Part 7 (2/2)
So many old-time friends have been to see him. Father, now that the heavy load of officialdom is laid aside, delights to sit within the courtyards with these friends and play at verse-making. No man of his time is found lacking in that one great attribute of a Chinese gentleman. He has treasures of poetry that are from the hands of friends long since pa.s.sed within the Vale of Longevity. These poems are from the pens of men who wrote of the longing for the spiritual life, or the beauties of the world without their doors, or the pleasure of a.s.sociation with old and trusted friends. I read some scrolls the other day, and it was as though ”aeolian harps had caught some strayed wind from an unknown world and brought its messages to me.” It is only by the men of other days that poetry is appreciated, who take the time to look around them, to whom the quiet life, the life of thought and meditation is as vital as the air they breathe. To love the beautiful in life one must have time to sit apart from the worry and the rush of the present day. He must have time to look deep within his hidden self and weigh the things that count for happiness; and he must use most justly all his hours of leisure, a thing which modern life has taught us to hold lightly.
But with our race verse-making has always been a second nature. In the very beginning of our history, the Chinese people sang their songs of kings and princes, of the joys of family life and love and home and children. It is quite true that they did not delve deep into the mines of hidden pa.s.sions, as their songs are what songs should be, telling joyful tales of happiness and quiet loves. They are not like the songs of warrior nations, songs of battle, l.u.s.t and blood, but songs of peace and quiet and deep contentment. When our women sang, like all women who try to voice the thoughts within them, they sang their poems in a sadder key, all filled with care, and cried of love's call to its mate, of resignation and sometimes of despair.
My father learned to love the poets in younger days, but he still reads them o'er and o'er. He says they take him back to other years when life with all its dreams of beauty, love, and romance, lay before him. It brings remembrance of youth's golden days when thoughts of fame and mad ambition came to him with each morning's light. This father of mine, who was stiffly bound with ceremony and acts of statecraft for ten long months of the year, had the temerity to ask two months'
leave of absence from his duties, when he went to his country place in the hills, to his ”Garden of the Pleasure of Peace.” It was always in the early spring when ”that G.o.ddess had spread upon the budding willow her lovely mesh of silken threads, and the rushes were renewing for the year.” He sat beneath the bamboos swaying in the wind like dancing girls, and saw the jessamine and magnolia put forth their buds.
What happy days they were when father came! For me, who lived within the garden all the year, it was just a plain, great garden; but when he came it was transformed. It became a place of rare enchantment, with fairy palaces and lakes of jewelled water, and the lotus flowers took on a loveliness for which there is no name. We would sit hand in hand in our gaily painted tea-house, and watch the growing of the lotus from the first unfurling of the leaf to the fall of the dying flower. When it rained, we would see the leaves raise their eager, dark-green cups until filled, then bend down gracefully to empty their fulness, and rise to catch the drops again.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Mylady18.]
The sound of the wind in the cane-fields came to us at night-time as we watched the s.h.i.+mmer of the fireflies. We sat so silently that the only thing to tell us that the wild duck sought his mate amidst the gra.s.s, was the swaying of the reed stems, or the rising of the teal with whirring wings.
My father loved the silence, and taught me that it is in silence, in the quiet places, rather than on the house-tops, that one can hear the spirit's call, and forget the clanging of the world. It is the great gift which the G.o.d of nature alone can give, and ”he has found happiness who has won through the stillness of the spirit the Perfect Vision, and this stillness comes through contentment that is regardless of the world.”
He often said to me that we are a caravan of beings, wandering through life's pathways, hungering to taste of happiness, which comes to us when we find plain food sweet, rough garments fine, and contentment in the home. It comes when we are happy in a simple way, allowing our wounds received in life's battles to be healed by the moon-beams, which send an ointment more precious than the oil of sandalwood.
I could go on for pages, Mother mine, of the lessons of my father, this grand old man, ”who steeled his soul and tamed his thoughts and got his body in control by sitting in the silence and being one with nature, G.o.d, the maker of us all.” And when I think of all these things, it is hard to believe that men who love the leisure, the poetry, the beautiful things of life, men like my father, must pa.s.s away. It seems to me it will be a day of great peril for China, for our young ones, when these men of the past lose their hold on the growing mind. As rapidly as this takes place, the reverence for the old-time gentleman, the quiet lady of the inner courtyards, will wane, and reverence will be supplanted by discourtesy, faith by doubt, and love of the G.o.ds by unbelief and impiety.
Yet they say he does not stand for progress. What is progress? What is life? The poet truly cries: ”How short a time it is that we are here!
Why then not set our hearts at rest, why wear the soul with anxious thoughts? If we want not wealth, if we want not power, let us stroll the bright hours as they pa.s.s, in gardens midst the flowers, mounting the hills to sing our songs, or weaving verses by the lily ponds. Thus may we work out our allotted span, content with life, our spirits free from care.”
My father has a scroll within his room that says:
”For fifty years I plodded through the vale of l.u.s.t and strife, Then through my dreams there flashed a ray of the old sweet peaceful life.
No scarlet ta.s.selled hat of state can vie with soft repose; Grand mansions do not taste the joys that the poor man's cabin knows.
