793
"FROM SWATOW TO CANTON:
ſov HIRLAND.
BY
HERBERT A. GILES,
Of H. B. M.'s Consular Service.
London : TRUBNER & CO.
SHANGHAI: KELLY & WALSH.
t
SEIANGEAI :
PRINTED AT THE “ CELESTIAL EMPIRE * OFFICE.
1877.
— º
UNIVERSITY OF MICH1GA* .
GENERAL LIBRARY


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[See. p. 66


FROM SWATOW TO CANTON:
IOVIEERT, ATNT).]
BY vu" N
HERBERT A. GILES,
Of H. B. M.'s Consular Service.
London: TRUBNER & CO.
SHANGHAI: KELLY & WALSH.
SHANGHAI
PRINTED AT THE “CELESTIAL EMPIRE” OFFICE.
1877.
DS
793
, K7
G 47
- /3 -226 377
NOTE.
BEING under instructions to proceed to Hui-chou Fu
(#)||Jſ), vià Ch'ao-chou Fu (; )]] }}) and Kia-ying
chou (; Jº JH), in order to verify the good faith of
the Chinese in posting the Yünnan Proclamation, it
was obviously more expeditious and more economical
to push on from the former city to Canton, thence
to Hongkong, and so back to Swatow. It was also
infinitely more agreeable; for although this trip is
one which might well claim the attention of any two
or more residents in Canton, Hongkong, or Swatow,
desirous of spending a pleasant month surrounded
by beautiful scenery, yet an utter isolation from all
human beings except Chinese and Hakkas, even for
the short space of three weeks, had made the prospect
of European society unusually inviting, at the same
time that it had brought home forcibly to the writer
the sustained heroism of such real travellers as COOPER,
MARGARY, and ELIAS.
H. A. G.
H. M. Consulate, Canton,
1st August, 1877.
2 FROM SWATOW TO CANTON.
But the panel which should have shewn the second line
of the couplet had been for some inscrutable reason.
taken out, and the “mother,” as the Chinese call the
first half of a couplet, was left alone to mourn the loss of her
“son.” Further aft we discovered two strips of coloured
paper, each bearing a response from some local deity to a
question propounded by the owner of the boat and paid for
at the rate of thirty cash per response. On enquiring of
the boatman it turned out that during the preliminaries of
engaging his craft he had hurried off to his favourite oracle
and consulted it upon two points, (I) whether the journey
would be a profitable one for him and (2) as to the disposi-
tion of the traveller he, was about to take on board. The
replies he received were flavoured with a pinch of Delphic
salt and ran thus:–
(1) Pure gold of priceless worth—
Who shall go and seek it,?
The Superior man will not stoop to pick it up.:
Picking it up his heart will not be at ease.
(2) Treat others with gentleness
And your journey will be a happy one,
On the 3rd or 5th of the moon -
You will meet with a worthy gentleman.
Now if the curious reader will refer to an Anglo-Chinese
almanac for the current year, he will find that the 5th of
the 2nd moon corresponds with the 19th of March—the
day we left Swatow. -
Here our distractions came to an end, and we had no
resource but to listen to the sailors calling to the wind,
exactly as inhabitants of more civilized countries whistle to
it, and with the same object.
20th.-This morning we sighted the tall pagoda which
stands upon the bank of the river nearly opposite the city
FROM swatow To CANTón. 3
of Ch'ao-chou Fu. By one o'clock we were at anchor along-
side the wonderful structure which apparently once spanned
the river but is now broken by a gap of over 100 yards.
Countless banian trees grow out of its masonry and are
slowly working its inevitable ruin; yet upon the very bridge
itself and considerably overhanging the water are shops,
swarming with workmen, supported by shaky-looking posts
which do not go straight down into the water but are nailed
on to the stone-work of the bridge at a very considerable
angle. The gap is filled up with a bridge of boats which is
opened from time to time for the passage of junks, when the
familiar scene is enacted of half-a-dozen Chinamen springing
across at the last moment and at the risk of their lives
sooner than waste five minutes of the precious time which
when we pass will be spent on the other side in gaping at
the red-haired barbarian. How it is there is such great
traffic across this bridge is difficult to say. There are very
few houses on the opposite bank to the city and no shops to
speak of. A beautiful shrine sacred to the glorious memory
of Han Wèn-kung who was formerly Governor (-k ºf)
here, stands upon the hill-side, and there are some celebrated
tea-shops near by where the jeunesse dorée of Ch'ao-chou Fu
smokes its afternoon pipe and discusses the news of the day.
The city is dull-looking and brown, but there is a pleasur-
able sensation in knowing ourselves exempted from the ca-
tegory of imbeciles who go to Kuang-tung and yet do not
visit Ch'ao-chou Fu; for, as the proverb says, “they go to
“Ruang-tung in vain.”
#| || 7 #| ||
# # iè — #
The Chinese declare it is one of the sights of the Kuang-tung
province and we are bound of course to believe them, though
4 - FROM SWATOW TO CANTON.
we doubt if the European traveller would have guessed as
much. Within, the city is much like every other city. The
same bustle and ceaseless activity; the same shouting and
screaming; the same steaming restaurants and dangling g
shop-signs that are to be seen from one end of the empire to
the other. In the evening as we moved slowly up the stream
we passed a number of huge square-shaped house-boats,
painted blue, from which issued sounds of the twanging
guitar mingled with the notes of the wooden-toned Chinese
flute. No friendly crack or half-open door admitted us to a
share of the revelries which were evidently already in full .
Swing, and it will be a long time yet before the presence
of a foreigner ceases to change the complexion of any
Chinese scene upon which he may enter a bidden or an
unbidden guest. At present it is impossible to see even a
Chinese city under its normal aspects. The sight of the
foreigner's hat and boots alone is enough to call together an
impatient throng, all anxious to get a close view and quite
preventing the foreigner himself from Seeing anything at all.
It is also equally impossible to visit a temple or any other
object of interest in a thoroughly satisfactory manner, and
for precisely similar reasons. Consequently we cannot get
to the very marrow of Chinese society, and posterity will
laugh at us for our inaccurate conclusions, not knowing that
they were often drawn from blurred and half-stated premisses.
But the river is beginning to grow narrower and we can
already discern the silhouette of hills where really fine
scenery is to repay the monotony of two uneventful days.
21st.—There was a scramble among the half dozen villagers
who collected to see us take early breakfast for two provision
tins which had been opened the night before. Crosse and
Blackwell carry happiness into many a Chinese village—
FROM SWATOW TO CANTON, 5
which, by the way, will be a capital addition to their list of
recommendations and for which we expect to receive one of
their very best Christmas hampers. But so it is. These
tin pots, valuable to us only for what they contain, will
have their jagged edges nicely rounded off, a hole drilled at
either side for a handle of string or wire, and will then be
used as a receptacle for oil or Chinese soy, to remain in the
family of the thrifty possessor an heir-loom for ever. Just
then the whistle of a steamer roused us from a dream of the
future when the provident Chinaman shall have everywhere
supplanted the costly and luxurious European. But a
moment's reflection recalled the fact that we were upon the
inland waters of China, sacred to the lines which tradition
says Confucius himself laid down and not yet open to
desecration by the furrow of a barbarian keel. It was only
the travelling pork-butcher blowing on his horn to warn the
villagers of his approach. Landing for a stroll along the
banks of the river, occasionally across the hills whenever the
stream took a favourable bend, we had occasion to note for
the thousandth time the courteous reception offered us by
the half-naked peasants we came across. Invariably a pipe
of tobacco and sometimes a cup of tea was put before us;
we were aware however that the same etiquette which
requires the offer of these luxuries to the passing stranger
obliges the latter to refuse them. It is as much as
the poor fellows can do to get tea and tobacco for them-
selves : they could ill afford to share their store with
every chance comer. The water buffalos glared and snorted
as we passed by, Scenting probably the foreign smell
which Chinamen declare they detect in Europeans. The
women too did not place much confidence in the apparition
that every now and then came upon them, but preferred to
6 FROM SWATOW TO CANTON,
observe our movements from a safe distance. They do not
bandage their feet, having to-work in the fields with the
men. Here and there we passed plantations of the edible
bamboo, carefully fenced in from the depredations of thieves
and cattle. We saw acres and acres of the common bamboo
which is very largely cultivated about here, and from time
to time met huge rafts of it floating down with the stream
to Ch'ao-chou Fu. As far as we could make out, the ex-
ports and the imports each consisted of four kinds of pro-
duce. The boats going up were all laden with
Salt,
Rice,
Salt Fish,
Sundries,
while the traffic down was confined to
Charcoal,
Bamboo,
Firewood,
Trees.
Many of the hills are densely covered with pine-trees, which
accounts for three of the last-mentioned four; the valleys
are chiefly planted with bamboo. Apropos of salt, we came
across a good-sized bunker of it when stowing away our
things in the space below the deck. The boatmen could not
resist the temptation of doing a little Smuggling on the way
up.
The evening had closed in before we reached Liu Ng
(§ {#). A fair is held there, the boatman told us, on the
2nd, 5th, and 8th of the moon; and when we expressed
some astonishment at crowding the whole business of the
place into a single week, he explained that every day of the
month in which 2, 5, or 8 occurred, was included, thus
giving nine days in each month at nearly equal intervals,
FROM SWATOW TO CANTON, 7
Other fairs in the neighbourhood were held on the inter-
mediate days, so that there was always a chance of doing
business somewhere.
22nd.—This morning we observed a man dancing vigour-
ously about on a raft at anchor in the middle of the river.
He took a long step forward and then back again, boxing
the compass all the time with his body, and looking gene-
rally ridiculous, the more so as he was dressed according to
riverine fashion “in the skandalus costume of a Greek
“slave.” We found, however, on enquiry that he was
only treading rice out of the husk—a human threshing-
machine. Later on we heard the familiar tick tick
of the stone-mason's hammer, and looking up we saw
a small quarry almost at the tip top of one of the
high hills which came sheer down to the water's edge. The
hill-side was scored as if by a groove down which the stones
might be passed from above, but the workmen were not
engaged in that part of the business as we went by. During
our morning walk we were much struck by the unusual
number of tiny joss-houses scattered about at every turn,
and especially so alongside the river banks, most of them
dedicated to the sailor's patron Saint, the Empress of the
Sky. A propos of which goddess, our worthy tai-kong
(helmsman) in a desultory conversation on general subjects,
asked us to what spirit (if shěn) foreign sailors prayed when
the wind roared and the waves dashed against the prow. In
an instant the fearful scene of the shipwreck in Don Juan rose
up before us, and we thought of the mingled oaths and
prayers, the flowing rum-casks and drunken orgies of that
supreme moment. So we took a middle course, and told
him that some trusted to Heaven, and some to their luck,
but the best and bravest to their own strong arms and hands,
8 FROM SWATOW TO CANTON.
Then he asked us if the God of Thunder ever struck down
foreign ships and men; to which we replied that he did,
mentally substituting electricity for the superstition of our
unsophisticated friend. He next proceeded to enquire whe-
ther in our part of the world the thunder ever harmed good
people. On being informed that unfortunately it did, he
Was kind enough to explain that this was never the case in
China; whereupon we cut in with the irresistible remark
that in China there were no good people to harm. He
laughed at this, and said that at any rate there were very
few among the mandarins, and that if every man got his
deserts the God of Thunder would have enough on his
hands.
We saw several lofty pagodas on the distant hills and re-
gretted only that want of time prevented us from making a
closer inspection of them. We also noticed a group of three
brick furnaces (§ # yen tun), used for creating the dense
column of smoke by which any important event or national dis-
aster is communicated to the next station, and so on to the
capital. Five li, or about two miles, is the regulation distance
between the stations. But the little house where the
watch (; ; hsin kuan) should remain day and night
on the alert was empty and in ruins, and the
boatman told us that no one ever lived there now.
We recollect reading somewhere that Chou Wang
(# =E) caused one of these beacon-fires to be lighted sim-
ply for the amusement of his infamous favourite T'a Chi
(H. E), and that in an incredibly short space of time the
whole country was up in arms, to the intense disgust of the
people when they found out how recklessly they had
been summoned. And this reminds us of another
act of this extravagant pair which well exemplifies
FROM SWATOW TO CANTON, -9
the wanton cruelty that ultimately brought about
their overthrow and death. They were carousing one day
amidst garlands and wine-cups in the celebrated tower which
Chou Wang had intended should reach the stars (# F# #
tséh sing low), when they saw an old man and a young man
about to ford the river rolling at their feet. After a few
minutes delay they observed the young man get upon the
old man's back, and the latter at once plunged in to battle
with a somewhat rapid stream, “I wonder,” said Chou
Wang, “what can be the meaning of this. It would have
“been more natural for the young man to have carried the
“old one.”
“Most probably,” replied T'a Chi, “the young man is a
“coward. I should say he was the child of old age, and
“has no marrow in his bones. But let us have them up
“ and see.”
Immediately the unfortunate couple were seized and
brought into the royal presence, where a leg of each was
chopped off and T’a Chi's surmise was found to be correct.
But the legless victims—ah, what of them : Why, merely
that a leg more or a leg less is a trifle in Chinese history.
Our afternoon walk lay along a narrow path carved out
on the side of the precipitous hills which rise up in many
places perpendicularly from the water's edge. A great part
of it was paved with stones to prevent its total disappearance
with the Summer rains. Sometimes we found ourselves as
much as 100 feet above the level of the river, with nothing
but a clear fall on one side and a steep cliff on the other
Had we met a stranger at such points, our attention would
have instantaneously been concentrated in some engrossing
object on the wall side. We did come across one little bare-
legged boy, luckily at an easy place, and we asked him if
10 FROM SWATOW TO CANTON.
the road farther on was good; but he was so terrified at
meeting such an uncouth object at such close quarters that
he said he didn't know, though he had necessarily just
walked the whole length of it and was evidently an inha-
bitant of the hills. Farther on, where the hills sloped more
gradually back, we reached a cottage with no “double coach-
house” but only a strip of garden fenced in with bamboo
and a man standing at the door. We begged to know if he
had taken his evening rice, and also if he had any eggs to
sell ; but he answered never a word, only pointing with his
forefinger in the direction we were going as much as to say
he would prefer our room to our company. So we went on
our way, rejoicing that we were not as this man, condemned
to a life of loneliness and desolation on the bank of the
Ch'ao-chou Fu river. *
All the evening we had a slashing breeze from a favour-
able quarter, contrary, as the tai-kong told us, to his wildest
expectations at this season of the year. Reflecting that this
poor man was so saturated with Superstitions of all kinds
that we should only be wasting valuable time in trying to
convert him to the cause of science, we thereupon directed his
attention to the responses he had received from his infallible
P'u-sa ; and we further added a response of our own, scrib-
bled with a lead-pencil on the stern of his boat. It was to
this effect:-
If you are fair, the wind will be fair.
