The spell of China

Front matter

Spell ^ China

Archie Bell

ft

Contents

Foreword vii

I. A City of Terraces 1

II. Canton the Incredible 27

Chapter I A City Of Teekaces

.APOLEON BONAPARTE said: ''When old China begins to move, she will surprise the world," and thus proved himself to be a good prophet. China has not only begun to move, pausing the world to look on in amazement, but she has continued to move, and the world is more surprised than it was when the tremendous and ancient dragon raised herself for the first real attempt to rouse from a sleep that endured for so many centuries that she was blinded by the light of day, befogged and barely knew which way to turn. Perhaps her first impression was that it might have been better to remain asleep. The comatose condition had not been without its pleasant sensations. Like the dreams of one of her own opium-smokers, the rainbow centuries had 1 passed and left her in tlie mauve vapor of unreality. She declined to admit the real, even when her eyes were open. Sleep and dreams were preferable, and although she had been awakened several times within a thousand years by the abominable clatter of young nations, their encroachments, claims and demands, she merely blinked her eyes fretfully and resumed her slumber, apparently leaving strict orders that she was not to be ''called" until the beginning of the Twentieth Century, a. d., as the children among the nations reckon time. And then, when the time arrived, she awakened without a call from the outside. Old China awakened from within. She heard her own voice calling her to be up and stirring. And in this, probably Napoleon Bonaparte would be surprised. It was more than even a good prophet would have ventured. China is moving, and, in some respects, she is causing greater surprise by the celerity of her movements than by the fact that she decided to move at all.

Like a peevish grandparent, she is obliged to admit that she has been asleep, but she excuses herself by explaining that, in her life, a few centuries were nothing inore than a brief spell of drowsiness. She is awake now, as she was awake in those days when she felt that she could go out and conquer the world. The seat of her central government is to China the center of the universe. While she slumbered, some of the children and upstarts among foreign nations tried to convince themselves that this was not true. But the dragon is stirring again and the world may well be surprised. Nothing more unexpected has occurred since the fall of Babylon, Athens, or Eome. Yes, a few things have happened since China went to sleep; America has been discovered and a great nation has resulted, political power has shifted in Europe from Spain to other countries ; Japan, a troublesome little group of islands near her coastline, has shown remarkable vigor, and the heir to the imperial throne of her ancient sister, Korea, is a prisoner in his palace. The huge dragon realizes all of these things — ^none better than she — and the world wonders what is about to happen. The great French emperor said that China's awakening would change the face of the globe. Lord Wolseley added; *'They are the most remarkable race on earth and I have always thought and still believe them to be the coming rulers of the world."

Aware of these things which are now common knowledge, I knew that one who had postponed his tour of China until the last Manchu emperor was lying in his tomb and Yuan Shi-k'ai ruled the country as an unpopular president, having unsuccessfully attempted to declare himself emperor and to found a new dynasty, must feel as one passing through Dante's gate and ** abandon hope" of seeing China as she was in the days before the awakening. Probably, in the rather lengthy days of the Pacific voyage, I imagined that China in transition could not be so fascinating to the Westerner as in the older day when the Son of Heaven sat on his throne and any abortive attempt to change the ancient customs and manners was speedily answered by the sending of the silken cord, or decapitation. But the preconceived notions were quickly dissipated after arriving on Chinese soil.

One of the first things that attracted my attention was a big, stalwart Chinese blacksmith at his forge, swinging a sledge hammer. Stripped to the waist and wearing only bathingtrunks, his great bronze body was picturesque, as he stood only a couple of feet beyond the entrance of his shop on the public thoroughfare. And this powerful blacksmith at his forge wore a wrist-watch! At least in his own mind, he was very modern. He had adopted Western notions; at least he had adapted them to his own requirements. At the moment he merely caused a smile, but, as the days passed, he became not only typical of Hongkong, where I saw him, of Southern China, where the great revolutionary movements originate, but also of the vast republic. I thought of him when visiting great commercial establishments, factories, hotels and even in the palaces of China's rulers. He was a veritable symbol of the great republic of four hundred millions of people, Orientals at heart and by heredity and training, who are popularly supposed to be adopting the civilization of the West, but who, in reality, are absorbing much of it and adapting it to their own requirements. A wrist-watch on a half-naked Chinese blacksmith! At the moment it was funny, but six weeks later it was no funnier than when I sat at table with a Chinese statesman and observed him wrestling with the intricacies of a knife and fork and attempting to swallow bread and butter without a word of disgust for the things that Westerners eat and the awkward implements employed in the process.

