Inside Canton/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III.
Before traversing the streets of Canton, visiting its shops, conversing with its inhabitants, venturing into this labyrinth of houses, and mixing with this crowd of people, I should like to give the reader an idea of the appearance and position of this celebrated city. This topographical description will be in some measure the clue which I shall put into the hands of those who follow me into the labyrinth.
Canton is situated on the left shore of the Tchou-kiang. It occupies a space which cannot be gone round in less than six hours, stepping out quickly. The city is divided into three distinct parts, joined in a way together; its shape is a square, stretching from west to east; it is bounded on the south and west by the river, or, to speak more truly, by the floating town; on the east, by waste and marshy plains; and on the north, by sloping hills, which by degrees rejoin the mountains of the snowy clouds which are seen in the distance.
The three parts which form the capital of Kuang-ton are the suburbs and walled city, which is divided into the old or Tartar city, and the new or Chinese city. The suburbs, which, like the boulevards in Paris, are the best, handsomest, richest, and most commercial part of Canton, occupy on the south and west the ground between the Tchou-kiang and the walls of the two fortified cities, and on the east, where they lose their importance, some low and muddy land, on which are scattered a few huts. A wall which runs parallel with the river cuts in two the quadrilateral figure in which the official city is enclosed. The Tartar town, which is three times as large as the part called the Chinese town, lies to the north. Later, we shall see that this separation is owing to the minute precautions of a jealous policy.
These twin cities communicate together, and with the immense suburbs, by sixteen gates made in the walls. These sixteen openings are strictly guarded. It is in this double enclosure that the civil and military authorities reside, and entrance is formally denied to barbarians. When you look down from an elevated point on to the inhabited river and immense city, you are struck by the magnificence of the panorama. After having wandered over fertile plains, and after having fatigued itself by following the windings of Tchou-kiang, the moving dwellings of which are confused with the elegant buildings in the suburbs, the eye rests on the curved roofs of the two official cities. From the midst of this mass of houses, the polygonal towers of two pagodas rise like natural obelisks carved by the hand of time.
Now that the reader has, I hope, an approximate idea of the form and position of the capital of the two Kuangs—that is, of the three populations established on dry land—we will go through its innumerable streets. At the same time, I must inform my travelling companion that we shall not really leave the suburbs: we shall remain upon the legitimate soil. We will not overstep the limits which the distrustful jealousy of the Chinese has placed as a prison during the day, to European vanity. It is intentionally that I use the expression of "prison during the day;" for, during the night, our conceited countrymen first of all are shut up in a ghetto, like the Jews of the middle ages, and could not leave it without danger. They are incessantly menaced by the populace of the suburbs. These inhabitants of dry land have nothing in common with the polite and kind hosts of the floating-houses on the Tchou-kiang; they are a mob of rogues from Fo-kien and Kuang-ton, filled with hatred and envy. Nothing guarantees a stranger from the attacks of these wretches: the caprice of the moment, the wind which blows, a bad humour, are the only motives of their actions.
These idiots, who like you to visit their fortifications and temples, who, without any evil intention, give up to you their means of defence; and who expose the objects of their veneration to European scepticism, would bravely cut off your head, if you crossed the threshold of one of their houses—they would stone you if you entered into their walled cities. These horrible creatures, who grovel in the miserable hovels which cover a fetid plain to the east of the suburbs, will not allow strangers to approach the rich dwellings of the Imperial functionaries; these dirty and ragged beggars, who have never, except by a look, passed the lattice-work of the flower-boats, would feel hurt if barbarians elbowed their opulent countrymen on them.
Honour to whom honour is due! Before penetrating into those streets which are exclusively Chinese, we will visit the European ghetto and its cosmopolitan population. The factories are built on the south-east point of the suburb nearest to the shores of Tchou-kiang, and they form several streets which are at right angles with the river. Each factory consists of a suite of houses uniformly built, the whole of which resembles a vast building isolated on all sides, and nearly resembling the barracks in which Fourier's phalansteriens wished to shut up mankind. Formerly, there were thirteen similar edifices, which was the reason that the name of Thirteen Factories Street was given to a Chinese street which runs to the north of the European residences. These monumental constructions, beginning with the Hong-i-ho, or Creek Factory, and ending with the Hong-te-hing, or Danish Factory, extended from east to west. Now, the primitive line still remains, but the interior arrangements have undergone important modifications. It was on the following occasion:—On a day of public diversion, the inhabitants of the suburbs of Canton rushed to the hongs I-ho, Tsih-i, and Paou-ho, the English and Dutch factories, and set them on fire. These edifices have not been raised from their ruins—memorable witnesses of the intelligent justice of a Canton mob. Some temporary buildings have been constructed on the ground they occupied, and the foundation is hardly dug for the future English factory.
