Through China with a camera/Chapter 3

Chinese Guilds—Hongkong—Native Boats—Shopkeepers—Artists—Music Halls.

Gambling is a phase of Oriental vice to which the Chinese are peculiarly addicted, and was at one time farmed by the Government, but the ordinance was eventually suppressed. The licensing system, during its short career, contributed about 14,000 dollars a month to the Treasury, and judging from local statistics, naturally aided in the suppression of crime. It was, besides, supposed to maintain a higher moral tone among the native police, who, when secret gambling-houses flourish, are seduced continually by bribes into dereliction of duty and corruption. One of the difficulties in carrying out the plan was the conscientious scruple, which, apparently, even affected the promoters of the measure, as to the application of a constantly accumulating fund derived from a source so polluted. It was even suggested to drop it silently into the sea and have done with it. All I would say is, if the policy of sheltering this particular vice, in order to effect a diminution of crime in the Colony, was sound, the proceeds of the gambling-farm might

have been wOj.thily employed in rendering the police-force

_{Street Gambling.}

St ill more efficient, and in lightening the burden of taxation

borne by the colonists. But, as I have no desire to criticise government measures, I will simply state that, on the same lines, the policy adopted of bringing disorderly houses under the direct supervision of the government by licensing, had also to be abandoned, although the results, as far as statistics show, proved the wisdom of the measure.

During the time when gambling-houses were under supervision, they became the open resort of most respectable-looking Chinese; patterns one would suppose of native virtue. It took me by sur- prise, when visiting a gaming-house, to find one or two native shopkeepers, otherwise noted for respectability, busily engrossed at the table. The room in which I found them was nearly square, and the ceiling had been pierced with an opening leading to the next floor or gallery. This gallery was filled with a silent party of players, some of whom were bending over, looking down upon a long table spread before us. A close-shaven, placid Chinaman on the right of the table acted as banker, and before him an orderly array of coins and bank-notes were spread out on the table. It was surprising to note the speed with which he reckoned up the winnings and interest on the smallest sums, deducting a seven-per-cent commission from the gains of every transaction; behind him an assistant weighed the dollars, broken silver and jewellery of the players, then at his side was the book-keeper, and on the left the teller. On the centre of the table lay a square pewter slab crossed with diagonal lines, and the sections thus formed bore the numbers, one, two, three and four respec- tively. The player was at liberty to stake on any of these numbers, when, unless he ventured on two numbers separately and at once, he would have three to one against him, plus seven per cent on his winnings should he succeed. Some men spend the entire day in the house, and on starting, open an account with the bank, which is kept carefully posted on a pewter slab before them, and balanced at the close of the day. When the stakes are made, some are dropped from the upper gallery in a small basket attached to a cord. The teller, who conducted the vital part of the business, sat there serene and stolid, closely watched in spite of his seeming probity and hon- our. His sleeves were short, nearly up to his arm-pits; before him, on the table, lay a pile of polished cash, from this he took a handful, placed it on a clear space and covered it with a brass cup. After the stakes were made, the cup was removed, and the teller proceeded with the extreme end of an ivory wand to pick out the cash in fours, the remaining number being that which wins. Before the pile is half counted, provided there are no split coins or trickery in the game, a habitual player can always tell, with puzzling accuracy, what the remainder will be, and at this stage of the game one observes a striking pecu- liarity in the Chinese character. There are no passionate excla- mations, no noisy excitement, no outbursts of delight, no deep cursing of adverse fate. It is only in the faces of the players one can see the signs of emotion, or the sullen determination to carry on at all hazards, until Fortune smiles once more, or leaves them beggared at the board.

Native gambling is not confined to gaming-houses, it is carried on in clubs and private abodes, in the highways and at the corners of streets by labourers in their leisure moments; even children will form a ring round a vendor of sweets and stake their cash in the attempt to win a double share of his condiments. Lotteries are also in great vogue in China at all times; for these, tickets are sold on which a series of numbers

are engrossed; the purchaser pays his cent and marks ten of

_{Pepohonan Woman, Formosa.}

_{Cantonese Girl.}

the numbers, those which by some secret process of his own he

selects as the lucky set. The marked ticket is then paid in, and the holder receives a duplicate marked in the same way. On the day of drawing, the numbers are supposed to be dealt with by a mystic being or spirit, whose abode is darkness ; he who holds three of the winning numbers gets back his money in full, and he who holds the ten numbers gets back six thou- sand times his stake. This banker not unfrequently pockets fifty per cent as his profit for managing the lottery. Although gambling is a popular Chinese vice, it does not, so far as I am aware, meet with recognition from the Chinese Government, and this is all the more astonishing as it might be made to contri- bute largely to the Imperial revenue.

