It was represented to us, and so appeared upon observation, that the well known practice of compressing the feet of the females from their birth was a gradually declining custom. Some few middle-aged women were met with in the streets whose feet had been thus treated in infancy, and who hobbled about with much difficulty, but no young girls were to be seen thus hampered. When this hideous deformity has been adopted, the knee and ankle joints do not bend at all in walking; all movement is from the thigh joints, a mincing gait is imparted, and the arms swing from side to side, the whole body being at all times liable to topple over. A traveler is not competent, however, to speak of the higher classes of women, as no access is afforded to domestic life in wealthy families. Only women of the common class appear indiscriminately in public, Oriental exclusiveness wrapping itself about the sex in China nearly as rigidly as in Egypt. If women go abroad at all, it is in curtained palanquins, quite hidden from the public eye, or at most only partially visible through semi-transparent veils of gauze. Anywhere east of Italy woman is a toy or a slave.
The European portion of Hong Kong consists almost entirely of one broad avenue, called Victoria Road, which is the Broadway or Washington Street of the city, and which runs parallel with the shore front, from which it is separated by a single block. This thoroughfare is well paved, and is mostly lined with attractive stores, hotels, and club-houses, with a few dwellings intermixed. The intersecting streets are in many cases so steep as to be ascended by broad stone steps, like portions of Naples and Rome. After leaving the Victoria Road, one plunges immediately into Chinese life among narrow lanes and crowded, dirty abodes, like China Town at San Francisco, such dwellings as are only to be found in the midst of a miserable and degraded condition of humanity. The river or harbor front is lined with lofty European warehouses, and some good residences, – half devoted to business, however, the locality being mostly given up to the requirements of commerce. It will be remembered that Hong Kong is an island, nearly forty miles in circumference, consisting of a cluster of hills rising almost to the dignity of mountains. The gray granite, of which the island is mostly composed, affords an excellent material for building purposes, and is largely employed for that object. Nearly all the public buildings are constructed of this granite, which presents a fine appearance, and affords good opportunity for architectural display.
The side-wheel steamer Han Kow was taken for a passage up the Pearl River to Canton, the commercial capital of China, situated a little less than one hundred miles from Hong Kong. The steamer had some two or three hundred Chinese passengers, who were partitioned off in a part of the vessel by themselves, and securely locked, away from the European passengers. In the cabin, ranged about the foremast, were a dozen loaded repeating arms, rifles, and pistols for the use of the whites, in case the Chinese should rise and attempt an act of piracy by taking the ship. This has more than once been done upon the Pearl River, and the steamboat company now goes prepared to visit condign punishment upon such offenders.
In passing up the river, on board the Han Kow, a fine view was afforded of the farming and vegetation of the country. Banana, orange, sugar-cane, and tea culture, in their various stages, were in distinct view, the steamer at times nearly grazing the right or left bank, and being obliged to move slowly on account of shallow water in the winding channel. Strange birds, brilliant flowers, and remarkable trees trained to grow in the shape of men and animals, were seen bordering the plantations. Great fertility of soil, however it might be induced, was manifested on all hands, and the vegetation exhibited tropical luxuriance. The number of small fishing-boats upon the river was quite marked, showing from whence came a large percentage of the daily food of the humbler classes. These boats seemed to be almost entirely rowed and managed by women, always with the inevitable baby at their backs, sometimes sleeping, sometimes gazing vacantly about, but always quiet and contented.
The river is nearly two miles broad on an average, sometimes opening into bays of considerable size, six or eight miles across, and thus forming a water-way of immense importance in a country where railroads are unknown. The canals and rivers of China are her great dependence, her inland highways or roads being unworthy of the name, – exhibiting one of the most prominent features of the lack of national enterprise. China looks to the past, not to the future. Some advance has been forced upon her in the art of war. She no longer fights with fans, gongs, and fire-crackers, but "shoots bullets every time," as the French found to their most serious cost very lately. The remoteness of the country from the centres of civilization, the exclusiveness of the government, the almost incomprehensible character of the spoken language, – entirely different from the written tongue, – has always excited curiosity, and thrown a halo of romance over everything Chinese. This false glamour, however, disappears, like dew before the sun, by personal observation, and is superseded by something like a sense of contempt. The missionaries of science, commerce, and of religion have done much within the last twenty years to dispel the extravagant ideas entertained of the Celestial Empire, and have shown us that the race is by no means celestial, but a people very much like the rest of the Eastern nations, certainly no more civilized.