The Americans inhabit nearly the centre of this little town, and they have absorbed within their limits four ancient hongs known by the names of Paou-choun, Ma-ying, Soui, Loung-chun, and Fung-tai. At last, on the 26th of October, 1843, an incendiary, the effect of chance, came to the assistance of the popular demolishers, and destroyed two streets on the west. Whatever be the result of these changes, the little town of the barbarians has preserved its primitive appearance, and some of its streets bear names which seem to indicate that each of them is exclusively inhabited by merchants of the same nation, to the exclusion of all others. Thus there are a Danish, a Portuguese, a Spanish, and even a French factory; but these designations are quite arbitrary. In reality, of all the Western nations, the Americans only are at home, and have built at Canton a palace worthy of the conquerors of our age, of the rivals of the English, of the peaceful soldiers of prosperity and industry.
The interests of all the Christian nations in China are intimately united; and it is to be regretted that the French Government, the natural ally of all free governments, has not joined those of Great Britain and the United States to found on the shores of the Tchou-kiang a real western town, by uniting on one common spot the edifices which, according to the latest treaties, each nation has a right to erect at the open ports for purposes of commerce. This simultaneous act would have shown the Chinese the good understanding between all civilised nations; it would have insured the safety of our missionaries and merchants much better than the menacing preparations on board the fleets, protected by the flags of England, the United States, and France.
The part appropriated by the barbarians contains, nevertheless, three streets which are completely Chinese. One is celebrated in the memory of sailors. Europeans gave it the name of Hog Lane: in Chinese, San-taou-Lan. It lies between the ruins of the English hong and to the east of the American hong. Although you do not now see the unclean animal, there which gave it its name, that name still belongs to it by just right. It is a kind of low tavern, into which the Chinese invite the sailors, to sell them at a low price adulterated and fetid spirits. The numerous shops in this dark passage are at all hours the theatre of the most disgusting and licentious scenes of drunkenness. The two other Chinese streets are better frequented: one called Old China Street, and T'sing-youen by the Chinese, is situated between the French hong and an open place which joins the American hong; and the other, New China Street, or Toung-wan, comes after the French factory and precedes the Danish hong.
The banks of the Tchou-kiang, which runs through the district of the hongs, psesent from time to time convenient landing-places, round which are grouped flotillas of tankas, whose proprietors shout to you without ceasing, "My boat, captain? my boat?" But as soon as you leave the water's edge, and enter the house of any European merchant, a mournful silence succeeds to this tumult. The only one of these edifices which is worth the trouble of describing, is, as I have already said, the American hong. It is an immense building, the heavy facade of which, with its five doors, admits to five passages, or, to speak more correctly, five long streets. This phalanstery has only two storeys, and its roof, in the form of a terrace, offers to the proprietors a promenade which is more vast, but not more agreeable, than the square, planted with its trees and flowers, which is in front of it. I know nothing in the world so sad as this silent palace. It reminds you of one of those enchanted habitations in which some capricious fairy has imprisoned for centuries some prince who has denied her power. In the long passages, paved with flags of granite—in the vast and airy store-houses with vaulted roof—you never meet a woman or a child; you only see a few men of pale complexion wandering about like shadows, and silently giving orders to yellow-faced, half-naked porters, who in their turn obey without a word. There is but one sound which at intervals cheers the hearts of the unhappy captives, and makes them think of their families, from which they are so far distant, and of the joy of being one day seated before the parental hearth. I mean the sound of the piastres falling into the scales! The silvery sound tells them that the fairy who has them in her power is not inexorable, and that soon the joyful ring will sound the hour of their deliverance.
The Americans and the English are the real heroes of this century. In going courageously to seek their fortunes in distant lands, they realise the only honourable conquests of the present time, and like all men who run great risks, it is not merely the love of money which urges them to these enterprises. These intelligent speculators are not, as is generally thought in France, avaricious usurers; the majority of them are men gifted with powerful minds, and who, in the delicacy of their sentiments, carry us back to the periods of Amadis and Galaor. It was reserved for our witty nation to discover that these courageous merchants, who condemn themselves to a perilous and voluntary exile in order to share the riches acquired by their own labour with some loved one at home, were devoid of all poetic sentiment, and had ingots of gold in place of hearts! I have known a great many of these hardy adventurers, who lived in this commercial Bœotia without complaining that they were not understood by the bankers of their own country, and by the tea-dealers of the Celestial Empire, possessing as their sole consolation in the midst of their irksome labour, the hope that one day they would see again some fair head which was then hidden in some corner of Kentucky, in the mountains of Scotland, or the sweet cottages of Albion. I can affirm that the steamer which brings to those sad edifices, the factories, the European or American mail, distributes almost as many soft protestations and tender oaths as commercial bills and inexorable accounts. And those impassible merchants, who unseal without emotion a missive on which sometimes depends their entire fortune, often tremble all over in opening the letter of a young girl, to whom they communicate all their successes. If I had time, I would relate some of these secret histories which have had no witnesses but the cold walls of this severe monument—this commercial monastery—and some English or American cottage, and no intermediaries but some unhappy sheets of paper which arrived at their destination impregnated with marine effluvia, and already several months old! I am sure that these secret dramas, genuine pictures of real life, would be found interesting even after the perusal of our modern novels, whose heroes, in their amorous phrensy, might cleave mountains, rifle pedestrians, and set the universe on fire, in order to obtain their fair one, but who would be incapable of adding up figures and of working like journeymen for her sake.
