Sidelights on Chinese Life Part 20

Fighting now goes on every day, and other villages round about take sides with one of the parties, till sometimes as many as thirty, divided into different camps, are at open war with each other. Fields are desolated, and crops are ruthlessly destroyed. All this time the "Father and Mother of his People" knows exactly what is going on, but as he has never been officially informed of it, he acts on the a.s.sumption that the district where men are being murdered is at absolute peace. Not a soldier is sent to apprehend the lawbreakers, and no notice whatever is taken of the fact that combatants are being seized and subjected to the most horrible tortures, whilst they can get no redress from the const.i.tuted authorities who ought to protect them.

The fact of the matter is the mandarin is simply waiting his time, and when that arrives he will come in force and rake in the golden harvest that awaits him. In these clan fights it invariably happens that after a time both sides become tired of the whole business, and mediators are appointed to bring the two sides to terms with each other. This process goes on smoothly until the question as to how much blood-money should be paid for those who have been killed on each side arises. Where an even number have fallen in the struggle the solution of the difficulty is an easy one, but when the number of the slain is greater on one side than on the other, it is in nearly every case necessary to appeal to the mandarin to get him to use his authority to settle the matter. It is then that he finds his opportunity of making a lot of money out of both the belligerent parties. They have broken the law, he tells them, by carrying on war in his Majesty's dominions, and he must fine them for daring to take this liberty. In many cases he has been known to return to his Yamen thousands of dollars richer than when he left it.

In the question of crime, the democracy is allowed a much larger liberty than is the case in the West. With the exception of rebellion, or any overt act against the Government, a Chinaman may commit the most atrocious misdemeanours without being held responsible to the authorities, unless, indeed, some formal complaint has been made against him. Murder, for example, is a crime that in nine cases out of ten is always settled by the families concerned, by a payment of blood-money. They will fight and wrangle, and discuss for days together as to the compensation that is demanded, but when once the amount has been settled and paid the whole thing is finished, and society never dreams that the murderer owes anything to it, or that he ought to atone to it for the injury he has done it in killing one of the members of it.

It is interesting to observe how the mandarin, with his impecunious staff, who all represent the majesty of law in this Empire, systematically a.s.sist certain cla.s.ses of people to evade the law of the land, in consideration of a regular payment being made to allow them to do so. Take gambling, for instance. The gambling instinct is one of the strongest pa.s.sions by which the whole of the Chinese race may be said to be moved. There is no cla.s.s exempt from it. The rich and the poor, the men of learning in common with the coolie who earns his living on the streets, refined ladies and the wives and daughters of the labouring cla.s.ses, all have this pa.s.sion in their blood. This is so well recognized by their rulers that gambling is strictly forbidden throughout the Empire. There are standing laws against it which forbid the indulgence of it in any form whatsoever. There is only one exception to this, and that is during the first three days in the new year. Then the nation gambles openly, and tables are placed on the streets, around which crowds of men gather; and in the homes the women, forgetful of their duties, are so absorbed over their cards and dice that until the fourth day, when the gambling must stop, they seem to be driven with as mad a pa.s.sion for gain as are the men on the streets.

Now the mandarin and his low-cla.s.s, opium-dyed gang of followers take advantage of this terrible weakness of the people to make money out of it; and so a stranger to the ways of China would be immensely astonished to find that in the market towns, and especially in those where regular fairs are held, gambling shops where games of chance are played openly before the public everywhere exist, and crowds of country b.u.mpkins, drawn by the universal pa.s.sion, gather round the tables and, forgetful of time, lose all sense of everything else, and become absorbed in the changing figures of the board that bring them either fortune or despair.