Canton is the strangest of all strange cities, and perhaps the most representative one in China. With a population of a million and a half, it has not a street within its walls over eight feet wide. Horses and vehicles are unknown. Even the useful and comfortable jinrikisha could not be used here, where everything to be moved must be transported on human shoulders. The city extends to about a distance of four miles on the banks of the Pearl River, and fully a hundred thousand people live in boats along the river front. The families occupying these sampans will average at least four individuals; a man and wife with two children, – frequently there are half a dozen of the latter. These boats are about twenty feet long and five wide. But a small portion of the after part has any covering, and the cooking is done in the bow. Here the family live, – cook, eat, and sleep, knowing no other home. The youngest children are often seen tied to the thwarts, and if they tumble overboard they are easily pulled back again.
There are hundreds of temples distributed over the city, many of which were visited and found to be crowded with idols and idlers, though we never saw a Chinaman praying in them. The corner of nearly every street, as well as numerous stores and dwelling-houses, have each an idol and small shrine on which incense is kept burning all the time, and every day of the year. The whole city is permeated with the smell of this highly scented incense, and though used in such small individual quantities the consumption in the aggregate must be very large. Of the numerous temples and pagodas in Canton probably the most famous is that of the Temple of the Five Hundred Gods, containing that number of gilded statues of Buddhist sages, apostles, and deified warriors. The expressions on the features of this large number of statues were remarkable in the fact that they all differed essentially from each other; otherwise they were exceedingly commonplace.
Every sort of manufacture or business is performed in the most primitive manner by hand, machinery of any sort being scarcely known; but personal service or labor is so cheap that it even competes with machinery. One is surprised as to how such a crowded community can exist in such an inconsiderable space; whole families live and sleep in a single small room. The Chinese, in point of domestic comfort and cleanliness, are a century behind the Japanese; and this remark will apply as well to nearly all the relations of life. There is less of nudity here than in the latter country; but, so far as one can judge by brief observation and inquiry, morality is at a lower gauge in China than in Japan. It is doubtless as true here as elsewhere, that "one touch of nature makes the whole world kin," but you lack the touch of nature. With the Japanese the traveler feels himself sympathizing. He goes among them freely, he enters their houses and drinks tea with them, but not so with the Chinese; here we realize no sense of affiliation, but rather one of repulsion. The universal amusement is that of gambling, and the means whereby the people gratify this passion are endless. Dominos, and several similar games, are most popular in connection with cards, the latter game, however, differing very materially from our own. The Chinese cards number a hundred to the pack. Cock fighting is universal, and is as much of a national game as at Manilla.
Our guide, who was an intelligent and high-caste native, took us into one of the opium dens, to be found in nearly every street of Canton, and where we saw the victims of the terrible indulgence in the several stages of debasement. A number of the smokers appeared to be men of average health and strength, but all had the dull, vacant eye and attenuated forms of the victims of this insidious habit. It was curious to hear the guide stoutly defend the use of the opium pipe. He declared that it lengthened, not shortened, life; besides which he insisted that with opium one lived a double life, and therefore he lived twice as long as he would do without it. "Europeans get drunk," said he, "and have nasty headache; Chinaman smokes opium, enjoys paradise on earth, but has no headache." Of course one cannot argue with an opium consumer to any good effect. The habit once acquired is never successfully abandoned. There is always some hope of reform for a drunkard, but for an opium-eater, never. No statistics of a reliable character as to the quantity of the deadly drug which is consumed in China can be obtained, but the aggregate amount, large as it is known to be, is yet increasing. All the opium which can be obtained from India is consumed here, beside that which is raised in China; the former by the wealthier classes, the latter by the poor, – the home product being cheaper and much inferior in quality.
