Part 16 (1/2)

CHAPTER XI

A CHAPTER ON SOME OF THE MORE SHADY PROFESSIONS IN CHINESE LIFE

The geomancer--Description of--Instances of his profession--Fung-Shuy--Laws of geomancy--The quack--His methods--Instances given--Disreputable character of the story-teller--Examples of his stories--Kung-Ming--The story of the prince and concubine--The interpreter of the G.o.ds--Mode of selection--Depraved character.

There are certain trades and professions in this Empire that are looked upon by the Chinese with respect, because they all represent an honourable attempt of men to earn their living in a straightforward and honest way.

As in England, some of these are looked upon with more respect than others, and men pride themselves, just as in the countries of the West, on the higher local standing that their trade or profession gives them in the eyes of the community. Outside of the Government officials, there are practically only two respectable cla.s.ses of professions, viz. the school-master and the doctor. There are of course others, such as the geomancer, the pettifogging lawyer, the priests, and members of the theatrical professions, and those who get their living in connection with the idols, but these are all looked upon with a suspicion that their morality is not of the highest, and consequently society refuses to accord to them the respect and honour that they spontaneously give either to the scholar or to the _bona fide_ medical man.

This chapter will be devoted to an account of some of the more well-known professions that belong to this doubtful category of professional men, and the first that I shall take is the geomancer. This man is a product of the beliefs that the Chinese have regarding the dead, and also with regard to the malign and evil spirits that are supposed to people the air and to be always on the lookout to bring sorrow and calamities wherever the unwary have not taken measures to frustrate their evil designs. In spite of their high-sounding beliefs that life and death are all arranged and settled by Heaven, the Chinese universally hold that the ground in which a man is buried has much to do with his happiness in the Land of Shadows, and also with his ability to benefit the members of his family that still remain in the land of the living.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A TEA HOUSE.]

The study of this subject has become an exact science with the Chinese, and there are men that spend their lives in mastering its principles, and they become so familiar with them that they are constantly employed in pointing out the precise spots where the dead may be buried so as to secure the highest benefit both to them and to the living.

The poorest and the commonest amongst the people have not the means of engaging these professors of the geomantic art, neither have they the funds to buy expensive plots of ground where the ”Fung-Shuy,” as it is popularly called, works with a strong and imperial will to summon to itself the forces in nature that will secure wealth and fortune and worldly honours to all that are connected with it. Their homes are narrow and will barely suffice to accommodate the living, and so the dead have to be hurried away and laid in any piece of ground on the side of a hill that some benevolent individual may make them a present of.

Persons with any means and with a spare room where the dead may be laid for a few days, would never dream of burying any of their relatives without engaging a geomancer to examine all the available vacant plots of ground that may be in the market for sale, and in giving his professional opinion as to which of them would be likely to satisfy the feelings of the dead and bring the greatest prosperity to the home they had left behind them.

It would seem that according to the laws of geomancy, a low position where the soil is damp, and where the rains would be allowed to settle, is one of the very worst that could possibly be selected for the burial of the dead. It would mean that in the South, at least, before very long, white ants, captivated and allured by the scent of wood, would come in their myriads and attack the coffin. As they can do no work without moisture, the damp and sodden soil would supply them with an abundance of that, and the working members of the great army would continue their labours with a perseverance and an industry that would soon riddle the abode of the dead so that only the merest and flimsiest sh.e.l.l of the coffin would survive after the attacks made on it.

This it is believed the dead resent with a fierce and bitter feeling that seems to set them in the wildest hostility to the friends who are responsible for this state of things, and in the Land of Shadows they plan how they shall be revenged upon those who have shown so little feeling for them, as to bury them in such a position.

The professors of ”Fung-Shuy” are careful to prohibit all permanently damp localities, or where the drainage is so imperfect that during the rainy season, when for weeks the annual rains pour down in more or less continuous torrents from the heavens, the grave must be thoroughly sodden with the wet. They know that then, unless the grave is dug in a situation where the water will easily drain off, the most disastrous results will happen to the coffin, such as would bring lasting mischief both to the living and the dead.

There are several things that according to geomantic laws are essential to the making up of a good grave or Fung-Shuy. The first of these is, it must be dry. Next, it must have a wide and if possible a charming outlook, for there is nothing that the dead dislike so much as to be confined in their view by high walls, or by mounds, or elevations that would limit them in looking at the landscape that stretches out before them in the distance.

Any proximity of large trees is considered to be specially obnoxious to the occupants of graves. It seems that the waving of the branches during a storm, and the sighing of the winds through them, produce such doleful sensations that the spirits are apt to get irritated, and by and by to vent their wrath by hurling calamities on the living.

The gentlemen that get their living by catering for the dead have all these things to keep in mind when they are in search of a place where the dead are finally to be laid. Proceeding to the hills with their large compa.s.s in hand, which is inscribed with cabalistic characters and lines and divisions that mark off the cardinal points with a precision that would be needed to guide an ironclad across the ocean, they cast their eyes across the landscape, and with the look of experts they take in at a glance the general features that combine to make any particular spot a Fung-Shuy, where the dead will have all the consolations that external circ.u.mstances can afford them. It would seem, indeed, as though these demanded very much what the living would like to have if they had the choice. A wide and extensive scenery with mountains in the distance, and hills standing as sentinels to the right and the left; also gra.s.sy mounds sloping down towards a stream that fills the air with its music as it travels on in graceful curves and loses itself amongst the ravines in the distance. These are the ideal elements that go to form a Fung-Shuy where a king might be laid with the certainty of finding complete rest.