I have already noticed the floating population of Hongkong, a community which suffers great loss during the storms or ty- phoons common to the region. I had long been anxious to witness a typhoon, and I had my wish gratified on more than one occasion. The force of the wind at such times is more than I thought possible. It whirls ships helplessly adrift from their moorings, and I have seen them emerge from the storm with canvas torn to shreds, spars carried away, and masts broken off nearly flush with the deck. In Hongkong, the wind, with a sudden blast, has riven roofs from houses and blown them far inland, and has sent solid brick corners and projecting ve- randahs flying across the streets. Once while the tempest was at its height, I ventured down to the Praya, in time to see the crowd of Chinese boats and sailing craft that had been blown inshore and piled up in a mass of wreck below the city, at the western end of the beach. One or two intrepid foreigners had been there and had rescued a large number of the natives, but many more had gone down with their boats. The sky was dark and leaden, and there were moments when the wind abated only to gather fresh violence, catching up the crested waves and sending them in long white streaks of vapour across the scene, through which dismantled ships were dimly descried, drifting from their moorings, and steamers with steam up, ready for any emergency. Blinded by the waves as they leapt over the road and dashed against the houses, and lying forward on the wind, I at length reached the east end of the Praya, joining a number of foreigners who were attempting to rescue two women from a small Chinese boat. These women, seemingly greatly exhausted, were putting forth their last efforts to keep their tiny vessel in position and to prevent it from being dashed to pieces against the dislodged, jagged blocks of the Praya wall. Advantage was taken of a slight lull to fire off line-rockets, but these were driven back like feathers, against the houses ; then long-boats were dragged to the pier, but the first was wrecked in launching, the second met with a like fate and its gallant crew were pitched into the sea. Every effort proved abortive, and as darkness set in the poor women were reluc- tantly left to their fate.

The Chinese as I found them at home, under their own paternal Government, proved in some material respects different from their fellow-countrymen abroad. The large majority are engaged in manual labour of some sort, chiefly tillage, not be- cause of its lucrative nature, but because Mother Earth was the only friend they could trust to yield them subsistence for labour. Their rulers, represented to them by the nearest Mandarin and his crafty Yamen-runners, collectors of revenue, legitimate and otherwise, could be trusted only to gather their spoil. They were the far-reaching antennae of the Government, trained to a

degree of scientific nicety to leave blood enough in the body of

_{Group of Chinese Labourers, Hong Kong}

the patient husbandman, to enable him to continue his toil

without fainting, to supply his own modest wants and to fill the local treasury. But some seasons the crops fail, and the farmers having no resource whatever, perish in multitudes, of famine and disease. In some of the Western provinces, the people, noted for their independence, resist extortion by the ruling classes and live in comfort and even affluence. This limitation also applies to the merchants at the ports open to foreign trade ; many of them amass wealth and enjoy the protection of the local authorities, who, some of them, have money profitably invested in native commercial enterprises. The bulk of the officials, however, while they view commerce with contempt, do not scruple to levy extortionate exactions on trade, and to accept bribes to condone offences against the law, even to the extent of permitting a criminal to procure a substitute to suffer capital punishment in his stead. *

My first excursion into China proper was an ascent of the north branch of the Pearl river of Kwang-tung, accompanied by three Hongkong residents. This northern affluent joins the main stream at a point called "San Shui," or Three Waters, lying above Canton, about forty miles inland. To reach it we must pass through the Fatshan Creek, where Commodore Keppel fought his famous action in 1857. The town of Fatshan exceeds a mile in length ; the Creek passes right through its centre, and it is the nucleus of the great manufacturing districts of Southern China. Cutlery and hardware are the two chief industries, hence it is said to be the Sheffield of Cathay. It appeared strange to me after examining the native wares, that similar articles of superior English make had done so little to supplant the industry of the