The temples generally seemed to abound with votive offerings; but the one aim, so far as we could understand, was to appease the wrath of malignant deities. These gods, it would appear, are largely composed of departed ancestors, and the power of such spirits for mischief is the most prominent article of Chinese faith. In one temple was observed the hermetically sealed coffin of some lately defunct citizen, beside whose casket an abundant meal of cooked rice and vegetables was conspicuously placed. This preparation of food for the dead and buried is not, however, an exclusive Chinese idea. We have also seen food placed by the side of newly-made Italian graves at Genoa and Pisa, and our Western Indians bury arms, clothing, and dried meats with the bodies of deceased warriors. It is known that reverence for parents is the leading moral precept of Chinese faith, and more than that, it is lived up to upon earth by all classes, and when these parents die they are addressed spiritually and reverentially as guardians. At the entrance of the temples there are always two large, gilded wooden figures or idols, considered as a sort of presiding guard over the place.
We visited the Temple of Honan, a place of great sanctity to the natives. The service is conducted by a college of Buddhist priests resident within its walls. The institution consists of a group of shrines or demi-temples dedicated to special gods, and standing within enclosed courts, shaded by trees of great height, size, and age, the grounds covering many acres. At the main entrance are placed, as usual, two hideous idols of colossal size, figures half animal and half human in design, with strangely distorted countenances. Here the shaven-headed priests were busy performing rites and chanting before burning incense and lighted candles, after the Roman Catholic style. Within an enclosure were a number of sacred hogs, wallowing in filth like any other swine. Some lively Chinese boys mounted the largest of these, and extracting a few of the "sacred" bristles offered them to us for pennies. Upon our inquiring as to the final disposition of these animals, our guide, himself a remarkably dignified native, with "millions" of self-conceit, admitted that the fattest of the lot would probably be eaten in due season. We shall often have occasion, in these notes, to see how low poor humanity in its blindness can descend, groveling after strange gods. When trying to analyze the frame of mind which probably actuated these people in making sacred objects of swine, the thought suggested itself that after all it might be an instinctive groping of ignorance after light and truth. Crude, and even disgusting as it appears to an intelligent Christian, it has its palliating features. The Parsee worships fire, the Japanese bows before foxes and snakes, the Hindu deifies cows and monkeys. Why should not the Chinese have their swine as objects of veneration? There are certain forms of what is called Christian worship which are by no means above comparison with even Chinese extravagance.
Within the walls of this Temple of Honan was a spacious and curious garden, where the dwarf trees and flowering shrubs were ingeniously trimmed to make them grow in the forms of various animals; and here was a large pond of the sacred lotus in bloom, the thin, soft, white velvety leaves displaying every line and vein in their formation. The fragrance was very delicate. In the poetical language of the East the lotus is called the "goddess" as we call the rose the "queen" of flowers. We were here shown the cremating ovens in which the bodies of the departed priests are disposed of, and also the crude cells and the large refectory of the order. But somehow these priests, who pretend to lead such lives of self-denial, are wonderfully round and unctuous in personal appearance. Our visit to the Temple of Honan was a very curious and not uninteresting experience, made up of a strange conglomerate of swine, priests, fat idols, flower gardens, human roasting ovens, and pond lilies.
All over Canton may be seen lofty towers, square in form, which dominate the town. Our guide called these warehouses, or storehouses for the safe keeping of goods, they being both fire-proof and thief-proof. But further inquiry proved them to be a series of pawnbroker's establishments. In summer the average Chinaman pawns his winter clothing, and other articles not in actual use, thus enabling him to employ more capital in his business, whatever it may be. When the cold weather comes he redeems his needed clothing, and the same with other articles. So universal is this practice that hundreds of these tower-like pawning places are required to meet the demands of the citizens. As these establishments are supposed to be fire-proof, they do certainly afford a place of safety for valuable articles not in use, the owner paying storage in the form of interest for the money loaned, the goods being security.