Whether it is their training that has developed the artistic element in these geomancers or not it is impossible to declare definitely. There is one thing, however, that one may be quite sure of, and that is, they have the keenest instinct in at once pitching upon the most romantic and the most exquisite spots in a landscape as the places where they declare the dead may alone with safety be buried. As a result of this, one continually is struck with the way in which the graves have been constructed on points of a hill or a mountain, where the widest outlook may be observed from them. They may be looking over a wide expanse of fertile plains, or peering along some mighty ravines, or catching a vision of a far-stretching sea, but in each case they are there not by any accident, but in obedience to the decision of the geomancers, who selected them with a special view to the beauties of the location where the dead were to be buried.

There is one point on which all geomancers are agreed, and that is that wherever any natural object has the shape or appearance, say, of a man or of some of the more intelligent or powerful of the brute creation, you have there a collection of the strongest forces of nature which will all work for the welfare of everything that lies within their influence. Such objects as these make the finest Fung-Shuy, for there is nothing in the whole range of natural scenery that can in any way be compared to them.

On one occasion there was a civil war being carried on between two powerful clans. Scores on each side armed with guns and pitchforks, and any deadly weapon that could be got hold of, made fierce forays against each other, and inflamed with pa.s.sion risked their lives in their mad desire to kill their enemies. In one of the houses that lay on the borderland of the fight a man had recently died, and fearful lest the attacking party should set fire to the building and so burn the coffin with the corpse inside, a number of the relatives made a rush with it from the house, and in a cleft of the rock that went by the name of the ”Crow's Beak,” they placed the coffin in the narrow opening. It was so called because in the distance it exactly resembled the mouth of a crow as it looks when it is perched motionless on a branch. Hastily thrusting it into the very mouth of the bird, they flew down the narrow path that led to the village, and taking up their arms they again joined in the battle that was going on.

After hostilities had ceased and peace was proclaimed between the two parties, a geomancer was called to find a lucky spot in which they might bury the man who for the time being had been thrust with so little ceremony into the ”Crow's Beak.” He belonged to a well-to-do family, and they could afford to engage the services of such a man. On their way to a specified locality where a suitable place was likely to be obtained they pa.s.sed along the foot of the hill which contained the ”Crow's Beak.”

Casting his eyes up towards it, this gentleman caught sight of the coffin, and in the greatest excitement exclaimed, ”There is no need of our proceeding any further, for you have already laid the dead in the finest Fung-Shuy that could be obtained in all this district. The coffin is in the very place of power, and if you value the comfort of your deceased relative and the honour and prosperity of your family you will not remove it from the place it now occupies.”

This advice was attended to with the greatest possible care, and the strange spectacle was seen of a coffin perched up in this rift in the rock instead of being laid away in mother earth, where it would have been sheltered from the storms of wind and rain that now and again battered around it. Very singular to say, from the very day that the dead man was placed in the ”Crow's Beak,” prosperity seemed to come to the house he had left, and for many years wealth and honours flowed in without cessation upon his friends and relatives. As the sons grew up they became distinguished scholars and took high positions in the service of the Government. That in itself was enough to ensure that the family should be enriched, for the posts they held were so lucrative that fortunes must come to those in possession of them. The family finally became of such importance, and held so much landed property in the neighbourhood, that its influence became supreme in the whole of that region. All this was ascribed to the coffin in the ”Crow's Beak,” and the members of the clan guarded that with the most scrupulous care, lest any outsider should interfere with it or surrept.i.tiously displace it by the body of a person belonging to another clan, when the good fortune would pa.s.s away from the family and flow into that of another.

Whilst the geomantic art is a recognized one and is believed in by the whole of the nation, the professors of it are not held in the highest esteem by the community at large. There is so much room for lying and deception in their statements about the plots of land that they may recommend that it is felt by the public generally that their honour and their veracity are not of the highest character, and that when an opportunity is presented them of making money, they will seize upon it without any regard to the fact that they may be violating the principle of truth and equity.

The next person that I shall attempt to describe is the ”quack” or strolling doctor.

If ever there was a people in the world that believed in doctors it is the Chinese, in fact they seem in themselves to be a nation where every one has more or less a knowledge of medicine. Learned and unlearned alike profess to be able to understand almost every disease that the Chinese race are subject to, and to have nostrums of their own that will cure those that are afflicted. It is this fatal facility for diagnosing disease and for suggesting remedies that crowds the medical profession with so many incompetent pract.i.tioners in this land.

The State takes no cognizance of the men who profess to keep society in good health, and then it is so easy to put on a long gown, look profound, and ape the airs of a literary man, and be transformed in the twinkling of an eye into a regular doctor, who is prepared to treat any disease under the sun, with the confidence of a President of the College of Surgeons in England. No study is required to be a doctor. There are certain traditions floating amongst society as to how a number of diseases should be treated.

These are stored up in the mind. Then there are well-recognized books that have been written in former days by famous physicians with prescriptions for an unlimited number of diseases, and there are also secrets how to treat special ailments that have been transmitted through several generations in some particular family, and are never allowed to leak out to the general public.

All these are sources to which the man who aspires to be a doctor can apply, and by a careful study of which he may get such a knowledge of the Chinese herbarium that he will be able to deal with simple and elementary cases with some degree of success. He must also have unbounded cheek, a fluent tongue, and a natural eloquence that will win its way to men's hearts and fill them with a confidence in his skill that they will never think of questioning his ability to deal with their particular ailments, no matter how difficult or complicated they may be. Of these three elements nearly every Chinaman has an abundant supply, so as a doctor he starts business with a stock-in-trade that are most valuable a.s.sets in dealing with the troubles of his countrymen.