Part 13 (1/2)
The impression one gets from a look into these miserable homes is that the Chinese idea of comfort differs essentially from our own, and that they can put up with a vast amount of discomfort such as would drive an Englishman mad. Their houses are filthily dirty and untidy. The wife after a few weeks of married life loses the trim, neat appearance she had as a young girl. She drops naturally into the slattern ways of the women who are her neighbours, and ere long dust and dirt and cobwebs, and frowsy and untidy garments, are the leading features of the home.
It would be unwise to infer from this state of things that the Chinese are unhappy, or that they are conscious that their surroundings have something in them to induce melancholy or discontent. The ideal of the West is cleanliness, a thing that the East never seems to aim at, or to even dream of. This great city through which we are walking is an example of this latter statement. Its streets are unswept from one year's end to the other. Heaps of rubbish festering and fermenting in the sun and exhaling the most unpleasant odours meet you at every turn. The drains are badly made and left absolutely to themselves until, choked up, they are opened up for repairs, when the hidden compressed effluvia send their noxious vapours into the homes around.
The people are highly uncleanly in their persons. They never bathe, and even in the homes of the rich the bath tub is an unknown luxury. The face and hands are about the only parts of the body that on ordinary occasions ever make the acquaintance of water. Their clothes, too, from a Western standpoint, are anything but satisfactory. They are frowsy and wanting in the crisp cleanliness that a liberal supply of soap and water impart to them. There are always certain garments that are worn day after day and week after week, that men never dream of cleansing in any way whatever.
The lower you go down in the scale of life, the more conspicuous is this disregard of cleanliness, and yet it does not seem to affect either the general health or spirits of the people. They are a laughter-loving race, and jokes and funny stories and everything that would raise a smile to the face find a ready echo in their hearts. The fact that they are surrounded by dust and dirt and untidiness such as would put the s.h.i.+vers into any ordinary Englishman, and dim for the time being the very light of life, have no seeming effect upon this long-lived race.
The people of this town appear to be endowed either with very good appet.i.tes, or to have very defective arrangements at home for supplying the wants of the inner man, for there seems to be an altogether extravagant number of itinerant kitchens with food already cooked stationed at various corners where the traffic is the greatest, to cater at once to the public appet.i.te.
Here is one close at hand, and as we have a few minutes to spare let us draw near and see what it is like. It consists of two wooden stands which can be slung on to the ends of a stout bamboo pole and carried at a moment's notice in any direction that suits the owner. Where trade is brisk at any particular spot, he remains there until his customers desert him, and then, shouldering his miniature eating-house, he goes off at a quick trot to the localities where the hungry are most likely to congregate.
On one of the stands there is a large rice pan which is filled with rice that is kept just on the boil by a fire that burns underneath. The heat must be so modulated that it will never blaze into a flame, for to allow it to do that would be fatal to the success of the enterprise. The Chinese, who are connoisseurs in the art of cooking rice, can never tolerate it being boiled to a pulp. The grains must to a certain extent retain their individuality, and though boiled to the very heart, there must be no loss of that. The man who would wish to be popular must have learned the secret of how to please the taste of the most critical. The other stand is a kind of rough dresser, where the condiments that are to allure a pleasant pa.s.sage to the rice are tastefully set out. These are salted turnips of a brown, leathery look, and the most popular, because very cheap, of all the various articles that the Chinese eat with their rice. There are also bean curds and cuc.u.mbers pickled crisp and juicy, and celery and lettuce, and salted beans and plates of various kinds of fish, and different kinds of soy, which are sprinkled with a sparing hand over the bowl of rice to give it a flavour in order to induce an appet.i.te with the first sip that the customer takes of the savoury compound.
It is interesting to watch the deft way with which the man fulfils the orders that are given him. He first of all ladles out enough rice from the pan to nearly fill one of the bowls that lies turned upside down on the dresser. He then selects with his chopsticks a bit of salted turnip and drops it into the very centre of the steaming rice. Then once more, with the eye of a connoisseur, he picks up a bit of crisp pickled cuc.u.mber about the size of a bean and drops it on the top. If his customer is extravagant and is going in for luxuries, he selects a tiny sprat that lies cooked and ready for use, and places it in a tempting position just within the lip of the basin, and resting on the rice as though it were in its native element. A little savoury soy is then sprinkled over the whole, a pair of chopsticks are daintily laid crosswise over the steaming compound, and the man whose mouth has been watering all the time this process has been going on takes it with eager hands, and without any delay proceeds to satisfy his appet.i.te, and all for the modest sum of a little over a halfpenny.
