Sidelights on Chinese Life Part 5

Superst.i.tion has been a most potent force during the whole course of Chinese history in preventing the development of the nation. The mineral resources of the country are exceedingly abundant, and if they had been rightly exploited, would have been the means of enriching great ma.s.ses of people who are now in extreme poverty. To understand this let us come in imagination to one district in the county of "The Peaceful Streams." As we stand gazing upon the scene before us, we are struck with the grandeur and magnificence of its scenery. In the far-off distance the mountains are piled up, one range higher than another, till the last with its lofty peaks seems to be resting against the sky.

In the foreground are countless hills along whose sides the tea plants flourish, and there are undulating plains, and miniature valleys, and gently flowing streams that have come from the distant mountains, and which have lost a good deal of their pa.s.sion as they have travelled away from them. The soil is poor, and the farmers have to expend the severest toil upon it to be able to extract out of it enough to keep their families from starvation. The struggle for existence is so severe that large numbers every year have to leave their homes and their farms and emigrate to other countries, where they hope to make sufficient money to be able in the course of a few years to return to the old homesteads and start a new life of independence and comfort.

Now, but for a wretched superst.i.tion, this region ought to be one of the richest in China, and its people should be living in affluence; and instead of having to desert the land and being scattered in Singapore, and Penang and the Malay Peninsula, toiling to save their ancestral homes from peris.h.i.+ng through poverty, every man would be called back in hot haste to share in the wealth that would be enough to enrich ten times the number of people that now exist on the land struggling to make ends meet.

The land that stretches before us is rich in coal, and one hill at least contains such a large percentage of the finest iron, that one engineer who examined it reported that there was enough of the ore in it to "supply the whole world for a thousand years," and still it would remain unexhausted.

Expert after expert has visited this region, and with unvarying unanimity they have declared that seams of coal abound throughout it that if worked would turn this poverty-stricken district into one of the great workshops of the South of China, and would give employment not only to its own population, but also to large numbers from the adjoining counties.

Now the one controlling reason why this great natural wealth, that G.o.d has put into the soil of this beautiful county for the service of man, is left untouched is because it is believed that there are huge slimy dragons who lie age after age guarding the treasures of coal and iron, and that any attempt to take them from them would end in the destruction of the people of the whole region. The pickaxe and the shovel and the dynamite would disturb their slumbers, and, filled with pa.s.sion and mad with anger, they would hurl plague and sickness and calamities upon the unfortunate dwellers on the land. These unseen terrors, more potent than hunger and poverty and famine, have kept the mines unopened and the iron from being smelted, and have driven thousands of people into exile, very few comparatively of whom have ever come back to look upon the land of great mountains and peaceful streams, where untold riches lay ready for the gathering.

China is a country that is distinguished for its dense population.

Wherever you travel you never seem to be able to get away from the human Celestial. The great cities and market towns and public thoroughfares present a never-ending succession of Chinese forms and faces that becomes absolutely monotonous. It is natural to expect them in these great centres of population, but you go into the most out-of-the-way places, and even there you are confronted with the same perplexing problem.

You wish, for example, to be alone, absolutely alone for a time, where no Mongolian visage with its acres of features and its yellow bilious-looking smile shall gaze upon you. There is a hill near by that you believe to be entirely deserted, and you think if you could only get up there, the desire of your heart would be gratified.

You walk briskly down the street, as though you were projecting a good long const.i.tutional, in order that no one may be mad enough to think of following you. By and by you make a sudden flank movement that takes you into a lane leading off from the main road. Casting hurried glances back on the way you have just travelled to see that no one is watching you, you make rapid strategic doubles in the direction of the hill, till you find yourself calmly and with a contented mind slowly rising higher and higher, until at last you have fairly left all traces of human life behind you, and you are actually alone.