The dwelling-house and pleasure-grounds of the late Poon-tin-qua, a distinguished and rich Chinaman, were visited, and proved to be typical of all Chinese pictures. Here were airy summer-houses, pavilions, bridges, rockeries, and ornamental sheets of water, as we see these things represented on lacquered ware, decorated China dishes, and fans. It was really very curious and amusing, and showed much of luxurious life, – even a private theatre being contained in the establishment. Though all seem to be deserted now and somewhat neglected, still the garden showed us roses, camellias, azaleas, lilies, and green shrubs trained in the usual grotesque manner, not forgetting the dwarf trees, which seem to give this people great satisfaction when successfully cultivated.
As regards the punishment of crime in Canton, one would look in vain for justice, but there is plenty of cruelty. We visited the execution yard, a circumscribed space in the very heart of the city. Here, our guide told us, twenty condemned prisoners were executed weekly, by decapitation, each Friday being devoted to clearing the docket. The executioner takes off a head with one stroke of the sword, and the guide said he had witnessed the decapitation of eleven heads in seven minutes. Through a grating in the wall of the yard, an open area was seen where a crowd of manacled prisoners were sitting upon the ground, no shelter being afforded them night or day. The place was more filthy than a cattle-pen, – so offensive that we remained but a few moments. It is doubtful if anywhere else in the world such barbarous carnage and cruelty exists, under the guise of legal punishment.
Much has been said about the wonderful Water-clock of Canton, but it is actually a very simple and crude mode of measuring time, which any smart Yankee school-boy would improve upon. It consists of four tubs of water, located one above the other on a wooden frame, each dripping slowly into the one below it, the last being furnished with a float, the rise of which is measured on a graduated scale, indicating units of time; and such is the famous Water-clock of Canton. We were not disposed to walk any more than was necessary in the public streets, where the foulest odors assailed us at every step, and disgusting sights met the eye in the form of diseased individuals of the most loathsome type. The stranger is jostled by staggering coolies, with buckets of the vilest contents, or importuned for alms by beggars who thrust their deformed limbs into his very face. It is but natural to fear contagion of some sort from contact with such creatures, and yet the crowd is so dense that it is impossible to entirely avoid them. Underfoot the streets are wet, muddy, tortuous, and slippery, so that one comes from them with a feeling that a hot bath is an immediate necessity. Why some deadly pestilence does not at once break out and sweep away the people is a mystery. We know that the Ghetto at Rome, which forms the most filthy part of the Eternal City, was entirely spared when the rest of the place was decimated by cholera; but Canton generally is far dirtier than the Roman Ghetto.
As we found it almost impossible to traverse the streets of Canton on foot, we were carried, each person, in a palanquin, upon the shoulders of four coolies. These vehicles can make their way through the narrow streets, but cannot turn round in them without going to some open space where several streets meet. The bearers trudge along, keeping step with each other, and uttering a loud, peculiar cry to clear the way, reminding one of the gondoliers on the canals of Venice. People were obliged to step into shops and doorways, or flatten themselves against buildings, in order to make room for us to pass in the palanquins, but they did so with a good grace and took it quite as a matter of course. Whenever we stopped for a trifling purchase or to visit some point of interest, a small crowd was sure to collect. The narrow lanes are lined in many sections by stores containing very attractive goods, curiosities, silks, fine China ware, ivory, scented woods, mother-of-pearl and carved tortoise shell, all goods of native manufacture. The remarkable patience and imitative skill of the Chinese enables them to produce very choice goods in these lines of art. The shops being all open in front, the entire contents can be seen by the passers-by. Many of these passages are covered over at the top by matting, which effectually excludes the sun, and, indeed, much other light, so that they often have a sombre and dreary appearance.