• Meadow's Notes on China. Fatshan factories. This is partly caused by the cheapness of Chinese labour and the suitableness of the articles manufactured to local popular requirements. Chinese scissors, for example, are quite different from those in use with us, and if we were to attempt to cut with them, we should be apt to tear the cloth. In the hands of a native tailor they are made to work wonders, and indeed use has taught the latter to prefer them to our own. The iron used in this district is mainly imported from abroad, although it is said that ore abounds in the Ying-ping district of the province, of a quality so good as to yield 70 per cent of the metal.^[1]

But the "Feng-shui" superstitious dread of natives, fostered by the Mandarins, to opening mines is gradually giving way before the pressure of foreign intercourse and a practical popular awakening to a knowledge of the wealth stored up in the land. Contiguous to the iron deposits are also coal-beds of unknown extent and value. So long, however, as "Feng-shui" and Government opposition hold their sway, mines are certain never to be opened up. Some progress has been made in this direction; the coal mines of Kaiping, eighty miles north-east of Tientsin, are worked with European machinery, and connected by a railroad with the Peh-tang river, twenty-one miles distant. As we pass through the city we notice numerous edifices substantially built of brick, the residences of native merchants, temples with a sculptured granite façade, and a large customs station; but the houses in the suburbs which border the creek are raised above the water, on piles, and their temporary, miserable appearance is in striking contrast to the abodes and evidences of wealth which we encounter in the heart of the town. The Creek

_{CHINESE SAWYERS.}

_{CHINESE PEDLAR.}

is the principal thoroughfare, and is crowded with thousands of junks and boats, all busily engaged in loading or discharging cargo, or else in bearing passengers to and fro along the extremely narrow channel which winds its way through this floating Babel where endless discord reigns. This creek is evidently much too contracted for the traffic of the place; and I can readily imagine how, forty years ago, the Chinese squadron, fleeing before a handful of British tars in their small boats, drew up like a wall across this narrow passage, and poured a hail-storm of shot upon their gallant assailants, spreading death and destruction among the little band. As for the Commodore, with his boat shot away from under him, "with his coxswain killed, and every man of his crew wounded,^[2] he retired to await reinforcements, and returned at last from a severe attack, with five of the largest junks in tow." The Chinese themselves, who are by no means destitute of courage, are said honestly to have acknowledged their admiration for the pluck and daring of the man who started with seven small boats to capture Fatshan and its 200,000 inhabitants, and who destroyed their entire fleet—the terror, as was supposed, of the "foreign fire-eating devils," who were held never before this to have fought a fair fight; but to be always taking their foes in the rear of their forts, instead of bravely coming to the front and taking the guns which had been set up with so much pains for the very purpose of receiving their assaults.

Whenever a block-up among the boats in the creek takes place—which happens frequently, and is protracted indefinitely for a long period of time—one has leisure to notice the numerous floating tea and music saloons, and many flower barges moored close against the banks. These boats carry elevated cabins on their decks, and are very prettily carved, painted, gilded and decorated throughout. The windows and doors are curtained with silk; and through one of these, which stood conveniently open, we could discern gaily-dressed young dandies, and even elder Sybarites, flirting with gaudily painted girls, who waited upon them with silver pipes or Chinese hookahs, or served up cups of tea. There were pleasure boats, too, fitted up with private cabins, in which families were being conveyed into the country to enjoy a glimpse of the green rice-fields and orchards.

At San-shui we entered the north river, passing into a pictur- esque district, in some places not unlike the Scottish lowlands, covered with ripening fields of barley. Halting not far from the town of Lo'pau, at Wong-Tong village, on the right bank of the stream, I prepared to take a photograph, and my in- tention was to include a group of old women who were gossiping and drawing water; but when they saw my instrument pointed towards their hamlet, they fled in alarm, and spread abroad the report that the foreigners had returned and were preparing to bombard the settlement. A deputation soon set out from the village, led by a venerable Chinaman, the head man of the clan, and to him we explained that we had come on no hostile errand, but only to take a picture of the place. He gave us a hearty welcome to his house, spreading tea and cake before us. This was one of those many instances of a simple, genuine hospitality which I experienced all over the land; and I feel assured that any foreigner knowing enough of the language to make his im- mediate wants understood, and endowed with a reasonable, even temper, would encounter little opposition in travelling over the

greater part of China. But there is always a certain amount of

_{Chinese Bridge, Kwangtung Province, China.}

danger in the larger and more populous cities. We offered one

or two small silver coins to the children of the house, but the old gentleman would not permit them to be accepted, until it had been carefully explained to him that they were simple gifts to be worn as charms, and not intended as a recompense for his hospitality.