JV Jiā Jīl. Jji
He knew all these characters; and we might have incauti-
ously set him down as a scholar of no mean order, had we
not discovered on subsequent examination that these four
words formed near about the sum-total of his stock in trade.
Our object however was gained. He was convinced that
FROM SWATOW TO CANTON, 11
even a barbarian may bring good luck with him though he
hasn't a flat nose and betrays an irresistible tendency to
wash himself much more than is either necessary or good for
him—two points which seemed to attract the special atten-
tion of this particular man. He told us that many China-
men believe washing to be injurious to health, and indulge
in it as little as possible. Opium-smokers, by the way, are
proverbially averse to water, for what reason we have never
been able to find out. The tai-kong was further lost in
astonishment at the few paltry characters we had traced, all
too clumsily, upon his boat. That a foreigner should be
able to speak the language of the son of Han was déjà
beaucoup; but to write the sacred symbols arranged by
the prophets of old and handed down from the generation to
generation, the exclusive property of the black-haired people
—this indeed was never dreamt of in the philosophy of our
simple boatman. And lest any student, just entering upon
a course of Chinese studies, should peruse the jumbled items
of this hastily-written diary, let us warn him while there is
yet time that a knowledge of Chinese characters implies the
power of writing them; and that a man who says he can
recognise characters but cannot write them must perforce
remain for ever an inaccurate and unreliable scholar. There
are those who will boldly assert the falsehood of the principle
we have here ventured to lay down; but such will always
be found belong to the ranks of those “who know characters
“but cannot write them,” and amidst their loudest vocifera-
tions and most violent statements the minds of their au-
dience will inevitably wander away to the fable of the mon-
key who had lost his tail.
23rd–Early this morning we reached Sam-ho-pa (= iſ
3H), and took breakfast in the presence of a shrieking and
12 FROM swatow To CANTon.
excited audience. Between our own boat and the bank
were two other boats, so that the people standing there did
not get a first-rate view. This difficulty was soon obviated
by a ferry-man who took three punts off the regular line and
ran them from the Sam-ho-pa bank round to the other side
of our boat where they delayed to receive another freight of
sight-seers for a similar trip. Thus immense numbers were
gratified by the sight of a very singular wild animal—at
feeding-time too—and the ferry-man, who charged the usual
ferry fee of a cash per passenger, realized the earnings of
several days in the short space of a single hour. -
The pagodas in this neighbourhood are of only two, or at
most three, storeys. Such buildings are of course expensive
and the people here are poor. Yet we noticed no diminu-
tion in the number or size of the joss-houses scattered about
the hills. From the cabin of our boat we have counted as
many as four, all in sight at once. Buddhism has still a
firm grip upon the minds of the people which will not easily
be relaxed.
Shortly after leaving Sam-ho-pa we passed the first bonā
fide specimen of terrace cultivation that we had seen during
ten years residence in various parts of China. We had fre-
quently observed some half-dozen and more terraces one
above the other, cut out at the base of a hill in continuation
as it were of the valley below; but here was a high hill
terraced right away to the very top, and presenting the ap-
pearance at a distance of an enormous flight of steps. We
counted the terraces and found there were forty-three. Se-
veral pretty little farms with brown children and the inevit-
able water-buffalo at the door relieved here and there the
monotony of the hills, which for the last ten miles or so had
been of an unvarying green. Now and then a grave met
FROM SWATOW TO CANTON, 13
the eye, looking in its solitary whiteness like the target of a
distant rifle-butt. We noticed only one shut in by the
horse-shoe of trees which Chinamen love to think excludes
the wind from the Sacred bones of their departed ancestors.
But all were placed in some gentle dip on the hill-side
where the good influences of nature collect to lap them in
eternal slumbers. Our attention was here called off to flocks
of wild geese flying over head in a northerly direction, and
forming the two characters JV jén man and — yih one as the
Chinese say is their wont. From these the eye wanders to
some exquisite groups of bamboo, the tops of which bend grace-
fully over, for all the world like Prince of Wales's feathers.
And now the boatman informs us that away among the hills
on the right bank are man-eating tigers, and that two child-
ren were carried away last year by them and one the year
before. There is evidently enough cover to justify his state-
ment, and we accordingly accept it without protest.
We are now passing the very spot where the famous re-
cluse Lu Chu-ch'i (; ºf Ś spent so many years of his
existence
“Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,”
in the company of his books alone. A large Omnium
gatherum shop stands upon the site of his one-roomed hut,
and before it there is an aged banian tree which we should
like to believe once screened the Sage from the rays of a
July sun. Yet Sage as he was, spurning the society of
his fellow-men, he did not altogether despise some of the
pleasures of life, as the reader will be able to judge from
the following anecdote. One night, when he was on a
visit to the city of Ch'ao-yang, he dined with a party
of friends, and took such a quantity of wine that he
was positively unable to walk and fell flat down in
14 FROM SWATOW TO CANTON,
the middle of the street. By and by the Prefect came
along in his chair, and seeing him lying right in the
fair-way roared at him to get up. But Lu. Chu-ch'i merely
raised himself lazily on his elbow and replied “You are
“the Prefect : that's your business. I’m drunk : that's my
“business.” And he followed up this telling argument by
an impromptu couplet, as follows:–
“Though the torrent be swift it can ne'er carry off the
moon-beam that lights up its bed ;
“Though the mountain be high yet it cannot arrest the fast-
flying cloud overhead.”
The original words of which are:—
7k # # $ft # lig R,
III # 7, # H # jë
Thereupon the Prefect ordered his servants to help the
stranger home, “For, truly,” said he, “this is no ordinary
“man.” -
A bend of the river brought us, during our usual after-
noon walk, suddenly upon a small Hakka village. Dogs
flew out and barked in all directions, and we were soon
surrounded by a bevy of women and children, with only
one man among them. The men are chiefly employed in the
boat traffic up and down the river; cultivation of the fields
is left to their wives and daughters. They are a simple,
goodnatured lot, but very dirty. It was amusing to find
that a native of the Ch'ao-chou Fu district who was with
us and could speak no language but his own, did not under-
stand these Hakkas as well as we ourselves, and was per-
fectly unintelligible to them. Every now and then we
managed to detect a word of mandarin, such as yu (#)
have got, and ch'ien (§) money, and so succeeded in
arranging for the purchase of four eggs at about ten times
their real value. Suddenly one of the women who had got
FROM SWATOW TO CANTON. 15
behind us discovered that we had no tail, and a deafening
shout was raised by the entire village as the news spread
rapidly from one to another. But they nearly all went into
fits of excitement when we removed our “Christy's Patent
“Machine Made” and betrayed a crop almost of Parisian
closeness. They said we were the first of our race they had
ever seen, and that there was not a single person in their
village who could either read or write. For all that they did
not strike us as being a lower order of humanity than the in-
habitants of many a Welsh out-of-the-way hamlet. Wishing
them good-bye, we took our way once more along the narrow
path cut on the precipitous hills which flank the river on
both sides. We gradually got accustomed to seeing a sheer
fall of many feet on one hand and nothing to catch hold
of on the other but surface-deep plants and weeds. Now
and then a bridge, to call Small things by great names,
made us wish that in youth we had acquired le pied
montagnard on Some treacherous Alpine path. A gap of
anything from ten to twenty feet in breadth by about
sixty-five feet (we omit fractions) in depth, spanned by
three narrow planks, is sufficiently uninviting to people who
have not been trained to rope-dancing. On one occasion
we found the middle plank quite rotted away at the further
end, so that the iron rivet which held the three together was
exposed to view, and we experienced a violent rush of blood
to the head as we stopped there a moment over the gulf
below to adjust our feet carefully on the two exterior planks
which were sound. We found, however, that the will could
exercise considerable control over this rush of blood, and in
response to a determination not to let it confuse our thoughts,
we felt it begin gradually to subside. In less dangerous
places, three bamboos are usually tied together and thrown
16 FROM SWATOW TO CANTON.
across, and the naked foot of the local mountaineer finds no
trouble in stepping lightly across. But beneath the barba-
rian boot, these bamboo poles always feel as if they must
turn round, besides being smooth and slippery enough to
make the passage across anything but comfortable and se-
Cllr 6.
24.—This morning we arrived at the × 3% # Ta-féng-
pien rapids which are considered among the most dangerous
of all about here; so much so that a proverb has sprung up
and is now widely used in the Ch'ao-chou department by
numbers who are quite ignorant of its origin. It runs
thus:—
“Lose a pole, and you're back to Sam-ho-pah.”
5& — ; # 3; E iſ j}l
For the stream is so swift just at this point that much
valuable time would be lost if one of the boatmen dropped
his punt-pole into the water. The usual application of the
proverb is to any arduous undertaking in which the least
slip would be fatal.
Having had unseasonably hot weather up to to-day, we
are now treated to a temperature which calls for a thick
great-coat at breakfast. Yet these wonderful boatmen
make no change in their costume unless it is to wrap up
their heads in a blue calico turban, leaving their legs and
backs well exposed to the pitiless north-easter which makes
us delicate mortals shiver again. From one year's end to the
other they seem never to put on either shoes or stockings;
but, somewhat contrary to our notions, they are very careful
to keep their heads as warm as they can. Tradition says
that the turbans worn by the natives in this part of the em-
pire were first put on at the opening of the present dynasty,
FROM SWATOW TO CANTON, 17
when, sullenly submitting to the Manchu power, they
sought to hide the hated badge of slavery—the shaven head
and plaited tail which the victorious Tartars imposed upon
the conquered race.
Meanwhile we are slowly passing a seven-storeyed octago-
nal pagoda with a small red temple at its foot sacred to
5. É the God of Literature, from which point the hills on
both sides recede inland and leave us to wind our way
through an open and apparently fertile plain until we reach
Sung-k'ou # II where they again take their place on either
bank of the river. The chilly air has a tendency to sharpen
the appetite, as we remark during five minutes' conversation
with the “man at the wheel; ” but this infallible guide
assures us that the phenomenon is due to the amount of
wood all round us, which causes digestion to take place more
rapidly than usual—and we bow forthwith to his decision.
JFor is he not a child of the same soil that produced the
sages of antiquity ? And did not those Sages examine
closely into the nature of things and deduce certain fixed
laws to remain unchallenged for all time ! But we have
thrown an apple of discord on to the boatmen's dinner-
table—the deck. They have taken up the theory of
cold weather increasing the appetite and are talking for their
very lives. And as we are rather in the proverb-trade
to-day, we will just mention a saying apropos of the long
tongues of these Hakka boatmen.
“Three Hakkas and three Ch'ao-yang men will talk enough
to stun you.”
E || # JV E { } } N # Ilā Hā ĀE JA
but as Mark Twain observed, when he was told that a vessel
of 1000 tons was bearing down on them, that “800 tons
“would be sufficient for him,” so we feel it a duty to state
18 FROM SWATOW TO CANTON,
that peradventure two Hakkas would be enough to do the
trick without any Ch'ao-yang men at all. Which digres-
sions are quite diverting our attention from the extraordi-
nary looking village of Sung-k'ou, which one would certainly
say had just been burnt out by a fire, so blackened and
smoky are its houses and walls. The curious feature is the
height of the houses, nearly all being of three and many of
four storeys. They are evidently poor miserable tenements,
with the single exception of the local pawn-shop which
flaunts its huge sign ś on a lofty and well-kept outer wall.
We stop here a few minutes only and then pole slowly up
stream before a large and wondering crowd. The washer-
woman almost drops her bâton with astonishment,
“Ixion rests upon his wheel,”
and youthful Hakkas scream and shout with excitement.
There is an end, however, to all panoramas, and we were
soon snatched from their eager gaze, to gaze very shortly
ourselves upon the hill-side where they say may be traced
the lineaments of a beautiful woman. But we gazed and
gazed in vain. Perhaps the lady was shy and would not
shew herself to strangers, though that excuse will not hold
good for the gentleman on the other side of the water, whose
features were equally indistinct.
At this point we met long rafts of wood coming down
with the stream upon their difficult and dangerous course.
They say at Swatow that there are three hard trades for a
poor man,—
1. Managing rafts.
2. Carrying young fish to stock ponds.
3, Cutting fuel on the hills.
In the first trade the allusion is to the cumbrous and un-
manageable nature of the rafts, which are often of immense
FROM swatow To CANTON. I9
extent and very troublesome to guide. To carry young fish
it is necessary to keep up a very tiresome jogging motion So
that the water in which they are kept shall be well shaken
about, otherwise the fish will die. In the third case the
fuel-cutter cuts away all day until he is thoroughly tired and
hungry, and then he has to carry a heavy load home.
In the afternoon we took our usual walk, but it was short
and not of an eventful character. We came across a notice
warning people to abstain from cutting down bamboos in
the neighbourhood at the risk of incurring the wrath and
vengeance of the clan £, the rightful owners. And farther
on at the door of a road-side tea-shop, we saw pasted up the
following “infallible prescription” (ſill j}), which was
stated to be a certain remedy for all kinds of sudden
and violent complaints such as cholera and like diseases.
“Take six mace weight of soap-stone: wash and pound fine.
“Add one mace weight of liquorice, also well washed and
“ pounded. Boil these two in a mixture of yin and yang
“ (male and female, i.e., hot and cold) water : stir in a little
“honey, and drink to the very dregs. It will then be
“necessary to leave off beef and dog-flesh, which taken at
“any subsequent period will bring the disease back again.”
The reader was further requested not to despise this
prescription because of its simplicity, but to give it a fair
and impartial trial. We wonder if any one has yet done so,
and if it did him good.
Defore getting on board again we watch the boatmen haul
our boat up the last set of rapids we shall pass to-night. At
this spot, the tai-kong tells us, both passenger and cargo
boats were very frequently capsized until a year or two ago
when the Grand Examiner happened to pass by on his way
to Canton, and hearing of the dangers of the place disembarked
20 FROM SWATOW TO CANTON,
with his suite and passed a whole night in fervent prayer
to the Empress of the Sky at one of her little temples on
the bank. Since that time, he assured us, not a single boat
had been upset. “Poor trusting soul " we muttered in a
language that happily he could not understand, “go on thy
“simple way, and we will go on ours. It is not for us to criticise
“too sharply the superstition that drags thee down to earth.
