In Eastern Seas Part 5

December 26th.--The overcast sky of last night was indeed a precursor of what was to follow. About midnight the wind freshened into a full gale, the first we have encountered since leaving England. It gave us a proper shaking down into our places. The sea became wild and mountainous, the wind shrieking and vicious, and as to hold our course we had to stem its full fury, it was found impossible to keep the s.h.i.+p head on except at a much greater consumption of coal than we were prepared to use. Cras.h.!.+

What's gone? The jib-boom and all its appurtenances. The wrecked spar falling athwart the ram remained there for hours, proving a most difficult obstacle to clear away in such a whirl as was going on in the neighbourhood of our bows.

But there were no signs of the gale moderating, and the admiral deeming, I suppose, the present state of things far from satisfactory determined on putting back to Manilla. The s.h.i.+p was brought around, or "wore" as nautical men term it, an evolution which, though not of difficult accomplishment, at a certain moment in its progress leaves the vessel completely helpless in the trough of the sea, a fact you all know far better than myself, I only touch upon it to hint what the result must be to such a c.u.mbersome ma.s.s as our iron hull. As we broached to, it became a matter of holding on to everything, and by everything--eyebrows and all--especially between decks. Delightful times these for ditty boxes, crockery, bread barges, and slush tubs; 'tis their only chance for enjoyment and they make the most of it. Such revelry generally winds up with a grand crash somewhere in the vicinity of the iron combings to the hatchways. Any plates left, any basins? Nay, that would be to ask too much of the potter's art. At length we are put round, and running back to Manilla under all the canvas we dare shew.

December 31st.--Completed with coal and left on a fresh attempt to reach Hong Kong, the black and lowering sky suggesting either the continuation of, or the sequel to, the late stormy weather. Being New Year's Eve the usual attempt at a tin-pot band was made to make the night hideous. Setting aside the annoyance of this species of rowdyism to the less exuberant spirits amongst us, the noise would be most unseemly with the commander-in-chief on board, and it says much for the would-be musicians that they saw it in this light.

We reached the northern point of Luzon without mishap, and stood away with a heavy cross-sea for Hong Kong, arriving on January 4th, 1879.

CHAPTER VII.

"Then Kublai Khan gave the word of command And they all poured into the Central Land."

HONG KONG.--SOME CHINESE MANNERS AND CUSTOMS.

I suppose there are few amongst us, sailors though we are, who, as boys at school when reading of China, have never expressed a wish to see that land for themselves, to say nothing of making the acquaintance of its quaint old-world people in their very own homes. In my imagination I had covered its goodly soil with wondrous palaces, all sparkling with splendour and embellished with all that art could furnish or riches command. I had peopled its broad plains with bright beautiful forms in silken attire, amongst whom a love of the elegant and the beautiful pervaded all cla.s.ses of the community, and who in long ages ago had attained to arts and learning which it has taken us centuries of careful study and elaborate research to acquire. Yea, it was always a wonderland to me, even down to the present year; such is the power which the a.s.sociations formed by the child exercise over the mind of the man. Yet were we prepared to meet a people who should, in almost all things, differ from almost all other peoples. In the last particular we are not deceived; in all else, yes. But I wont antic.i.p.ate.

In this little book I shall not be able to tell you a t.i.the of what may be told of this land did I feel competent to do so. Volumes have been written on the subject, and still the half has not been said. I purpose, therefore, henceforward to intersperse with the narrative of our own doings, just so much of the manners and customs of the Chinese and j.a.panese, as every sailor possessed of the ordinary powers of vision may see for himself.

January 4th.--The harbour of Hong Kong is reached from the sea by means of a rather long and tortuous pa.s.sage, with bleak barren heights on either hand,--the channel being in some parts so narrow that there is scarce room for the s.h.i.+p to turn.

The island itself--rendered either "_red harbour_" or "_fragrant streams_," which you prefer, though neither seems applicable, certainly not the latter if by _fragrance_ is meant what we mean by it--lies on the southern seaboard of China. It became British in 1842, on the conclusion of the first Chinese war. The city of Victoria is situated on its northern side, and stands on a beautiful land-locked harbour, formed by the island on the one hand and the peninsula of Kowloon (also British) on the other a sheet of water which always presents a gay and animated appearance, from the thousands of vessels and boats which cover its surface like a mosaic.