But this combination of knives, forks and chopsticks, or that of the undressed blacksmith and the wrist-watch, and thousands or tens of thousands of combinations of the ancient and modern, the unmistakable evidences of the

^'aAvakening" of China, should not discourage the prospective tourist. He should not draw upon his imagination, after reading of progress in China, fearing that everything has changed and that human eyes are no longer privileged to see the splendid or sordid sides of the amazing country which many serious writers have put down as the "hope of humanity." There is also the reverse side of the picture. There is much in China that can never change, much that it will take centuries to change ; and, as before hinted, the veneer of Western civilization, the adaptation or misappropriation of occidental borrowings leaves the country as fascinating to the tourist as ever before, and the means of communication, hotels, railroads, even the attitude of the people towards the stranger have changed only for the better, and contribute a comfort, even a luxury, to Chinese travel and sight-seeing that were unheard of when the Son of Heaven sat on his throne.

Less than twenty years ago, even enthusiastic travelers who approached China's shores soon lost their enthusiasm and confined their visits to the larger coast cities, unless being specially desirous of reaching some inland point they pressed on and usually had tales of hardship to relate afterwards, inevitably ending with advice to others to profit by their misfortunes. Even the globe-trotters who ventured into the great ports usually were satisfied to "do'* China in a few hours from a rikisha or sedan chair. As late as the year 1900 a well-informed writer said: "Nobody travels in China for pleasure," yet, for centuries, every traveler who put pen to paper, after penetrating beyond the outer crust of China, the principal port cities, scarcely found his vocabulary sufficient to communicate his impressions of the magnificent enigma. It was all a, colossal contradiction, quite appropriate to the subject, for China was and is the supreme paradox of the earth. The so-called "Riddle of the Sphinx" is a problem for children by comparison. China is incomprehensible to the Western mind, just as it was when the first "paleface" arrived in the country. As it has been often repeated, the Westerner who attempts to understand is either a sublime egotist or a fool. But this eternal paradox and contradiction, even the well-meant advice of early travelers have had only one effect, and that has been to arouse curiosity and to attract attention to China. Perhaps it was true, in a measure, that travelers did not go to the celestial empire for pleasure twenty years ago.

It is not true of the celestial republic to-day. The world's steamers discharge thousands of passengers on Chinese soil every year, and what was once a ''forbidden country," now attracts hordes of pleasure-seekers. Perhaps Americans are in the lead numerically, as the hotel lobbies swarm with them, the English language being heard more frequently than any other, excepting the countless dialects of China itself. China has become a favorite playground for sight-seers. Many of them are sophisticated travelers who find that the most novel sights on earth are among earth's oldest people. I entered China by her great southern gateway, Hongkong; and for many reasons would recommend this route to others. Hongkong is the Asiatic terminus of many steamship lines that girdle the globe. It seems to be the great Chinese point of communication with everywhere. Something similar exists in New York as a gateway to the eastern part of the United States. Just as there is a Boston and Philadelphia, so there is a Shanghai and Tientsin in China. The city of Hankow is located on the Yangzte-kiang inland, but approachable by steamer, as if Chicago were in the headwaters of the Mississippi. Travelers having a distinct destination may select other ports and find it a saving of time and a convenience, but for one who goes to China to see as much of the country as possible in a given time, Hongkong is the preferable gateway and more easily reached than any of the others, because it seems to have direct communication by steamers with all the other great ports of the world, as one readily realizes upon consulting the sailing lists of the world's steamship lines.