The ground floor of each factory is devoted exclusively to store-rooms; beneath the sheds are the scales in which the money is weighed, for it is never counted. The weighing concluded, a Chinese is intrusted to examine the piastres. The operator is generally a quasi-gentleman; a man in a long dress of blue silk, with his pig-tail well plaited, and his head protected by a cap, who sits down with his legs crossed by the side of the balance, and examines one after the other every piece of money. This rival of Arcet and Laurent has no need either of a lamp-stove, nor of a coppel in order to test the money; touch, sight, and smell are sufficient for him. The Chinese tester can easily dispense with taste, but the loss of any other sense would render him unfit for his trade. When he doubts the genuineness of a piece of money, he passes it slowly between his forefinger and thumb, examines it with care, smells it, and then placing it on his left thumb-nail, which is inordinately long, tosses it suddenly in the air, and catching it again on this horny projection, listens attentively to the sound. This last experiment is generally decisive, and the piastre is either accepted or rejected. In the former case he marks it with a puncheon, which bears a Chinese character adopted by the merchant who puts it into his coffers. This mark is sufficient to cause the acceptance of the piece by the retail dealers; and when it is thus stamped, if it is afterwards discovered to be false, it can be given back to the last merchant, who has guaranteed its genuineness. But it can be understood to what inconveniences such a system must give rise; those Chinese who are not very scrupulous, imitate the marks of the most honourable English and American houses, and then take them the false money which is thus fraudulently stamped. Then the tester is called for again, and decides finally as to the lawfulness of the demand.
The piastres are sometimes stamped through with such a number of characters that they are quite disfigured, and look like so much metallic lace. But this accumulation of stamps is intended almost always to conceal some fraud; either the pieces have not the legal weight, or the holes made by the punching have been filled up with some alloy.
In the great commercial houses, the comprador—that is to say, the man entrusted with the purchases of the house—acts as tester; but at Macao and Canton there are some persons who make it a special profession, and who go from house to house to verify the sums received. I saw at M. de Lagrené's a man who was a type of the class. When he had money to examine, he took up his position beneath the verandah of the embassy, and went conscientiously to work. But he only used his right hand; his left seemed to be paralysed, and to be condemned to perpetual repose, the fact being that each finger was surmounted by a nail whose length was greater than that of the finger itself.
These pieces of yellow horn were frightful; they were like those wax puppets which the conjurors of the streets exhibit with their dirty fingers to the great admiration of little children. He never used his left hand, except when it was necessary to spin some doubtful piastre in the air. The Chinese men of fashion leave these exaggerations to parvenus who ape the gentleman, and do not wear their nails any longer than ourselves. This man told me that he took a great deal of trouble in order to avoid breaking his hideous claws; he shut them up every evening in a bamboo case. I proposed to amputate his hand so that he might keep it carefully preserved in a drawer, and thus prevent the great misfortune which he dreaded so much.
The first floor of the American factory is devoted to the offices. The clerks go there the first thing in the morning, and come away at four in the afternoon. From this moment they are free to go and dine and to walk about the enclosure of the square in front of the hong. The whole of the second storey is divided into a multitude of apartments, great and small; it even includes the most modest cells, so that, still according to the phalansterian principle, each one may find an habitation corresponding to his position and fortune in this magnificent palace.
In the evening, the American garden is the rendezvous of all the European residents, who go there chiefly for the sake of the sea breeze. These reunions, which are composed almost entirely of men, are remarkable for the excellent manner in which all present are dressed. The young merchants are nearly all in yellow gloves, the clergymen of course wearing their white neckerchiefs. This stiffness has a certain beneficial influence; it does not allow the relations existing between the exiles to degenerate into undue intimacy. What the French call camaraderie has a disastrous effect in the confined space of a ship, or on the small tract of land conceded to the factories; sufficient protection does not exist for the dignity of the individual. A man, whoever he may be, must always lose by being seen every moment without preparation, as by permitting indiscreet questions concerning his intimate impressions and thoughts. The Americans and the English, who have understood this, have imposed a limit to familiarity which is never crossed.