It is not without some difficulty that we push our way through the thronging craft, princ.i.p.ally little boats termed "sampans," to our moorings abreast of the Dockyard. Curious craft withal, and serving a double purpose; for besides their legitimate one, whole families live and move, are born, and die in them; the necessary accommodation being furnished by an ingenious arrangement of hatches, floors, and part.i.tions, and, as it seems highly fas.h.i.+onable that the Chinese mammas should be making constant additions to the population, the squalling of the young celestials betrays a healthiness of lung, and a knowledge of its capabilities, scarcely to be credited of such small humanity.

The earlier fate of these infantile members of the boat population is sad. They are exposed to a "rough-and-tumble" existence as soon as they are ushered into the world, especially should the poor innocent have the misfortune to be born a girl baby, for in that case she has simply to s.h.i.+ft for herself, the inhuman parents considering themselves fortunate if they lose a girl or two overboard. The boys, or "bull" children, as they are termed, meet with rather more care relatively speaking. As, from the nature of their occupation, but little time can be devoted to nursing--the mother being compelled to constant labour at the oar--the child is slung on to her back, and, as she moves to and fro with the stroke of the oar, the babe's soft face bobs in unison against its mother's back, a fact which will perhaps explain how it is that the lower cla.s.s Chinese wear their noses flattened out on their two cheeks rather than in the prominent position usually selected by that organ.

It is amazing how wonderfully quick the Chinese pick up a colloquial foreign tongue; the same tailor for instance experiencing no difficulty in making himself understood in English, French, Russian, or Spanish; English, though, is the language par excellence along all the China seaboard. So universal is it that a foreigner must needs know something of our tongue to make himself intelligible to the ordinary Chinaman; and, more remarkable still, there is such a vast difference between the spoken dialects of north and south China--nay, even between any two provinces in the "Flowery Land"--that I have known some of our native domestics from the Canton district, when talking with their countrymen of Chefoo, communicate their ideas and wants in English, because their own medium failed them; the difference between the native dialects being as broad as that between English and Dutch.

Though such a diversity exists _orally_, the _written_ character is common, and expresses exactly the same idea all over the empire, and beyond it in j.a.pan, Corea, and the Loo Choo islands.

The Chinese are splendid workmen, providing you can furnish them with a model or copy, for there is very little genius, properly so-called, attached to John Chinaman.

Their imitative faculty and powers of memory are really wonderful; as an instance of the former perhaps the following may not be amiss:--

"In the earlier days of the first occupation, the English residents of Hong Kong were often placed in difficulties about their clothing, Chinamen not having attained to that perfection in the tailors' art which they now have acquired. On one occasion an old coat was supplied to a native tailor as a guide to the construction of a new one; it so happened the old garment had a carefully mended rent in its sleeve--a circ.u.mstance the man was prompt to notice--setting to at once, with infinite pains, to make a tear of a similar size and shape in the new coat, and to re-sew it with the exact number of st.i.tches as in the original."

The old stories we have heard at home about a Chinaman's tail being designed that by it he may be hoisted to heaven, and that if he lose it he may never hope to reach that desirable alt.i.tude, have really no foundation in fact, nor is it a fact, as sailors are apt to believe, that it is nurtured for their special benefit as a convenient handle for playing off practical jokes on the luckless possessors; the truth being that the "queue," now so universally prized amongst them, is a symbol of conquest forced upon them by their hated Tartar-masters. Previous to the seventeenth century the inhabitants of the middle kingdom wore their hair much after the style of the people of Corea, but after the Manchu conquest they were compelled to adopt the present mode.

The city of Victoria is very prettily situated on the slopes of an eminence which culminates in a peak at an alt.i.tude of 1300 feet, and from which a most charming and cheerful view of the sea on the one side, and the harbour and the yellow sand-stone hills of China on the other.

It is allowed to be the most cosmopolitan city in the world.

Representatives of races far in excess of the Pentecostal catalogue, may be encountered in its streets in any hour's walk; men of all shades of colour and of every religious creed live here side by side in apparent perfect harmony. The Chinese who form the bulk of the population live entirely apart from the "_Ung-moh_" (red hair devils) as they flatteringly term us. English manners and customs do not seem to have influenced the native mind in the smallest degree, in spite of our charities and schools--a fact we cannot wonder at, taking into account our _diabolical_ origin.