You naturally ask how it is that in a country where gambling is so strictly forbidden, that here is a shop entirely given up to that vice, and that openly and in sight of the crowds that usually flock to a fair, the place is packed with men who make no attempt at disguising what they are engaged in. You will soon discover that the owner of the place pays a certain settled sum into the Yamen that is divided amongst the "Man that knows the County" and his disreputable set of underlings; and should any policeman happen to have official business in the fair, and were pa.s.sing along the street and saw the eager, noisy gamblers gathered round the tables, he would profess the utmost ignorance as to what was going on in that disreputable place. Should any of the more respectable inhabitants make a formal complaint against the betting and gambling fraternity, the magistrate would appear to be filled with indignation, and runners would be sent to apprehend the lawbreakers to bring them before him to be punished according to law. They would find, however, when they arrived that every trace of gambling had been removed, and only perhaps a young lad would be found, with an innocent-looking face, selling peanuts and candies. The fact is, before they started with their warrant from the mandarin, they sent on a swift-footed messenger ahead of them to warn the men they were coming, and telling them to clear out.

China is a country full of lofty ideas. These are found in the writings of the sages. They are pasted up in crimson strips of paper on the doorposts of the houses and shops in every city in the Empire. They are found staring at one over the temples of the G.o.ds, and on the lofty doors of the Yamens, so that one would suppose that these latter were churches where the highest morality and the profoundest of theological teachings were being daily expounded. There is no place indeed that is considered so bad that a public sense of decency would demand that they should be excluded from it. Low, miserable opium dens, and houses of ill-fame, and gambling h.e.l.ls, and homes that are the abode of thieves are adorned with the most exquisite sentences full of the highest morality, and seemingly culled with the greatest care from the vast repertory that the language contains, as if to condemn the very vices that are rampant within.

One would imagine that these beautiful and choice epitomes of all the virtues would have made the Chinese a highly moral and virtuous people, but they have not done so. The exquisite sentences that give you a thrill as you read them for the first time, stare down upon the inmates and upon the pa.s.sers-by without the remotest apparent effect upon any one. The opium-hued runner, and the mandarin whose sole aim is to enrich himself, pa.s.s in and out of the Yamen with sentences that extol righteousness and benevolences as the highest virtues, but the Yamen remains unchanged, and continues to be the abode of the greatest villainies. It is an undoubted fact that it has the worst reputation for roguery and cheating and chicanery, and the violation of all justice, of any other place throughout the kingdom.

This is no new development of modern times, but has been in existence from ages immemorial.[4] It is not, moreover, the result of any cla.s.s legislation, for all the mandarins spring from the ma.s.ses, and therefore all their vices and defects are inherited from them. There needs a renovation of the whole social fabric to make men honest in life, and to cause them to refrain from the practice of things that would never be tolerated in the common life of the Englishman of to-day. The methods of judicial procedure in China are entirely different from those in the West.

There is no jury, no summoning and questioning of witnesses, and no lawyers to defend their clients or to expound the law, so as to deliver them from any penalties they might have incurred. Everything is left in the hands of the judge, who takes whatever view may seem to him to be the best in the case, and to decide without any reference to law books or statutes or to legal precedents.

A case, for example, is going to be tried. A man is accused of robbing a grave, one of the most heinous crimes of which a Chinaman can be guilty.

As it is one of the axioms of Chinese law that an accused person is a.s.sumed to be guilty, he is brought in forcibly and with brutal roughness by some of the runners, wildly declaring that he is absolutely guiltless of the offence with which he is charged.

This protestation is, of course, taken as a kind of joke that every prisoner is accustomed to make, so he is forcibly b.u.mped down on to his knees, whilst his head is made to strike the ground with a sound that is heard throughout the court. The judge looks on him with a stern and solemn visage, and enlarges on the enormity of his crime. He must be guilty, for how otherwise would he be here charged with this offence? The mandarin calls upon him to confess, but as he refuses to do this, but, on the contrary, adheres to his statement that he is innocent, a signal is given to the runners, who proceed to beat him most unmercifully, till his cries ring throughout the building, and he calls in the most piteous tones to all present to bear witness that he never committed the crime with which he is charged. After a time, seeing that he remains obstinate, the castigation is stopped, and the man, bleeding and wounded, is dragged out by his tail by the runners and thrown into a dismal dungeon, with some dirty straw in a corner, and where he can consider whether he will confess as the mandarin commands him, or whether he will consent to endure the barbarous treatment he will receive till he does.

