One who was selling small, slender incense sticks, said that you could burn them to drive away the devil, an excellent purpose certainly. He also said they were good to keep moths away. Doubtless in the Chinese mind there is a connection between moths and evil spirits; but you smile at all such puerilities. They belong to the childhood of the world and not to the beginning of the twentieth century. Among other creatures which they venerate are chickens and lions. They invest the lion with divine attributes on account of his majesty and power. But the chicken? Well, it is a gentle creature. It is the embodiment of motherhood and it speaks of care, not only to the Chinaman's understanding, but to ours also. The Divine Teacher, greater than Confucius, said: "How often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings!"

Will China, now waking out of the sleep of centuries, allow Him to gather her children together under the wings of His Cross? "And ye would not." Oh, what pathos in these few words! But doubtless they will. Many during the war of the Boxers were "gathered" unto Him, emulating the zeal and courage and faith of the martyrs of the early days of the Church. As the hen is sacred in the eyes of the Chinaman, sacred as the peac.o.c.k to Juno or the ibis to the Egyptians, they swear by her head, and an oath thus taken may not be broken.

One of the images which I saw in the Joss-House was pointed out as the G.o.d of the Door; and how suggestive this t.i.tle and this office!

Another figure, on the right side of the altar, which attracted my attention particularly was that of Toi Sin. He was dressed somewhat like a mandarin, and his head was bared, while tears as of blood were on his cheeks. He lived some three hundred years after the Advent of Christ; and owing to his disobedience to his parents, for which he was punished in his conscience, and otherwise, he grieved himself to death and wept tears of blood. His image, I was told, is placed in all Temples as a warning to children. It is a forceful lesson, and it is a timely warning. The one thing that is characteristic of a Chinaman is his filial piety. This filial piety was admired in all ages. It was inculcated in the old Hebrew Law and enforced with weighty considerations. It was a virtue among the Greeks as well as other peoples of the Gentile world; and I wonder not that when the heroes who captured Troy saw Aeneas carrying his aged father Anchises on his shoulders and leading his son, the puer Ascanius, by the hand, out of the burning city, they cheered him and allowed him to escape with his precious burden. A Chinaman is taught by precept and example to venerate his parents and to give them divine honors after death.

Should a Chinese child be disobedient he would be punished severely by the bamboo or other instrument, and he would bring on himself the wrath of all his family. This strong sense of filial piety has done more for the stability and perpetuity of the Chinese Empire than ought else. It is a great element of strength and it leads to respect for customs and to the observance of maxims. Especially are burial places held in sacred esteem, and as they contain the ashes of the fathers they must not be disturbed or desecrated. In this respect we might emulate the Chinese, for they are a perfect ill.u.s.tration of the old precept, "Honour thy father and thy mother," which, in a busy, independent age, there is danger of forgetting. But we look with no little interest on the Joss above the altar, the Chinese G.o.d. His name is Kwan Rung, and I am informed that he was born about two hundred years after the beginning of the Christian era. Such is the person who is wors.h.i.+pped here. That he may not be hungry food is placed before him at times, and also water to drink. It is a poor, weak human G.o.d after all, a dying, dead man. How different the Creator of the ends of the earth, Who fainteth not neither is weary! The Chinese have no conception of the true G.o.d. They cannot conceive of the beauty and power and compa.s.sion of Jesus Christ until they are brought into the light of the Gospel. But what is Chinese theology? What do they teach about the origin of the world and man and his destiny. The scholars tell us that the world was formed by the duel powers Yang and Yin, who were in turn influenced by their own creations. First the heavens were brought into being, then the earth. From the co-operation of Yang and Yin the four seasons were produced, and the seasons gave birth to the fruits and flowers of the earth. The dual principles also brought forth fire and water, and the sun and moon and stars were originated.

The idea of a Creator in the Biblical sense is far removed from the Chinese mind. Their first man, named Pw.a.n.ku, after his appearance, was set to work to mould the Chaos out of which he was born. He had also to chisel out the earth which was to be his abode. Behind him through the clefts made by his chisel and mallet are sun and moon and stars, and at his right hand, as companions, may be seen the Dragon, the Tortoise and the Phoenix as well as the Unicorn. His labours extend over a period of eighteen thousand years. He grew in stature at the rate of six feet every day, and when his work was finished he died.

