Ofocncll Httiueraity library iltl;ani, ^txu fork CHARLES WILLIAM WASON COLLECTION CHINA AND THE CHINESE THE GIFT OF CHARLES WILLIAM WASON CLASS OF 1876 1918 DS 721 C82 °" ""'™™"*' '■"'"'>' * ^iniilSiMSfi.S.tJ!!?*** peach-Stones / 3 1924 023 241 205 Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924023241205 ^ Siring of QMnesQ ^ each'' Stones MORRISON AJ^D GIBB, PRINTERS, EDtNBLJRQH. Charm issued by the TAOisrPnpp ^ Ztvina^ of By V. )\rlhur Cornaby Iff ^ Hontion CHARLES H. KELLY 2, CASTLE ST., CITY ED. ; AND 66, PATBRNOSTEE ROW, E.G. 1895 TO THE REVEREND DAVID HILL THIS KBStrlT OF THE GATHERED UP FRAGMENTS OP NINE YEARS IS DEDICATED WITH HEARTIEST AFFECTION. Qontenis. I. A Village District in Light and Shade II. Rural Scenes and Sounds III. The Mandarin in Embryo IV. Red Letter Days V. Compensations . . . . VI. Records of an Ancient City VII. Can any Pathos come out op China? viii. An Historical Romance . IX. Problems Domestic and National . X. Gods Many and Lords Many . XI. A Taiping Camp .... xii. The Longhaired have come . XIII. Sdppering by Deputy .... XIV. An Old, Old Story in a New Edition, XV. Imperial Pop-guns . ... XVI. The Mart op Central China . XVII. Four Miles op Flame xviii. Imperialists to the Front PAGE 1 20 47 75 94 112 135 153 187 209 234 258 273 290 306 347 356 CONTENTS. CHAP. XIX. Aht and Artists XX. How TO BECOME A DeMIGOD XXI. Changing Scenes XXII. Father and Daughter xxiii. Ebsdrrection XXIV. For Better, for Worse PAGE 372 386 404 421 442 457 JfotQ on the Jllus-traiions. The seals on the back of the cover contain the Chinese name, etc., of the author, and the brazier on the title-page has inscribed upon it the title of the book in Chinese. The illustrations are, many of them (reduced) facsimiles of Chinese pictures of various penmanship, while the bulk are composed on the style of the best drawings in one or other of the two native (photo-lithographed) illustrated papers of Shanghai, to whose artists (unknown) the writer must here express his indebtedness. Thanks are also due to Dr. Fryer of the Kiang-nan Arsenal, Shanghai, for his kind loan of the one surviving impression from a block (since stolen), engraved with the portrait of Cheng Kwoh-fan. At the other end of the scale, thanks have already been rendered to a vendor of watermelon slices in Hankow streets, who was generous enough to give to a passing foreigner a character-formed picture of an ox, whose doleful proportions he was studying. Such little incidents are as cheering as willow trees in the somewhat dreary expanse, as it seems, of many parts of China. VIEW OF THE PLAIN NOETH OF HANKOW. JniToduction , Eespected Eeadek, — May I be allowed to dispense with conventionalities, take a seat by your side, and have a chat with you about the book you hold in your hand ? The title ? It may be taken to indicate that you are in possession of a collection of desiccated tales, legends, and the like, picked up here and there along the highways and byways of China. Or if you should be charitable enough to regard the body of the book as a story in itself, the title win still apply ; for a string of peach-stone charms, literal enough to hang upon a study wall, does certainly figure in these pages. In that narrative, my object has not been to attempt anything like a novel, but by means of a series of character sketches, in which the details are drawn from the life, to picture the normal village life of Central China, to describe some leading incidents in the earlier Taiping Eebellion, and to indicate how Chinese character may be modified under the changes which come, and must come, even in " the changeless East." To many, China is merely an old curiosity shop, to others a land of easily-scared soldiers or of anti-foreign mobs. The present need is for information. A symmetrical' work of art would hardly meet this need, and at the expense of what may be called literary fluency, the author has xii INTRODUCTION. endeavoured to give as much reliable information as may be crammed into four hundred and eighty pages. Since returning from China, it has been my privilege to visit many an English home, tell many a Chinese tale, and answer questions by the hour, until the hands of the clock have united in upward suggestions for all early risers. A direct or indirect answer to most of these questions may be found somewhere or other between the covers of this volume. The book, indeed, is the result of many a fireside chat out yonder — with the fire eliminated; for at the outset of my residence in the middle of the Middle Kingdom, I gained a Chinese friend of my own age, a young man of more than ordinary intelligence and communicativeness — a walking encyclopaedia of anecdote, who had been schoolboy, "house- boy," colporteur's