On the bank of the river in the Tsing-yune district, 1 nar- rowly escaped sinking into a quicksand. We spent a night before Tsing-yune city, but were kept awake by the noise of gongs and crackers, by the odour of joss-sticks, and by the smoke of cooking from the adjoining boats. At length we reached the Buddhist monastery of Fi-lai-sz, perhaps the most picturesque, and one of the most famous of its kind to be seen in the south of China. The building is approached from the brink of the river by a flight of broad granite steps; this con- ducts us to an outer gate, whereon is inscribed in characters of gold, "Hioh Shan Miau." The monastery has been built on a richly wooded hill-side, and half way up to it, on the verge of a mossy dell, we reach the Fi-lai-sz shrine. Three idols stand within this shrine, one of them representing, or supposed to represent, the pious founder. A favourite resting-place this for travellers, one where they are hospitably entertained, and where the monks, with impious sympathy for human weakness, supply their guests with opium, and sell carved sticks, cut from the sacred temple groves, as parting relics of their visit.

The Tsing-yune pass, in which the monastery lies, is in great repute as a burial-ground. There, thousands of graves front the river and stud the hill-slopes to a height of about 800 feet. To every grave there is a neat facing of stone, something in the form of a horse-shoe, or like an easy chair with a rounded back. The interior of the temple cloister is paved with granite and decorated with flowers set out in vases and ornamental pots; thus art lent its aid to a scene of natural loveliness, the most romantic and beautiful. On the opposite bank of the stream a narrow path leads to a wooded ravine, whither the monks retire when they ought to abstract themselves from the world, forgetting existence, with its pleasures and sorrows, and cultivating that supreme repose which will bring them nearer Nirvana. It seemed to me, when I inspected the cell-like chambers of these devotees, that some among them were not unfamiliar with the fumes of the opium-pipe, and that they must, poor frail mortals! at times endeavour to float away to the western heavens steeped in the incense of that enslaving drug. We next halted at a village called Lien-Chow-Kwong. It was a miserable specimen of its kind, planted in a desolate neigh- bourhood, and with an air of poverty and destitution pervading both it and its inhabitants. The passes in this river present some bold rock and hill scenery, while the short reaches and sudden bends of the stream remind one of Highland lochs. In other places the hills slope gently downwards towards the water, and terminate in a bank of glittering sand, not unfrequently a mile broad. These sand-banks glare like miniature deserts beneath the blazing mid-day sun, but are happy in the asso- ciation of a refreshing stream which flows clear and cool along the margin. The Mang-Tsz-Hap, or Blind Man's Pass, is one of the finest on the river. Here the bold crags shoot up in precipices that are lost in shreds of drifting mist, as if the heavy clouds, sweeping across jagged pinnacles of rock, were riven into a hundred vapoury fragments. The weather was now cold and stormy, but fitful gleams of sunshine broke in upon the darkness. Once, caught in a rapid by a sudden gust of wind, our boat seemed like to have been shattered in the breakers; but her crew in a twinkling slipped the tracking line, and she drifted safely down mid-stream.

The Chinese get the credit of being exceedingly temperate, and in the majority of cases this is true ; but at the same time, among the lower orders, especially the boating population, tem- perance is only observed because sheer necessity compels re- straint; and many of the boatmen on the rivers along which I have travelled will drink sam-shu to excess during the cold weather, whenever they can win a few extra cash. These men are about as poor and miserable a class as one can meet in the most poverty-stricken districts of the land. In the southern provinces their sole food is steamed rice, flavoured with salt, or rendered more savoury with a fragment of salt fish; and when times are good, they even indulge in the luxury of a little bit of pork fat. It is surprising how they stand the cold, more especially in the northern regions, and how a drop of spirits will send the warm blood tingling through their veins and cause them to display a muscular power and a strength of endurance not easily accounted for, when one considers the simple nature of their food. Millions of these hardy sons of toil live from hand to mouth, and are only kept from starving, from piracy, and from rebellion by the cheapness of their staple food, and by the constant demand for their labour. But there are pirates to be found in this very river; our crew themselves told us of it, and added, that for anything they knew to the contrary, there might be a swarm of them in the boats among which we moored at night.