“For the film that keeps back light from the eyes of our
** OWn countrymen, though broken, is not yet drawn away.”
But we bitterly lament our inability to infuse the last brilliant
paragraph a la Sterne into the mind of this Hakka tai-kong,
since few things are more appreciated in China than a good
turgid metaphor.
25th.-Almost the first thing we saw this morning W3S 3
large bird sitting at the water's edge and evidently in search
of its breakfast. The boatmen said it was a fish-catch-bird
# ſº º tiao yi niao and we take our bill quickly and write
down cormorant. Shortly after we arrived at a busy village
called ºjjī Tī Ping ts'un Shih and saw the first bridge
across the river since we left Ch'ao-chou Fu. But this was
only a rickety structure of ill-lashed trestles, and constantly
succumbs, as we were told, to the swollen stream or an
extra heavy gale of wind. In the middle was a small plank
house, where sat the toll-taker and his mate, receiving one
cash from every passenger. While at some distance off, and
before our unusual presence had arrested the tide of traffic
backwards and forwards, we counted as many as thirty-seven
people on the bridge at once. Just beyond the village there
was a rapid—it was in fact a day of rapids with us—of
considerable power and extent, and by its side were waiting
large numbers of Hakka women to earn some twenty cash
a piece by helping to haul us up. It took about sixteen
FROM SWATOW TO CANTON. 21.
women to each boat with the boatmen poling as hard
as they could all the time, and even then it was as
much as they could manage. Every now and again one
of the punt-poles would slip off a stone at the bottom of
the river and the boatman lose his hold, or the torrent
would catch the bow at an advantage and whirl it round
so as nearly to throw all the women on their backs. The
shrieks of the boatmen during the whole performance were
perfectly deafening, and it was an auricular relief to find
ourselves safely at the top. We next saw how the streams
which rush down from the hills to feed the river are not
allowed to waste their kinetic energy. Just above the junc-
tion there is generally one or more huge wheels, say thirty-
five feet in diameter, looking exactly like the paddle-wheel
of a steamer. Transversely across what would be the tire of
an ordinary wheel are secured joints of bamboo at about
three feet apart, not horizontally, but nearly at an angle of
45°. These joints are open at one end only, and when they
go under water with the wheel turned by the stream, the
open end is uppermost. They are thus filled with water,
and so conveyed up to the highest point of the wheel, after
which the bamboo has its inclination directly reversed and
the water is shot out of the open end into a trough arranged
to receive and carry it down to the thirsty paddle-fields
below. - rº--~~ :º-, .x,z.
Thence on up numerous rapids and through much beauti-
ful scenery, sometimes Soft and green, sometimes rugged and
'brown, but in all cases
“Meet nurse for a poetic child,”
even of the Mongolian type of bard. And with such ex-
quisite fields of inspiration at their command, we cannot
wonder at the flow of verse which has for many centuries
s
; : .* -
.* * * * *
flºº ºff ºf
f : . “. … " ..." -
, * *..
22 FROM SWATOW TO CANTON.
deluged the empire and to a certain extent continues to do
So still. Yet Chinese poetry has but few charms even for
the most enthusiastic student. Crowded allusions and forced
conceits are apt to pall upon an ear accustomed to the bold
flights and generous sentiment of Western song; though
upon an educated Chinaman the effect is all that could be
desired. Now and then we may pause perhaps longer than
usual over such a charming couplet as
# £ ºff #j; # ºf:
# JH #}#7& H BH
which may be roughly rendered :—
“With wine and flowers we chase the hours in one eternal spring:
“No moon, no light to cheer the night—thyself that ray must
bring.”
But as a rule Chinese poetry is hard reading, and does not
repay the effort. As an instance, however, of the change
that all things sooner or later must undergo, we may men-
tion that the celebrated modern poet ſåſ # # Ho Shao-chi,
who was born in the year 1808, actually introduced the
word “steamer" into a stanza of his written on the occasion
of a voyage down the Yang-tsze Some years ago. The actual
lines are :-
#5)||ɺ f: X ##
# H. Jā, ś); # flº
Fijiš - ºff # ſº, ».
Hi Bà fift # #; fill #
“At Hankow I went for the first time on a steamer ;
“The noise stunned me, and the wind and waves prevented
me from eating and sleeping.
“Two days and one night we flew along like a horse;
“At a Custom-house on the way I met a good friend whose
wine gushed out like a spring.”
There is some touching story about the way in which this
FROM SWATOW TO CANTON. 23
Ho provided a dowry for his daughter, but we have forgot-
ten it. All we recollect of his history is that his integrity
was above suspicion, and that he had five wives and five
concubines. -
In the afternoon, while passing a small cluster of houses
on the hill-side, we were startled at hearing a voice call out
from one of them “Sir Sir are you English ' " We
looked round and saw a smart Chinaman smiling all over
his face and coming down to meet us. He then explained,
in fair English, that he had been some time in Calcutta,
whither he was going to return at the end of the three
months. He said his name was # Fij # Lin Ah-yao,
and that he was in the employ of a tailor, Harman & Co.,
which he spelt out very creditably—H, a, r, m, a, n. We
asked him if he could speak Hindustani, to which he
replied that he could, and fired off a sentence with
great volubility. We do not known whether Messrs.
Harman & Co. have really a local habitation as well as
a name ; in any case, it was refreshing to meet a
Chinaman in these lonely wilds who shewed no great
anxiety about the texture of our trousers and shape of our
hat, and to whom we appeared as a being composed very
much of the same elements as himself. We bade him
good-bye, promising on our way through Calcutta to call
and take a suit of clothes from the establishment of Messrs.
Harman and Co.; , but we felt at the moment as the
Ephesian Christians felt when they fell on Paul's neck and
kissed him—that we should see his face no more. *
Here and there along the banks we passed a spacious rain
pavilion, erected by some charitable persons who did not
omit to set up a stone in Some conspicuous part of it, with
their names ostentatiously carved thereon and the amount
24 FROM SWATOW TO CANTON.
subscribed by each. So, wherever the mountain path was
extra good, we might be sure of seeing a tablet commemo-
rating the virtue of those whoput it in repair. Finding
little to interest us on shore, except the ricks of dried weeds
and hay piled up on frames about five feet from the ground
for the water-buffalos to get underneath and pull their food
comfortably down without waste, we took a seat, like Xerxes,
on a rocky brow that overlooked the last rapid we were
going to pass that night. Happily the scene at Salamis
was not enacted over again upon the hulls of our fragile
fleet : we got in safely to the top, to dinner, and to bed.
26th.-At length, after a weary succession of interminable
rapids we arrived within sight of the city of Kia-ying Chou.
The first thing to greet our eyes was of course the usual
pagoda, which was one of the plainest of its kind we had
ever seen. We then passed a creek leading to another part
of the town, and noticed some way up a fine stone bridge
of four large arches. When within about quarter of a mile
from the landing-place we could see that the mud quay was
one dense mass of moving blue. The news of our arrival
had preceded the fact, and the whole city had turned out
to catch a sight of the barbarian. It was evident that the
people of Kia-ying were unused to novelties in general and
barbarians in particular, for when we landed the uproar was
something tremendous, and it was as much as thirty soldiers
could manage to make a passage for us to the chair
and keep us from being crushed into a jelly when there.
Shouts of “He is come ! He is come !” preceded
us along the street as we moved slowly by at a snail's
pace, and every time we turned a corner there would be a
general rush of the crowd and mingled cries of “The barba-
“rian | The barbarian : The Devil The Devil | " But it
FROM SWATOW TO CANTON, 25
was all in good faith, as the highwayman said when he tied
his rifled victim to a tree. No offence was meant, and
accordingly we did not insist on being insulted. We shall
remain barbarians and devils in Chinese eyes for many years
to come ; for with these simple-minded people every one
who is not of them belongs necessarily to a fan pang (##5)
or barbarian nation. As we passed along no person offered
us a material insult of any kind; there was no stone-
throwing and nojostling of the chair or other unpleasantness.
There was merely an extreme anxiety to get a fair view, and
in this the sight-seers themselves were the only sufferers, as
they tumbled about and knocked each other over in the
excitement of the struggle. Meanwhile we looked round
in vain for any remarkable monument which might attract
the eye. With the exception of a few common-place joss-
houses there was positively nothing but long dirty streets of
dirty shops, evidencing the poverty of the inhabitants. The
houses which skirt the bank are mostly of two or three
storeys in height, with a Small verandah to each storey over-
looking the river. Altogether Kia-ying Chou is not a city
worth visiting for its own sake, as we found out in a very
short time, hurrying off next morning at day-break en route
for Ch'ang-lé (# #).
27th. For an hour or two in the early morning we had
a fair wind, and hoisted the great sails which when fully
spread out give the appearance of an open fan. These boats
are flat-bottomed and of very light draught, so that they
can make no pretence to sail on a wind. But running free
they will shew as much as 300 square feet of canvas, which
carries them along even against the stream at a very fair
pace. Our happiness, however, was of miserably short
duration. Rain began to fall in torrents, and we were soon
26. FROM SWATOW TO CANTON.
at anchor, with nothing left us but to wonder how long the
flimsy bamboo awning would keep the Water out. Tuckily,
we were not destined to the horrors of a leaking boat; rain,
and heavy rain, fell for many hours without causing any,
discomfort in that respect. The river rose rapidly and was
soon a broad stream, rushing past at about five miles, an
hour, and if we had only been going down stream instead of
up, we should have travelled as fast, as, we could have.
wished. But the boatmen are unable to pole, in the
rain; the poles get wet and slip out of their hands,
and, their feet can yet no firm hold of the deck,
As to the rain and cold, they don't seem to, mind;
either, always leaving their legs and feet, bare, and,
frequently letting their wet clothes dry on them. Of their
heads they are ever careful, wrapping them up in turbans,
and putting on a large umbrella hat whenever it is cold or,
rainy. And this reminds us of a curious custom among the
divers on the sea-coast in this part of China, The night,
before they are going to have a spell of diving they all bind;
up their heads tightly with the usual cloth turban, and let.
it remain on all night, declaring that the omission of this.
precaution is sure to entail severe headache and an inability.
to stop under water. Whether this may be mere imagina.
tion, or not, we do not venture to say; but we will add one
more short anecdote about which there can be very little,
doubt. A Chinese literate, newly arriving at Swatow, was.
asked by a friend to share a prettily-situated little house on,
the Kak-chio side, beneath which ran a mountain stream. At
first he seemed very pleased at finding a lodging gratis, and
a congenial companion; but in a few weeks he took his.
leave, asserting that the water running underneath the house,
“carried all his happiness and good-luck away,”
ºf ROM ŠWATOW TO CANTON, 27
28th.--We are seriously thinking that if this rain lasts
much longer it will carry most of our happiness away, that
‘happiness consisting at present chiefly in tinned soups and
Château Pomys, both of which luxuries are disappearing at
an alarming rate, considering that it may possibly rain for a
week and so prevent us from moving forward a single yard.
But we reflect that man should train himself to emulate the
almighty cash, and be -
“Round in disposition, square in action.”
the character fi being read in the # ºf ; or as applicable
to the cash
Yi ſã fi jj
- “Round in shape, convenient for use.”
# being here read in the T 25; the sentence being of
course a play upon words, and a very fair example of the
Chinese pun. -
Towards the afternoon there was a slight improvement in
the weather, and the boatmen set to work to struggle with
the stream which was every moment widening and increasing
in rapidity. Inch by inch they fought their way, now cling-
ing like grim death to the overhanging bamboos on the bank,
and now scrambling ashore with a line to tow the boat round a
difficult corner. Sometimes when the river took a wide bend
we would creep up as far as possible against the extra rush
of water, and then suddenly letting go everything make a dash,
as if for dear life, to get to the other side where the current
was less boisterous and the bank more adapted for towing.
The slightest relaxation on the part of the boatmen and away
we would go down stream, losing in one minute the toil
perhaps of half an hour. It was a most exciting scene to
watch, enlivened by the shrieks of the sailors as they
28 FROM SWATOW TO CANTON.
changed a long pole for a short one or Snatched up a boat-
hook to make a forlorn-hope grab at the receding land. Once
only we noticed the bow of the boat get too far away from
the shore, and the current was just catching it to whirl it
round with irresistible force when one of the men seized a
huge oar, and thrusting it down straight into the water,
made the side of the boat his fulcrum and by sheer strength
brought us back parallel with the bank. Another instant
and we should have been whizzing down stream, probably
to crash into the boat that was following us. By looking
over the river side of his boat, the traveller may enjoy to
the full that exquisite sense of the Glory of Motion. He
seems to be cutting through the water at terrific speed, and
sees and hears the rush of the tide breakimg over the bow.
But like the peacock, which struts about in the magnificent
pride of its hundred-eyed tail until by chance it catches a
glimpse of the hideous feet below, when suddenly down fall
all its beautiful feathers in humbled vexation of spirit, so
will the joy of our traveller be changed into sadness when
he turns his gaze to the shore and finds that he is really
moving at the rate of about ; a mile per hour. -
Along the bank we notice a few dripping pedestrians, all
barefooted, as is the universal custom among the Hakkas,
but many of them carrying those little hand-stoves contain-
ing lighted charcoal which are more usually seen in the
north. Our boatmen, however, do not seem to know the
meaning of cold any more than the boy Nelson knew the
meaning of fear. They plunge into the water up to their
middles and wade along the half-immersed banks sometimes
for an hour together. When they get on board they look
as if nothing had happened; they make no attempt to dry
themselves, but sit down as they are and Smoke a quiet
FROM Swatow To CANTON. 29
pipe. Every now and then while towing along the shore
they execute a raid upon the the vegetables within their
reach, and carry off whole armfuls without reference to
ownership.
29th–The morning broke cloudy but without rain. We
accordingly elected to make the best of the flying hour and
enjoy a walk upon the bank. As we landed, the boatmen
discovered a fish-trap set close by, and at once drew it up to
possess themselves of whatever spoil might be found in it.
But they were disappointed, and threw it back with a growl.