assistant, a partner in a little firm, pottery painter, and opium smoker. A serious illness having destroyed the opium craving, he came to live under my roof, accompanying me in my journeyings, and our companionship (yes, we plied our chopsticks together for a long time) only ceased when I buried him, — and buried a bit of my heart with him. It was his custom to tell me a Chinese tale every night, and my custom to jot down all he told me. With such an introduction, it became easy, after due study, to read various Chinese tale-books as an after-work recreation, and to con- tinue my researches into the comparative folk-lore of the district in which my lot was cast. In this region of folk-lore, unexpected correspondences were found between Far East and West, sufficient as it seems to reverse the once prevalent notion that China is emphatically a realm of Topsyturvydom. In order to bring out these correspondences, a rather formidable array of footnotes has been necessary, readable it is hoped and INTRODUCTION. xiii interesting to the more studious reader, but capable of being passed over by the juveniles who are hereby introduced to a few typical Chinamen at home. China was once regarded as such an out-of-the-way place that Walpole has a story of the Duchess of Kingston, who, on being told that the end of the world was close at hand, declared that she would start for China without delay. In which outlandish region certain of her countrymen have been in close touch with the natives for years, feeling as much at home among them for days together as though it were their own land. It used to be a truism that the study of the written hieroglyphs was " the passage of the wilderness of the Chinese language to reach the desert of Chinese literature." That there is much desert,* and few willow trees in some parts, no one will deny. But there are many spots where the varied foliage of the hill-slopes lends a grateful colour to the dull brown villages, and even the willow tree affords a touch of nature to the grey and white mazes of a city of slums. Nor are pavilions and pagodas to be despised — they are bricks and tiles in blossom. Being interested therein, the writer seeks to interest others — a sentence which will recall to any Chinese student who may honour the " younger brother " with its perusal, a quotation from the desert -like books of orthodoxy, specimens of whose classical sand will be offered for in- spection. Professor Legge having been guide. For semi- classical references, W. F. Mayer's Chinese Students' Manual and J. H. S. Lockhart's Chinese Quotations have been con- sulted. My indebtedness to other scholars is noted in the right place. The connecting thread of narrative on which the varied tales are strung has to do with the years 1849 to 1867. It involves the Taiping Kebellion which affected Central xiv INTRODUCTION. China in the years 1850 to 1860, after which it continued to be an Eastern China fact until it was finally put down by General Gordon and his " ever-victorious army," for an admirable account of whose achievements, the reader is referred to the large volume of A. E. Hake, Events in the Tavping Eehellion. The leader of the Eebellion, being early possessed of Christian books, commenced his career as an exponent of their contents, but more especially of certain dream revela- tions of which he professed to be the recipient. Like Mohammed, he was a man with a mission, but before long the man himself predominated. The Scriptures, however, were actually read, and Christian doxologies were sung in the Taiping camps of Central China nearly ten years before any European Christians came to reside there. Once masters of a given locality, the Taipings were undoubtedly popular in Central China. The movement rapidly degenerated in various ways, but not before it had given a deathblow to idolatry as a religion — nowadays it is little more than a "luck-pigeon." By breaking up many of the old isolations and monopolies of the land, it has also done more than perhaps any other modern ^vent towards the opening up of China. Apart from historical and legendary characters, the reader will have to be troubled with the following Chinese names : — Nieh (Shii-k'ing), a village schoolmaster; Lieu (Fuh-t'ang), a tea-shop proprietor ; (Lieu) Fah, his son ; Li (Sung-seu), a farmer ; (Li) Seng-teh, his son ; Li, the Crouching Tiger, a Taiping captain ; Yang, the Golden Ox, an Imperialist commander ; Tai, a young pottery painter ; Chii, the future brother-in-law of N"ieh ; INTRODUCTION. xv besides those of some ladies related to some of the above, and those of a few lesser personages. For further light upon the Chinese character and more readable literature, such delightful books as Chinese