I admit that my first impression of China was not wholly up to anticipations, but China was not to blame, neither were the Chinese. A heavy tropical rain was falling and heavy clouds hung over the hills that surround the ''Gibraltar of the Orient," looked upon by many strategists as important to Great Britain as the colossal granite gateway to the Mediterranean. A few Chinese junks, with batwing sails, floated close to the ship as we came to anchor in the bay. Naked yellow sailors, and men with long capes made of palm-leaves came close by — ^men and sails dripping wet. And to the depressing scene was added the rather ridiculous examination by the British officials, who seemed to suspect that every comparatively innocent tourist who needed a change of clothing, necessarily placed in a box for the convenience of traveling, was a terrible spy of the enemy with designs upon Hongkong and carrying enough bombs in a small handbag to blow the place to atoms. But these were days of unusual excitement at home, and Englishmen in Colonial possessions were, perhaps, over-zealous in watchfulness. Hongkong is a free port, and the world's people usually come and go with less restraint or red tape inquiry and investigation than is commonly met with in other great ports of the world. Even the inconvenience of registering at the police office of Hongkong on arrival and departure was easily overlooked in after days when many pleasant memories of the place crowded for recognition in recollections of the visit.

Hongkong, contrary to popular impression, is not a city, but an island, the capital of which is Victoria, named after England's beloved queen. '^Hongkong," however, usually means the city, and one rarely speaks of Victoria, or hears the word spoken. It is as if New York City were called ''Manhattan," the name of the island on which it is located. The vast harbor covers a water area of about ten square miles, with different channel entrances for ships from Australia, the Philippines, or Straits Settlements, and those which come from the northern coast, Japan and North America.. Perhaps there is a more beautiful harbor on earth, the distinction having been claimed for Nagasaki, Naples, Algiers and Rio Janeiro. The last mentioned I have not visited, but I have been on ships that poked their noses into the other waters, and excepting that ^' pearl surrounded by emeralds," Algiers, I have no hesitancy in casting a vote for Hongkong. It seems an exalted Mediterranean port, a gigantic replica of those beautiful bays along the French Eiviera that have long prompted the admiration of the world. It seems land-locked, the beautiful hills rising in all directions around the azure waters of the bay. The steamer that floats into the harbor and passes an island or two, seems hopelessly ''trapped" to the stranger. Only the experienced traveler will be able to see by which channel the ships enter from Pacific waters. And just as Venice is a never-to-be-forgotten marvel, if approached at sunrise, as the beautiful bride of the Adriatic seems to be rising from the waves, so there is a weird distinction to this city of granite which, as Longfellow said of Amalfi, seems to be dipping her toes in the sea, and then rising by staircase streets far off to the top of the hill known as the "Peak," a height of only twelve hundred feet, but seeming to be much higher, either when the bay is viewed from the heights, or when the mountainside first comes to sight from the deck of an incoming steamer.

But it was raining in Hongkong; it was the "rainy season." Now, every one who has traveled to tropical and semi-tropical countries, feels that he has seen rain. The American is obliged to go no further from home than Panama or other Central American States to see the sky open, drenching the earth with great torrents that seem to threaten the older interpretation of the Biblical rainbow. But it is safe to venture the opinion that one who has not been in Hongkong in the ''rainy season" has never seen rain. In many other districts famous for their precipitation, the rain comes in showers. Thus, in Panama it rains many times a day at certain seasons of the year. In Hongkong it rains ceaselessly for twenty-four hours a day *4n season," and frequently the waterfall continues for many days, even weeks. Fortunately, the city of Victoria nestles against the verdant hillside and the streets have wide stone gutters that carry the torrents to the harbor. Men and women in any corner of the earth seem to adapt themselves to physical conditions. Caspar "Whitney relates that no dinner in a Broadway cafe has seemed more appetizing to him than did chunks of walrus blubber when he was in the frozen fields on the trail of the muskox. The camel is utilized as man's beast of burden in one country, the reindeer serves the same purpose elsewhere, and so does the llama in Peru, caribou in the Philippines and sheep in Madeira. The Westerner, who would consider staying indoors during a gentle rain at home, soon becomes accustomed to the terrific rainfall of Hongkong.