Very few fish indeed are caught in this river, and such as
there are do not repay any one but a Chinaman for the cost
and trouble of cooking them. We noticed several Hakka
women dipping about along the shore with hand-nets, but
as far as we could make out they swept the niggard stream
in vain. And rightly so; for were they not transgressing
the precepts of their mighty master who fished indeed with
a rod and line, like a true sportsman, but never used a
net ; With Confucius fishing was a contest of skill between
himself and each individual life ; not the deadly blockade
which only requires time and patience, no thought or ad-
dress, on the part of cold-blooded besiegers. There were
days too when the great Sage would take his bow and
wander away among the hills in search of quarry. We do
not know with what result. History does not say if his
hand was steady and his eye quick; but it does tell us in
plain and simple language that he who would not fish with
a net scorned also to take the advantage of a “pot-shot.”
His birds were killed upon the wing, and thus regarded by
him as fair and lawful prize.
Passing a huge banian, we were so struck by its immense
girth that we proceeded to measure it with an umbrella. It
30 FROM Swatow To CANTON.
took sixteen umbrellas to surround it, which measurement
we cautiously repeated the other way round and with the
same result; but after all the length of the umbrella re-
mained an unknown quantity and will continue so until
civilisation regained supplies us with a foot rule. Shortly
after this we came upon a small market-town of fair, which
was in a filthy state owing to the late rains. And the
smells! those sacred smells, in the very midst of which
which Chinamen live and breathe and have their being,
they were there in full bouquet that day. So we hurried
through with speed, just having time to observe a large
square of covered sheds—evidently the market-place—sur-
rounded on all sides by shops, and forgetting, in our anx.
iety to breathe, to ask the name of the town. . . -
Later on in the afternoon, we sighted # 35i Yū-k'êng, a
busy and prosperous place; its prosperity being due of course
to a delicate adjustment of Féngshui in the shape of several
correctly placed pagodas in the neighbourhood. Here again,
as at Kia-ying Chou, the news of our arrival had preceded us;
and the prospect of a novel spectacle drew many a blue-coated
idler to the bank. It was moreover market-day, and the crowd
was unusually large. Men, women, and children, were ranged
in close-packed tiers, and were straining every eye to get à
sight of the wild man, Not to disappoint them, we placed
a chair on the little deck outside the housed part of the boat,
and calmly prepared to run the gauntlet of about four thou-
sand eyes. Hardly a sound was uttered as our boat was
poled slowly by at a distance of some ten or fifteen yards
from the shore. The crowd seem lost in astonishment at a
human being wearing a different dress from their own, and
with facial lineaments of other than Mongolian type. - They
stared and stared as if their very eyes would drop out, but
FROM, SWATOW TO CANTON. 31
there, was no, excitement and not a word of questionable.
civility. Behind the crowd on the bank, the upper windows
of one and two storeyed houses were crammed to overflowing.
The owners, if they had only the wift to think of it, must.
have let them at a good figure, and cleared perhaps their
quarter's rent. For our own, part, we now began fully to
realize one of the intense discomforts of royalty. To be a
mark for every eye, a bull's-eye for every well or ill directed.
piece of vulgar criticism—“See see he's moving, He's
“shutting his eyes | He's folding his arms He's blowing
“his; nose "-is indeed a high price, to pay even for the
luxury of a throne. And it is needless to call attention to:
the fact that we were paying the price without enjoying.
the throne. But the babies—as the mandarins call
them—were evidently enjoying themselves. We were
to them an object of deep wonder, if not of admira-
tion, Perhaps there were not ten amongst them who
had ever seen a foreigner, before, and it may be some
time before they see another. We mean a bonā fide
foreigner, dressed in the full height of barbarian fashion;
for there are a few French missionaries scattered about the
hills at no great distance from here, but they wear-Chinese
clothes and shave the head & la queue de cochon. And the
conversations that will be held over-the rice-bowl and pipe
when the crowd before us, has separated and gathered again,
each individual member at his own domestic hearth !. How
they will tell the unlucky absent ones that the red-haired
barbarian was, bearded like the pard, and wore a queer-
looking hat., That at the moment he did not appear to be
drunk or engaged in knocking any one's brains. Out, as re-
puted to be the usual occupatious of foreigners in China.
But perhaps he was, cat-like, watching his opportunity, re-
32 FROM SWATOW TO CANTON.
culant pour mietta, Sauter, (or, as the Chinese put it,
Jä PI # ſh (b. Ch'il i ch'iu shēn yeh), and spying
around in search of a rich harvest of Chinamen's eyes
and hearts. Whatever might be the sense of such home
gossip, what would we not give to overhear it? The
torture of being stared at would become a penance of
love if it could only teach us what the Chinese real-
ly think and feel with regard to ourselves. It many be
safely asserted that no one as yet knows this ; for Chinamen
do not talk unconstrainedly in the presence of foreigners
any more than we do in the presence of Chinese. But from
our press they can learn in what light we regard their
manners and customs, their dress, their superstitions, their
vices and their virtues ; while we are still without this
source of a truer insight into Chinese thought than can be
gathered from the lips of a pedantic and interested teacher.
Meanwhile we are moving slowly but Surely on. The town
is far behind us, and the garping crowd, still lingering there,
fades into an indistinguishable bank of blue, until a bend of
the river hurries away the Scene and Sweeps it into our
dreams for ever. -
30th.—An early morning walk through fast-drying mud
|brought us to an elegant pagoda of somewhat unusual form.
Over the entrance, on a slab of blue stone which looked very
like slate, were carved the two characters ; # (lien-chu)
‘strung pearls.” The third (of course # ta) seemed to have
peen broken violently off as if by some malicious hand; but
the slab being let deep into the wall, we did not see how this
could have been readily accomplished. Making enquiries
among the few villagers who had collected to watch us,
an old man directed our attention to a root of the deadly
'banian which he said had forced its way us usual behind the
FROM SWATOW TO CANTON, 33
stone and at length broken off a piece. This was unsatisfac-
tory, for we could not understand why it should not rather
have forced out the whole stone instead of merely snapping
off about a third, and that third at the thinnest part, some
# of an inch thick. However, in China age is authority,
and no one dares dispute the dictum of those who, in the
exquisite native idiom, are “drawing near the wood.” (#
§ 7K Ž Chiang chiu mu i). Yet Confucius warned his
disciples against a contemptuous treatment of youth, pointing
out that the future of any young man may, for aught we
know, be superior to our own present. As it was we accepted
the patriarch's verdict with a bow, and passed on to examine
a little kiln for burning up written paper which stood in front
of the pagoda. What a glorious sample of self-deception is
this harmless custom, which, by the way, presses upon the
corns neither of merchant, missionary, nor diplomatist. To
'believe that the spirit of the heaven-born Sages who centuries
back in the immeasurable past gave the art of writing to
man, has mingled with the vile substance of the paper
whereon a single character is traced, is just one of those
strained theories which the Chinese delight to hold. Luckily
it does no harm to any one, and they may go on piously
collecting each errant scrap and building votive stoves for
the consumption thereof, until they and their precious
symbols of thought shall alike have passed away and left
not a wrack behind. Still we can distinctly remember the
horror with which, as a child, we listened to the story of
a wicked boy who threw down the Bible and stamped upon
it. The superstition is the same, only confined probably
with us to the narrow limits of a single work; whereas with
the Chinese it embraces all literature—the pregnant ut-
terances of the Sage, the ribald Songs of the Suburra. Beyond
34 FROM swarow To CANTON.
the stove, and overhanging the precipitous bank of the river,
was a small temple dedicated to the God of Literature. We
gently pushed open the door and beheld—not the god himself
—but another old gentleman in the act of having his head
shaved. He rose to welcome us, but a glance shewed us that
theci-devanttemple had been changed, at any rate temporarily,
into a dwelling-house. There was nothing to attract our
attention and accordingly we beat a hasty retreat. To
thoroughly interpret the scene, we need only beg the reader
to picture to himself a gentleman being shampooed in the
nave of an English church, while three or four of his servants
are frying sprats in the chancel. So we bade adieu to the
String-of-Pearls Pagoda, calling to mind as we did so a
little volume of poems for the young, entitled “Pearls of
“Thought strung in Rhyme,” presented to us some years ago
by no less a personage than the authoress herself. A stanza
of one of these had sunk deep into our very soul, abiding in
peace side by side with other flowers culled at random from
the wide field of the magnificent literature of England. The
subject was the sailor's life, its infinite hardships and danger;
and the verse in question ran thus:
A ship ahoy!!, I see a boy
As he sits up aloft in the clouds;
His messmates dowm there nor reck nor care,
As they pace the deck in crowds.
and here we are again diverted momentarily from the main
issue by our allusion to one at least of the splendid litera.
tures of the West. For it is almost our daily fate when
conversing with Chinese strange to the ways of life of the
European to be asked if foreigners have books—sometimes
even if they have pens and ink. These are probably the
most irritating of all questions that could by any ingenuity
FROM SWATow To CANTON. 35
be invented to discompose the serenity it is so necessary to
observe towards Chinamen of all ranks and classes. We
can Smile when they enquire if we have beef, mutton, rice,
corn, and pork, in that mysterious land which lies beyond
the utmost limits of the known horizon; or, if we have a
fixed government, and whether it is true or not that we are
ruled by a perpetual dynasty of women. All this can be
passed over with a laugh, and be quietly and briefly ex-
plained ; but to be asked if we have books, we, the heirs of
all the ages, whose very children of ten and twelve years old
possess more real solid knowledge than all the members of
the Han-lin Academy put together—this is trying indeed,
Especially so when nothing but a comparatively intimate
acquaintance with our literature could convince the self-
satisfied Confucian that we have anything to compare with
his own most sacred store, But in half an hour we cannot
give him this, and, so he goes away, believing perhaps that
we actually have “books” in our wild barbarian tongue,
but settling it once for all in his own mind that they would
be of no earthly advantage to the gifted citizens of the
Flowery Land. We have a valued friend whose daily and
nightly thought is how to raise the Chinese to a jnst appre-
ciation of what foreigners have achieved in Literature as
well as in the sister-realm of Science. He would show them
that we are not altogether wrapped up in the material bene-
fits of telegraphy and steam, but that many among us are
Ever delicately marching
Through most pellucid air—
in an atmosphere that the Chinese vainly believe is confined
only to themselves. He would translate into their own
expressive language the master-pieces that western nations
think have helped to make them what they are; and we
36 FROM swarow To canton.
should coincide readily enough with his views but for
the conviction that for many years to come such works
would command little or no sale. In the first place,
the translations would have to be well executed ; and
in the second, the secret of their authorship would have
to be rigorously concealed. Otherwise the literati would not
hesitate to damn them unread, suspecting the hated element
of Christianity to lie concealed at the bottom. Mr. Her-
mann Budler—for we need conceal no names—was, we
believe, the first to subscribe to the Polytechnic Institution
for the Chinese at Shanghai, an establishment about which
we are now hear little or nothing; and he has since started
on a more moderate scale a similar undertaking at Amoy,
All success to those generous efforts for the thankless and
suspecting objects of them ; but we cannot believe that the
gems of western literature will ever pass current among the
Chinese until the day shall come when the proud biterate
not only condescends but is enthusiastically eager to seek
for them himself. Even then it may be found to be as true
of nations as the witty Chinese proverb says is the case with
individuals, namely, that there is a fatal admiration for
One's own compositions, but other men's wives.
# E. fij ż ż, JV 3: Éſ :#; #.
Thus we maunder on, until we notice what we have never
before observed in our many long rambles in China—a
finger-post. A small stone at a forked road informed us that
Z: Zä
33
iſſ J.
|II *
the right-hand path would bring us to a village, the left-
hand path to the bank of the river. These conveniences of
FROM swatow To CANTON, 37
life should be common enough amongst the practical Chinese,
and they may be so, but we cannot recollect ever seeing one
before. They would form a capital vehicle for that form of
philanthropic charity which is so often exhibited in bridges
and roads, and might be duly inscribed with the name and
address of the giver. No one near seemed to know who had
put up the particular stone we saw or when it was done.
We asked a native what he called it, and he said it was a
#| |} yin-lu or “short the way.” Late in the afternoon
we passed the market-town of E # iſ II Ch’i-tu-ho-k'ou,
above which we anchored for the night.
31st.—The boatmen woke us up before daylight by what
was for them a most unusual anxiety to get under way.
We were not long in discovering the cause. At a secluded
point in a bamboo-shaded bend of the river, they ran the
boat alongside the bank, and were instantly met by a num-
ber of suspicious-looking gentlemen with baskets who soon
relieved them of the smuggled salt and separated in different
directions. We had noticed the night before the absence
of our “captain,” but we thought he had only gone to visit
his father and mother, who, he told us, resided in the neigh-
bourhood. This little affair comfortably arranged, we glided
quietly on until within a mile or so of Ch'ang-lè, # #,
when the water became so shallow that we stuck fast every
minute. We then awaked to the fact that the rain, which
had caused so much annoyance a few days before, had really
been a great boon and had enabled us to reach this point
without any serious stoppage. But now no rain had fallen
for some days and the river had sunk accordingly. So the
boatmen set to work in real earnest to push the boat which
drew say two feet, through more than half a mile of water
nowhere over one foot ten inches in depth. The uproar
38 FROM SWATOW TO GANTON,
they made was something hideous, even for ears well habi-
tuated to the melody of six or seven Chinamen all talking
at once. They screeched; they ran up and down the boat;
they stood on their heads—or at any rate appeared to do so,
with their legs far up in the air on the high prow of the
boat and their shoulders on the puntpoles down at the very
water's edge. Then some of them would get into the water,
and at length by dint of many long shoves, and strong shoves,
and shoves altogether, we positively found ourselves abreast
of the district city of Ch'ang-lé. But nothing of it can be
seen from the river: the city lies half-a-mile distant from
the shore, and so low that its streets are usually flooded for
about two months out of every year. The captain then
presented himself before us with a long face and said he
regretted that the state of the water would not permit him
to accompany us to # #, Ch’i-ling, the farthest point to
which the traveller can proceed by water and where it becomes
necessary for him to cross the hills in a sedan-chair. He had
however sent off for a couple of local boats which drew less
water than his own and would travel much faster. These
were alongside in a few minutes and were ordinary open
sampans with a bamboo mat bent over the middle part and
open at both ends; very different from the luxurious two-
roomed house-boats, with doors (though porous), in which
we had made the journey so far. Yet there was nothing to
be done but to get our baggage moved on board as soon as
possible; and while fixing up a mat at one of the open ends
and two half doors at the other, we comforted ourselves by
reflecting that after all it was only for a single night. So
we sat down to a delicious giblet Soup, hoping for the best,
and at the same time arranging both a great-coat and a
macintosh within reach. The cup—of Sherry—was actually
FROM swatow To CANTON. 39.
at our lips, whén without we heard a gentle siftlement,
followed by that sound we knew so well, and in a moment
both candles were blown out by a gust of wind, and rain
began to patter distinctly on the miserable covering over-
head. We put down the untasted sherry, lighted one of the
candles under the table, and prepared for the worst. Hap-
pily the worst had come. It was nothing : a false alarm ;
but the sky outside looked threateningly black, and the
moon forgot to rise. We had intended to make some pro-
gress by moon-light this evening; but the boatmen, wiser in
their generation, had foreseen a dark night and gone off
quietly to bed. Now the author of the Hitopadesa tells us
in one of the early slokas of that tedious work that—
In the enjoyment of sacred poetry the time of the wise passeth
[away ;
But the time of fools in dissipation, slumber and strife.