A few days pa.s.s by, and he is again dragged into the court and the same process is repeated, until at last, exhausted by his sufferings and unable to endure the horrible tortures to which he is subjected, he finally confesses that he did rob the grave. This is exactly what the mandarin has been manoeuvring for, for according to Chinese common law procedure, no prisoner can be condemned, and there can be no execution of his sentence, until he has signed with his own hand his confession that he is guilty. It would seem to the unsophisticated mind of the Barbarian that has never been enlightened by the civilizing influences of the sages, that criminal law would find itself at a complete standstill, seeing that no man would be willing to sign his own condemnation.

This, however, is an utter mistake. The mandarin has ways and means of persuading a refractory prisoner to make just the very confession that will justify him in punis.h.i.+ng him to the full extent that he believes he deserves. There is the prison where a man may be slowly starved, and chains and manacles, and stout bamboo rods wielded by st.u.r.dy brawny arms that no touch of pity ever weakens. These can be used with such steady, unfaltering perseverance that life becomes intolerable, and the poor fellow would be ready to sign a hundred criminating doc.u.ments rather than continue to endure the tortures that are inflicted upon him.

In the above accounts of the methods of judicial procedure in China, I have selected cases that are of constant occurrence throughout the Empire.

How a nation with such a system of judicature has managed not only to exist, but also to retain a vitality such as China has to-day, is a marvel that testifies to the law-abiding character of the Chinese race. The mandarin of to-day is about as mean and as ign.o.ble a specimen of a ruler as can be conceived, but he has always been the same. He is a product of the ages. All the teachings of the sages in which he is an adept, have never been able to produce a better. The people universally hate and loathe him. He is the synonym for oppression, injustice, and cupidity, and yet when a man rises from the ranks and is numbered amongst this aristocracy of power, he never remembers the loathing of the people for this cla.s.s, whose name is distasteful to all honest men. It is quite true that one does occasionally meet with a high-minded and honourable mandarin, but he is simply an exception that proves the rule. The love and devotion that the people manifest to such an exceptional character as this only shows what a longing men have for those to rule over them who shall exhibit in their lives some of the higher virtues by which human life is adorned.

The mandarin being untrammelled by juries or by precedents or by statute books, and often having to depend upon his own mother wit to find out the truth in some intricate case that comes before him, is accustomed to use independent and original methods that would shock the legal mind of our judges in England. Not so in this land, where they are applauded by those who hear of them as being exceedingly ingenious and as showing the subtle character of the minds of those who devised them. A description of some of these may be interesting to the reader.

On one occasion a farmer was going to market with two huge bundles of firewood that balanced on a bamboo pole he was to carry on his shoulder from his farm to the neighbouring market town. Just before leaving, his wife thrust some yards of cotton cloth that she had woven into one of the bundles, and asked him to take them to the draper's and dispose of them for her at the best price he could get for them.

Arriving at the town, he applied at the house of a rich scholar to whom he had been accustomed to sell, and asked if he wanted to buy any firewood.

Finding that he did, he saw that the bundles were duly weighed and paid for; when, walking down the narrow, ill-paved street and congratulating himself that he had disposed of his wood so easily, he suddenly remembered that he had forgotten all about the cloth that had been hidden in one of them. Hastily retracing his steps, he explained to the purchaser that there was some cotton cloth belonging to his wife concealed amongst the wood, and he would be infinitely obliged to him if he would kindly take it out and give it to him.

The man protested that it was quite a mistake to say that there was any cloth in either of the bundles. They had both been taken to pieces, but nothing of the kind was found in them. He must have dropped it by the way, or his wife may at the last have forgotten to put it in.