The town--by which I mean the European part of it--possesses many public and private buildings of almost palatial grandeur. Of these, Government house, the City hall--including the museum and reading room, the cathedral and college, the various banks, and the residences of the great merchants may be cited as examples. There is also a fine botanical garden, not nearly so large as that at Singapore, but perhaps scarcely less beautiful, and an extensive recreation and drill ground, where one may see curious sights! pigtailed, loose-robed Chinamen wielding the cricket-bat, and dealing the ball some creditable raps too.

There is perhaps only one good street in the colony, Victoria street or Queen's road; this traverses the city from end to end, and const.i.tutes the great business thoroughfare of the place. After about an hour's walk along it, for the first part under an arcade of trees, we find ourselves in the filthy, unsavoury Chinese quarter, as the nose is careful to remind you if there be any doubt about it. They are certainly a very dirty race, these Chinamen; the dirtiest on earth, I should be inclined to say, considering their boasted civilization and vaunted morals; and, though compelled by our sanitary laws to live somewhat more cleanly than their enthralled brethren on the continent, still they are dirty, and I'll hazard to say a sight of the Chinese of this town would soon dispel any illusions one might have nourished to the contrary. A subsequent visit to the native city of Shanghai shewed us to what disgusting depths humanity can descend in this particular.

This enterprising people possess some very fine shops, where you can purchase every known European commodity at cheaper rates than of the European firms. Every shop has a huge sign-board depending from the top of the house to the bottom, whereon is recorded in vermillion and gold characters, not so much the name as the virtues of the man within, sometimes, too, his genealogical tree is appended. Such expressions as "no cheating here" or "I cannot deceive," are common, but, in nearly every case, belie the character of the proprietor, who is a living libel on the word honesty. Honesty! old Shylock even would blush for them.

Here, where there is protection for life and property, a shopkeeper surprises you at the rich and grand display of his wares. In China proper, a dealer dare not show all he is worth for fear of the mandarins, who, should one chance to pa.s.s that way, would in all probability, cast his covetous eyes on the poor man's property, and demand whatever had taken his fancy. Nor may a poor man be in possession of an article inconsistent with his position in the social scale--he may not be the owner of a tiger's skin, for instance, as none but mandarins and people of similar position, are permitted such luxuries. This reminds one of the time, not so very remote, when similar restrictions were placed on dress in England.

This system of mulcting is known all over China as "_c.u.m-shaw_," a system, too, which I would advise all sailors to adopt in their dealings with the slippery race if they would not be robbed. The vendor dare not say nay to a mandarin; and, though it is a point of etiquette on the part of the big man to offer payment, it is equally a point of etiquette for the tradesman to refuse: a fact, it is said, the mandarin always calculates on.

In addition to the orthodox shop, the streets are lined with itinerants, orange stalls, betel-nut tables, heaps of rags, and sundries, baskets of vegetables of very strange appearance and strong penetrating odours, half-cooked roots and leaves--for the people never eat a well-cooked root or vegetable; it is from these princ.i.p.ally that the intolerable stench is proceeding.

What the Chinese eat is a mystery, and such queer compounds enter into their _menu_ that I would give everybody who dines with a Chinaman this advice--don't enquire too minutely into what is placed before you, or you will eat nothing, and so offend your host; bolt it and fancy it is something nice--and _fancy_ goes for something at times, I can a.s.sure you. That it requires a tremendous effort on the part of the human stomach, the subjoined "Bill of Fare" of a dinner given to Governor Hennessey by one of the Chinese guilds will, perhaps, serve to shew:

Birds' Nest Soup.

Pigeons' Egg Soup.

Fungus Soup.

Fried Sharks' Fins.

Beche-de-mer[1] and Wild Duck.

Stewed Chicken and Sharks' Fins.

Fish Maw.

Minced Partridge.

Ham and Capon.

Meat Ball and Fungus.

Boiled Sh.e.l.l Fish.

Pig's Throat, stewed.

Minced Sh.e.l.l Fish with Greens.

Chicken Gruel Salad.

Stewed Mushrooms.

Pig's Leg, stewed.