So we solemnly repeated these lines over the curled-up forms
of our snoring sailors, blanked them all round, and retired
to rest ourselves.
1st April,—Wonderful to relate, our cook—a Chinaman
forsooth !—passed a sleepless night. Consequently he
roused up the boatmen long before it was light and made
them struggle onwards a few li before breakfast. After that
refreshing meal—no jaded gourmand's milkless tea and but-
terless toast, but such a breakfast as only a traveller's diges-
tive organs can successfully cope with—we found ourselves
strolling slowly along the bank amidst scenery that reminded
us of the valley of the Thames. The river continued of a con-
siderable breadth, but so shallow that nothing but a flat-bot-
tomed Chinese sampan could have floated us comfortably
along. It is even doubtful if we shall reach # # Ch’i-ling
Possibly we may be obliged to disembark at ## Ch'ing-ch'i
{{} FROM SWATOW TO CANTON,
which however will only increase our land journey by about
three miles. On the hill-side we noticed a larger number
than usual of those earthen-ware urns wherein lie concealed
the bones of some departed ancestor, collected perhaps from
the broken coffin or the demolished grave by the pious hand
of a descendant. Sometimes a small stone is erected near,
informing the passing world that the remains of such and
such a one are within, reposing in their City of Old
Age (; ;). We cannot say whether this term for the
last resting-place of the dead is general in China, or merely of
local use; but we may assert that we observe throughout
this great empire a singular delicacy and refinement in the
selection of the language and ceremonies applicable to Death
and Burial. The religion of the people is made up of so
many and varied elements that it is difficult to say what is -
the popular belief of the masses as to the life to which they
look forward after the dissolution of the body. They believe
in a future state; but what that state is supposed to be we
have found it impossible to discover. The mysteries of
Nirvana have no meaning for the poor and uneducated,
however much they may satisfy the cravings of some ;
and the Hall of Heaven (R º is far too vague and im-
material for the ordinary pork-loving Chinaman. He would
require a place where there was plenty to eat and drink, no
cold and shivering, no grasping and ruthless officials, but a
tongue-tied wife and a quiver full of children and grand-
children. Then we could imagine him basking his sleek form
in the sun of everlasting happiness, and uttering from the
very bottom of his heart— -
“ Deus nobis haec otia fecit !”
But we wander from the point—if perchance it may be
conceded that we have a point—which was to make a few
FROM SWATOW TO CANTON, 41
desultory remarks on the subject of Chinese graves. In the
first place no tomb-stone is ever seen in China engraved
with other names than those of a father and mother, a
grandfather and grandmother. No “Sacred to the memory
“ of —, daughter of —, aged only 19,” as we
once saw in Highgate Cemetery, carved at the base of a marble
chair which the gentle spirit of the young girl had vacated
for ever, leaving her mantle hanging negligently over the
back and a dead dove lying on the ground beside. “Only
“19"—what power and pathos in a single word, requiring
no italics in the original inscription, emphasised as it is by
the marble scene above. To return once more. We have
said that all tombstones in China are erected to the memory
either of a father or mother; but as mortality amongst
children is naturally as great here as in any other country it
becomes a question what is done in the case of the death of
a little one. Strange as it may seem, if a boy, he is made a
father at once by having some other child posthumously pre-
sented to him as his son; and then, when a suitable monu-
ment has been erected, the son will in years to come worship
there the spirit of his departed father. But if a girl—ah !
hers is a sad fate. No son can be made over to her to fulfil
those duties by which the Chinese set so much store; but
when night has thrown its own dark pall over the scene, she
will be hastily laid in a small hole, within reach, if con-
venient, of the family vault— -
“In sight of heaven, though feeling hell”
debarred for ever from participation in the feasts and cere-
monies which the Chinese believe can alone give the depart-
ed spirit rest. We said the “family vault” because it is
usual for the sons of a family with any means at all to pre-
pare the grave, as well as the coffins, of their father and
42 FROM SWATOW TO CANTON.
mother long before the need actually arises. And the old
people love to visit the well-chosen spot where they hope
that their bones will some day lie; and their names and
surnames are carefully inscribed thereon, leaving only the
date blank. But hereby hangs a tale. The colour of the
characters on a tombstone is a matter of the highest import-
ance. A common custom is—but customs vary much in the
Lighteen Provinces—to paint all the characters red at first.
Bed is the colour of joy; and the passer-by sees at a glance -
that the vault has no occupant but is only there in readiness
against that day which Sooner or later must come to each in
turn. When that day does arrive, and the father or mother
is to be deposited within, the ming 54 — anglicé, Christian
name—of the defunct is painted black or green. So with
the survivor; but nothing except the ming of each is chang-
ed, for the dynasty is still flourishing and the surname still
lives in the son whose duty it is to transmit it to posterity
even as his forefathers have handed it down to him. There
is yet another piece of formality to be observed with re-
gard to the wording of the inscription. It will be best ap-
preciated by those young ladies who have been accustomed
to read the future through the mystic medium of cherry-
stones:–“Tinker, tailor, Soldier, Sailor, gentleman, apo-
“thecary, ploughboy, thief.” The Chinese have a similar set
of words:–“Life, age, illness, death, sorrow ;” and it is
- imperative that the epitaph on a grave should be so con-
structed as to end with one or other of the first two auspicious
words and not with either of the three last ill-omened sounds.
This sentence (AE, 3, #, 35, #) Shēng, lao, ping, ssi, k'u,
is of almost universal use, though we have heard that a
variation of four characters only (AE, E, AEE, #3) Shéng,wang,
ssú, chieh, is better known in the province of Fokien. But
FROM SWATOW TO CANTON. 43
all this time we are lying anchored in front of the village of
# §, Ch'ing-ch'i, for we can get no farther ; and here we are
to remain until tomorrow morning at break of day when the
land journey is to begin. This being the case, we spent the
afternoon in scrambling over the hills which reminded us
very much of the scenery of North Wales, excluding of
course the variation of terraced paddy-fields and the bamboo.
2nd.—Long before dawn we were awakened by the pre-
scient “boy,” who foresaw that there was a good day's work
in store. In a momentary absence of mind, thinking only
of the twenty odd miles of mountain road before us, we
reproached him somewhat for having waked us too soon and
professed our intention to slumber again. But he knew
better, as we afterwards found to our cost. So we swal-
lowed a hasty meal, put our valuables together, and ex-
changed the boat for the bank. There we found a crowd of
porters and chair-coolies surrounding two consequential-
looking Chinamen, one seated at a table with pen; ink, and
paper before him, and the other standing before a temporary
weighing-machine suspended between three poles like a gipsy
kettle. It appeared that the system was to charge so much
–6} cash—per catty for the conveyance of baggage or
merchandise across the hills, and that consequently every-
thing had to be carefully weighed before starting. Here
was a fine field for the native love of screaming inherent in "A
every Chinaman's breast. Every one of the sixty-seven.
individuals standing round that weighing-machine spoke—
bawled at once, and each at the very top of his voice. The
din was indescribable, and we retired to survey the scene.
from a distance. Meanwhile we thought they never would
have finished; the sun rose higher and higher while the best
part of the day was being wasted. At last this part of the
44 FROM SWATOW TO CANTON.
business was over, and when the headman of the baggage
hong came and calmly informed us that we should have to
pay on eight hundred catties, say 1000 lbs weight, of luggage,
we felt that any energy to dispute the accuracy of his
scale, still less his own immaculate honesty, had long since
ebbed away. So we accepted his estimate, reconciled to
anything by the prospect of a near departure. But tired
and exhausted as we were by the long drawn out scene we
had just witnessed, we had arisen to go just about one hour
and a quarter too soon. For though the luggage had been
duly, if humourously, weighed, this process had to be
repeated amongst themselves by the coolies engaged to
carry it. It was a trying time. Not one would carry an
ounce more than any other, and the distribution of packages
among them led to a drama which no language could put
before the reader with a fraction of its actual vividness; we
will therefore beg leave to shroud our description within the
limits of a single word—Rideau /
It was close upon eight o'clock when our caravan moved
slowly off and began to climb the steep hills beyond which,
at a distance of some twenty three miles, lay the town of
#: @ Lao-lung—our Promised Land. By a happy chance
the sky had clouded over, but without prospect of rain, or
we might have had some miserable hours, perhaps a night,
to spend in a dirty Chinese hovel. So we gave ourselves up
to thorough enjoyment of the delicious morning air, and the
exquisite views that opened one after another upon us. We
had taken the precaution to engage four coolies to carry our
chair, two at a time ; and as we walked a great deal,
especially up the steepest parts, we had no fear of over-tiring
the largely-developed calves of these sturdy mountaineers.
Besides we found to our astonishment a first-rate road,
FROM SWATOW TO CANTON. - 45
usually about eight feet broad, occasionally rather narrower ;
and this rejoiced us the more as we not unfrequently had a
fall of two or three hundred feet on one side, when our
thoughts, diverted from the beauty of the landscape, con-
verged involuntarily upon the position of our centre of
gravity. We met such strings of people too, and they
always would take the inside, so that every now and then
there seemed to be nothing below us but an uncomfortable
thickness of space. And here we may say that before the
end of the journey we were utterly astounded at the ceaseless
traffic to and fro across these hills. During an eight hours'
march we never once covered one hundred yards of ground
without meeting some man or woman carrying a burden.
Nor did we but very rarely meet individuals : generally
long files of women, so long that we once counted as
many as seventy-four carrying tubs of oil (lamp-oil and
tea-oil for the hair), two women to each tub. A great
many were carrying loads of tea-cake (##R)— no connec-
tion with Sally Lunn—which is still used as soap, and
Sometimes as manure, by the inhabitants of out-of-the-
way regions. It is made from the husks of the tea-seed out
of which the oil has been expressed. Apropos of these
women, it was impossible not to notice their extreme mo-
desty of expression. Some of them were young and nice-
looking; but all looked overworked. A few wore straw
Sandals on their feet ; the majority walked barefooted over
the stony paths, though there was not one without a bracelet
of some kind upon her arm. All this time we hardly ever
lost sight of the river which gradually dwindled to a thread
of water splashing among the rocks, until at last we reached
the summit of the chain of hills alongside the very source
that gave it birth. It was a beautiful spot. A cluster of
46 FROM SWATOW TO CANTON.
three or four magnificent trees shaded two buildings, one on
either side of the road, joined by a lofty arch-way which
served as a resting-place and shelter for travellers. While
our coolies were refreshing themselves with tea and pipes,
we entered the building on the left, over the door of
which were inscribed the characters ####. It was
a Buddhist temple, and several priests were busily en-
gaged in trimming the lamps and renewing the burnt-out
joss-stick. There was nothing to see but two old women on
their knees before the shrine of the world-honoured One,
So we turned and left them to their devotions, passing across
to the building on the other side of the way. There we
moved in a totally different atmosphere—purer, holier far,
than the rank odour of Superstition we had just quitted.
We stood in the presence of a Spirit we too could adore ; for
the Spirit of Literature, common to all ages and to all na-
tions, was there enshrined, and breathed its influence around.
We were in a chapel sacred to the undying memory of Han.
Wén-kung, and an image of this brilliant “statesman, phi-
“losopher, and poet,” reposed majestically upon the altar.
On either side were his faithful followers # =P Chang Ts’ien
and z; †. Li Wan who accompanied him in his wanderings
when he had incurred his imperial master's displeasure and
was nominated governor over this then wild and uncultivated
territory. There he sat, neglected, and, but for the dumb
statues who shared his solitude, alone; while at the distance
of a few yards flourished with a yet unstricken vitality the
idle forms and ceremonies of that religion he had made such
an effort to overthrow. With a sigh we sought to appease
the manes of Intellect defeated in its struggle with the most
loathsome of all monsters that prey upon humanity, and fled
the humiliating scene. But as we turned to take a last
FROM SWATOW TO CANTON, 47
glance at the hallowed spot, two remarkable because widely
different objects appeared to force themselves upon our
notice. The first was an inscription over the entrance—
}; ; ; # 42 or “All will be purified who enter here":
and the second—ah ! the second, what was that, hanging
upon the shadow-wall (; ;) which should bar the entrance
to all things noxious or profano | It was a copy of the
Margary proclamation.
Descending the pass on the other side we found ourselves
for some miles moving in a valley of paddy-fields and mud
cottages alongside a tributary of the river for which we were
steering our course. In some places the bed of the stream
was very wide, though recent drought had reduced the actual
flow of water to its narrowest limits. However at one point
in the valley we had to cross a long wooden bridge, without
railing like the generality of Chinese bridges, and in the
middle about fifty feet from the ground. We at first
thought of dismounting from the chair and finding our own
way across, but the bridge was six planks (about a foot each)
in width, and did not seem at all formidable at the shore
end. Neither should we, more or less accustomed by this
time to dizzy heights, have experienced any discomfort even
at the highest elevation, had not a string of coolies carrying
large mat packages calmly started to meet us from the other
end when we were about one-third of the way across. We
had seen these wretches on the opposite side and had given
them credit for sense enough to wait until our chair had
passed the bridge before coming on themselves. Not a bit
of it. Chinaman-like they accepted the risk, leaving the
issue to fate ; and stepped lightly towards us as if it was the
merest trifle in the world. And it might have been to
them, sure-footed mountaineers, and pedestrians to boot.
48 *
FROM SWATOW TO CANTON,
But to us, whose youth knew no steeper or more dangerous
climb than the kerb-stones of Holborn Hill, and suspended
as we were between the shoulders of two fallible men fifty
feet above the dry gravelly bed of a river with nothing but
six narrow planks between us and the Infinite, which scant
allowance we were now to reduce by just one half—to us,
indeed, the prospect was anything but reassuring. At such
junctures we always fancy that the senses of seeing and
hearing—especially the latter—are very much intensified.