The farmer, perfectly certain that the cloth was in the possession of the rich man, and seeing no way of obtaining redress, wended his way to the Yamen of the mandarin to ask his advice on the matter. This man happened to be one whose reputation for ferreting out crime was the admiration of all the country round. He listened to the farmer's story very attentively, and after a few pertinent questions he sent one of his runners and ordered the suspected man to come and see him at once. When he came he vigorously denied that the cloth was amongst the wood he had bought, and he declared that the farmer had trumped up this false charge against him and ought to be severely punished. "The Man that knows the County" seemed to sympathize with all that he said, and rather inclined to side with him against the poor farmer. "Is it at all likely, your Excellency," he said, "that I, a wealthy man, would do such a mean and dishonourable act as to rob a man of an article only worth two or three s.h.i.+llings in value?"

In reply to this, the mandarin begged to be excused for a moment, and going into a side room he called one of his runners, and told him to go to the wife of the rich man and tell her that her husband had confessed that they had the piece of cloth in their possession, and that she was to hand it over to the runner, who would bring it to the mandarin. Fully believing this story, she brought the stolen cloth out of the hiding place where it had been placed for concealment, and handed it over to the policeman. It may be easily understood how utterly dumfounded the culprit was when the runner walked in with the stolen cloth in his hand, and how delighted the farmer was when it was handed over to him by the "Father and Mother of his People." Turning to the rich man, the mandarin addressed him in very stern language upon the meanness of his offence. "I do not like to send you to prison," he continued, "for that would degrade you in the sight of the people and the members of your family. My Yamen is out of repair, and if you will call a builder and have it thoroughly overhauled, I shall be willing to let you off any further punishment." As this would cost him fully a hundred pounds, it will be quite evident that he paid dearly for trying to rob the farmer of his cloth.

One day a mandarin was being carried along a certain road in his sedan chair, when a man who had been having a quarrel with another appealed to him to defend him against an attempt that was being made to wrong him. He explained that as he was walking along the road, it began to rain, and seeing a stranger who had no umbrella he offered to share his with him as far as they went together. Now when they were about to part, the man claimed that the umbrella was his, and had forcibly taken it away from him. "The Man who knows the County" declared that it was rather a difficult case to settle, because there was no outside evidence to be got to help him to a decision. There was simply one man's word against the other, so he decided that the umbrella should be cut in two and a half given to each.

There was no appeal against this action of the mandarin, and so the men went off, with the hacked and mangled pieces of the umbrella, much to the amus.e.m.e.nt of the crowd that had gathered to witness this impromptu trial on the road. They had not gone many yards ahead when the official called one of his runners, and ordered him to follow the two men, listen to their conversation, and mark which one of them was most severe in his condemnation of his judgment. He was then to apprehend them both and bring them to his Yamen, where he would give his final decision on the matter.

In a short time both men were brought into court, when the runner reported that the man that claimed that the umbrella was originally his, and that out of good nature had shared it with the other, was most indignant at what he called the unjust decision of the judge. The other individual, on the other hand, treated the whole thing as a joke, and highly applauded the conduct of the mandarin. "The Father and Mother of his People"

addressed the latter in the severest terms. He spoke of his ingrat.i.tude and baseness of heart in returning a kindness in such a dastardly way as he had done, and he ordered him to buy a new umbrella and give it to the man he had wronged as a punishment for his offence. He issued also an order that he should be made to wear the cangue[5] for a fortnight, and that he should be made to parade up and down in front of the house of the man he had maligned during the day, and be shut up in prison during the night. This decision gave great satisfaction to every one excepting the man who was so seriously affected by it.

If money could only be eliminated out of the life of a mandarin he would cease to be the despicable character he often is. In their private life they are kind and hospitable and have the courtly manners of gentlemen. In their public capacity, when a bribe is not in view, they have a desire as a rule to do justice in the cases that are brought before them. In some respects they are much to be pitied. As no man may be a higher official in his own province, it follows that he has to live far away from his home and his friends, amongst people strange to him, who often speak a different language from his own. It is true that his wife and children accompany him to his new position, but they never cease to long to be back again at the place where their kindred dwell. To be a mandarin means power and the facility for acquiring a fortune, but it means also exile for the time being from the ancestral home, and constant danger of being involved with the higher authorities should any of his mistakes or his misdeeds be brought to light.

