Part 9 (1/2)
The son is indeed a man to be proud of by a Chinese father. He has the look of a man who can hold his own in the world, and though utterly uneducated, his face has a semi-refined appearance, that speaks of a tender heart and of a mind that would easily be influenced for good. His young wife has a face that it is a pleasure to look upon. It is not by any means a beautiful one, for there is not a single feature in it that could by the widest charity be called pretty, and yet it is just such a one that has an attraction about it, that it wins men's homage though every canon of beauty is defied by it. She has high cheek-bones and a large mouth, and a nose that is as far removed from the Grecian as it is possible to be conceived, but her eyes are bright and sparkling, and it seems as though the spirit of fun lay close behind them, for there is a perpetual suggestion of laughter in them. Her face, too, browned with the great Eastern sun, is a most kindly and pleasing one, and smiles at the least provocation ripple over it, and fill it with suns.h.i.+ne or shadows, as the mood happens to take her.
She and her young husband are busy hoisting the nets high up on a bamboo pole to have them aired and dried in the sun. The youngest child, which is but a baby, is strapped on her back, where he is sound asleep, the motions of the mother acting as a cradle would do in lulling him into forgetfulness of everything around him. The other child is a little over two, with a round, chubby face and large, staring black eyes, that look upon you with wonder as you make various signs of friendliness to him. He is stationed in the ”sitting-room,” to be out of the way of the workers, and to guard against his moving beyond certain limits and tumbling overboard, a good strong string has been tied to one of his legs, which effectually prevents any such accidents happening to him.
The old father, calm and placid looking, is sitting on his heels near the tiller smoking a long bamboo pipe. This mode of resting is a most popular one amongst the middle and lower cla.s.ses of the Chinese, but one which an Englishman could not endure for five minutes without considerable discomfort. His wife is fussing about the diminutive kitchen, getting ready the meal for the family, and deftly cooking the rice and the salted turnips and the pickled cabbage that are the princ.i.p.al features in the daily meal of vast numbers of the Chinese.
[Ill.u.s.tration: NETTING FISH FROM THE Sh.o.r.e.]
The above is an attempt to describe the kind of boat that a certain cla.s.s of people who get their living by fis.h.i.+ng in inland waters everywhere use.
They are absolute facsimiles of each other. The question often arises, how is it they are all so identical? Why should not some of them be, say, a foot or two longer, and a few inches wider, so as to antic.i.p.ate the needs of a growing family?
Such a thought never occurs to a Chinaman, or if it does, it is at once rejected as heterodox, or as treason to the original designer. A profound sense of the benefits conferred upon them by the man who had the brain to devise such a boat, though an Englishman would have the daring to think that any idiot could devise a much better one in five minutes, will prevent this nation from ever venturing to think it possible that any change could be made in it that would improve it in one single respect.
The fishermen are absolutely content. They spend their lives on these boats. Men are married upon them, and children are born upon them and grow up to be men and women, and men lie down and die upon them, and from them they are carried to their long homes on the sh.o.r.e, which during their lifetime they have looked upon as a place where they had no inheritance, but which perforce would have to give them a narrow s.p.a.ce when they had finished with life, in which to hide them away from the world.
The boats I have described are but a sample of the mult.i.tude of ways in which the Chinese are circ.u.mscribed and prevented by forces greater than the enactment of special laws from making progress in their national life.
There are signs at the present moment that China is awakening and that the dead hand of the past is being lifted. It will be long, however, before the new movement will permeate into the villages and into the more retired and out-of-the-way places of the Empire, where under the shadow of lofty mountains, and out of the lines where human thought and human traffic are most vigorous, men cling to the traditions of the past. But that the movement will spread and finally change the whole character of the country, there is not the least shadow of a doubt.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A STREET SCENE.
_To face p. 131._]
CHAPTER VII
AMUs.e.m.e.nTS
Chinese a laughter-loving people--Fond of society--Sources of amus.e.m.e.nts few--No seaside outings or holidays--New Year's time--Dragon boat festival--Feast of Tombs--Theatricals--Battledore and shuttlec.o.c.k--Kites--Punch and Judy.
The Chinese are a laughter-loving people, and their broad, unaesthetic-looking faces seem to have been made with a wide and generous area, in order to allow their latent humour to have plenty of scope for its expansion.
No matter what a Chinaman does, there always seems to be a comical element about it that provokes one to smile. With other nationalities, when certain unpleasant things are done, one is inclined to be roused to sudden pa.s.sion and to strong and vigorous language, and a feeling of indignation that takes a long time to die out. With a Chinaman the experience is quite different. He does something most aggravating, and your mind is filled with the deepest resentment, and you feel as though you could never forgive him. You look with indignation upon the man who has offended you.
As you gaze at him, the subtle humour that somehow or other seems to lie about his yellow homely features grips you, and you find a smile rising to your face and your anger explodes in laughter.
There are no people in the world that seem to have such a hypnotizing power over the men of the West as the Chinese. It is not their beauty or their eloquence, nor the fascinating way in which they talk, but in the large amount of human nature they all possess, and in the strain of humour that seems to run through them as music does through an exquisite piece of poetry.
From this it may be easily believed that they are fond of laughter and merriment and the bright and joyous side of things, and social intercourse, and plenty of company, and loud-sounding music and firing of crackers. The solitary feeling that makes an Englishman like to be alone, and shut himself up day after day in a house by himself and not care to see visitors, is something that is quite incomprehensible to a Chinaman.
A man rents a house, for example, and he finds that in the other rooms that are built round an open courtyard there are one or two other families already residing. He welcomes this as one of the advantages that the house he has taken possesses. He comes in with smiling face, and remarks how very cheerful everything is. His wife stands by his side and expresses her pleasure that there are so many people close by them, so that they need not feel dull or lonely. They are both received with overflowing expressions of welcome, and are a.s.sured that their coming is an immense comfort, and will make their homes much more cheery and enjoyable than they would be without them.
Their love for their fellow-kind is a pa.s.sion with the Chinese, and they seem to be able to stand an amount of noise and loud talking and screaming babies and barking of dogs, such as would send an Englishman off his head.
Now, many of the sources of amus.e.m.e.nt that are open to the people of the West have no existence in this country whatever. They have no Sunday on which they can lay aside the eternal round of work, and forget for one day that life is a treadmill which never stops its grinding. There are no stated holidays, when people rush off to the seaside or to the moors or to some fis.h.i.+ng stream, where midst the hills they can forget the heat and pressure of the city. The legislators of China have never dreamed that any one needed a vacation. The school-boys, indeed, after eleven months of cramped school life have been thought worthy of a month's holidays at the end of the year, but the grown-up people have to work. Without that, large sections of the community under present conditions would starve.
The most serious thing of all, however, is the illiterate character of the people. It has been reckoned by competent critics that only ten, or at the most fifteen, millions out of the four hundred can read. The result is that, excepting in the houses of the favoured few, there are no books or magazines or pictures, or, in fact, literature of any kind in the vast majority of the homes into which one may enter. What this means for the young people, full of restlessness and with an immense fund of animal spirits, may be more easily imagined than understood.
In their idle hours or during the dark nights of winter, they are thrown upon their own resources, and as these are extremely limited, it is no wonder that the young fellows take to the only things that they can think of to while the hours away, and that is gambling and opium smoking.