The eye seems to take in the minutest details, and
the ear to note every rustle that stirs the air. This
may or may not be sheer imagination ; at any rate
the coolies approached nearer and nearer in their dread
march until we were temporarily relieved by seeing them
put down their packages on the bridge, as we thought at the
moment, to allow us to pass them more easily, but really to
get a prolonged view of the outlandish creature in the chair.
Our chair-bearers went on without relaxing their pace.
We grazed by the first three or four packages, having about
# of an inch to the good, the eyes of every gaping coolie
fixed upon us in a stony idiotic stare, when we saw about
two yards ahead a package which the careless owner—who
we excommunicated him internally —had put down corner-
wise, and against which our then accurate sense of sight told
us we must inevitably bump. We were not tongue-tied :
we could have spoken when we first noticed it, but the
recollection flashed across us that the bearers were Hakkas
and would not understand a word. To speak might flurry
them, and would certainly flurry us; so we decided to go
on, revolving even in the short space of two yards the best
method of escape, how to throw ourselves over the side of
the chair as the chair itself was going over the side of the
FROM SWATOW TO CANTON, 49
bridge, what to clutch at, and similar desperate particulars.
Meanwhile, our time was at hand. The chair, as we had
foreseen, struck—to our ears, crashed like thunder—against
the corner of the misplaced package. The chair shivered
from one end to the other, and the coolies were stopped
short, for the package was heavy and did not yield an inch.
We experienced a violent rush of blood to the head, over
which we had little or no control, probably because the
issue was so absolutely in the hands of others. However,
the coolies steadied themselves without any apparent effort ;
the fiend whose carelessness had caused us so many seconds
of unutterable discomfort straightened his package to a line
with the others, and we crossed the bridge in safety.
As a relief to the above scene we forthwith met two men
carrying a pig in a bamboo cage shaped like a Sausage. The
pig's four legs hung down through the large meshes of the
cage, and the expression on its face was ludicrous in the
extreme. This may be the usual way of carrying pigs in
the Kuang-tung province. We hope it is, and that the
practice will some day become general in the empire; for it
is infinitely more humane than the northern system of tying
the wretched animal's four feet together and carrying it on
a pole with its back downwards, Shortly after this we
reached the Half-way House, where the chair-coolies are in
the habit of taking their midday meal. It reminded us of
another Half-way House where we had once refreshed our-
selves with bread and cheese and mild ale while passing
through the beautiful county of Buckinghamshire. That
establishment was called by the singular name of the Five
Alls, which was most obligingly explained to us by a half.
tipsy reveller at the bar who told us he was a native of the
place, “You See,” said he, “the king governs all, the
50 Fr.0M SWATOW TO CANTON,
“Soldier fights for all, the parson prays for all, the doctor
“heals us all, and the lawyer cheats us all. And so they
“calls this house the Five Alls, and I should be much
“pleased, Sir, to join my friend Bill here in drinking your
“very good health.” No bread, no cheese, no beer, satisfied
the craving stomach at this Half-way House, separated by
ten thousand miles of sea and sky from that ; neither found
we here any uproarious Bacchanalian to amuse us with his
drunken wit. The coolies settled themselves down to their
rice and fat pork and Sweet potatoes, most of them finishing
up with a whiff of the invigorating opium-pipe. We walked
on ahead, vainly hoping to escape the little crowd and take
a quiet lunch in peace. But the people would not hear of
it ; they determined to interview us, and closely followed at
our heels. Finally we scrambled up a steep piece of rock,
and there, partly hidden by a large tree and partly by our
own umbrella, we managed to bolt three hard-boiled eggs, a
piece of seed-cake, and half a tumbler of sherry. On we
went again, up hill and down dale, but always along an
excellent road which left|nothing to desire. Houses became
more numerous and of more extensive proportions. They
were all built in the form of a square with a small court-
yard in the middle, but not a single window or opening of
any kind in the outer walls except one entrance protected
always by a most substantial looking door. This told its
own tale; and in the plan of these detached and often
solitary homesteads we read many a melancholy tale of
sacked houses, murdered families, and scattered household
gods. Another strange phenomenon here presented itself
for solution—a suddenly and largely increased percentage
of beggars. Ever on the watch to discover the real
standard of material prosperity now enjoyed by the
FROM SWATOW TO CANTON. 5}
people of China, we had kept a careful account of the
beggars seen with our own eyes between Swatow and
the furthest point we had reached by water, namely
# §, Ch'ing-ch'i, including our visit to the city of
Riaying Chou. So far the number had amounted to only
five. The people of Kia-ying Chou and its vicinity ap-
peared indeed to be miserably poor; but poverty and starva-
tion are not synonyms, and what we saw of the city Sup-
plied us only with a single example of the “rice-seeker"
(#fff; fiğ). It was after passing the temple of Han
Wén-kung, situated, by the way, exactly on the bound-
ary line between the districts of # # Ch'ang-lé and # JII
Lung-ch'uan, that we were startled from a dream of full
stomachs by an endless panorama of destitution. We cal-
culated that in the last twelve miles of our journey we met
one beggar to every hundred yards; and yet throughout the
eleven or twelve miles of road which led from # 3
Ch'ing-ch'i to the temple we had not seen a solitary One. It
was still a problem to us, when the chair-coolies put on a
sudden spurt, hurried through the busy town of #3 &
Lao-lung, and put us on board a large passenger-boat which
was there awaiting our arrival. The first thing we did was
to come into violent collision with the roof which was just
about two inches too low ; and this, following on the fatigu-
ing land journey just accomplished, reduced us to a state of
limpness that could only be removed by a well-starched—
IExshaw's is the best—glass of soda-water. The next thing
we did was to gaze reproachfully at the beam which had
scattered our few remaining ideas, when lo ! we beheld
thereon a scroll of red paper bearing the usual words of
welcome –
X F. * ->
# jã H. :
“Joy when you raise your head,”
52 FROM Swatow To CANTON.
and the bump we had to show on the top of ours formed an
excellent commentary upon the text. Apropos of the rela-
tive height of Chinese and Europeans, a Chinaman informed
us only the other day that his own people were once tall
and muscular, but that they had sadly deteriorated in the
last few hundred years. The giants-in-those-days theory is
of course common to China with the rest of the world ; un-
fortunately they have no skeletons or armour or gauntlets of
the heroes of old to shew them how utterly unfounded that
theory is, for though Chinese civilisation may have remained
stationary for many centuries we cannot believe it has ever
lost a position once occupied. The Chinese themselves are
never tired of Salving the wounds of to-day by a reference to
their glorious Past. We laugh in our sleeve whenever we
see them laying on thick layers of the unction flattering to
their souls. We believe that at the brightest epochs of
Chinese history the standard of moral purity, intellectual
culture, and physical comfort, was never higher than it is at
this moment, and that every day which dawns upon China
is raising it more and more. The laudator temports acti,
otherwise known as the celebrated character in Gil Blas
who insisted that the peaches of his youth were finer than
those of his old age, is positively the rule in China instead
of being as he now is with us a rare and almost extinct
species. With us no one is fool enough to wish that he,
had lived in the days of King Alfred or under the rule of
Good Queen Bess. If he regrets at all his existence in the
whirl and rush of the nineteenth century, it is because he
looks ahead one or two hundred years even to a further
development of the resources of man and a final settlement
of several undecided, though hardly doubtful, questions of
the day. All this time the evening has been ebbing fast
FROM SWATOW TO CANTON. 53
away. We have given up all chance of leaving till the
morning, and devote ourselves to settling down. The boat
is so large that it carries us, servants and all. A partition
in the middle leaves ample space at our end for a sitting-
room and bed-room with an imaginary line of demarca-
tion between. Beyond these, and fenced off by a sliding
door, is the family oratory, with a small altar in
it on which already Smoke various offerings of pork and
vegetables by the dim light of three tiny red candles. A
horrid thought arises within us, simultaneously with a com-
mon and well-known Chinese proverb. We plan a sacrilege
of the deepest dye, and the proverb guides us to our prey.
We want a bath-room; and that sacred chamber, scene of
so many heart-felt invocations and vows of incense for the
nostrils of the spirit, seems to be marked by destiny for our
own. The Chinese themselves say that
“Money can move the gods,”
§ flé à ji;
and we determined at Once to put the practical value of this
saying to what we imagined would be a crucial test. Need
we relate the issue of our scheme Need we inform the
reader that with the aid of one shining, ringing, life-inspiring
Mexican dollar, the gods were moved; and that there, in
the very Presence-chamber of the Empress of the Sky, were
our barbarian ablutions performed?
3rd.—We now found otirselves much more comfortable
than we had hitherto been. The boat did not rock about,
and we were able to spread ourselves out. Our captain, too,
was an exceedingly pleasant old fellow, and we should have
been tempted to call him an honest-looking man but for the
caustic saying that
“Honesty is another name for imbecility.”
# it iſ # F# Will ºf
54 FROM swatow TO CANTON.
and such is truly the case in China. A smart, clever servant
invariably makes a good thing out of the master he serves
so well. The open-faced, simple-minded boy who blushing-
ly limits his commission to five or at most ten per cent, can
never be broken of handing round spinach with Oyster pat-
ties and calling his mistress “Sir” We must take the long
with the short—PI ###3 –some prefer the one type,
Some the other.
But we are fast gliding past # )\l Lung-ch'uan without
paying proper attention to its pagodas and a particularly
quiet and peaceful-looking temple on the river bank. The
scenery is pretty, though not equal to what we have seen
already. The river widens. Every now and then we stick
on a mud-bank and wish it would deepen. But the cur-
rent is in our favour ; we have no longer to contest
every foot of the way, and it is pleasant to be quit of the
shrieks of struggling boatmen. So we give up the day to
the uninterrupted luxury of—thought. -
4th.-Which reminds us that a Chinaman placed in the
Same position as ourselves would infallibly have spent his
leisure hours in sleep, in spite of the Confucian fulmen
against persons who so indulge during the day-time.
“Rotten wood,” said the master, “cannot be carved ”—
# 7K ZS TJ } {0–when his attention was called to a
sleeper who should have been employing himself more pro-
fitably in some other way. It is marvellous how Chinamen
seem to have acquired a power of sleep. Not only can
they go straight through the night with gongs and fire-
Crackers clanging and banging all round them ; but at
any given moment in the day they havé only to shut
their eyes and they are sound asleep within two minutes.
We do not remembor ever to have seen a Chinaman occu-
FROM SWATOW TO CANTON, 55
pied in solid thought. If not reading, writing, walking,
eating, smoking, or chopping wood, he is quite sure to be
enjoying a comfortable nap. Hence, perhaps, the stately
utterance of Confucius that “Learning without thought is
labour lost”—g iſ T. H. H.] Hº-warning his countrymen
that they must not only continue to acquire knowledge but
digest and arrange the knowledge they have already acquired.
But we owe, and here offer, to our readers a very ample apology
for presuming to quote from the profane pages of this benighted
old pagan. The highest authorities are almost unanimous in
their opinion that nothing good or great has ever or will
ever come out of the teachings of him whom twenty odd
centuries of erring millions have foolishly regarded as a sage.
It has been quite by mistake that the Chinese have so long
allowed Confucius to be venerated as a mouth-piece of
Wisdom and Virtue; and now that they are gradually com-
ing within reach of the influence of western religions, we
are called upon by Dr. Legge” to believe that “the faith of
* We are sure that nobody will feel greater satisfaction than Mr.
Giles at the marked change which has come over the views of Dr.
Legge with respect to the teachings of Confucius since he penned
the sentence quoted by Mr. Giles in that portion of his Diary that
we print to-day. The Doctor's paper on Confucianism in its rela-
tion to Christianity is a monument of liberal views, as the following
sentences abundantly show:—“The teachings of Confucianism on
“human duty are Wonderful and admirable. . . . . On the last
“three of the four things Confucius delighted to teach—letters,
“ethics, devotion of Soul, and truthfulness—his utterances are in
“harmony with both the law and the Gospel. A world ordered by
“them would be a beautiful World. . . . . What can be more excel-
“lent than the doctrine of the five human relations, and the five
“virtues pertaining to them 2-—than the lessons of Mencius about
“benevolence and righteousness?—than the oft-repeated inculcation
“of the Superiority of influence in leading men to the right Course,
“over force?—than the exhibition of the power of example 2 When
“Confucius made the golden rule his own, and repeatedly enun-
56 FROM SWATOW TO CANTON.
“the nation in him will speedily and extensively pass away.”
We do not think it will, any more than that the Chinese
will speedily and extensively put away the troublesome
fashion of wearing a tail and take to the more convenient
custom of the western barbarians. The chief outcry against
them in California is that they will persist in keeping to
their own manners and customs, and utterly refuse to adopt
American habits of dress, food, or anything else. How then
can we believe that they will be in such a hurry to get rid
of what must be dearest to them of all—a deep-seated faith
in the inspiration of their master? Christ tells us to “Love
“one another.” Confucius had uttered the same precept in
identically the same words several centuries before, (; āś
# E + Elż JV, Lun Yü, XII.) We look upon the former
“ciated it, he did the greatest service to his country. It has been
“ said that he only gave the rule in a negative form, but the 13th
“chapter of the Doctrine of the Mean, and other passages as well,
“show that he understood it as a positive rule, and held that it was
“ then only fulfilled when the initiative was taken in carrying it
“into practice. If a hall were somewhere to be erected to contain
“ the monuments of the Sages and benefactors of mankind, on the
“statue of Confucius there should be engraved his conversation
“with Tsze-kung, related in the 23rd chapter of the 15th book of
“ the Analects.” Dr. Legge further holds that the God of Confu-
cius was the God of Christianity, though imperfectly understood,
but still represented as a Being powerful and supreme, righteous,
holy, and loving. We think such extracts as the foregoing are
sufficient to clear Dr. Legge from any charge of bigotry or narrow-
mindedness.-Celestial Empire, June 16, 1877.
We regret that we have not yet seen Dr. Legge's paper. All we
know of it is that it has been excluded—and consequently the noble
admissions above quoted—from the list of papers published by the
Committee of the late Missionary Conference. In other words, one
of the greatest living authorities on the Chinese language was
specially invited to contribute a paper to the so-called Conference;
and because found to be too broad, too liberal for the narrow pre-
judices of an ignorant majority, was flung back rudely in his face.
FROM SWATOW TO CANTON. 57
as a divine command straight from the Throne of the Al-
mighty, and reckon it perhaps the most beautiful of all the
sayings of the Saviour. We slur over the latter with almost in-
decorous haste, and unctuously speak of its author as a poor
heathen “striving after light.” But it should never be for-
gotten that this is precisely the attitude of the Chinese
themselves. The precept they have inherited from Confuci-
ous is the precept for them ; put in the mouth of the barba-
rian teacher “Yah-soo " its eloquent morality is gone. For
TJr. Legge's treatment of the words above quoted, we refer
the reader to Vol. 1, page 124, of his Chinese Classics, where
he will find (in note 22) that the translator not only con-
siders the replies of Confucius enigmatical and difficult to
anderstand, but also omits to mention the very obvious
identity of £ JV Ai jén and “Love one another.” It
would seem hard thus to cheat even a pagan out his just
due, did we not know the Chinese to be quite competent in
this respect to look after their own interests, and likely to
wreak an ample vengeance on the unoffending texts of the
Cld and New Testaments. Personally, we can only say—
once again with Confucius—that we “hate the manner in
“which purple" is made to “take away the lustre of ver-
** milion.”
5th.—We spent a long morning in the company of
a most agreeable gentleman of highly-cultivated mind,
“Full of wise Saws” if void of “modern instances,”
who came to pay us a visit and went off delighted,
like many others we met on the journey, with a present,
of some of Messrs. De La Rue & Co.'s beautiful Christ-
mas cards. He remained a good three hours, but we
“chatted of Heaven and discoursed of Earth” (# 5K # #6)
and the time slipped pleasantly away, though it was
58 FROM SWATOW TO CANTON.
somewhat wearisome to have to go over much of the
old, old ground. Of course he held decided views as
to the flatness of the earth, and believed in the existence of
a spiritual world, acknowledging at the same time that the
Buddhistic and Taoist religions were mere inventions of man
for his own ulterior purposes. We managed by degrees to
divert the conversation to a subject in which we have always
felt a deep interest—the universal system of bribery. We
presume the reader to be aware that no mandarin could pos-
sibly live, and properly perform the duties of his position,
on the salary allowed him by the Emperor. A Tao-t'ai, for
instance, gets about £200 a year; a petty police magistrate
(#: # 5) not more than £18, and so on. But it
must ever be borne in mind that the fees received are
the property of the incumbent for the time being. This
alters the case very materially; for just as with us a transfer
of land, we will Say, costs a certain amount in fees, which
sum is the property of the State, so with the Chinese is
there a fiated amount payable on similar official transactions,
with the sole difference that such fee is the lawful property
of the officiating mandarin. Every officer of the Chinese
Government derives a large portion of his income from these
legitimate sources, and if he could limit his aspirations to
the not insignificant income thus accruing to him, his ad-
ministration would be free from the taint that now attaches
to it. But in nine cases out of ten his present position was
purchased only by a considerable outlay of hard cash, and
in ºvery single instance the favour of his immediate superior
can only be retained by conformity to a time-honoured usage.
Five occasions present themselves annually upon which
every subordinate official seeks to oil the wheel, the smooth
revolution of which implies his continuance in office. There
FROM SWATOW TO GANTON, 59
is His Excellency's or His Honour's birthday, and the
birthday of His Excellency's or His Honour's lady. Be-
sides these, there are the three great festivals of the
year, upon each of which certain sums of unvary-
ing amount are expected from every subordinate and
presented to every superior. Our friend spoke very
candidly and sensibly upon this subject. He said it was
absolutely necessary to receive presents or to fall out of the
ranks altogether from inability to propitiate the less
scrupulous palms above. He told us one point of which we
were before ignorant, namely, that expectant (§ #)
officials make no presents upon the occasions above men-
tioned. These officers are attached to given districts and
take their turn in being deputed to perform whatever duties
may be required of them, in the process of which they
manage, by a little well-timed extortion, to Scrape together
enough to support themselves and their families. But even
if appointed to act temporarily in such a post as that of
magistrate, they are not expected to make the usual presents
of money. It will, however, be regarded as a delicate
attention on their part if they forward a Sample of anything
for which their particular region may be famed—a chest or
two of tea, a few boxes of Sweetmeats, or a roll of silk. The
result of the system is evidently this —instead of a large
revenue flowing direct into the coffers of the State, from
which the pay of the executive, reduced to the lowest
possible figure, is drawn, we see in China vast sums of
money working their way upwards from the people to the
Throne, but so mutilated by numerous and greedy hands
on the way that the ultimate residuum is barely sufficient
for the luxuries and vices of an eastern palace and leaves
no balance to be applied for the advantage of those to
60. FROM SWATOW TO CANTON.
whom by right every farthing of it belongs. Behind the
rest of the civilised world in theory and practice alike, the
Chinese still believe that the people were made for officials
to prey upon. They cannot see that every officer of govern-
ment—to a certain extent, the Son of Heaven himsehſ—is
but a servant elect of the people, entrusted with the adminis-
tration of the revenue and of justice, in deference to superior
abilities evinced at the great competitive struggles. An
official in China—let us hope nowhere else—thinks he is of
different flesh and blood from the merchant who grovels at
his feet. He will not see that it is this very merchant who
places him where he is, gives him the pas, and invests him
with a dignity not his own, for what must be exceedingly
obvious reasons. When we employ a domestic servant to
make our bed and clean our boots we do not fall down and
worship him. He takes his place in the kitchen and touches
his hat to us in the street. But when we engage a man to
decide difficult questions of right and wrong, or take action
in delicate matters upon which enormous interests may hang,
then we do well to say “This man shall walk into dimner
“before us; we will take off our hat in his office; we
“will pretend that he is a different being from ourselves.”
By doing so we shall attach a weight to his judgment that
in the eyes of the masses it would not otherwise possess;
and he on his part, while conniving at the deception, will
recognise the true value of his position and the source from
which it is derived. How exactly opposite are the opinions
held by the Chinese. According to their view, the earth
is given by Heaven to the reigning Emperor, to be ruled
indeed for the welfare of the people, but still to be ruled,
the people themselves having no voice in the question as to
how their own interests shall be protected. It is the duty
FROM SWATOW TO CANTON, 61.
of the Emperor to surround himself with the most talented
of his subjects to aid him in the administration of govern-
ment ; and it is their duty to see that the districts confided
to the care of each are tranquil and undisturbed. Floods,
drought, famine, pestilence, and the whole category of
national misfortunes, are ranged under one convenient head-
ing—the Will of Heaven; manifested, say the Chinese, in
token of the mis-government of those in high places. But
the material prosperity of the people—the producers, with-
out whose labour the baseless fabric of officialdom would
crumble into dust—that is but a paltry unit in the sum of
mandarin calculations. Hence we see in China bad roads,
tumble-down bridges, and undredged water-ways, except
where the philanthropy of the individual comes to the rescue
of the many. Hence we see the tillers of the soil moistening
their coarse rice with cabbage-water, and rarely knowing
the luxury of meat ; while the table even of the petty man-
darin is covered with a profusion of unnecessary and oft-
times costly delicacies.
6th,--It has just occurred to us that in our notes of yes-
terday there is nothing at all about the country through
which we were slowly passing. In truth, there is very
little to say. Day by day the scenery decreases in beauty ;
the hills become brown and uninteresting; the dense groves
of bamboo thin down almost to disappearance. We spent
part of the afternoon in watching the movements of a little
girl and boy, aged six, the twin children of our estimable
captain ; and were much struck, as often before, by the
thoughtfulness and self-reliance of these little bodies. The
boy ran up and down the side of the boat leaning on his
undersized punt-pole as if our fate depended entirely on his
particular exertions. Whenever we ran aground, he was
62 FROM 3WATOW TO CANTON,"
invariably the first in the water, pushing away with all
his might and taking his fair share of the shrieks and argu-
ments that accompanied each such scene. Every day at
meal-times this mite of a boy was left in sole charge of the
helm of our huge boat, seventy-two feet long, often with
rocks on either side and junks before and behind. His
sister too would take her turn with the pole or add her tiny
weight to one of the heavy sweeps at the bow. But the
prettiest sight of all was to see her sitting Chinese fashion
on the tip edge of the gunwale of the small punt attached to
our stern, busily engaged in preparing the family dinner.
The way in which she would take up a bunch of onions,
wash it in the river, so careful all the time to let none drop
in, then remove the uneatable portions and finally chop up
the whole with a sharp cooking-knife previous to throwing
it into the boiling fat on the fire—all this, we say, performed
quietly and with an air of supreme nonchalance, while
preserving her equilibrium on the punt and ignoring the five
to ten feet of water below, was a remarkable development of
intelligence in a child only six years of age. She wore no
shoes or stockings, of course : but like all the women re-
velled in the luxury of a silver bracelet on each arm. What
these two children thought of the outside barbarian we shall
not take upon us to Say. On one point, however, they
betrayed decided, and as long as the voyage lasted, unaltered
sentiments—a marked approval of the skill of Messrs. Hunt-
ley and Palmer in the preparation of their “Mixed Biscuits.”
But Hui-chou Fu is already in sight; we can plainly trace
the outline of the district city wall, and we concentrate all
our attention upon the abode of immortal Poetry and death-
less Love. We landed at the nearest point to the entrance
gate and passed right through the District into the Prefec-
FROM SWATOW TO CANTON. 63
tural city, which we bisected in like manner. The streets
were blocked up by a large crowd, collected partly to view
the barbarian, and partly an elaborate religious procession
which was dragging its slow length along amidst the plaudits
of the on-lookers. It is evidently a flourishing city. There
was an appearance of wealth and prosperity in the shops
which contrasted favourably with the staring poverty of
the regions through which we had so lately passed. Beyond
this we saw nothing unusual in the city of Hui-chou Fu,
except perhaps the large hats worn by the women and
covered with dark blue calico overhanging the brim all
round by about six inches, and looking like a flat parasol with
a deep fringe. The effect of these was extremely picturesque,
and very convenient for the wearer who, if troubled by the
gaze of man, could completely shade her features from view
by a slight inclination of the head. So we urged on the
steps of our chair-bearers towards the famous spot, one
glimpse of which was to repay us for three weeks of travel
and fatigue. For in China, more so than in many other
countries, any journey of more than five or six days' dura-
tion is inseparably connected with considerable bodily dis-
comfort. The traveller must live entirely on tinned provi-
sions, and in no long time the very smell of an Oxford
sausage becomes positively unbearable and revolting. His
bread is soon exhausted or mouldy ; and unless his morning
palate is characterised by the freshness of youth, a plate of
boiled rice will sadly furnish forth his breakfast table. No
fresh meat to be had anywhere ; only Chinese pork, which
no foreigner can or ought to eat, and a few tough old deni-
zens of the dunghill, carried on board, poor wretches, with
their heads downwards and slain before one's very eyes.
Well did Mencius say that if the Superior man heard the
64 FROM SWATOW TO CANTON,
dying Scream of the victim he would not endure to eat of
its flesh; and that therefore the cook-house with its horrid
shambles should stand at a distance from the house. We
found it so, though we base thereon no claim to superiority
of any kind; for the logician will recollect that the subject
and predicate of a Universal Affirmative are not necessarily
convertible terms. A French poet once made the same
complaint in almost identical words,
J’ai reconnu le Soir le coq infortuné
Qui m'await le matin a l'aurore naissante
Réveillé brusquement de Sa voix glapissante.
Then again no fish is to be got, and the brain stagnates for
want of a due supply of phosphorus. The season for fruit is
over; the eggs, obtainable by thousands, have known the
waxing and waning of more than a single moon ; and the
water with which one's morning coffee is prepared, barely
changes colour under the process. Apropos of want of fish,
Confucius (what that pagan again!) tells us that dwellers
on the sea-shore are cleverer but more untrustworthy than the
inhabitants of the hills who, if they are stupid, are at any
rate virtuous and honest. But we are losing sight of our story.
A few minutes more and we had passed through the city
gate, and there before us in the Sunny calm of an April after-
moon lay the much-extolled Western Lake. Here it was
all but eight hundred years ago the banished statesman Su
Tung-p'o (; ; ; ) poured forth his soul in poetry or
forgot his troubles in the smiles of his beloved Chao-yiin
(§ #). Here it was that her delicate health gave way,
and here she was finally laid to rest on the shore of this
beautiful lake, leaving her lord and master inconsolable and
alone.
We stepped into an ornamental little boat and proceeded
FROM swATOW TO CANTON. 65
to view the beauties of the place. Passing through one
of the two Five-Eye bridges, so-called because they have
five arches, we landed first at a tiny island in the cen-
tre of the lake, entirely occupied by a pretty little
building named Mid-water Pavilion (ºft is #). The view
from this was 'decidedly such as might charm a poet's eye,
even without those associations which here the poet himself
has bequeathed; but it must not be mentioned in the same
breath with the choice morsels of our own lake scenery at
home. We visited the seven-storey pagoda without succeed-
ing in finding out the date at which it was erected. We
sat in the guest-chamber of the temple from the window of
which, as a scroll above it informed us, we could take in at
a glance the various beauties of the lake; and the declining
sun was just beginning to burn the crests of the western
hills when our tour was completed,—all save a reverent
pilgrimage to the little white pavilion which shelters the re-
mains of Chao-yin. We had reserved this for the last ; for
it is really the great attraction of the place. Beneath the
pavilion, open to the four winds of heaven, there stood a
small stone table, and on either side, facing the entrance,
were scrolls, on which we found engraved the following
couplet—the dying words of the ill-fated girl.
“Like a dream ; like a vision ; like a bubble ; like a shadow ;
like dew ; like lightning. *
“No life ; no annihilation ; no defilement ; no purity ; no
gain ; no loss.”
fill # fill 31 ſil #6, #11 #3 #11 # 3.p {#:
ZR 4: Zſ, W. ZF # 7, #7, #7, #.
It was with this consciousness of the vanity of life that the
gentle spirit of Chao-yin melted away “into the infinite
“azure of the past ; ” and it was with these words still
ringing in his ears that her disconsolate lover erected this
*6 PROM SWATOW TO CANTON.
pretty building over her tomb, and called it the Pavilion of
the Six Likes. But stay—this fresh-looking newly-painted
kiosque has surely never braved the winds and storms of
eight long centuries of time? Ah no ; an inscription there
tells us that it was re-erected in the reign of Tao Kuang,
scarce forty years ago. So we turn at once to the tomb-stone
itself, anxious—strange feeling—to touch the very slab
which Su Tung-p'o must have so often watered with his
tears. There it stands, of a dull brown colour, bearing an
inscription written in the Lesser Seal character—majestic
relic of a semi-barbarous and unpractical age. We approach:
we could almost kneel, as the scales of time fall from our
eyes, and we stand in the presence of the Past.
The characters are remarkably clear-cut and distinct for a
monument eight hundred years old; at which we inwardly
rejoice, for our knowledge of the Seal character is limited,
and we hail any aid that is likely to lighten the labour of
deciphering them. We hurry on, like impatient novel-
readers to the dénouement of a sensational story, to the ex-
treme left hand column which contains the date—when, oh
horrors what vision of unreality is this that meets the
straining eye? “The sixth year of Chia Ch'ing ” (1802)—
impossible impossible ! But it was so. The very tomb-
stone as well as the Pavilion had undergone the fate of re-
storation. There was nothing on that sacred spot, except
incorporeal history, to carry us back more than seventy-five
years. It was a bitter disappointment, though not the first
of the kind we have experienced in China. The oldest em-
pire in the world seems to have no antiquities to shew.
Her classics are ancient beyond doubt, older far than the
earliest records of the existence of literature in Greece. But
her buildings and her monuments are of to-day; to-morrow,
FROM SWATOW TO CANTON, 67.
they too may be gone. Yet previous to the restoration we
have just mentioned there must have been a Pavilion and a
tombstone on the exact spot where now stand the unsatisfac-
tory works of so recent a date. In witness whereof we ap-
pend translation of a “Note on the West Lake at Hui-chou,”
written by a celebrated Lan Lu-chou (; ; }I), and to be
found in the sixth volume of the only edition we know of
his collected essays.
Towards the end of the year 1731, being on my way to Canton,
I stopped at Hui-chou ; and hearing that to the west of the city
there was a lake—the finest of all the three “Western Lakes "-
I was seized with a desire to pay it a visit. Accordingly, one
bright moonlight, I set off with a party of friends ; and on issu-
ing from the city gate, a beautiful scene burst upon our view.
There lay more than three miles of serpentine, with clearly-
defined hills and pale, green water, bridges and minarets
in every direction, exactly like the west lake of Hang-
chou. Long ere our feet could carry us thither we were already
in the midst of it all,” astonished to find such beautiful scenery
on that side of the hills. Then following Su Tung-p'o's em-
bankment, we crossed the new west bridge, and went up into,
the “Six Likes' kiosque. We dropped a tear on the grave of
Chao-yin, took a look at the Orphan Hill, and visited the pool
of Hsi-tzú. Su Tung-p'o's embankment and the Orphan Hill
are nothing more or less than a plagiarised repetition of our old
friends of Hang-chow. I was not much pleased ; but to Su.
Tung-p'o in his days of exile it brought back the beauties of
Hang-chou, the two being as alike as the halves of a tally ; and
scholars will not be likely to find fault with the borrowed grace.
of the various names. Besides much money has been spent upon
it, and the spirit of Shih-érh still haunts the spot. Su Tung-p'o.
has in fact made the place his own, his Chao-yin corresponding:
to the Hsi-tzú of Hang-chou. [Our author here gives an unin-
teresting list of the temples, pagodas etc., of the Western Lake.
and its neighbourhood.] But I had not time to take note of all,
* Beaders of Dante will recollect the lines
“Co’ pièristetti e con gliocchi passai
Di là. dal fiumicello—”
f
68 FROM SWATOW TO CANTON,
of them. Ah if this lake were only placed at Su-chou or at
Chefoo where the surroundings would be more in keeping, nei-
ther of the other two western Lakes would bear comparison with
it. But alas, flung down in such an out-of-the-way place, its beau-
ties are lost in this wild uninhabitable spot where it now lies; and
not even the residence of Su Tung-p'o and Hsi-tzú can save its love-
ly hills and streams from obscurity. It is as some precious object
with a grievous flaw. My own home has nothing much to boast
of in the way of scenery. Would that I could take this lake
and place it near old Kao's grotto to be one of the sights of the
south east of China. I fear that inasmuch as men daily grow
more civilized and more calculating, an envious eye will be cast
upon it, and by and by the waters will be drained off and the
stream that feeds it dammed up, all to plant a few more acres of
grain. Now, as I cannot take it with me, I will not be ans-
werable for its ultimate fate. I will however quote some words
that were formerly uttered on the subject :—“Had this ground,
“before it became a lake, been an encampment whereon an army
“of soldiers had resisted the enemy, then the people would not
“ dare to injure it, and this would ensure the preservation of the
“lake for ever.”
April 7th.-The lofty pagoda of Hui-chou is fading
rapidly away, and with it almost the last traces of the
gorgeous Scenery which has surrounded us for the past three
weeks. In the distance we perceive the silhouette of Lo-fou
Hill (#### III) looming darkly through the rain-clouds
that completely shroud its summit. According to a proverb,
it is very difficult to climb –“ Of ten who go to Lo-fou
“Hill, nine don't reach the top.” (+ # #### Ju ZF #).
Yet upon this mountain there said to be over one hundred
monasteries, and consequently several thousand priests.
The latter do not belong to the ordinary run of scoundrels
who make a business of their religion as they would of any
other trade, but their ranks are replenished by disgraced
mandarins or wealthy philosophers who have seen the vanity
of all earthly objects (# F# T # 9 as the novels say)
FROM swatow To CANTON. 69
and retire hither to die. On the other side, the left bank of
the river, we notice an enormous archway, standing near
some small rocks and looking like the remmant of a mighty
viaduct. It turns out to be natural rock, Scooped out by
the quarrymen into that particular shape ; and now below it
several little huts have been raised, and even a shop or two
for the sale of tea, tobacco, and rice. We spend a few
minutes in watching a man who passes usin a “jump white”
boat (98 H) but he does not seem to catch anything.
Sitting concealed under an awning at one end of his crank
little canoe, he exposes two white boards in such a way as
to catch the eye of any passing fish. The latter, yielding to an
instinct which impels towards anything bright, jumps
wildly over the board and is forthwith seized by the fisher-
man. We also meet a few professional dredgers, coolies
who wait about at shallow points when the water is low, and
with the aid of a shovel-like apparatus clear a channel in
front of any boat that may happen to be drawing more water
than is convenient. But we soon get tired of the dreary
mud-banks on either side, and indulge, for want of better
occupation, in the usual passenger trick of consulting the
captain upon the probable date of our arrival at Canton.
It was a positive relief when a boat came alongside and our
servant brought in a card bearing the following remarkable
inscription –ff ¥ ſº # # # #; HE ſº fê ## #
# jà Hº-which being interpreted is neither more nor less
* We would here point out the extremely bad selection of charact-
ers used to represent the word London. The Chinese are so fond of
inverting, especially in the case of their so-called “dissyllables"—
€. g. # #. OT # #—that it is dangerous to allow two characters
to come together in the same sentence without making sure that
there is no loop-hole for what Confucius would term “deflected "
thoughts (# %5 §). What the result is in the present instance,
70 FROM SWATOW TO CANTON.
than “T’ung Chao-an, a faithful disciple of Christ, of the
“London Mission Society for the department of Hui-chou,
“bows his head.” We have a wholesome horror of native
Christians. The first servant we ever had in China bore
upon his brow the sign of “charity with all men.” In less
than a fortnight he borrowed, without mentioning it, eight
dollars from a private box of ours. His motive was doubt-
less a good one. He wished perhaps to subscribe largely
for a new pulpit at the chapel where he was accustomed to
worship. But hell is paved with good intentions, and the
rude magistrate ordered him fifty blows with the bamboo.
When he entered our service, a piece of flesh about the size
of an acorn hung below his chin, attached by a single thread
of skin. Nothing could induce him to have this disfigure-
ment removed; for Confucius had sanctioned the foolish
principle that mutilation of the body is an insult to one's
parents, and that as our mortal coil is received from them
at birth so should it pass from our possession to the grave.
We saw our quondam domestic once again, some six months
after his dismissal from our service. The button of flesh
was gone; he had lost it in a scuffle at a tea-shop. Since
then we have not put our faith in “converts.” We find
that a pagan cook makes excellent pancakes if he is only
taught that the fat must be boiling before the batter is
poured in ; and that a pagan valet folds one's dress-coat to a
nicety, ignorant though he may be of the existence of the
Ten Commandments. All this time the “faithful disciple”
is waiting patiently at our outer gates. Our first impulse is
to send him empty away; but we are informed that he
comes on official business and is a runner in the yamèn of
we shall leave to the inquisitive student of the Chinese written lan-
guage. -
FROM SWATOW TO CANTON. 71
the District Magistrate of Po-lo (fi: ;). Now here is a
direct contradiction of terms. No Christian could possibly
be a runner; consequently no runner could be a Christian,
however fervent might be his protestations of faith. Run-
ners have no salaries; they have to “find themselves,” and
they do this most effectively by robbing and cheating the
people in every direction. Theirs is the corruption that
must be attacked first, before proceeding to touch the bribery
system of the mandarins. They are the dregs of China,
hard-hearted, unscrupulous villains. Yet we have now to
account for finding in their very midst a “faithful disciple”
of the gentle Redeemer. And this difficulty is enhanced by
the notable fact that no mandarin is a Christian ; the
magistrate of Po-lo would be therefore unlikely to tolerate
the presence among his dependants of a convert to the hated
faith. So the disciple contrives “a double debt to pay.”
Convert and runner by turns, he manages to secure the ad-
vantages of both. Is there other explanation than this
We pass the busy, filthy, market-town of Shak-lung
(F #), and anchor below it for the night.
8th.-“Your foreign style of dress is much more conve-
“nient but less comfortable than ours,” remarked the Chi-
nese literary friend who (see ante) paid us a visit this
morning and helped us to pass a pleasant hour or two in
international gossip.
“Granted,” we replied, “that it is more convenient than
“the picturesque but unwieldy fashion of your own honour-
“able nation; we, who are accustomed to it from youth
“upwards, do not find it at all uncomfortable. Put us into
“Chinese dress and for the first few days we should hardly
“know what to do with ourselves.”
“Trueenough; "answered our friend, “ of course you would
72 FROM SWATOW TO CANTON.
“feel strange for a short time; but I should say that with
“those narrow sleeves and tight-fitting waistcoats you
“foreigners wear, it must be quite impossible to catch the
“fleas; whereas we # * * *.” -
“And so,” as Mark Twain says, “he cheered the way with
“anecdote,” throwing here and there rays of light upon
many a subject that for us had hitherto remained obscure,
and strewing the path of conversation with the flowers of a
well-stocked mind. He was a fair specimen of the Chinese
gentleman. He was widely read in the literature of China.
He thought the earth was flat, and wore his sleeves deep
for the convenience of catcling fleas. But we are neglecting
our real task; the dreary mud-flats are fast passing unnoted
away, and the City of Rams is in sight. Alas! should
any too indulgent reader have accompanied us thus far upon
our travels, we fear he must have already discovered that
we “study nature rather in men than fields, and find no
“landscape afford such variety to the eye, and such subject
“to the contemplation, as the inequalities of the human
“heart.”
And the moral of our story is this :—For three weeks we
have been passing through Scenes rarely profaned by the
presence of an outer barbarian. In that time we have
covered some five hundred miles of lovely country, through
which the Flying Scotchman would have whirled us in a
single night. . We have been chiefly struck with (1) the
density of population all along the line of our route ; (2)
with the extreme poverty, but not destitution, of the people ;
and (3) with their intense religious feeling. For the first
two, a relief is at hand; and a knowledge of its advan-
tages is surely if slowly penetrating these thick layers of
over crowded humanity. Emigration from Swatow to the
FROM SWATOW TO CANTON, 73
Straits, which under its present honourable aspects should
be encouraged to the full by all who take an interest in the
welfare of China, is increasing year by year; and hundreds
of returning emigrants, each with his little hoard of easily-
earned dollars, now succeed in persuading more timorous
friends and relatives to accompany them on a second trip to
the distant El Dorado. Every mail brings bulky packets of
Chinese letters, all containing drafts of various amounts for
the families of these adventurous rice-winners. The people
of the districts round about Swatow now thoroughly under-
stand that kidnapping is a thing of the past, though the
term has unfortunately not yet disappeared. For it is a
favourite trick of the unscrupulous rowdies of the neighbour-
hood to extort money by threatening a charge of kidnapping;
—a trick at which yamén-runners, gate-keepers, lictors, etc.,
are only too ready to connive, on condition of sharing the
spoil. But this is merely one of the penalties of citizenship
in the Flowery Land, the privileges of which outweigh in
a Chinaman's patriotic eyes all the advantages of an alien
freedom, law, order, and civilisation, put together.
As to the intense religious feeling of which we have
spoken, and of which we met with such overhelming proofs
at every turn, it is amusing to an outsider to watch the
struggle of two distinct faiths and numberless sects over what
they are pleased to consider the dying carcase of Chinese
superstition. To us it seems vital enough, and, with certain
modifications to suit the spirit of the times, likely even to
not-live its tempest-tossed rivals of the West, But supposing
we were to succeed in weaning the Chinese from their own
religious beliefs, their fear of a material hell, their hope of a
sensualistic heaven, with what should we fill the void?
Necessarily with our own diversity of sects and opinions,
r -
74 FROM swatow To CANTON.
questions of candles, flowers, and vestments, the Tweedle-
dum and Tweedledee of eastward and other positions, which
but few of us can regard with unmixed feelings of pride.
It is here, however, that the safety of the Buddhist-Taoist
superstition will be found. Pulled a dozen different ways
by a dozen different claimants, each of whom asserts that his
own is the way and the rest perdition, the Chinese will in
all probability elect to remain where they are. Our views
may possibly be altogether wrong; for, to parody the mock
humility of a Chinese statesman, we see the heavens through
a pea-shooter or as a man sitting at the bottom of a well.
We shall console ourselves, however, by reflecting that if
time does show these opinions to be baseless and false, they
will but share the fate of nearly all that have preceded them.
and certainly of many that will come after.
|Cost of trip, for one traveller and three servants, say
$250.00.] - -
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AT MESSRs. KELLY & WALSH's, SHANGHAI.
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GILES’s Chinese Sketches ....................................... $8
,, Dictionary of Colloquial Idioms in the Mandarin
Pialect ....................................... $3
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BALFOUR's Waifs and Strays....................................58