Several men are seated on their heels round this peripatetic kitchen, shovelling down with their chopsticks the good things contained in their bowls. It does not seem at all strange to any one that they should thus in the sight of all the pa.s.sers-by and without tables or chairs be willing to be seen eating on the public streets. The free-and-easy methods of Eastern life, as well as the intensely sociable character of the Chinese mind, make many things possible here that would be considered highly improper in the West.
The scene before us is a thoroughly Oriental one and in some respects a very picturesque one. The narrow street only six feet wide, packed as it were with human life, is a splendid place from which to view the various items of which the life of the city is composed. Here is a scholar in his long gown, threadbare and showing signs of decay. Amidst the crowd of pa.s.sers-by we should never mistake him for anything but what he is. His face has that keen intellectual look that the students of this Empire usually have. Though poor, he has a proud and haughty air, as though he felt himself higher than any of the crowd that brushes up against him.
Coming close behind him is a farmer, rough and unsophisticated, with the sun burnt into his face, and with the air of a man who never opened a book in his life except the ancient one of nature which he has studied to such a purpose that he can read her secrets and can extract such crops from her as make his fields laugh for very gladness. Following on is a countryman whose home lies at the foot of the hills in the near distance. He is carrying a huge load of brushwood balanced on the ends of a bamboo pole slung across his shoulders, which he is carrying to the market to be sold as firewood. He occupies more than half the roadway, and when he swings his burden from one tired shoulder to the other, the width of the street is only just enough to contain it. He pa.s.ses along, however, at a steady trot as though the town belonged to him. His loud cries, ”Clear the way,”
”Get to the side,” ”I'll b.u.mp against you,” are uttered with an air of authority as though some royal edict had given him the authority to take possession of the road in this masterful manner.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A REFRESHMENT STALL.
_To face p. 184._]
It is amusing to watch the good-natured way in which the ebbing and flowing crowds yield to this man from the hills. Every one gets out of his way, and even the scholar, with pride and contempt in his heart for the unlearned ma.s.ses, stands meekly at the side of the road and crushes himself up against a counter to let the imperious seller of firewood pa.s.s by. No thanks are given and none are asked, and as the tide of men close up behind him, we can hear coming down the air, ”I'll b.u.mp you,” ”I'll b.u.mp you,” ”Go to the side,” ”Fly, fly,” until the sounds so masterfully given and so meekly obeyed are lost in the distance.
In looking at this moving panorama there is one thing that is strikingly conspicuous, and that is the good-natured, easy, tolerant way with which they treat each other on the street. It would seem as though every man, the moment he got on it, had determined that forbearance shall be the word that should guide his conduct in his treatment of every one that he meets.
Just think of it: a roadway of five or six feet wide, along which constant cross currents of people, of all kinds and conditions, are travelling, and yet no collisions, or at least so rarely that they are not enough to be quoted. Business men, clerks, coolies, opium-smokers, thieves and vagabonds, country b.u.mpkins and elegant and refined scholars, all with an instinctive sense of the rights of others, yield to the necessities of the road, and bear with infinite good nature whatever inconveniences may arise, and treat each other with patience and courtesy.
As we have been watching the motley crowds pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing before us, the man with the kitchen has been doing a roaring business. Customers have come and gone with most pleasing succession, and the heap of cash that he has received in payment for the savoury bowls of rice has grown into a little mound, and as he looks at it his eyes glisten with pleasure.
All at once there is a sudden and mysterious change in his att.i.tude.
Instead of standing with a benevolent look upon the group sitting on their haunches round his eating-house, he becomes agitated, and hastily bidding his customers to hurry up, he begins to make preparations for an immediate move. The men gulp down their rice, the bowls are hurriedly piled up on the dresser, and before one can hardly realize what is taking place the kitchen has been shouldered, and he has disappeared at a jog-trot amid a stream of people that have engulfed him and his belongings.
