Part 8 (1/2)

The staying power of the Chinese seems unlimited. The strong, square frames with which nature has endowed them are models of strength. They are not graceful, neither are the lines of beauty conspicuous either in face or form, but for endurance there is nothing to surpa.s.s them anywhere throughout the world.

On one occasion, I had to make a journey to a large city some twenty miles or more distant. It was in the hottest days in summer, when the temperature was over ninety in the shade. I engaged two chair-bearers to carry me, who were taken at random from the nearest chair shop, where such men wait to be hired. There was nothing to distinguish them from the ordinary men who get their living by carrying chairs. They had the look of the farmer cla.s.s from which they were taken, and were as dull and as uninteresting as shabby clothes and tanned and bronzed faces could make them. They had a mean and insignificant appearance, being not more than five feet and a half in height, and the blue colour in their garments, which is so popular with the Chinese, gave them a commonplace look that did not raise one's opinion of them.

We started very early in the morning, just before the light of the dawn had touched the darkness that covered the land with its shadows. We had not gone far before the men began to show their mettle. With the heavy chair upon their shoulders, they kept on at a steady swing of over three miles an hour, in spite of the fact that the roads were simply footpaths, that had been worn into ruts and hollows by the feet of countless travellers and by the wear and tear of storm and rain.

The first hour's travelling was comparatively cool, for the sun had not risen above the mountain tops to flash his fiery rays upon the world around us. The scene at this time was full of beauty. The earth lay clothed in a dim, subdued, cloisterlike light that gave it an air of mystery. The rice in the fields looked shy and modest as it appeared to be hiding itself amid the shadows that still rested upon the earth. The clumps of trees took fantastic and grotesque shapes, and seemed like spectres that had come out to travel during the uncanny hours of night and had dallied too long by the way. But most beautiful of all were the hills in a blue thin haze that clung to them, and turned the rocks and boulders into seeming fortresses and castles, behind which one could fancy gallant knights and armed soldiers kept watch and ward.

After a time, the sun rose with fire in his face and flashed his molten rays across the land, till everything glowed beneath their touch, and made life a misery. My men, however, strode on through the scorching air, with as firm a step as though they were on a Highland range with the purple heather at their feet. The sun blazed down upon their bare shaven heads till it seemed as though I should have a sunstroke out of sheer sympathy from looking at the glare that flashed about them; but on they went, their bodies steaming with perspiration, but with overflowing spirits that made them catch the humours they met by the way, which now and again sent them into uproarious fits of laughter.

The hours went by, and with a tread like fate they marched on along the burning roads, through villages and across flooded plains, till at last we reached the great city. It was a little after midday when we pa.s.sed through the great gates that gave us entrance into the narrow streets, where the crowds jostled each other, and where the tide of human life flowed in a perpetual stream.

After transacting our business, I spoke to the men about returning. This was a most unusual proceeding, for one such journey was universally considered to be enough for one day. The day, however, was young, and the heat in the city, where the crowded houses kept away the breeze, made it a perfect oven where men could scarcely breathe, and where the mosquitoes revelled in the luxuries that the half-dressed people afforded them.

I asked them whether they could engage fresh men to carry me back, for I never dreamed of suggesting that they might be able to do so. ”What need is there,” they replied, ”to search for other bearers, when you have us, who are perfectly willing to make the return journey with you?” As they said this, their eyes perfectly danced with delight at the prospect of earning two days' wages in one.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SEDAN CHAIR.

_To face p. 117._]

I was perfectly delighted at this, for I knew the men by this time to be pleasant, good-tempered fellows, who would play me no tricks by the way, and then they were going home, and would not dally by the journey as strangers might be tempted to do. Preparations were at once made to start back immediately. The chair was brought round to the door, and the men with beaming faces and as fresh-looking as though they had done nothing all day, started back on the long weary journey of fully twenty miles.

Once more we were retracing our way through the long, winding streets of the city, and then we emerged through the gates into the open country beyond. A haze of heat lay upon the fields and on the hills. The afternoon sun, still breathing out fire, glared into the chair and shone upon my face and played upon the bare skulls of the bearers. Surely that fierce heat would break their spirit, for I began to feel limp and f.a.gged, though the only exertion I had to make was to try and keep cool by fanning myself.