CHAPTER XIV

PEDDLER LIFE IN CHINA

The Chinese thrifty--Nothing wasted--Besides regular shopkeepers, there are itinerant dealers--The "candy man"--His various kinds of sweets--The "sweets and sours man"--The cloth peddler--Describe him minutely--The pork peddler--The jewellery peddler--The fortune-teller.

The Chinese are a thrifty race. Stern necessity and a widespread poverty that has placed vast ma.s.ses of them on the very borderland of starvation, have compelled the nation to exercise economies such as are absolutely unknown in the richer lands of the West. We get some idea of the narrow line that divides countless numbers of people from absolute want, by the fact that with regard to food there is nothing of that ever wasted in China. "Wilful waste brings woeful want" is a proverb that Chinese in common life would have great difficulty in understanding, or indeed in any rank of society. The famines that have in all ages desolated great regions in China, and the desperate struggle that is constantly going on for simply enough to eat, have surrounded food as it were with a halo, that would make it seem like sacrilege to misuse what we should throw away as useless or positively hurtful.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A PEDDLER.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SHOEMAKER AT WORK ON THE STREET.

_To face p. 296._]

On one occasion, I was travelling in the interior, when I was disturbed by a violent explosion of wrath on the part of the captain of the boat. He was evidently incensed beyond measure with one of the members of the crew, and he used the strongest language in condemnation of him. They were all gathered round the great rice pan having their evening meal, and with every mouthful that was taken out of the bowl that contained the condiment to go with their rice, the anger of the captain blazed out in a fresh burst of indignation. "What is the matter," I at last asked, "and why are you making such a row over your meal?" "Matter!" he replied, "there is a great deal of matter, that is quite enough to make one as angry as I am.

Do you see this man?" he said, pointing with his chopsticks to the delinquent upon whom his wrath was being expended. "I sent him this afternoon to the market to buy some oysters to eat with our rice this evening, and he had not the sense or the nose to buy good ones. He allowed the dealer to cheat him most egregiously, for the oysters are not simply tainted--which would not have seriously mattered--they are positively stinking, and the taste is so offensive that we can hardly get them down without being sick." "But are you really going to eat them?" I asked, with a look of consternation on my face. "Eat them! of course we are; you would not have us waste the food, would you? We have paid for it, and we certainly could not afford to lose our money," and the whole crew went on popping the unsavoury, unhealthy morsels into their mouths, grumbling all the time at the man who was the cause of their discomfort, but who in order to cover his mistake pretended to be perfectly satisfied with the almost putrid oysters that one could smell from a distance.

The preciousness of food and the jealous care that is taken not only of what is wholesome and appetizing, but also of what would be rejected by our poor in England as positively uneatable, show unmistakably how near the greater part of the nation is to the ragged edge of dest.i.tution and want. The result is that the desire to maintain life in the fierce struggle that the ma.s.ses have for mere existence has made the Chinese amongst the most industrious people in the world. Mere poverty alone would not have developed this feature in the national character, had there not been a deep instinct of industry in the race which has tended to develop industrial habits that permeate every cla.s.s of society.

The whole population of China has been roughly divided by one of its great thinkers into four cla.s.ses, the scholars, the farmers, the workmen, and the tradesmen. As the last-named produce nothing, but simply deal in articles that other hands have manufactured, they stand the lowest in the estimation of the public, and are deemed of less service to the community than any of the other three. The scholar is the thinker without whom no State can ever rise in intelligence or in civilization. The farmer is the man that tills the soil and produces the food of the nation. Without him the people would perish, or revert to their primitive state when they were compelled to hunt the wild beasts in the forests and live a wretched, precarious life. The workman supplies society with everything that is needed for the necessities or the luxuries of everyday life, and transforms by his skill the raw material into the thousand and one forms that are needed for the comfort of the persons or the homes of the entire nation.