Seating yourself on a gra.s.sy mound, you look out on the broad expanse before you, and you breathe a sigh of content. No mechanical sounds of voices, as though they were being ground out by some creaking machinery, fall upon your ears. You hear the sighing of the wind and you see the gra.s.ses waving their heads as though they would talk in dumb show with you. You look down at the river, that winds like a silver thread along the plain, and you feel that this contact with nature is a most delightful break on the eternal monotony of faces that may suggest humour and pathos and lurking fun behind a yellow exterior, but never beauty.

All at once you receive a shock. You catch the gleam of an eye through an opening in two or three bushes that you never dreamed of concealing anything human behind them. You are startled, for you feel that the Chinaman has outwitted you. You turn round and cast suspicious glances towards a hedge, where wild flowers are growing and that you thought to be the very picture of sylvan solitude, and you see several figures dodging behind it.

The delightful sense of being alone vanishes, and you realize that that is an impossibility in China. You stand up disgusted, but with the feeling of amus.e.m.e.nt predominant, and one after another comes out of his hiding-place, where the black, piercing eyes have been scanning your every movement for the last ten minutes, and at least a dozen ungainly forms creep up to you and with smiling faces try to make friends with you.

Now, mighty and overwhelming though the living force of Chinese life may be, it is an undoubted fact that the dead and sleeping nation, as a religious factor, in many respects controls and dominates the living tides of men that impress us so vividly with their vast numbers. Even the casual traveller in China cannot help but be impressed with the way in which the graves of the dead thrust themselves upon the attention of the living.

There is no getting away from them. The mountain sides very often are so thickly covered with them that one has to tread upon them if one would pa.s.s from one part to another. Every uncultivated spot on the lower levels has been eagerly seized upon as s.p.a.ces where to bury the dead. Even the cultivated fields have been invaded by them, and mounds right in the centre of some diminutive rice or potato patches show how the little farm has been narrowed down in order to make room for some members of the family that have pa.s.sed away. These graves thrust themselves up to the edge of the great roads, and seem to be prevented from grasping even them only by the incessant march of the countless feet that hurry along them from dawn till dark. The clearings and little hills outside the cities that cannot be used for cultivation are all seized upon as unprotected cemeteries for the dead, and the little mounds like tidal waves advance up to the very edge of the walls of the town, and are stayed in their progress only by these huge bulwarks.

But it is not simply by the signs that appeal to the eye that one gets an idea which is apt to appal one of the vast problem of the dead in China.

In countless houses throughout the land, and more especially in those of the rich, one is astonished to find how many lie in their coffins, hermetically sealed, for weeks and months, without being buried. It is a most gruesome sight, and would give an Englishman the s.h.i.+vers to have the dead in the next room for many months and sometimes for years.

Now, it is an unquestionable fact that the "dead hand" is a most mighty and a most potent factor in the religious life of the people of China. All the G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses that are wors.h.i.+pped throughout the Empire are not believed to have the same influence over human life in sending misery or in bestowing happiness as the dead members of a family have in regard to their relatives that are still alive on the earth. A man, for example, dies. He was a poor worthless fellow when he left the earth, and his life was a constant record of failure and incapacity. He never accomplished anything, and he was a mere nonent.i.ty not only in society but also in his own home till the very last. All that is changed now, and as he lies in his tomb he has acquired a new power that, in conjunction with the unseen forces that are supposed to gather round the grave, will enable him to pour riches and power upon the home he has left.

The dead to-day all over China hold the living within their grip. They are believed in some mysterious way of having the ability to change the destinies of a family. They can raise it from poverty and meanness to wealth and to the most exalted position, but if they are neglected and offerings are not made to them at the regular seasons, they will take away houses and lands from it, and turn the members of it into beggars.

A man died in a certain village. He was so poor that a grave was dug for him by the roadside and he was buried with but the scantiest of ceremony.

He had never shown any ability in the whole course of his life, and he seemed in no way different from the ordinary commonplace looking men that one meets in shoals anywhere.