The mountains were formed from his head, his breath produced the wind, and the moisture of his lips the clouds. His voice is the thunder, his limbs are the four poles, his veins the rivers, his sinews the wave-like motions of the earth, his flesh the fields, his beard the stars, his skin and hair herbs and trees, his teeth bones, his marrow metals, rocks and precious stones, his sweat rain, and the insects clinging to his body become men and women. Ah, how applicable the memorable line of Horace!

Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.

In regard to the spirits of the dead the Chinese believe that they linger still in the places which were their homes while alive on earth, and that they can be moved to pleasure or pain by what they see or hear. These spirits of the departed are delighted with offerings rendered to them and take umbrage at neglect. Believing also that the spirits can help or injure men they pray to them and make offerings to them. From this we can understand the meaning and object of ancestral rites. In these rites they honour and a.s.sist the dead as if they were alive still. Food, clothing and money are offered, as they believe they eat and drink and have need of the things of this life. Even theatrical exhibitions and musical entertainments are provided on the presumption that they are gratified with what pleased them while in the body. Now as all past generations are to be provided for, the Chinese Pantheon contains myriads of beings to be wors.h.i.+pped.

But think, what a burden it becomes to the poor man who tries conscientiously to do his duty to the departed!

Now this ancestral wors.h.i.+p leads to the deduction that it is an unfilial thing not to marry and beget sons by whom the line of descendants may be continued. Otherwise the line would cease, and the spirits would have none to care for them or wors.h.i.+p them.

The Chinese view of rulers or Kings is also striking. According to the belief prevalent regarding government, Heaven and Earth were without speech. These created man who should represent them. This man is none other than the Emperor their vicegerent. He is const.i.tuted ruler over all people. This accounts for three things; first, the superiority which the Chinese emperors a.s.sume over the kings and rulers of other countries; secondly, for the long-lived empire of China, it being rebellion against Heaven to lift up one's self against the Emperor; and in the third place it explains to us why divine honours are paid to him. He is a sacred person. He is in a certain sense a G.o.d. The view is similar to that entertained by the Roman Emperors, who, in inscriptions and on coins employed the term Deus, and at times exacted divine honours. As we turn from the Joss-House and walk away from this bit of heathendom in the heart of an active, stirring, prosperous, great American city with its Christian civilisation and its Christian Churches and its Christian homes, we cannot but ask ourselves what would have been the history of the Pacific States, of California with its nearly eight hundred miles of coast, if the Chinese had settled here centuries ago? If they had been navigators and colonizers like the Phoenicians of old, like the Greeks and Romans, if they had had a Columbus, a Balboa, a Cabrillo, a Drake, the whole history of the country west of the Rocky Mountains might have been totally different.

Millions of Chinamen instead of thousands might now be in possession of that great region of our land, and great cities like Canton and Fuchau, Pekin and Tientsin, might rise up on the view instead of San Diego and Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Francisco, with their idolatry and peculiar life and customs. Another question may be asked here by way of speculation. What would have been the effect of Chinese occupation of the Pacific coast on the Indians of all the region west of the Rocky Mountains? Would the followers of Confucius have incorporated them into their nationality, supplanted them, or caused them to vanish out of sight? What problems these for the ethnologist!

Doubtless there would have been intermarriages of the races with new generations of commingled blood. And what would have been the result of this? There is a story which I have read somewhere, that long years ago a Chinese junk was driven by the winds to the sh.o.r.es of California, and that a Chinese merchant on board took an Indian maiden to wife and bore her home to the Flowery Kingdom, and that from this marriage was descended the famous statesman Li Hung Chang.

But whatever the fortunes of the Indians, or the Chinese in their appropriation of the Pacific coast, it would not have been so advantageous to civilisation, to the progress of humanity. It would have been loss, and a hindrance to the Anglo-Saxon race destined now to rule the world and to break down every barrier and to set up the standard of the Cross everywhere for the glory of the true G.o.d. His hand is apparent in it all. He directs the great movements of history for the welfare of mankind, and He controls the destinies of nations for the advancement of His Kingdom!

CHAPTER XI

THE GENERAL CONVENTION OF 1901

First Services--Drake's Chaplain--Flavel Scott Mines--Bishop Kip--Growth of the Church in California--The General Convention in San Francisco--A Western Sermon--Personnel of the Convention--Distinguished Names--Subjects Debated--Missions of the Church--Apportionment Plan--The Woman's Auxiliary--The United Offering--Missionary Meeting in Mechanics'

Pavilion--College Reunions--Zealous Men--A Dramatic Scene--Closing Service--Object Lesson--A Revelation to California--Examples of the Church's Training--Mrs. Twing--John I. Thompson--Golden Gate of Paradise.