Character- istics, by Eev. A. Smith ; Gems of Chinese Literature, by H. A. Giles ; and A Collection of Chinese Proverbs, by Eev. W. Scarborough, are to be highly recommended. W. A. C. Sf^ String of Chinese ^each^Siones, Chapter 3. A Village District in Light and Shade. ITS WHEREABOUTS FISH FOWL DIETARY FOOD FOR THOUGHT AUTUMN SORROWS AND THEIR ONLY REMEDY. " Rain torrents tave ceased, flood waters subside ; Clouds chased to the westward, behind the hills hide ; The lake one wide mirror, all heaven shining there. The trees autumn tinted, autumnal the air. The fishermen's boats like wild geese return, And oh, with the wild fowl for cloudland I yearn ! The wavelets beyond, where are hills higher still, By storm billows circled, each wave crest a hill. But look, here are yellow flowers laughing with glee. Like thousands of wine cups proffered to me; The wine is as golden, as fragrant, I ween. As ever of yore in yon ruin was seen." With some such words as these, a visitor to the Hill of the Nine Eecluses recorded his impressions of the scenery there- from, some two hundred years ago, little thinking that from over the " storm billows " could come by and by an " ocean man," to stand on the spot where he stood ; still less that he 2 A STRING OF CHINESE PEACH-STONES. would offer his Western readers some sort of a translation of the officially preserved poem he there indited. As yet, the hill in question has hardly had more than one foreign visitor, if the priest-monk on the hill-top is to be believed ; but that countryside well repays a visit. It is an almost lovely neighbourhood ; the lake waters ever blue, the banks ever fertile ; the towering hill peaks, the highest in the Hanyang county, shutting in the scene from the sounds and distractions of the outer world. That world, however, is not far distant. An hour by boat and another by land brings the traveller to the kiln- dotted town of Ki-ma-kow (so called because some grandee in ancient times tied his horse to a tree on the bank of the Han by the mouth of a creek, since silted up). From hence come the grey tiles and the brown pots and pans of the neighbourhood. Ten miles to the north, on the banks of the same winding Han, is the mart of Tsaitien (vegetable enclosure), and twenty miles to the east is the hub of the Chinese universe : Hanyang (virility of the Han), with its literary pretensions, the densely populated mart of Hankow (Han mouth), opposite which two important places, on the eastern bank of the mile-wide Yangtse (popularly explained as son of ocean), is the spacious city of Wuchang (military effulgence), the capital of Central China, where reigns the Viceroy in a state befitting his powers of almost absolute monarchy over the fifty millions of Hupeh and Hunan (northern and southern lake district). The neighbourhood of the Hill of the Nine Eecluses is in more thaii physical configuration a world in itself, a world which supplies nearly all the wants of its denizens. We who are accustomed to sit down before tables spread with various products from every continent, can hardly realise how inde- pendent of the outer universe are many country districts in China. The necessities which have to be imported can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Given a bowl of salt, a packet of tea, an iron pot, an earthen pan or two, and whole country districts can afibrd to be well-nigh hermetically sealed, self-contained and self-supporting. When the farmer does go to town, it is to sell rather than to buy. But he A VILLAGE DISTRICT IN LIGHT AND SHADE. seldom goes. He is essentially a stay-at-home, where home means such fields and lakes as these. As a fact the produce of the land in this region is bought by traders, whose large boats ply on the lakes for this purpose. The waters are stocked with a variety of fish, most of them familiar to the English angler, such as the bream, pike, Fresh-Water roach, tench, barbel, gudgeon, dace, and carp, Fish. tiie latter being known, by those who have watched the process, to change into a dragon ! Among the fish, which it is presumed must be peculiar to China, is the oft-quoted " time knowing fish," which, if only possessed of a loud voice, might throw many a night watchman out of employment. It leaps out of the water once for the first watch, twice for the second, and so on till the fifth watch sees the stars pale before the ris- ing sun. The idiotic tora-toming of the old Charleys, some of which make night hideous with their cry of " Sleep care- fully ! — Burglars about ! " might make the most sober-minded fish leap in wonder. But this explanation is untenable, for thpre are no such nocturnal distractions around the country lakes where such fish abound. All fish, however, are not voiceless. There is