I hate the threatening clash of arms when fierce retainers throng, I loathe the drunkard's revels and the sound of fife and song; But I love to seek a quiet nook, and some old volume bring, Where I can see the wild flowers bloom and hear the birds in spring.”
Ah, dear one, my heart flows through my pen, which is the messenger of the distant soul to thee, my Mother.
Kwei-li.
10 My Dear Mother, My days are pa.s.sed like a water-wheel awhirl, and I can scarcely find time to attend to the ordinary duties of my household. I fear I seem neglectful of thee, and I will try to be more regular with my letters, so that thou wilt not need reproach me. To-night my house is quiet and all are sleeping, and I can chat with thee without the many interruptions that come from children, servants, and friends during the waking hours.
I have had callers all the day; my last, the wife of the j.a.panese Consul, who brought with her two children. They were like little b.u.t.terflies, dressed in their gay kimonas and bright red obis, their straight black hair framing their tiny elfin faces. I was delighted and could scarcely let them go. Their mother says she will send to me their photographs, and I will send them to thee, as they seem children from another world. They are much prettier, in my eyes, than the foreign children, with their white hair and colourless, blue eyes, who always seem to be clothed in white. That seems not natural for a child, as it is our mourning colour, and children should wear gay colours, as they are symbols of joy and gladness.
My husband watched them go away with looks of hatred and disdain within his eyes, and when I called them b.u.t.terflies of Gay Nippon, he gave an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of great disgust, as at this time he is not o'erfond of the j.a.panese. He believes, along with others, that they are helping the rebels with their money, and we know that many j.a.panese officers are fighting on the side of the Southern forces. He could not forget the words I used, ”Dainty b.u.t.terflies,” and he said that these dainty b.u.t.terflies are coming far too fast, at the rate of many tens of thousands each year, and they must be fed and clothed and lodged, and j.a.pan is far too small. These pretty babies searching for a future home are China's greatest menace. j.a.pan reels that her destiny lies here in the Far East, where she is overlord, and will continue as such until the time, if it ever comes, when new China, with her far greater wealth and her myriads of people, dispute the power of the little Island. At present there is no limit to j.a.pan's ambition. Poor China! It will take years and tens of years to mould her people into a nation; and j.a.pan comes to her each year, buying her rice, her cotton and her silk.
These wily merchants travel up her path-ways and traverse her rivers and ca.n.a.ls, selling, buying, and spreading broadcast their influence.
There are eight thousand men of j.a.pan in Shanghai, keen young men, all looking for the advantage of their country. There is no town of any size where you cannot find a j.a.panese. They have driven the traders of other nationalities from many places; the Americans especially have been compelled to leave; and now there is a bitter struggle between the people from the British Isles and the j.a.panese for the trade of our country. In the olden time the people from Great Britain controlled the trade of our Yang-tse Valley, but now it is almost wholly j.a.panese.
The British merchant, in this great battle has the disadvantage of being honest, while the trader from j.a.pan has small thoughts of honesty to hold him to a business transaction. We say here, ”One can hold a j.a.panese to a bargain as easily as one can hold a slippery catfish on a gourd.” The Sons of Nippon have another point in their favour: the British merchant is a Westerner, while the j.a.panese uses to the full his advantage of being an Oriental like ourselves. Trade-- trade-- is what j.a.pan craves, and it is according to its need that she makes friends or enemies. It is her reason for all she does; her diplomacy, her suavity is based upon it; her army and her vast navy are to help gain and hold it; it is the end and aim of her ambitions.
We, Chinese, have people-- millions, tens of millions of them. When they are better educated, when China is more prosperous, when new demands and higher standards of living are created, when the coolie will not be satisfied with his bowl of rice a day and his one blue garment, then possibilities of commerce will be unlimited. j.a.pan sees this with eyes that look far into the future, and she wants to control this coming trade-- and I fear she will. She has an ambition that is as great as her overpowering belief in herself, an ambition to be in the East what England is in the West; and she is working patiently, quietly, to that end. We fear her; but we are helpless. I hear the men talk bitterly; but what can they do. We must not be another Corea; we must wait until we are strong, and look to other hands to help us in our struggle.
We hope much from America, that country which has so wonderful an influence upon us, which appeals to our imagination because it is great and strong and prosperous. The suave and humorous American, with his easy ways, is most popular with our people, although he cannot always be trusted nor is his word a bond. He is different from the man of England, who is not fond of people not of his own colour and will not try to disguise the fact. He is cold and shows no sympathy to those of an alien race, although we must admit he always acts with a certain amount of justice. America is contemptuous of China and her people, but it is a kindly contempt, not tinged with the bitterness of the other Powers, and we hope, because of that kindliness and also because of trade interests (the American is noted for finding and holding the place that yields him dollars), she will play the part of a kindly friend and save China from her enemies who are now watching each other with such jealous eyes. There is another reason why we like America: she does not seem to covet our land. There is no Shang-tung nor Wei-hai-wei for her. I would that she and England might form a bond of brotherhood for our protection; because all the world knows that where Germany, Russia, or j.a.pan has power, all people from other lands are barred by close-shut doors.
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