It was interesting to watch the operation of the primitive hand-loom in which is woven the favorite Canton silk. The fabric is beautiful and expensive, being sold by the pound in place of by the yard, as with us. Men and boys only engage in silk weaving. Women assume the heavier and more exposed branches of labor, and of out-door-life, besides lugging their infants. Some of the lofty and utterly useless pagodas, which are over twelve hundred years old, are quite unique in architecture and ornamentation. One was visited which was nine stories high, measuring in a vertical line about two hundred feet. Observing a woman at one of the shrines fanning an idol, the guide was asked for an explanation. He said that the woman would presently take this fan home with which to fan some sick person, and from this process would hope for miraculous intervention in behalf of the suffering one. "And do you believe there is any efficacy in such a proceeding?" we asked. "You would call it the result of credulity and imagination," was his intelligent reply, "but I have seen some wonderful cures brought about after this manner. Do not people, who call themselves Christians, believe in prayer?" "Most certainly," we replied. "Well," continued the guide, "this is simply Chinese prayer." After this explanation, the queer proceeding of fanning an idol seamed less strange. That was certainly a good answer, – calling it Chinese prayer.
Undoubtedly our type of features is repulsive to the average Chinaman, certainly his is very much so to us. One looked in vain among the smooth chins, shaved heads, and almond eyes of the crowd for signs of intelligence and manliness. There are no tokens of humor or cheerfulness to be seen, but in its place there is plenty of cunning, slyness, and deceit, if there is any truth in physiognomy. The men look like women and the women like children, except that their features are so hard and forbidding. The better classes wear a supercilious expression of features that makes the toes of one's boots tingle; and yet in all the shops there is a cringing assiduity to get all the silver and pennies from the outside barbarians that is possible. In the streets there was a most unmistakable surliness exhibited that would have broken into forcible demonstration as we passed through them only for the instinctive cowardice of the Asiatics. It is quite impossible to express what a strange sea of life these narrow Canton streets exhibited, as we floated through them in palanquins upon the shoulders of the coolies. Their filth dominated all other characteristics, and forced upon the memory Charles Lamb's remark to his friend, when he said: "Martin, if dirt was trumps, what a hand you would hold."
Philanthropic societies are numerous in the cities of China, hardly exceeded in variety and excellence of design by those of Europe and America. These embrace well-organized orphan asylums, institutions for the relief of indigent widows with families, homes for the aged and infirm, public hospitals, and free schools in nearly every district. As with ourselves, some of these are purely governmental charities, others are supported by liberal endowments left by deceased citizens. Depots for the distribution of medicines to the poor are numerous, and others exist for distributing clothing to the needy. One organization was mentioned to us which supplied coffins to the poor, and bore the expenses of burial. Among the dense population of the country there must be ample occasion for the exercise of such charities. It must be remembered that these societies and organizations are not copied from European or American models; they have existed here from time immemorial.
Philologists have vainly endeavored to trace any affinity between the Chinese language and that of other nations, ancient or modern. It is unique, – an original tongue, and, what is equally remarkable, no other nation, except the neighboring Japanese, have ever borrowed from it, or amalgamated any of its elements with their own. It must have risen in its written form from the untutored efforts of a primitive people. Like the Egyptian tongue, it was at first probably composed of hieroglyphics, which, in the course of time, became symbolic as they stand to-day.
The foreign population of Canton, American, English, French, etc., live upon a spacious and beautiful island by themselves. The island is connected with the city proper by a stone bridge having iron gates, through which no native is permitted to pass unless in the domestic employment of the residents, and then they are obliged to show their written permits each time to the guard on duty at the gate of the bridge. All of the foreign consuls with their families reside here in elegant quarters, surrounding their European style of dwellings with fine gardens, trees, and pleasant walks, and here they extend to travelers hospitality only too open-handed and generous. They are completely isolated from the outer world socially, and intelligent visitors from abroad are cordially welcomed by them.