Whilst we are wondering what it is that has caused this sudden panic and collapse in a business that was so prosperous, we hear the clang of the slow and measured beatings of gongs. Higher, too, than the voices around us there comes trailing on the air, as though unwilling to leave the locality from which it started, the sound of the word I-O in a crescendo note, but which finally dies away in a slowly decreasing volume till it finally vanishes in silence. There is now an agitated movement amongst the crowds in the street before us. Some seem full of hesitation, as though undecided what to do; others a.s.sume a perplexed air and look about for some opening into which they may escape. A sedan chair, that comes lumbering up with the shouts that the bearers usually indulge in to get the people to make way for them, comes up, but no sooner is the sound of I-O heard than the men hastily retrace their steps and disappear in the opposite direction from which they were coming.
The beating of the gongs, and the prolonged wailing sound I-O, in the meanwhile advance rapidly in our direction, when all at once, all indecision on the part of the pa.s.sers-by vanishes, and every man flattens himself up against the outstanding shop counters, drops his queue that has been twisted round his head, lets fall his hands by his side and a.s.sumes a look of humility and respect. The centre of the street is in a moment deserted, and there bursts into view a mandarin with his retinue.
The first members of it who come swaggering down the empty lane are the men that fill the air with the sound of I-O, in order to warn the crowds ahead of the coming of the great man. They are a most villainous-looking set of men, and seem as though they might have been picked up out of the slums and gutters for the special duty of to-day. At first sight one is inclined to burst into a loud fit of laughter, for to a Westerner they have a most comical and ludicrous appearance. Each one has a tall hat on his head, shaped very much like a fool's cap, but set on awry to meet the contingencies of their tails that are twisted round their heads. This makes them look like clowns that have come on to the street from some neighbouring circus to amuse the populace. A closer look at them, however, soon dispels that idea, for in their hands they carry long rattans, which they wield menacingly as though waiting for a chance to let them fall heavily on the shoulders of some unwary one who is transgressing the rules of the road and thus showing disrespect to his Excellency. They have a truculent look as they furtively glance over the silent walls of human beings that line the roadway, and a discontented, sullen frown overcasts their faces as they find no chance to use their despotic power on the person of any unfortunate one.
Immediately behind them comes another set of men, quite as evil-looking, with chains in their hands. These have a proud and haughty mien, as though the supreme authority of the town rested in their hands. Should any one be unwise enough to dispute that for a moment, he would find himself instantly bound and shackled, and bundled off to prison, where ample time would be given him to review his temerity.
Coming closely behind these scamps, the luxurious chair of the mandarin, carried by eight bearers, fills the vacant s.p.a.ce in the street. He is the mayor of the town, and for all practical purposes the supreme power in it.
He is an ideal-looking official, for he is large and ma.s.sive in appearance, whilst he has that stern and uncompromising look that is supposed to be necessary in any magistrate who would hope to keep his subjects in order. He has a stern and forbidding aspect, as though he were on his way to the execution ground to have some criminal decapitated. This is the kind of air that the mandarins put on when they appear in public.
In the course of many years' experience, I have never once seen any one of them, from the highest to the lowest, with a smile on his face or a look of sympathy for the people whilst he was being carried officially through the streets. In a few seconds the procession has pa.s.sed by, and the human stream again flows along its ancient channel, and the life of the street is once more resumed.
We saunter along again closer to humanity than the most crowded city in the West, except on some great festival, could let one have. The sensation is not in every respect a pleasant one. The ancient odours of China a.s.sert themselves and will be felt, whilst the aroma of unwashed garments and persons that never used a bath, gives a delicate taint to the air that is purely Oriental.
But whilst moving slowly on and carefully guarding lest our feet should trip against the uneven slabs of stone with which the road is so badly paved, a strange procession of men catches our eye and at once arrests our footsteps. We count them one by one, and there are just ten of them, as gruesome and unsavoury a collection of human beings as could be made were the whole city to be ransacked to find their equal.