The eldest son who buried him was a young man of exceptional ability. He was rough and overbearing in his manners and a very unpleasant man to have to oppose, but he had the keen pa.s.sion of the trader, and seemed to know by instinct every phase of the market, and what it was safe for him to speculate in. As he had no capital of his own, he was compelled to begin his life at the very bottom and to work his way up. This he did with great success, so that in the course of time he ama.s.sed a considerable fortune, and his name was known as that of one of the merchant princes in the region in which he lived.

Now, this man's steady rise from poverty to wealth was not put down to his own ability or to any skill that he had shown in the management of his business affairs, but almost entirely to the old father who lay buried at the crossroads. It was he, the son believed, that guided the golden stream that flowed into his life, and it was his mysterious hand that had so prospered the combinations which the son had made, that the firm was built up till it was distinguished for the magnitude of its transactions. So convinced was he of this that he would never allow the grave to be touched, and he would never have a stone put up to show to whom this common-looking, neglected mound of earth belonged. He was afraid lest careless hands should break the spell that hung around it, and perhaps annoy the old man so that the run of prosperity should be broken, and in anger he should send misfortune instead.

Countless instances could be given similar to the above, all ill.u.s.trating the profound faith that the Chinese have in the power of the dead to influence the fortunes of the living either for weal or for woe. From this has arisen the most powerful cult, ancestor wors.h.i.+p, that at present exists in China. Its root lies neither in reverence nor in affection for the dead, but in selfishness and in dread. The kindly ties and the tender affection that used to bind men together when they were in the world and to knit their hearts in a loving union seem to vanish, and the living are only oppressed with a sense of the mystery of the dead, and a fear lest they should do anything that might incur their displeasure and so bring misery upon the home.

Looked at from a sentimental point of view, ancestor wors.h.i.+p seems to be very beautiful and very attractive, but it is not really so. The unselfish love that is the charm that binds the members of a family to each other, and the willingness to endure and suffer for each other, are entirely absent in the wors.h.i.+p that the living offer to their dead friends. The bond that binds them now is a vague and a misty one, and exists solely because there are hopes that lands and houses and wealth may come in some mysterious way from the unseen land, and sorrow and pain and disaster may be driven from the home. It is no wonder that this wors.h.i.+p has such a powerful hold on the faith and practice of the Chinese, when it is considered how much that men hold dear is involved in it. It is the greatest religious force in the land, and will survive in some form or other even when all the others that are at present recognized have pa.s.sed away from the hearts of the people.

We now turn to what to a casual onlooker might naturally seem to be the dominant and most powerful factor in the religious life of the people of this Empire of China, and that is idolatry. This popular and universal form of wors.h.i.+p meets one everywhere and is practised by every cla.s.s and condition of people throughout the country. The rich and the poor, the learned and the unlearned, the common coolie who earns his living in the streets and the most learned scholar who has risen to the highest rank in his profession, men and women of all grades, good, bad, and indifferent, all more or less believe in the idols and wors.h.i.+p them.

That this is so, is evident from the almost universal presence of the idols. Every house has at least one, which is the household G.o.d of the family, whilst the more religious and devout will have several others as well. Then the cities abound with temples dedicated to certain well-known G.o.ds that have been built, some of them at great expense, and are kept in constant repair by the free-will offerings of the people. The villages, too, not to be outdone by the towns, have each of them at least one public temple where the people can make their offerings to their patron G.o.d, and where on the birthday of the idol the whole population gather to witness the play which is performed in honour of it.

Then, again, there are monasteries scattered very liberally through the provinces, some of them so large that they will have over a hundred resident priests, all engaged in the one duty of chanting the praises of the various G.o.ds in them, and in superintending the wors.h.i.+p of the throngs of people who crowd to such places to make their offerings to the different idols. There are also numerous nunneries where women devote their lives exclusively to the service of the G.o.ddess of Mercy, and spend their years in trying to get from her the peace of mind they have not been able to obtain in their own homes. The inhabitants of these establishments are nearly always widows whose homes are unhappy, or married women who, dissatisfied with life, and with the consent of their husbands, have retired to the quiet and solitude of these retreats, in the hope that by prayer and meditation the unrest of spirit that has made life intolerable may be exchanged for one of calmness and contentment.

In addition to the above, there are mountain temples that abound in all the hilly regions, and little shrines built by the roadsides, where pa.s.sing travellers may offer up their devotions to the G.o.ds enshrined within them, and a mult.i.tude of devices for drawing the attention of men and women to the duty of remembering the services they ought to pay to the G.o.ds of the land they live in. The more one studies this question, the more one is impressed with the fact that idolatry is a huge system that completely covers the whole of the Empire with its ramifications. If the faith of the Chinese is to be measured by the money that they are willing to put out for its support, then it must be profound indeed. When one considers the innumerable number of temples of all sizes and description that meet one in every direction, and that the expense of building them and keeping them in repair falls entirely upon the people, one cannot but be struck with the sacrifices they are willing to make for the sake of their G.o.ds. But when one considers further that the huge armies of Buddhist and Tauist priests who are connected with these religious establishments are all supported by voluntary gifts freely bestowed upon them, one stands amazed at the amount of money that must be annually expended throughout the Empire upon a system that has no State endowment, but which depends entirely upon the spontaneous offerings of the people at large for its very existence.

But it is now time to go into detail with regard to the working of idolatry in order to understand what is its exact effect on the ma.s.ses who practise it, and in order to make the picture as vivid as possible, I shall first describe how the home is affected by this form of religion.

Any house taken at random will do equally well for our purpose, for, like the Chinese themselves, they are all built on the same general model, and a description of one would do for all the rest.

As we pa.s.s through the courtyard and enter in at the front door which stands open all day long, no matter what the weather may be, the first thing that we catch sight of is an oblong table on which is seated the family idol. The most popular and the most generally wors.h.i.+pped is Kwan-Yin, or the G.o.ddess of Mercy. Her face is placid, and there is a look of tenderness about it that has won the hearts of the millions of China so that in nearly every home in the land her image is found as the one conspicuous object towards which all hearts are drawn.

Her whole att.i.tude and the air of benevolence that sits so naturally upon her agree well with the beautiful story we have of her life, and the reason why she, an Indian woman, should have become almost the national G.o.ddess of the Chinese nation.

Kwan-Yin was the daughter of an Indian prince, and as a child she showed herself to be possessed of a most loving heart. As a girl she used to run in and out of the houses of the common people that stood near her father's palace, and she was so distressed at the sights of poverty and sorrow that she constantly witnessed that she made a vow that when she became a woman she would never marry, but would devote her life to alleviate the miseries that the women of India were compelled to endure.

This vow she carried out to the very letter, and her days were spent in ministering to the wants and ailments of women, no matter how low in society they happened to be. Her fame spread far and near, and the story of her devotion and self-denial touched every one that heard it. With true Oriental imagination people declared that she was a fairy that had been born into the world in human shape, for never had such tenderness and compa.s.sion been shown by any human being, and therefore her home must originally have been amongst the G.o.ds and the G.o.ddesses that lived in the land of eternal suns.h.i.+ne, where no shadow ever fell upon their hearts to dim the happiness that perpetually filled their lives.

When she died it was felt that such a woman should be deified, and that her name and image should be added to the list of those that were wors.h.i.+pped by the nation. The story of this beautiful life somehow or other travelled over the mountains and plains and deserts that divide India from China, and the "Black-haired race" became so enamoured with it, that those who heard it declared that she was worthy, even though she were a foreigner, of being placed amongst the G.o.ds that they trusted in. With wonderful rapidity her cult was adopted by all cla.s.ses, but especially by the women, till to-day her image is found in nearly every home in the Middle Kingdom.

The recognized place where the idol is enshrined is in the living-room of the family. It thus becomes a silent member of the home and a witness of the daily life of its wors.h.i.+ppers. It seems to be treated with but scant courtesy, however, for no care whatever is bestowed upon it, and the dust that comes in at the doors, and that rises from the earthen floors, falls thickly on its head and makes it have a grimy, disreputable appearance.

The furniture in the room and the table on which the idol rests may be cleaned and dusted, but no damp cloth may ever be used to relieve it of the dust that has acc.u.mulated upon it, lest it should consider itself insulted by such familiarity and express its resentment by sending down some calamity upon the family. The G.o.ds are believed to be very human, and to be liable to fits of pa.s.sion, and to be very anxious to maintain their dignity, and to be cruel and merciless with those that offend against them.

A general theory with regard to the idols is that they have to be propitiated in order that they may exercise their power in the protection of the home. For this reason they are never formally approached on any occasion without at the very least an offering of incense or of paper money burned in front of the idol, which it is believed find their way to the spirit of the G.o.d, who can appropriate and use them for his own benefit. It is customary on the days of the new and full moon to burn a number of sticks of incense, just to keep the idol in a good humour, on the principle that a man makes a present to another, in the hope that should circ.u.mstances demand it, he will show himself friendly when he is appealed to.

The one great occasion in the year when the idol is wors.h.i.+pped with great ceremony is its birthday. Then special preparations are made to do it honour, and offerings of roast fowl and duck and boiled ducks' eggs, and certain vegetables, are placed in front of it, and it is called upon to partake of the good things that its wors.h.i.+ppers present to it. In the more wealthy homes, where money is plentiful, in addition to the usual offerings of food, the head of the house will engage a band of play-actors, and selecting some popular piece, he will have it performed in the courtyard right in front of the idol, so that it can be amused by the merry performers and be made to remember its birthday with feelings of pleasure and satisfaction.

There is one feature about idolatry that is very striking, and that is that it never proposes to have any effect on character. The theory seems to be that its help is only available when men are in trouble or want to get rich, or when they wish to be avenged on an enemy, or the business is failing and they desire that it should prosper, and so be relieved from the dread of poverty in the future. There may be a thousand things in the same line as these, and it is believed that the idols have resources at their command that enables them to meet all such contingencies in human life and to fill men's hearts with content.

The idols, however, are never supposed to have any influence for good on the characters of those that wors.h.i.+p them. A man never feels that as he has just been making an offering to the household G.o.d, he must therefore be a better man. Such a thought never occurs to a Chinaman. The connection between a lavish service to the idols and a life altered for the better is never dreamed of in this land. A man, for example, is an opium-smoker, and every day the habit grows upon him till at last he is perfectly powerless under its grip. He becomes indisposed to work and gradually the home becomes impoverished. The opium craving that comes over a man when the hour for smoking arrives is so intolerable that at all hazards it must be satisfied, but this man has stripped his home of everything he can p.a.w.n, and now only a bare and desolate house is left, and his wife is almost starving. Driven almost to despair by the awful pains that fill every joint and muscle of his body with the most exquisite agonies, he sells his wife, and she, only too glad to escape her wretched life, willingly consents.

Now, during the whole time that this gradual descent in the man's character has been going on, the idol has been a daily witness of his conduct, but it has never entered the thoughts of the opium-smoker that the G.o.d that sits on the oblong table and gazes calmly upon him without a wink cares anything at all whether he smokes or not, or is concerned in the slightest degree whether he lives a moral life, or whether he wrecks it by the grossest iniquities.

I once said to a man who looked like an animated skeleton, though not half so cheerful, "Are you not afraid that the idol that is so close to you, and that sees how wretchedly you are living, may punish you for the great wrongs you are committing?" He smiled a grim and sickly smile, as though I was perpetrating a huge joke, and he was vastly amused at it. The idol had no concern with human character, and it was only a barbarian that would ever dream in his unsophisticated nature that such a thing was possible.

Again, a mistress of a home, who was a devout and earnest believer in the G.o.ddess of Mercy, had a young slave girl about fourteen years of age.

Whilst drawn by the beautiful and benevolent-looking face of Kwan-Yin to a keener belief and wors.h.i.+p of her, she was daily treating this poor child in the most savage and brutal manner. Her body and her legs were all covered with scars caused by the beatings she had received. One of her eyes was nearly torn out of the socket, and she was brought to the hospital, so maimed and wounded that the doctor feared she could never be cured.

It never occurred to this cruel woman that the savage way in which she was murdering her slave girl, in the very presence of an idol who owed her power to the reputation she had universally gained for mercy and compa.s.sion, would so set the G.o.ddess against her that her prayers and her offerings would be rejected. What had her conduct got to do with the favour of the G.o.ddess? Absolutely nothing. The G.o.ds have no concern about human motives and mundane morality. They have other things to attend to, and certainly no time to give to such complex questions, and so men and women are left very much to themselves, and if in the cycles of time retribution comes upon men for their evil lives, it is not the G.o.ds and the G.o.ddesses that men wors.h.i.+p that will see to the ordering of that.

That the Chinese have profound faith in their idols is a fact that cannot for a moment be questioned. China is a nation of idolaters, and neither learning nor intelligence nor high birth tends to quench the belief that has come down from the past that these wooden G.o.ds have a power of interfering in human life, and of being able to bestow blessings or to send down curses upon men.

There are times, however, in the life of the people when the G.o.ds seem to vanish out of their sight, and they turn to a great power which they call Heaven for deliverance or protection. In the very earliest days of Chinese history, ages before idolatry was introduced into China from India (A.D.

61), there is no doubt but that the people wors.h.i.+pped the true G.o.d. In the course of time the word for G.o.d became mixed up with certain heroes that were deified by successive emperors, and so the monotheistic craving of the nation took refuge in the word Heaven. The Chinese character for that is composed of two words, "one" and "great." The combination then means, "The One Great," which truly expresses the thought that men have of the Great and the Mighty One whose power is absolute and whose decisions are final throughout the whole of creation.

That this belief is no mere abstract one is seen in many instances in ordinary life where men appeal directly to Heaven instead of to the idols.

The country, for example, is suffering from the want of rain. Months have gone by and the rainy season has come and pa.s.sed away without the usual rainfall, the crops are withering in the fields, and there is a prospect of hunger and famine unless the clouds send down of their richness and revive the drooping forces of nature.

The priests of a certain temple notify that on a certain day a procession will be formed to march through the city to beseech Heaven to pour down the much-needed rain upon the land. The people gladly respond to this appeal, and on the day appointed, scholars dressed in their long robes, and priests in their yellow dresses, and the common people in the clothes that they wear only on special occasions, all turn out and join in the long line that winds its way along the narrow unsavoury streets to intercede with Heaven, that it will send down copious showers on the thirsty earth.

One singular feature in this public demonstration is the attendance of the idols. They are brought out from their temples and carried in the solemn procession to join with the people in the universal prayer for rain. Every ten yards or so the slowly-moving line makes a halt, and every one kneels down and a piteous cry is raised to Heaven, that it would have pity upon the land, so that the crops may not perish and the poor may not die of hunger and starvation. It is intensely interesting to watch the long line of suppliants at this stage in their supplications. Many of them, in order to show the intensity of their purpose, have come dressed in sackcloth; others who are musical have brought their instruments with them, and as they walk with a solemn step they play a sombre funereal air that is intended to show to Heaven with what sorrow their hearts are filled at the calamity that threatens to overwhelm the people if the rain is withheld.

Now the music is stopped and the whole procession is on its knees, and even the idols, as it were, with silent supplications join in the mournful confession of sin and in the agonized entreaties to Heaven to have pity upon the people.