Water-proof clothing becomes a necessary part of his wardrobe, and he ventures forth with no more thought than he would give to the tropical sunshine that suggests the advisability of a helmet and umbrella. Hongkong is not typically Chinese; technically speaking, it is not Chinese at all, being a British possession, where a large part of the population of about one-half million is Mongolian. The island was first occupied by the British in 1839, when they hurriedly left Canton, Macao and other cities further south, as a result of the opium disputes. It is likely that the name is derived from the Chinese "Heung-kong" which means "Fragrant Streams," an appellation arising from the fact that the ships of the East India company came there for water from the hillsides before starting on return voyages. Previous to 1839, the island was inhabited by not more than four thousand natives, most of whom, like the natives of Yokohama, Japan, previous to the coming of the white man, were engaged in deep-sea fishing, a trade of vast importance in a country where fish forms one of the principal articles of food. Hongkong was established as a crown colony in 1843. The peninsula of Kowloon, which stretches out near to the island, had been occupied for some time as a sanitarium by the British, for in the earlier days of occupation, terrible pestilences like cholera and fever had swept over the place ; and in 1898, by the terms of a convention at Peking, Kowloon and several islands, most of which were desired for purposes of defense, about four hundred square miles in all, were leased to Great Britain for ninety-nine years.

I had not been many hours in Hongkong, however, before I absorbed enough '' atmosphere" to know that I was in China, for although I heard an Englishman say that *'one white man is worth a thousand Chinks," and the proportion of population, even in Hongkong, seems to the stranger to be almost at that figure, my eyes were on the Chinese rather than the British, who came to the hotel for the inevitable tea as punctually as when their country was not engaged in warfare. England always impresses foreign colonies with three of her institutions:

tea in the afternoon, handkerchiefs pushed up the sleeves and ^' dress" for dinner. They are the same everywhere. Nobody who comes into contact with them expects anything else. An American who has done a business running as high as twenty thousand dollars in one year with an English manufacturer in the Far East, told me that he had brok^en off formerly pleasant relations on account of the ''tea habit." Having but a few hours, while his ship was in port, he called upon the dealer to place his order, but the Englishman said: ''You will pardon me, please, but you have called exactly at my teahour," whereupon he put on his hat and started to go out. The American said: "I will not only pardon you, but I shall never see you again," and the Englishman lost his customer. Put him on a cocoanut island in the middle of the ocean, and you will find that he is the same ; tea, handkerchief and "mess jacket" for dinner. Perhaps these things are innocent amusements in themselves, but the trouble lies in the fact that they impress themselves upon the "natives," who adopt them because they want to be "like white men." These things thrive in Egypt and other colonies, if the English have been there long, but I have never seen them carried to such a ridiculous extent as in Hongkong. The climate is usually hot and the natives dress for the weather, most of them, so it is rather absurd to see a "Chino" wearing European clothes in an effort to be ''English."

But this commingling of East and West may be a part of the charm of Hongkong. It is a great city and magnificently situated seaport, populated chiefly by people who seem to be neither oriental nor occidental. Although they would not admit it, the English of long residence have absorbed much of the East, doing it unconsciously. One who entertained me at dinner at his home, served soup in the place of dessert, in the oriental fashion. But the occidental is not a natural or good imitator; the oriental is.

On the second or third day, I took the cable railway that runs up to the Peak, which lies back of the city on the mountaintop. The city is really in three stories. Business houses of the better sort are on the waterfront, where the sun sizzles. The natives dwell in crowded streets on the middle terrace. The Europeans, principally the English, dwell on the top shelf.