After walking about for some time they return home, assemble for some hours at the house of a friend, or go out upon the terrace of the palace. Alas! it is not, as on the borders of the Bosphorus, the song of a fair odalisque that descends from the height of this aërial promenade. If the voice of a woman is raised in the midst of this group of men, it is certainly one whose discreet lips have never pronounced a tender confession, nor permitted an amorous sigh to escape them. Such is the life of the European merchants—laborious, monotonous, and somewhat contemplative.
Some of these young merchants possess elegant pleasure-boats, in which they row about on the Tchou-kiang. Not being able to make use of their legs in this intolerant land, they are determined, at all events, to exercise their arms on the water. This fatiguing amusement always provokes the mirth of the corpulent mandarins, who are unable to understand how any one can row or dance for his own pleasure.
The other factories are inhabited by Europeans whose mode of life is quite identical with that which I have just described. At the same time, the merchants of other nations differ essentially in manners, language, and dress from the English and Americans, whose cold, reserved, and dignified attitude is well worthy their imitation.
As one of the streets in the quarter of the factories is called the French hong, I am obliged to speak of it, if only from humility. This double row of ugly houses belongs to my friend Pan-se-Chen. During our stay in China, our country had to hire No. 7, which was called the French Consulate, and it was there that our laborious commercial delegates resided. But upon the departure of M. de Lagrené's mission, France relieved herself of this burden, and for a certain time our flag ceased to fly in this port, where all nations of any importance exhibit their colours with pride. The Government of his Majesty Louis Philippe and that of the Republic had, it is true, a minister plenipotentiary in China, but he lived at Macao! that is to say, at a place where for years past there has not been a single Chinese official, and where the Governor has scarcely any communication with the official personages of the Celestial Empire. So that we, who unfortunately hare scarcely any commercial interests in the country—we, whose diplomatic action ought to be limited to an incessant political intervention in favour of the Catholics of the Celestial Empire—had agents who cared so little for the interests of our fellow-religionists, that, merely from motives of personal convenience, they live at a distance of thirty-five leagues from the residence of the Chinese functionaries. Instead of this, a French chargé d'affaires who wishes really to do his duty, ought to keep the cunning mandarins constantly in check; he ought to complain incessantly of the wrongs the Government has committed, of those which it commits now, and of those it may commit at any future period, towards the Catholics. It is only by means of continual and unflagging attacks, that the security of our missionaries and their disciples can be insured.
Leaving the wall which surrounds the American factory, and walking towards the east, we come to a noisy public place, the rendezvous of the Chinese populace; immediately adjacent is the street called "Old China," or, if the reader prefer it, "T'sing-youen;" then the French hong, and afterwards the street called "New China," or "Toung-wan."
These two streets, which have been often compared to our passages, are long alleys paved with slabs of granite, and covered over with mats, which preserve the pedestrian from the rain and the sun. At intervals there are certain aërial edifices of bamboo—kinds of bridges, on which the night-watchmen stand; and on each side of the street are shops with large windows and blinds. The houses of Old and New China Street consist of only one storey, the greater part of which is occupied by the stores. To form some idea of these two streets of European China, it is sufficient to imagine the gallery of the old Bains Chinois[1] turned into an entrepôt for all those lacquered and enamelled playthings, and all that common porcelain, which for some years past have blocked up the Palais Royal and several of our passages.
I never saw anything in China so stupidly dull as these two insipid passages and their trade. During three parts of the day there is not a soul to be seen; but as soon as a European heel resounds on the granite, every door exhibits a Chinaman with a naked head and a flat face, lighted up with an assumed smile, which is intended to tempt a customer to his shop. The most remarkable thing in T'sing-youen and Toung-wan is the perfect similarity of the houses, the shops, and the proprietors: the houses are not much more than four yards broad; the shops are carefully lacquered and varnished; and the proprietors, who are very stout, very fat, and as yellow as ochre, are all dressed in long blue robes, and fan themselves automatically with screens of painted silk.
Old China Street and New China Street form really, a part of the European ghetto; never does a Chinaman venture into them, especially if he wants to purchase anything. A native will no more go and be taken in by the traders there, than a Parisian will visit certain shops into which provincials and foreigners plunge. The shops in these two Chinese streets of the factories are, in reality, only make-shifts: if, some fine day or other, the sovereign mob of Canton were to prohibit the barbarians from repairing to the suburbs, a traveller, pressed for time, might, in an extreme case, purchase his curiosities in the above thoroughfares. He might also, on his return, assert that he had seen real Chinamen and brought back real Chinese porcelain and fans. Such, in truth, are these two celebrated passages, of which people talk so much. I can swear that, if there were nothing more curious to be seen at Canton, it would be better for anyone to remain in a faï-ting, in the midst of the floating city. I have described, as minutely and as exactly as I could, the European quarter of Canton. It is composed of some ten airy and solitary streets, and is inhabited, at most, by 200 barbarians, with red or black hair.
We will now enter China.
- ↑ On the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris.