Sidelights on Chinese Life Part 6

Heaven is recognized as being supreme in power. In the mottoes that the Chinese paste on their doorposts and lintels at the beginning of the year are several that show the popular thought on this great subject. "May Heaven send down upon our home peace and happiness": "Life and Death, adversity and happiness are all decided by Heaven": "Honour and wealth as well as poverty and lowly station are in the hands of Heaven": "Men may plan, but it is Heaven that decides what the result shall be."

There is no reference to the idols here. In fact, when Heaven is mentioned they are never referred to as having any authority in the great movements and principles by which human life is controlled and influenced. Heaven to the Chinese is a great impersonal power, so far exalted and so mysterious that in despair they have adopted the idols as a means by which they can communicate with the unseen. And yet there are occasions when men seem to lose their dread of Heaven, and they appeal to it, as Christians do to G.o.d. Heaven, for instance, is believed to have a stern sense of justice and of righteousness. It is also the redresser of wrongs, which it invariably puts right, upholding the innocent and bringing swift judgment on the guilty. Its government is one that is founded on great principles of right, that work automatically in the destruction of all that is evil and in the furtherance of all that is good.

There are many times in the life of this people when Heaven becomes to them a veritable Person, who can hear their cry when they are in distress and who, they believe, is ready to vindicate their character when it has been unjustly a.s.sailed.

One day, in pa.s.sing through one of the side streets of a great town, a crowd was observed standing with a kind of shocked look upon their faces gazing upon a woman that seemed to be raving mad. It turned out that she was a poor woman living down the street, who had gone to a.s.sist in the household work of the family opposite to where she was now standing. Some trifling thing had been missed in the house, and she had been accused of stealing it. She defended herself pa.s.sionately and with all the eloquence at her command, but without avail. Being originally of a high temper and of a hasty, fiery disposition, she was enraged beyond measure not only at the false accusation that had been levelled against her, but also because the woman refused to accept her defence of herself, and still reiterated her firm conviction that it was she that had stolen the missing articles.

Feeling that there was no other way of clearing her character except by appealing to Heaven, she rushed out into the street, and letting down her long hair till it fell in thick tresses over her shoulders, she looked up at the sky where the Power she called Heaven was, and she poured out the grievance that was filling her heart almost to bursting. She told how she had been falsely accused, and how every attempt to right herself had been listened to with scorn and contempt. Then with tears streaming down her face, she called upon Heaven to avenge her and show to the neighbourhood that she was guiltless of the charges that had been made against her. With a rush and a torrent of imprecations that positively made one shudder she then prayed "The Great One" to hurl down upon the woman that had injured her all the miseries and woes that poor human nature has ever been called upon to endure. Her vocabulary of evils was amazing in its luxuriance, and as each was shot forth from her pa.s.sionate lips, some of the onlookers actually shuddered with horror at the awful sorrows that she wished her enemy to have to suffer.

In studying the religious forces that are in operation amongst the Chinese, one is deeply impressed with the illogical position that is maintained in regard to each of them. "Fung-Shuy," for example, especially when it is acting in conjunction with the graves of the dead, is declared to be able to fill a home with boundless wealth, and to secure that sons shall be born into the family and the highest honours of the State be bestowed upon the sons and grandsons. The idols again are credited with the most marvellous powers. They can get men out of sc.r.a.pes, and they can build up businesses so that colossal fortunes shall be made. They can fill the desolate homes with troops of children. They have the power, when they are enraged at the neglect of the people of any particular district in paying them proper honour, of sending cholera and deadly fevers that shall carry them off by the hundreds. All these are firmly believed in by priests and gentle-faced looking nuns, and fortune-tellers will all prove to you that the popular faith is founded in philosophy and experience. You retort to all the laboured arguments of these various interested parties by asking them whether it is not a fact that life and death, and prosperity and adversity, and kingly honours as well as the meanest station in society, are all decided by Heaven, and that they are its special gift. There never is any other answer to that question but one, and yet five minutes after the same person will be as enthusiastic as ever in his glorification of the idols, and in his profound belief that some favourite G.o.d has the power of bestowing every blessing that the heart longs to possess.

I have described the idol in the home, and I will conclude now by giving a description of a temple scene such as may be witnessed on the birthday of the chief idol or on the first or the fifteenth of the moon, which days are supposed to be specially lucky for those who wish to make their offerings to the G.o.ds.

The temple I am about to describe is situated on a rising hill that has an outlook of great natural beauty. Immediately below it and stretching considerably in the distance is a large city containing over one hundred thousand inhabitants, that live in the confined streets that look from the temple like narrow arteries along which the human tide ebbs and flows without cessation. Beyond the town there runs an arm of the sea, dotted with numerous islets and sparkling with the rays of the great Eastern sun, which he flashes on islands and capes, and the sails of the junks that are pa.s.sing up and down from the inland waters to the coast. Further on and completely filling up the background are ranges of mountains with the great shadows resting on them and their lofty peaks bathed in sunlight, whilst here and there the floating clouds rest like beautiful crowns upon the summits of some that tower the highest amongst them towards the blue sky.

The scene in the temple and its surroundings was very charming and attractive, for the sun shone upon the temple, and played amongst the solemn-looking pine-trees, and sent his rays down courtyards that seemed to delight in shadow, till everything appeared to be laughing for very joy. Even the idols looked as though they had caught the spirit of the day, and the "G.o.d of War" appeared to be less stern and bloodthirsty than was his wont, and the "G.o.d of Literature" had put on a light and jaunty air, hardly in keeping with the profound subjects that ever claim his attention.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WHITE STAR TEMPLE (NANKIN).]

But see! here come the people from the great city below, slowly winding their way up the stone steps that the feet of countless wors.h.i.+ppers in the years gone by have worn smooth and thin. Some few are coming with purposes intent upon appealing to the "G.o.ddess of Mercy," for their faces are sombre, and the shadows of troubles from which they hope the idol may deliver them, cover them with a sad and sorrowful aspect. Others, again, have come for an outing and to get out of their monotonous surroundings, to catch a glimpse of the far-off hills, and to see the sun as he puts forth his powers to turn the world into a thing of beauty.

Here is a jolly little party that has almost reached the top. It consists of an old lady whose hair is completely grey, but whose face is made beautiful by as sunny a smile as ever lighted up a human face. With her are two lads, evidently her grandsons, full of life and fun, and wild with the excitement that the mountain air has put into their blood. They race and chase each other up and down the steps, and round the huge boulders that lie on the roadside, and they dodge behind the old granny, who seems as if she would like to be a girl again and join them in their mad romps.

Whilst she is standing taking breath, and gazing with rapture upon the distant hills flooded with great waves of light, and upon the waters of the sea that are sparkling with sunbeams, a woman of about forty with slow and sorrowful motion climbs up the steep ascent. She has a slave girl with her, and she leans one hand upon her shoulder to support her as she walks.

She is a widow, and evidently has some sorrowful story that she is going to tell the G.o.ddess. One is struck with the pallor of her face, and the utterly hopeless air that rests on every feature in it. She hardly looks at the pleasant-looking old lady, but pa.s.ses up with downcast eyes till she reaches the open s.p.a.ce that is in front of the temple.

Immediately behind these people I have been describing, there appears a party of young fellows of the better cla.s.s. They are well dressed, and have an air of refinement about them. There is no sign of trouble or sorrow among them, for they laugh and chat and joke with each other, whilst the road resounds with the echo of their merry voices. Their visit to the temple to-day is merely one of pleasure. The streets below are grimy and evil smelling, and in order to have some object in view they have determined to spend the afternoon in a picnic to the well-known temple on the mountain side.

The temple as a whole consists not simply of one large room where the image of the G.o.ddess is enshrined, but is made up of a number of smaller buildings connected with each other in a cunning and artistic fas.h.i.+on by winding ways that nature seems to have devised in order to add to the attractions of the place. In each of these lesser temples there are placed images of some of the more commonly wors.h.i.+pped idols, a veritable kind of Pantheon where each visitor can find the particular G.o.d that he deems the most suitable for his individual requirements. Leading to these various buildings, there are little grottoes, and covered pathways, and natural adjustments of rocks, in which stone seats and granite tables have been arranged, and where the crowds of wors.h.i.+ppers, tired with their climb up the mountain path and anxious to get out of the glare of the great sun, can sit and enjoy the refres.h.i.+ng coolness that these recesses in the hillside naturally give.