At Ying-Tek city 1 fell in with a spectacle which fully affirmed this assertion, and at the same time produced in me a sensation of horror that it will be impossible ever to forget. Ying-Tek stands on the right bank of the stream; beneath its outer wall there stretches a bank of reeking filth and gar- bage, which at mid-day must pollute the air for miles round. We picked our way over slimy, treacherous paths and across putrid-looking pools, till we passed through the gateway into the main street of the town. It was an exceedingly narrow thoroughfare, and had at one time been paved, but the pave- ment was now broken and disordered; while, as to the people, they looked sickly, sullen and dispirited. But it was in the market-place that we beheld the most shocking sight of all: — there the bodies of two men were exposed to the public gaze, their position indicated by swarms of flies, and the air telling that decomposition had already set in. One of these male- factors had been starved to death in the cage in which he stood, and the other had been crucified.

Beyond the rapids of this part of the river we reach vast cultivated plains, out of which isolated limestone rocks and parallel ranges of mountains rise up in shapes most fantastic, and disorder most picturesque. It was from a hill above the Polo-hang temple that we obtained the finest views of the country. The cultivation hereabouts was of a kind I had never seen before; in the foreground were a multitude of fields, banked off for the purposes of irrigation, but already shorn of their crops; here and there was a mound covered with temples and trees, and beyond, reaching to the base of the distant mountains, were groves of green bamboo, rocking their plumage to and fro in the wind, like the waves of an emerald sea. The bamboo is reared in this and other districts, and forms a valuable article of commerce, the wealth of a farmer being frequently estimated by the number of clumps which he has on his estate. It requires neither care nor tillage, and is a source of wealth in this part of the country. When looking on this scene my old Chinaman, Akum, came up. I do not think he has yet been introduced to my readers. He was a faithful servant, or boy, as they are here called, about forty years of age, who had been in my employment in Singapore, and afterwards turning trader, had lost his small capital. "Well," he said, "what are you looking at, Sir?"— "At the beautiful view," I replied. — "Yes," he said; "I wish I had the smallest of those hills; I would settle there, on the top, watching my gardeners at work below, and when I saw one labourer more industrious than the rest I would reward him with a wife."

He spoke to me often afterwards about this ideal hill on which he hoped one day to sit and reward the virtue of his servants. He was a disciple of Confucius.

Hereafter I may say something as to the multitudinous uses to which the bamboo can be applied. There is good snipe and pheasant-shooting in this quarter.

We noticed quantities of the reeds employed for making Canton mats. Mats of this sort are manufactured extensively in three places — viz., Tun-kun, Lintan and Canton; they afford occupation to many thousand operatives, and are indeed an important industry of the province of Kwang-tung. About 112,000 rolls, measuring 40 yards apiece, are said to be annually exported from Canton.

About two hundred miles above Canton we visited the most remarkable object which we had encountered in the course of our journey. This is the celebrated grotto of Kwan-yin, the goddess of mercy, formed out of a natural cave in the foot of a limestone precipice which rears its head high above the stream. The mouth of the cavern opens on the water's edge, and the interior has been enlarged in some places by excavation and built up in others, so as to render it suitable for a Buddhist shrine. A broad granite platform surmounted by a flight of steps leads us into the upper chamber, and there the goddess may be seen, seated on a huge lotus-flower; sculp- tured, so they tell us, by no human hands, and discovered in situ within the cave. The priests placed implicit faith in the story, but they could not be persuaded to believe that the flower might be the fossil of a pre-historic lotus of monstrous dimensions. Barbarians might credit such childish fables as that flowers or fishes can be turned into stone, but not the enlightened followers of Buddha. No; they say the lotus was created in the cave for Kwan-yin to sit upon; there was no getting over that.