On the Peak, where the cable railway discharges its passengers every fifteen minutes, one might fancy himself in England, were it not for the fact that every white man or woman is carried around the streets in a sedan chair or

PEAK RAILWAY. HONGKONG on the shoulders of coolies. Troupes of Chinese servants fill the streets, attending to the business of their masters' households. Servants are so cheap that the white man of diminutive income can stock his house with half a dozen of them without feeling the financial strain. White men soon become lazy and demand much waiting upon in this climate. It is argued that this fact is one of the ** inducements" that keeps men of moderate means in the East. On every hand one hears from the natives and foreigners alike that there are ''too many people." Enough survive the plagues and pestilences, infant deaths and typhoons (one typhoon caused the death of ten thousand persons a few years ago) to keep the great country swarming with population. It is not so much a question how to preserve the human race in China as it is how to find something for the people to do. When skilled embroiderers and makers of artistic objects average from eleven cents to fifteen cents a day for work from sunrise until sunset, it is not surprising that servants are glad to accept even the ridiculous amounts offered to them to act as domestic or personal servants.

Hongkong is so damp that clothing is wet, when put on in the morning, and still wet when it is taken off at night. Thick mildew covers shoes in a single night. It is advisable to take everything from one's trunk and closets and give things a good " airing, " at least every three or four days. Merchants wrap everything excepting food in oiled paper, so that the dampness will not ruin it if it is left unwrapped for three or four days. Verily, one who enters China by this port, and leaves it after a few days — or weeks — after living in the Anglicized hotels, as so many American tourists are said to do, gains a very inadequate and very inaccurate picture of China or the Chinese. Even a peep at the beautiful city is better than not to have come at all, but conditions have changed, and one should no more remain at Hongkong and think he has seen South China than he would visit Marseilles and think that he has seen France.

English residents have made it quite ** incorrect" and socially forbidden to be seen talking with Chinese, or to be seen in the Chinese quarters of the city. When I told an Englishman that I would like to be presented to a famous Chinese authoress, he replied: *'I could arrange for you to go and see her all right, and I presume it would be all right for you to go because you are a stranger ; but really you '11 have to excuse me, I couldn't be seen at the house of a Chino. ' ' Then I mentioned a famous Chinese official whose name is well known in the United States and asked if he were obliged to submit to any of this snobbery.

''When one of the boys is invited to this Chink's house to dinner, he usually comes to the club, explains that he must go to the Chino 's house and we laugh it off, knowing his obligations. But, really, such things are not done. One would not care to be caught conversing about anything but business with a Chinese."

Perhaps the British officials know the ''native city, ' ' but the civilians do not. It would not be "good form" to be aware of its existence even, and as most tourists burden themselves with that foolish old custom of trying to behave as the Eomans do in Eome, usually making a botch of it, which would mean to try and be "English" in Hongkong, comparatively few strangers see the real life of the native city.

On the second sjielf of the mountainside Hongkong is delightful. A big native theater flourishes with nightly change of bill. The hall is so large that it seats probably three thousand persons, yet I found it necessary, after paying a premium to a ticket speculator for the first night, to obtain admission at all to speak for seats a day in advance on all subsequent occasions. There are scores, perhaps hundreds of mammoth restaurants always filled to overflowing at midnight, and the streets have a distinctive native flavor long after the sun has set and England in China is at its club or at home in bed. This side of Hongkong life is not disappointing and is worthy of a close inspection by strangers. Sir Walter Scott's advice: **Be aye stickin' in a tree," has been followed by the foreigners in Hongkong, so that there are splendid avenues bordered by large shade trees and many of the English residences are set in beautiful gardens of camellias, roses, poinsettias and many other flowering shrubs and plants that combine the charm of the English suburban villa with sub-tropical vegetation, always greenleafed and brilliant flowered. Despite the torrential rains and the sultry climate, it is likely that the island of Hongkong, previous to settlement by the English, was rocky and barren. At the present time, there is little ground space for agriculture, which is confined almost entirely to garden truck raising ; but trees seem to cover the hillsides and thrive in the valleys. One colonial governor of Britain was instrumental in having over one million trees planted during his administration. There is a fine botanical garden along the route of the Peak cable tram.

which, by the way, was the first to be placed in operation in Asia. It is an inspiring view to look down upon the city and harbor from this height, and then again from still further up at the terminus of the line. One should go in the daytime and then again at night. Beautiful on a clear day, it is all no less so in the evening, when the ships in the harbor have lights and hundreds of sampans, each with a lantern or candle, flit over the water, seeming to be fireflies flashing in the tropical night.