the " baby-fish," which cries like an infant when caught ; at least so the " compleat anglers " of China affirm, which affirmation is supported by the proverb, " Those who are near the water know the disposition of fishes." Leaving such wonders to the Chinese piscatologist, we 4 A STRING OF CHINESE PEACH-STONES. note that several varieties of eel are to be caught here, together with speckled water snakes, also that there are shoals of fresh -water shrimps in the stiller reaches of the hill stream, and that now and then a cockle or mussel shell is found to have been washed up on to the shores of the lake. These have probably been swept inland in high flood-time from the Han, on the banks of some of whose tributary streams such shells abound. The mussel is mentioned in what is perhaps the earliest specimen of a complete fable on record in Chinese literature. " A mussel was sunning itself F bi f th ^^ ^^® river bank, when a bittern came by and Bittern and pecked at it. The mussel closed its shell and the Mussel, nipped the bird's beak. Hereupon the bittern said, ' If you don't let me go to-day, if you don't let me go to-morrow, there will be a dead mussel.' The shell-fish answered, ' If I don't come out to-day, if I don't come out to-morrow, there will surely be a dead bittern.' Just then a fisherman came by and seized the pair of them." The moral of which word to the wise will be sufficiently obvious to the youngest reader. Fishing by means of cormorants is one of the " hundred methods," and is largely practised on these lakes. These birds fish best when hungry, and deliver up what they have caught without extorting commission, owing to the fact that a ring is fixed round their neck, which makes swallowing a task too arduous to be attempted. The feeding of these ungainly birds would afford more amusement to English A VILLAGE DISTRICT IN LIGHT AND SHADE. 5 youngsters than any sight in the Zoo at three o'clock. The Cormorant fisherman puts the end of his bamboo rod Feeding. jnto the water among the crowd of expectant birds, whose united cry sounds like the distant yelping of dogs, takes the ring off the neck of the first cormorant, which, having perched upon the rod, is lifted into the boat, and holds the bird aloft by the neck in mid-air. He then introduces a small fish between its beak, then another, and another. Should its swallowing powers be of too tardy a nature for his patience, he rams the fish down the bird's throat with his thumb. He may have lost count of the fish thus administered, in which case he bases his calculations upon the plumpness of the bird's "bread basket." This having distended sufficiently, he refastens the ring, and throwing his black feathered assistant into the water, takes up number two, then three and four, until the long-necked multitude is reduced to a state of after-dinner contentment. Water-fowl abound in the form of wild duck, and wild geese are frequently seen, as the poem at the head of the chapter indicates. The favourite bird with the poetasters (though not such a universal subject for art as in Japan) is the crane. It ranks next to the phoenix in Chinese legends. Its plumage is usually white, but there are yellow cranes, as the historical Yellow Crane Tower of Wuchang bears witness ; also blue and black cranes, as Chinese literature attests. The crane, together with the pine (and the tortoise), is the emblem of longevity. The black variety, after six hundred years, drinks but eats not. With such traditions it is not to be wondered that cranes are prized by the wealthy as fit adornments for their rock-scattered gardens, harmonising with the weirdly twisted fragments of antiquity as naturally as the peacock (also known in China) ^ with the terraces of an old English mansion. ' In the Middle Ages cranes used to be at least as numerous in England as peacocks. Among the miscellaneous entries in the books of the Goldsmiths' Company (1480), we find that foreigners were not only subject to restrictions n practising the art, but the foreigner vanquished in a trade exhibit had to pay to the winner a crane, with the appurtenances, in a dinner to be made at the trade hall to the wardens and others. — Christopher Barker. A STRING OF CHINESE PEACH-STONES. A certain prince of the seventh century B.C. (Yi Kung of the State of Wei) carried his fondness for cranes to the point of folly. The people were uncared for, while the royal park became an aviary for his pet birds, upon the choicest of which he conferred patents of nobility. When he rode forth, one of these favourites must accompany him in a special chariot. By and by the northern barbar- ians invaded his frontiers. He must arouse, and assemble an army ; but the militia would not enrol them- selves. Upon a number of the fugitives being captured by his guards, they exclaimed, "You have wherewith to defend the country; why do you want us ? " " What mean you ? " " The cranes." " Of what use are they to defend the country ? " " Why A VILLAGE DISTRICT IN LIGHT AND SHADE. 