According to their account this goddess of mercy has a marvellous history. She first appeared on earth in the centre of the world, that is China, as the daughter of a Chinaman named '* Shi-kin," and she was made visible to mortal eyes as a child of the Emperor Miao-Chwang. The sovereign ordered her to marry, and this she stedfastly refused to do, thus vio- lating the native usages, whereupon the dutiful parent put her remorselessly to death. But this measure, contrary to Miao- Chwang's expectation, only caused his daughter to be promoted into the proud position she now fills. Afterwards Kwan-yin is said to have visited the infernal regions, where the presence of such transcendent goodness and beauty produced an in- stantaneous effect. The instruments of torture dropped from the hands of the executioners, the guilty were liberated, and hell was transformed into paradise itself. The goddess now looks down with a benign expression from her seat upon the lotus throne, but she seems to be urgently in need of repairs.

The priests who dwell within the cave, sit overlooking the

_{Buddhist Monks.}

river from an opening in the upper face of the rock, which

serves the purpose of a window. As we see them with the sun at their backs they appear like a row of badly preserved dolls, so motionless do they sit, and so unconscious, to all seeming, of the presence of foreigners. But when we confront them and display a bright coin, they wake up and manifest an unholy zeal to appropriate it.

The money is offered and accepted, and then a venerable member of the order shows us through the interior of the cave. A number of smaller idols, the attendants of Kwan-yin, are ranged along niches in the rock ; a little lighted taper burns in front of each, while cups of sam-shu and votive offerings of food are spread out before them. A group of stalactites hangs in front of the window ; above and around them hover a num- ber of pure white doves, that descend at the call of the aged priest and feed out of his hand. It was interesting to notice the outstretched hand of the old man ; it was withered, shrunk- en, and encumbered by a set of long yellow nails, that looked dead, and were already partly buried beneath the unwashed encrustation of a lifetime.

It is harvest-time, and the grain in many places is already cut, and has been piled up in farm-yards in stacks, to be thrash- ed with flails, or trodden beneath the heavy-footed ox. The season has been a plenteous one, and the farmers are full of joy, praising the god of agriculture for the abundance of this their second crop from a soil which has yielded produce during centuries of constantly recurring harvests. The Chinese are careful farmers, and were probably the first to understand that their land requires as much consideration as their oxen or their asses; that the substance which it gives up to a crop has to be replaced by manure, and that it requires a time of rest after a season of labour, before it will yield its greatest increase. How the Chinese acquired this knowledge, and at what epoch, are questions which Confucius himself would probably have been puzzled to answer. There is no doubt that they succeed in raising green crops and grain alternately from their fields at least twice in the year. But this extraordinary fertility is due in part to the small size of their farms, which are, most of them, of so limited an area that the proprietors can cultivate them personally with unceasing care, and part also to the abundant use of manure in fashion among the peasants of China. We see evidence of the social economy of the people in a multitude of instances and a variety of ways. Thus, when the farmer is near a town he pays a small sum to certain houses for the pri- vilege of daily removing their sewage to his own manure-pit. This sewage he uses, for the most part in a fluid state, often to fertilise poor waste lands which have been leased to him at a low rental. If his farm is some distance from villages or towns, he is careful to use every opportunity for securing cheap suppHes of the manure which he so much needs, and accord- ingly erects small houses for the use of wayfarers, along the edge of his fields. His neighbour is equally careful to have houses of the same description; and they vie with each other in keeping them as clean and attractive-looking as possible.

I returned to Canton alone from San Shui, in a small boat, leaving my friends to find their own way leisurely back. At one place there were only a few inches of water above the bed of the stream, so I had to hire an open canoe, while my baggage was carried overland to the next bend of the river. In this canoe I descended, or rather raced, down to Fatshan, amid a number of similar craft whereon Chinese traders were embarked. The distance was about twenty-five miles. We contrived to reach the town about half an hour ahead of the rest, and passed at once down the narrow channel between the crowded boats. This was by far the most disagreeable experience of the journey. Attempting to land quietly and take a photograph of the tower, I was assailed on the bank by a mob of roughs, who drove me into the river, where I was taken into a boat by a couple of good-natured women, and by them rowed down stream till I could succeed in engaging a fast boat to convey me as far as Canton.

1. China Review, 1873, p. 337.
2. China, p. 35.—G. Wingrove Cooke.