As the afternoon went on, the steps of the bearers became less elastic, and when we rested at the regular stopping-places, they were less eager in resuming their journey. Beyond this, they seemed as vigorous as ever, and forged their way through villages, and past market towns, and round the foot of hills glowing with amber colours that were flung there with the lavish hand of the fast-descending sun.

We reached home long after darkness had settled on the landscape, and had blotted out the hills around which the clouds had gathered to let the sun paint his evening pictures. We could hear the rustling of the rice, as the night wind sighed amongst it, and sometimes we would be startled by the sudden looming up of trees like huge fantastic spectres that had escaped from the land of darkness to terrify men by their presence.

Travelling in the dark was not an easy matter, for we had to pick our way over narrow uneven pathways, and across broken dilapidated bridges, and over stepping-stones in a mountain brook, till finally, worn out and wearied to death, we stumbled down the dark street that led to our home, and there I threw myself into the first chair I could find, utterly exhausted by a journey that few men would undertake even in the coldest days in winter.

The chair-bearers, after a few whiffs at their bamboo pipes, started to light the furnace and cook their supper. All the weariness they had shown during the last hour or two seemed to have vanished, and they laughed and chatted about the incidents on the road and the funny sights they had seen. One chopped the wood, whilst the other washed the rice and poured it into the cauldron, and prepared the vegetables they were to eat with it.

No one looking in casually upon the scene and listening to the merry voices and to the animated conversation of these men would ever have dreamed that they had travelled fully fifty miles, carrying two hundred pounds' weight upon their shoulders, through the blazing heat of an Eastern summer day.

In one's dealing with the Chinese one is continually being reminded of the strain of dogged inflexibility that runs throughout the character of nearly every individual that one comes in contact with. It is not simply occasional instances that one runs up against. It is in the race, and there is no doubt but that it is this force that has given it such a strength that it has been able to stand the wear and tear of ages and to be as strong physically as it was a thousand years ago.

Of course there are differences. There are strong men and there are weak men. There are those whose wills are as firm and unbending as the granite hills around. There are others, again, whose temperaments are of an easy, yielding description, and one is apt to imagine that they can be moulded this way or that at the will of another. Up to a certain extent this is true, and yet one soon discovers that even with them, when the true temper of the man is tested, there is a tenacity of will that nothing seems to be able to shake.

A man, for example, comes in to see you. He is common looking, with a face hardened and battered by toil. His clothes, which are shabby and well worn, consist of the ordinary blue cotton cloth that in its dull and dingy colour helps to give a mean and uninteresting look to the wearer. If the nation would but depart from the eternal tradition that has come steadily down the ages in regard to its clothing and would take some hints from nature, whose varied moods make her look so charming, how different would these unaesthetic people appear from what they do now!

His face is a weak one, and there are lines about his mouth that in an Englishman would indicate a want of will. Your idea of the man is a very low one, and you ask him with as much politeness as your poor opinion of him will permit you, what he wants with you.

In a hesitating, nervous kind of way, he informs you that he has ventured to come and ask a favour of you. It is a very important one, he says, and as he knows no one that is so kind as you are or who has so much influence as you have, he has taken the liberty to address himself to you and he hopes that you will not refuse his request.

You find as he tells his story that he wants you to use your good offices to get his son into employment in a responsible firm in the town. You are startled, for you do not know any one in the said firm, and moreover you have no knowledge of the young man either as to his character or abilities. You try and impress upon the father that it is impossible for you to help him in the matter, because you really have no influence with any one responsible in the house of business to which he refers, and that therefore he had better apply to some one else who has the ability to help him.

The man in a weak kind of way appears to agree with you, expresses his appreciation of your kindness in so pleasantly listening to him, and bids you good-bye, and any one not acquainted with the Chinese character would certainly come to the conclusion that the whole incident was at an end and nothing more would be heard of it.

To-morrow morning you are engaged, say, in writing when the same man is ushered into your room by your ”boy,” and he in a timid, hesitating way expresses a wish to say a few words to you. In his hand he carries a fowl, with its legs tied and its head hanging down, and as this is the usual way in which such animals are carried in China, it seems to recognize the universal custom and to utter no protest against the indignity to which it is exposed.

Without referring to it, he lays it down in a corner of the room, and proceeds to make his request for his son in precisely the same language that he had done the previous day. Your statement then that you had no influence in the firm mentioned was considered by him to be a pleasant and refined way of showing your displeasure that a present had not been made you, and so to-day he is atoning for this by bringing you the fowl that lies fluttering on the ground.