7 then nourish the useless, and neglect the populace ? " The battle was " lost by a crane." The Immortals, however, who have no kingdom to lose, seem to cherish the crane lovingly. They are wont to use it as their courser through the cerulean, gliding along through upper air with a speed arid gracefulness which would quite' obUterate Shakespeare's Ariel " on the bat's back." ^ The emblem of vigilange among the Greeks and Eomans, the crane is credited in the Far East with wondrous sagacity. A tyrant of the seventh century a.d., having determined to add birds' feathers to the costume of his guards, a crane from her nest on a high tree, seeing the fowlers beneath, and fearing for her brood if she were pierced with an arrow, tore out her own feathers and threw them down to satisfy the hunters. Sportsmen from the treaty ports go out shooting in the season, to return with heightened spirits and robuster health. Birds in and with a burden more or less heavy, of pheasants, General. partridges, snipe, blackcock, and the like, all of which are known to the Nine Eecluses region. High above the little village is heard " The wheeling kite's wild solitary cry," which changes to "' a cackle like that of a hen " when any stray chickens newly hatched are in sight. The falcon, perched upon a jutting rock, presents the picture of dignity, maintained in spite of the noisy impudence of chattering magpies which fly around, daring it with mischievous beak- snappings to prove its prowess. The blue jay is very common. It is often taken in hand by the fortune-tellers of the town, and made to pick out the particular roll of dirty red paper which contains the precise destiny of the client. Eooks and crows are numerous, a large white-necked variety among them. A smaller bird is the pako, so called from the sound of its cry. It looks quite black when at rest, but displays white patches when the wings are opened. It is a merry bird, and so tame as to make friends with the 1 The bat, however, being blessed with a name of the same sound as the word for happiness, is a favourite emblem of good luck. 8 A STRING OF CHINESE PEACH-STONES. heavy, lumbering water-oxen, or even with their juvenile riders. White gulls are sometimes seen ; seagulls they seem to be. Perhaps they have followed the junks up the broad Yangtse. The wagtail haunts the shallower shores of the lake. On the overhanging branches is seen the gorgeous kingfisher, for the colour of whose back the Chinese have a special character. The golden oriole is not unknown. Per- haps it has suggested the term golden crow (or hird, for the characters are very similar), which is applied to the sun. ' When the dawn breaks to hush the hootings of the ill- omened owl, the lark, unconscious of its heathen birthplace, trills its morning psalm, which in the early months of the year is answered by a sound of a " delightful visitant," whose cry is reduplicated into cu-cuckoo. Soon after it has begun to add its note to the many joys of the spring-tide, come the swallows from the south (from the Kwangtung province, it is said), whose cry is " understanded of the common people " of Foochow ! The cooing of the wood-pigeon is heard above the twitterings of the ubiquitous sparrow, while song-birds of varied note and with only Chinese names, round off the list. One of these is called " Cut the corn, weed the fields," from the resemblance of its cry to the Chinese sounds for these oper- ations. But we have wand- ^-., ~ 'V»'^5^ (v^i'^K^^s^ \/ / ered as f ar as the swal- ^\|J^'';\^ '^"j^, ^ows fly. The text was the necessities of life, or, at anyrate, the utilities thereof. The world on wings counts little to the farmer. The dictum of Victor Hugo's good bishop, that " the beautiful is as useful as the useful, perhaps more so," finds no parallel here, except for per- haps the merry Chinese youngsters, who may even do a little amateur birdnesting. Cormorants, ducks, geese, and '•■>iJ''*'i \ 5? A VILLAGE DISTRICT IN LIGHT AND SHADE. 9 poultry — this is the extent of the utilitarian countryman's ornithology. His domestic hirds supply him with daily eggs, to be beaten up into a salted custard, or pickled in various ways. A succeeding race of foreigner-instructed children will have to teach their grandmothers to suck eggs, for the achievement is unknown as yet. The birds may be killed and eaten with " meat " (that is pork) on state occasions. The " yellow oxen " and water buffalos which plough the fields are not eaten unless they die naturally. The benevolent t'^' l.