An inexhaustible agricultural capacity remains unimproved in China, and the same may be said of her rich store of mineral wealth, which, under American enterprise and facilities, would soon revolutionize the country in its products and exports. Save the districts which are traversed by the canals, the present means of communication between different parts of the country are scarcely superior to those of Central Africa. The so-called national roads are nearly impassable. No other country in the world would be so surely and rapidly benefited by a thorough system of railroads as would China. Gold and silver are found in nearly every province of the Empire, the former being still procured by the most primitive processes, such as washing the river sands by hand, which are recharged by the freshets from the mountains, – a mode that would satisfy only Chinese labor. Coal is the most widespread, most valuable, and most accessible of all the buried treasures. If the twelve thousand miles of coal-fields have made Great Britain the workshop of the world, what may not be anticipated from the four hundred thousand square miles of Chinese coal-fields, which are capable of supplying the whole world, at the present rate of consumption, for thousands of years?
The depressing monotony in the customs, habits, and ideas of the Chinese, as contrasted with their neighbors, the Japanese, forces itself upon the notice of the traveler. There is no variety among the race, either in manners, dress, or architecture; one section of the country seems precisely like another, so far as the people are concerned, however widely divided, and all follow one model. There is no individuality. They look to the past not to the future. There is no such possibility as a nation's standing still; it either retrogrades or progresses. China, whose people do everything in a left-handed manner, advances like a crab, backwards. It would seem as if she must eventually dry up and die of old age; and yet, within the limits of the Chinese Empire is probably comprised one fourth of the human race. Strive as much as we may to be fair and liberal, it is yet impossible to disguise our strong dislike to the people whom we were now about to leave. A sense of relief on departing from pestilential Canton was inevitable, and there was little to attract us longer at Hong Kong, to which city we returned in the steamship Powan.
It is not wise to shut our eyes to facts which have passed into history, or be too strongly influenced by personal prejudice. The Chinese have long been a cultured, reading people. Their veritable records take them back to the days of Abraham. Five hundred years before the art of printing was known to Europe, books were multiplied by movable types in China, and her annals thereby preserved. Whatever of ignorance may attach to the people as it regards matters extraneous to their empire, the detailed and accurate knowledge of their own country and its statistics is evident enough from the elaborate printed works in the native tongue. Every province has its separate history in print, specifying its productions, a brief record of its eminent men, and of all matters of local importance. Reliable maps of every section of the country are extant. The civil code of laws is annually published and corrected. In the departments of science relating to geography and astronomy, they have long been well advanced. A certain amount of education is universal, eight tenths of the people being able to read and write. The estimate in which letters are held is clear, from the fact that learning forms the very threshold that leads to fame, honor, and official position. Competitive examination is the mode by which office is disposed of, those who hold the highest standard of scholarship bearing off the palm. The art of printing has been referred to as having its origin in China. In two other important discoveries this nation long precedes Europe; namely, in the use of gunpowder and the magnetic compass, the knowledge of which traveled slowly westward through the channels of Oriental commerce, by way of Asia Minor or the Red Sea. It is only just and fair for us to look on both sides of the subject.
On the night of December 11th, being the day previous to that of our departure from Hong Kong, a slight shock of earthquake was experienced, recalling a similar event at Yokohama; but as these are not of uncommon occurrence in either place, little was thought or said about the matter. We embarked on the P. and O. steamship, Brindisi, for Singapore, by the way of the China Sea and the Gulf of Siam. The northeast monsoon favored us, as we rushed like a race-horse over the turbulent sea, with a following gale, – the threatening waves appearing as if they would certainly engulf us if they could catch up with the stern of the ship. The Philippine Islands were given a wide berth, as we steered southward towards the equator. The cholera was raging among the group; and in illustration of the fact that misfortunes never come as single spies, but in battalions, Manilla, the capital, had just been nearly destroyed by a typhoon. Leaving Borneo on our port bow as we neared the equatorial line, the ship was steered due west for the mouth of the Straits lying between the Malay Peninsula and the Island of Sumatra.