Part 12 (1/2)

{147}

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA.]

The building of the Great Wail, considered simply as a feat of Herculean labor, leaves us no room to boast over the Panama Ca.n.a.l.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHINESE WOMAN'S RUINED FEET.]

The lower picture shows the terrible deformity produced by foot-binding.

{148}

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHINESE SCHOOL CHILDREN.]

The upper picture suggests a word about the amazing fertility of the Oriental races--the j.a.panese, for example, increasing from their birth-rate alone as fast as the United States from its birth-rate plus its enormous immigration.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE AMERICAN CONSULATE AT ANTUNG.]

A great need of America in the East is better consular buildings.

Witness this one at Antung.

{149 continued}

Now, when this happened, the friends of the mistreated man began to murmur. Failing to do anything with the magistrate, they appealed to the magistrate's father--for though you may be fifty or seventy years old in China, if your father is living you are as much subject to his orders as if you were only ten; this is the case just as long as you both live. But when the father spoke about the complaints of the people the magistrate lied about the jar somehow, but not in a way entirely to deceive the old fellow. He decided to do some investigating, and went blundering around into a dark room in search of the jar, and before he saw what he was doing came upon it and fell into it. Whereupon he cried to his son to pull him out.

The son did come, but when he pulled out one father, behold there was another still in the jar--and then another and another and another. He pulled out one father after another till the whole room was full of fathers, and then he filled up the yard with fathers, and had six or eight standing like chickens on the stone wall before the accursed old jar would quit! And to have left one father in there would naturally have been equivalent to murder.

So this was the punishment of the unjust magistrate. He had, of course, to support all the dozens of aged fathers he pulled out of the jar (a Chinaman must support his father though he starve himself), and it is to be supposed that he used up all the wealth he had unjustly piled up, and had to work night and day as well all the rest of his life. Of course the jar, too, had to be returned to its owner, and in this way the whole community learned of the magistrate's unfairly withholding it.

This story is interesting not only for its own sake, but for {150} the light it sheds on Chinese life--the relations of father and son; the unjust oppression of the people by the officials in a land where the citizen is without the legal rights fundamental in American government; and, lastly, the ”Arabian Nights” like flavor of this typically Chinese piece of fiction.

One of the funny things among the many funny things I have encountered in China is the peculiar way of buying or selling land, as reported to me by Rev. Dr. R. T. Bryan. If you buy land from a Chinaman, about Shanghai at least, without knowing the custom of the country, you may have to make him three additional payments before you get through with him. For, according to the custom, after the first payment he will give you a deed, but after a little while will come around sighing, regretting that he sold the land and complaining that you didn't pay enough. Accordingly, you will pay him a little more, and he will give you what is called a ”sighing paper,” certifying that the ”sighing money” has been paid. A few days or weeks pa.s.s and he turns up again.

You didn't pay him quite enough before. Therefore, you make another small payment and he gives you the ”add-a-little-more” paper showing that the ”add-a-little-more” money has been paid. Last of all, you make what is called the ”pull-up-root” payment, and the land is safely yours.

Of course, the impatient foreigner hasn't time for this sort of thing, consequently he pays enough more in the beginning to cancel these various dramatic performances. Doctor Bryan's deed certifies that the ”sighing money,” ”add-a-little-more money,” and ”pull-up-root money”

have all been settled to start with.

”Pidgin English,” or the corruptions of English words and phrases by means of which foreigners and Chinese exchange ideas, is also very amusing. ”Pidgin English” means ”business English,” ”pidgin”

representing the Chinaman's attempt to say ”business.” Some of the Chinese phrases are very useful, such as ”maskee” for our ”never mind.” Other good phrases {151} are ”chop-chop” for ”hurry up,”

”chin-chin” for ”greeting,” and ”chow-chow” for ”food.”

”Have you had plenty chow-chow?” my good-natured Chinese elevator-boy in Shanghai used to say to me after dinner; and the bright-eyed little brats at the temples in Peking used to explain their failure to do anything forbidden by saying they should get ”plenty bamboo chow-chow”! Bamboos are used for switches (as well as for ten thousand other things), and ”bamboo chow-chow” means the same thing to the Chinese boy as ”hickory tea” to an American boy!

A Scotch fellow-pa.s.senger was telling me the other day of the saying that ”The Scotchman keeps the Sabbath day, and every other good thing he can lay his hands on.” Now, the Chinaman, unlike the Scotchman, doesn't keep the Sabbath, but he does live up to all the requirements of the second clause of the proverb. Nothing goes to waste in China except human labor, of which enough is wasted every year to make a whole nation rich, simply because it is not aided by effective implements and machinery. The bottles, the tin cans, the wooden boxes, the rags, the orange peels--everything we throw away--is saved. And the coolies work from early morn till late at night and every day in the week. Their own religion does not teach them to observe the seventh day, and this requirement of Christianity, in China as well as in j.a.pan, is regarded as a great hards.h.i.+p upon its converts.

Buddhism in China, as in j.a.pan, it may also be observed just here, is now only a hideous mixture of superst.i.tion and fraud. As I found believers in the j.a.panese temples rubbing images of men and bulls to cure their own pains, so in the great Buddhist temple at Canton I found the fat Buddha's body rubbed slick in order to bring flesh to thin supplicants, while one of the chief treasures of the temple is a pair of ”fortune sticks.” If the Chinese Buddhist wishes to undertake any new task or project, he first comes to the priest and tries out its advisability with these ”fortune sticks.” If, when dropped to the {152} floor, they lie in such a position as to indicate good luck, he goes ahead; otherwise he is likely to abandon the project.

Let me close this chapter by noting a remark made to me by Dr. Timothy Richard, one of the most eminent religious and educational workers in the empire.