The tradesman is neither an originator nor an inventor, and his contribution, therefore, to the a.s.sets of the country is not to be compared to those that the three other cla.s.ses are continually making for the benefit of the community. In spite, however, of the inferior position that is a.s.signed to him, the tradesman occupies a very prominent position in the public eye, for the Chinaman, in addition to all his other qualifications, is a man who is imbued with a pa.s.sion for trade.

The towns and cities of the Empire are full of shops, and men with as keen wits as can be found in any country in the world are constantly on the alert as to how they shall make their business boom. The fairs and markets, too, that are regularly held all over the kingdom, are popular gatherings where the farmers can indulge in the national love for driving a bargain.

Outside of the regular traders, however, who have capital and business places where they can carry on their trade, there is a vast army of peddlers who are everywhere to be met with, and are a recognized inst.i.tution, supplying a distinct want that the regular shopkeepers are not always prepared to do.

The first of these that I shall describe is the "candy man." This itinerant dealer in sweets is one of the most popular of all the men that are to be found appealing to the public for a living. His outfit consists of two baskets on which boards are placed, where he daintily arranges the delicacies that are to prove so attractive to old and young, that the stock that he has laid in may soon be turned into hard cash. He will then be able to return home with his heart full of gladness because of the speed with which he has been able to dispose of his fascinating goods.

From past experience he knows exactly where to place his baskets with their tempting wares, so that he may be within easy call of those that are likely to become customers of his. It is usually under the spreading branches of a great banyan, where loungers congregate to catch the breezes that are ever wandering about beneath the huge boughs that stretch out almost horizontally as though to s.h.i.+eld those that seek their shelter from the great, hot, blazing sun. Or he takes his stand at the junction of two or more roads where people are constantly pa.s.sing, and near which he may know there are a good many children living.

No sooner has he settled upon the spot where he hopes to commence business than he ostentatiously makes a clanking sound with a huge pair of shears, that are very much like those that the tailors use for cutting in England, but which he employs to cut off lengths of toffy for those who would buy from him. The sound of these jangling shears acts like magic upon all the youngsters within hearing distance, and with mouths watering they gather round his baskets to gaze in rapture upon the array of good things, so temptingly laid out, that he has for sale.

Most of the lads have a few cash with them, but they delay buying because they have not yet quite made up their minds what they are going to invest in, and besides, it gives them an air of importance to keep the man waiting; which he does with the greatest good nature, knowing that any sign of impatience would drive his customers away, whilst with patience and tact he is sure of drawing from their pockets every cash that they possess.

His stock-in-trade consists of great slabs of what the Americans call peanut candy. This is made, as the name indicates, from a combination of the best white sugar and peanuts. These are boiled together in a great cauldron, and stirred and stirred, till they are thoroughly mixed and the now consistent mixture has been cooked, so that it can be emptied on a board. It is then allowed to cool somewhat, when it is rolled by a wooden roller to a certain thickness, after which it is ready to be eaten.

The combination of the sugar and the peanuts makes a very pleasant and succulent compound. The latter gives a nutty flavour to the former, whilst the sugar imparts some of its own essence to the nuts, and a mixture of flavours is produced that is popular amongst all cla.s.ses.

In addition to the candy, the peddler has also a very delicate sweet that is less substantial, but none the less popular because a larger amount can be bought for the same money. The material out of which it is made is moist sugar, as white as the manufacturers can produce it. This is put into a large pan and boiled over a slow fire. After a certain time it is turned by the heat into a very consistent and a very sticky substance. At the proper moment this is taken out of the pan and transferred to a board, where it is moulded with deft and knowing fingers into a length of two or three yards.

Then begins a most peculiar process that is to change the whole character of the material before us. It is first of all stretched with a cunning hand just as far as it will go without actually snapping. It is then doubled back on itself and pulled again to the breaking-point, and so on time after time until the work is done.