The streets of Hongkong are either shelves on the hillside or long staircases, which make all vehicles, excepting sedan chairs and rikishas, useless. The stranger from the West who has not stopped en route in Japanese ports or the Straits Settlements will thus have his first ride in the little pneumatic tired sulkies of Nipponese origin, which are becoming popular in countries as far distant as South Africa. Excepting when it rains, however, or when it is very hot and one has a long distance to travel, walking about Hongkong is preferable to riding. Many of the principal streets are arcaded as in several European countries, and one may visit the principal shops without going from under cover except at street crossings. Hongkong is not one of the shopping centers of China, however, and the stranger is advised to wait until he reaches other cities before succumbing to the lure of embroideries, ivories, laces, linen and jade that cannot escape his eyes and are likely to drain his purse elsewhere. In these matters of trade, the Hongkong merchants cater chiefly to passengers from incoming steamers who remain but a few hours and go away satisfied with usually inferior materials, for which they pay a price double, treble or quadruple that charged further inland.

Hongkong is the most distant outpost of the British empire, the Irish soldier remarking that his government could not send him further from home without bringing him nearer. Its shipping has grown to vast proportions. In the year 1861, only slightly over one thousand ships cleared the port ; just before the outbreak of the European war, the number had increased to over twenty thousand. It is difficult to obtain exact figures concerning the value of the exports and imports, owing to the fact that Hongkong is a free port, but the amount is supposed to be over a total valuation of six hundred million of dollars. Hundreds of ships seem continually rocking nervously on the great watery expanse before South China's great waterway, but they are foreign ships assembled at a point which seems to be most blatant example of foreign exploitation on earth.

Almost the first question asked of the returning tourist is regarding the foreign accommodations at Chinese hotels, concerning which ignorance seems to be general in Western countries, and a point on which books of Eastern travel have been ominously silent, excepting where endurance ceased to be a virtue and a tale of suffering, privation or disgust was unfolded. Hotel accommodations at Hongkong are fairly typical of what one finds in other parts of China at the present time. Probably conditions have changed in the past few years, they are not what they were; but there is still a chance for improvement. The principal cities have commodious hotels, where comfortable and hygienic sleeping accommodations, ample service, and a fairly good cuisine need cause no qualms to the prospective tourist. The hotels are not equal to those of Broadway, New York, not even equal to the larger hostelries in Japan, but they are superior to many ** leading hotels" in outlying districts in America, and compare very favorably to what was encountered in our own Western cities down to the beginning of the Twentieth Century.

The food is cooked in European style and the service is in kind. One might travel the length and width of China, at least where he is able to penetrate by railroad or steamer, and never so much as taste what is generally known in America as ''Chinese Food." In fact, many of the concoctions served at ''oriental restaurants" at home are purely American inventions, not procurable in a restaurant or hotel in the vast Chinese republic. What we know as ' ' Chop Suey ' ' in its myriad forms, is one of these and is known only by name in China, "the name given something prepared for the viceroy, Li Hung-chang, when he was in America." In general appearance, even in flavor, there is a similarity between "chop suey" and popular and very common dishes prepared by native cooks for the Chinese coolies, but one would not find them at the tables of a Chinese who made any pretense to "class," and he would not find them at the large native restaurants in the larger cities of China, some of which make a specialty of catering to tourists and other foreigners, who have a desire to have at least one meal in the style of the country in which they are traveling. But the tourist must go out of his way to obtain even this sample of Chinese dishes. No "native" dish is served at European hotels, as is often the case in foreign hotels of Spain or Italy. These