But let us take our stand a little to the side of the G.o.ddess and watch the wors.h.i.+ppers as they come in turn and take their position in front of her to offer their pet.i.tions to her. The widow with the sorrowful face, whom we saw climbing the hill, without one thought of the glorious scenery that filled the landscape with its beauty, comes in with the shadow deepening on her face, and lifting up her folded hands in the att.i.tude of devotion to the G.o.ddess begins to mutter to her the story of the trouble that is weighing on her heart. The sight is truly a most pathetic one. The face is in agony, and the eyes are turned with an intensity of gaze upon the calm face of the wooden image before her. The faith expressed in the impa.s.sioned look is profound, for it would seem as though her whole soul was absorbed in the telling of her story and in her wish to touch the heart of the placid image of the G.o.ddess.

After a few minutes, anxious to know what the answer of the idol is going to be, she takes up two pieces of bamboo that are lying on the table in front of it, and throws them up in the air. With a clatter they fall on to the tiled floor, and by the way they lie she learns that her prayer has been granted, and that the G.o.ddess will give her the desire of her heart.

A smile like a flash of sunlight in a winter sky fleets across her pale thin face, and one can see what a sweet one it might be, were her heart relieved of the sorrow that has painted it with such sombre colours.

Her place is taken by another who has been standing by waiting her turn.

Evidently her business is not a very pressing one, or such as to cause her much trouble at heart, for after a few seconds of muttering she tosses up with almost an irreverent fling the two divining bits of bamboo, and looks with a casual air at the position they take on the floor. The answer they give is No--her prayer is not granted--so with a bow to the G.o.ddess, and a kind of pout upon her lips, she pa.s.ses out into the open air. Her matter could not have been of any importance whatever, for in a moment she is laughing and gossiping with her friends, as though her visit to the G.o.ddess had been a joke that was now ended.

And so one after another come and take their stand before the idol. Some have a free-and-easy air about them, whilst others are intense and impa.s.sioned. Some accept at once the answer of the G.o.ddess as final, whilst others again continue to fling up the two coa.r.s.e pieces of bamboo until they give the reply that they wish to have. One young lad about eighteen attracts my attention. For fully a minute, with calm and untroubled face, his lips keep moving and his gaze is concentrated on Kwan-Yin. I ask him when he is finished what he has been asking of her. "I have been out of employment for some time," he replies, "and I have been round to several temples and entreated the G.o.ds there to find me a place; but they have done nothing for me, so I thought I would come here and see if I should be more successful with the idol of this temple."

As the evening sun began to set behind the ma.s.s of clouds that seemed to gather on the Western mountains to catch the last glimpse of him before he disappeared, we began to descend the hill. Numbers of those that I had seen standing with devout faces and uplifted hands before the idol were fellow-travellers. Others, again, who had ascended the hill for an outing, and whom I had watched sitting in the grottoes, eating peanuts, and deftly cracking dried melon seeds, and sipping tea, moved down at the same time.

The wooden G.o.ds were left behind in the gathering gloom of their shrines, and the only figures they saw were the opium-visaged priests that flitted about like ghosts. The people at any rate had had a pleasant day, and a breath of pure air, and a vision of nature in her most beautiful aspect, but nothing more. "What have you gained to-day in your appeal to the G.o.ddess?" I asked of a man that I had seen very devout in his prayers. He looked at me with a quick and searching glance. "You ask me what answer I have got to my pet.i.tion to the G.o.ddess?" he said. "Yes," I replied, "that is what I want to know from you." "Well, you have asked me more than I can tell you. The whole question of the idols is a profoundly mysterious one that no one can fathom. Whether they do or can help people is something I cannot tell. I wors.h.i.+p them because my fathers did so before me, and if they were satisfied, so must I be. The whole thing is a mystery," and he pa.s.sed on with the look of a man who was puzzled with a problem that he could not solve, and that look is a permanent one on the face of the nation to-day.

CHAPTER V

SERVANTS

General character of servants--The duties and perquisites of the cook--Taking account with cook--His oblique ideas of morality--The boy, his duties, etc.--The way that small things mysteriously disappear in a house--Percentages--The servant question.

The general experience of Englishmen in China with regard to the servants is, taking it all in all, a pleasant one. The average intelligence of the cla.s.s of men and women that are employed is a fairly good one. They consequently learn their work easily, and as they are industrious and moved by a sense of fidelity they render such very pleasant services that when families have to return to England, they think with regret of the home life they have left behind them in that far-off land, which owed a good deal of its charm to the cheerful and willing service rendered by the servants in it.

It must not be inferred that there never is any friction. That would be to a.s.sume a state of things that could be found nowhere in the wide world.

Disagreements do happen and collisions do take place, but these are but as it were the occasional clouds in a sky that is usually sunny, and besides there is so much of the grotesque mingled with the unpleasant, that after the affair is over and the irritation has subsided one is more inclined to laugh at the whole affair than to be angry.

If there is a family, the servants usually required are a cook, a table boy, a water coolie to carry water, and an amah or nurse, who will help with the children, if there are any, look after the bedrooms, and do any mending that may be needed. The most important amongst them all is the cook, for the comfort of a home depends in a very large measure upon him, so the great aim of every housewife is to secure a man who knows his work well, is clean, and is fairly honest. If such a one as this can be secured, there will never be any disposition to get rid of him, even though he may have serious faults that it requires considerable patience to endure.

As soon as it is known that you wish to engage a cook, you have almost an immediate application for the situation. You gaze upon the applicant with a good deal of anxiety, and if it were possible you would like to read into his very heart to know what kind of a character he is. Is he good-tempered, or is he touchy and masterful, and, like most Chinese, does he want his own way? You scan his face to see if you can catch a glimpse of the soul within, but it is as expressionless as a statue. The control that a Chinaman has over his features is one of the mysteries of this wonderful people. He has so schooled them, that when he likes they will show no trace of what is going on in his mind.

You inquire of him if he knows how to cook. If he is a really clever artist, he will reply, "A little." There is a double motive in saying this. It is a sign of pride, and it also secures him in the future from any very serious criticism of the mistress, for if he should fail to please her in any particular dish, he will remind her that he warned her when she was engaging him that he did not profess to be an adept in cooking.

All the time you have been questioning him he has been looking at you with those black, piercing eyes of his and trying to read you. Are you shrewd and wideawake, or are you so green that you can be cheated with your eyes open? Are you acquainted with the wiles of the Chinese mind, or will you accept everything you are told as though it were gospel truth? Will you watch everything that is going on in your kitchen, or will you leave the full control in his hands? These are some of the questions that flash through the Yellow brain, and before he quits you he will have formed a very accurate idea of the kind of mistress you are to whom he has engaged himself.

There is one thing that is quite settled, and that is from the moment of his engagement the one great aim of his life is to make as much money as he can out of the situation he has just gained. His facilities for doing so are very great, for the custom in the East is for the cook to purchase all the daily food that is used in the family. The mistress never does this. It would be impossible for her to rise every morning by daylight and go into the narrow ill-smelling streets and buy from the farmers as they bring in their produce from the country in the early dawn. There are months in the year, besides, when the heat is so intense and the rays of the sun are so scorching that she would not dare to venture out to make her purchases. The result is, the duty of buying is left to the cook, and as his conscience is an exceedingly elastic one, it may easily be conceived what an opportunity this gives him of making money.

In the art of doing this every Chinaman is an adept. He begins to learn it when he is a boy. His mother sends him out when he is a small lad to buy some simple thing for the home. He returns with the article minus ten per cent., which he considers his lawful commission, though he is careful not to let his mother know, and with this he plays pitch-and-toss with other youthful gamblers in the street. As he grows in years, he becomes more expert in the art of extracting commissions from every sum entrusted to his care, and now that he has become a cook a golden field is opened up before him, where his gains are only bounded by the ignorance or carelessness of his employer.

As it is impossible for his mistress to follow him down the narrow, crowded streets where the provisions for the day are to be bought, he has a wide field for the exercise of his ingenuity as to how much extra he is to charge for everything he buys. She does not know the market rates, and therefore within certain very undefined limits she is at his mercy.

It is as good as a play to watch the progress of the taking an account of the purchases for any particular day, and to see how the wily Chinaman, with his childlike, innocent-looking face, and the Englishwoman with her open-hearted, guileless disposition, settle such a difficult financial problem.

The latter seats herself at the table with her account-book open and with pen in hand. She is restless and uneasy, for she is conscious that she is going to be cheated, and that she herself will have to register the figures that will ensure her own defeat. The Oriental stands some way off, with head slightly drooping and with a face that might have been that of a saint. With a calmness and simplicity of manner, as though he were stating one of Heaven's eternal principles, he mentions the first item of his account. There is no faltering or hesitation in his accent, or any sign of guile, though it is precisely fifty per cent. more than he actually paid for the article he has mentioned.

The lady moves restlessly in her seat. Her heart is beginning to swell with indignation, for she is positive that she is being overcharged. She has no proof, however, and with her Occidental training that it is not right to bring an accusation unless supported by some evidence, she puts down the lying figures. The Oriental looks on without the shadow of a smile, though with his sense of humour bubbling up within him, he is conscious of the huge comedy that is being played. He has scored his first success, but to let his face show that would be to throw victory from him when it was just within his grasp.

Another and another item is given, as though they were quotations from his own sacred cla.s.sics, each one as mendacious as the first, and the scribe, conscious that with every additional figure sums are being stolen from her own pocket and transferred to the cook's, nervously writes them down, though her heart is vigorously protesting all the time. The only protest she can make is an indignant "Too dear, too dear by far," which the Oriental listens to unmoved, and as though they were eulogies upon his honesty.

At length one sum, that she has certain information about, that is a hundred per cent. over the market price is given her, without a quaver in his voice. She at once asks him, with a ring of pa.s.sion that up to this time she has managed to suppress, how it is that he dares to charge her just double of what he gave. The Chinaman is equal to the occasion. No man, indeed, in this great Empire is ever at a loss for an answer on the spot to the most awkward question that may be put to him. An Occidental will stammer and hesitate when a difficulty of this kind occurs, and the scarlet flush that will flash over his face will announce his confusion.

An Oriental will instantly become more calm. His eyes will melt into gentleness, and his face a.s.sume the appearance of one that is absorbed in some great moral problem that he is endeavouring to solve.

The cook looks at the lady in gentle wonder. The charge has steadied him, and made him more tranquil and composed. "What does the mistress mean?" he asks. His face is childlike in its a.s.sumption of innocence. "Do you really think I would cheat you? I may be poor," he continues, "but I am honest, and if you only go to the market and inquire the price of goods, you will find that I am charging exactly what I paid." "Well," she triumphantly replies, "I have been there already, and I find you have charged me just double the market rate."

This seems to be a crus.h.i.+ng answer, but it only serves to bring out the true resources of the Chinese mind. Instead of being fl.u.s.tered with this decided evidence of his guilt, he becomes more self-possessed. "It is quite true," he says, "that such goods can be bought at the price you name, but they are inferior articles, and such as would not be accepted by you, were I to buy them for you. You always want the best, and I would never dream of purchasing such things. I can get them for you at the price you mention, but you must not complain if they are not as good as you are used to."

The lady is determined not to be beaten, so she puts down the price at half that he has named, the cook meanwhile protesting that he is a loser, and that himself and family will have to suffer.

But it is not simply in the matter of overcharges that the cook finds a large field open to him for successful financial operations. Overweights are also a fruitful source of revenue to him. When he goes to market he always carries with him his steelyard, and every purchase that is made is weighed with it.

Chinese law has never legislated with regard to weights and measures, and no inspector ever goes round to see that the public is not cheated when they make their purchases. The consequence is that every man that can possibly afford it carries his own steelyard, in order to check the tradesmen who might be inclined to give them short measure. The cook would no more dream of going out to market without his steelyard than he would think of going without his fan in the dog days. It is his _vade mec.u.m_ by which he can measure his gains, for when he returns home he reports to the mistress that he has bought so many ounces more than he really has, and the money she pays him for these mythical weights is so much pure gain that he pockets.

If the lady, however, takes a pride in the management of her household and is anxious to keep down expenses, she will insist that every article that the cook buys shall be brought and weighed in her presence before she pays for it. This home is not an ideal one for a cook. He has, however, to submit to the inevitable, but he at once sets his wits to work to circ.u.mvent her by ingenious ways and dogged perseverance in his plans, such as no watchfulness on her part will ever enable her entirely to frustrate. There is no profession in China like a cook's for developing the inventive faculties or for stimulating the imagination.

The mistress in self-defence gets a steelyard. Without that she would be at the mercy of the man whose whole aim in life is now to circ.u.mvent her, and circ.u.mvent her he will, or the Yellow brain will have lost its cunning. Some of his schemes are most ingenious. For example, he is told one day to go out and buy a fowl. He goes to the market, and secures one after an immense amount of haggling and carries it home.

After he has got there he proceeds to cram down its throat some very common stuff, till its crop is as full as it can contain. This is to increase its weight and consequently his gains, for the animal is sold at so much an ounce.