^^ VRW^ St mm ■*-^ Jfe*X ,¥* fcy A mm argue thus : " Here is your most faithful servant, who has toiled hard for many a long year; is it not opposed to all principles of righteous retribution to kill and eat him in his old age ? " as in the doleful ditty reproduced above. The Buddhist priest-monk of the hill-top temple, indeed, exhorts the country folk never to destroy life. How do you know, he argues, that yon fat pig is not your Rationale of great-grandfather come back to earth in that Vegetarian- disguise ? At an execution at Hanyang, a man once cursed the executioner, saying, " In a future life you will be turned into a pig, and I will eat you." A cooked executioner might be tolerated by an appetite whetted with revenge. But one's great-grandfather ! Think of it, gentle 10 A STRING OF CHINESE PEACH-STONES. readers, who do not worship your distant progenitors as the Chinese do. Boiled grandfather ! Oh the cannibalism ! So, many are vegetarians on principle, accumulating stores of merit which shall appear on the credit side of their account by and by, when they kneel before the judgment- seat of the King of Hades. (That king is a deified China- man, and belongs to Taoism, but the popular theology is a composite photograph of beings Chinese and Hindoo.) And the King of Hades, it is hoped, will find that their abstinence in this one particular has just overbalanced their demerit in many others. He will say : " Punish not this man ; he has abstained from boiling and eating his great-grandfather." But even these vegetarians have a variety of foodstuffs to add to their rice. From the lake shores upwards are numerous fields in terraces, divided by many curved paths to baffle demons, who Three Crops can Only go in a straight line. Pestilence and a .Year. famine having been averted by this much-approved method, the fields yield the laborious farmer three crops a year; and that from year to year, for there is no ground lying fallow where there are hands to work in the genial sunshine, and ordure to enrich the soil This latter is supplemented by water-weed from the lake, and the ash of corn and rice husks (which ash is also used for making potash lye for washing, but can rarely be spared for that purpose). First comes the wheat or barley, some of which will fill the flour-bin and the primitive baker's oven, to be eaten between the two chief meals, in the form of rather gritty cakes, reminiscent of the threshing-floor, with a husk now and then as a reminder that the shovel-winnowing process has been deemed sufiicient. But fully half is made to ferment, and distilled into native spirit. The corn having been cut, the fields are flooded from a pond at the top of the terrace-like series, and plots of sunlit emerald deepen in tint until the rice ears have well formed ; then, having yellowed into ripeness, the cut grain is beaten out with flails as the corn had been. Then it is hulled in a stone mortar by means of a huge stone-headed hammer, worked by the foot. A VILLAGE DISTRICT IN LIGHT AND SHADE. 11 After this, if another crop of rice (of smaller grain than the former) is not wanted, the fields are clothed once more, it may be with sesame, the seeds of which yield oil for cooking and lighting, or perhaps with beans to supply the needed nitrogenous elements in the form of bean curd (the poorer country folk, however, may not be able to afford this ; they eat boiled bran instead) ; or it may be with plantations of white or buff-coloured cotton ; or perhaps with indigo to dye the former when it shall have been put through the rustic cotton-gin, spun on the goodwife's wheel, and woven on a simple loom into material for garments. Land which is too high and dry for all this is covered with the sweet potato plant, or with the yam (called " mountain medicine "), or various kinds of melons. Near the water's edge, in fields ever flooded, grows the taro, the graceful contour of whose leaf, however, is eclipsed by the lotus, which demands more than a passing note. The broad leaves at first float upon the waters when they appear in the third month, then with many a graceful scollop The Chinese are lifted up into a vision of possibilities in Lotus. tender green ; then fully opened, sway gently at the bidding of every breeze, or offer a green jade goblet for the rain pearls, cherishing and rocking the treasure lovingly, until it is found to be only water, too heavy a load to be borne, and so poured out into the lake ; then more pearl- catehings and more water-pourings till the clouds break. Anon in the sixth month, in poetry " the lotus month," the buds burst forth into an inflorate emblem of a realm of serenest calm and ethereally fragrant beatitude, which the Buddhist dreamers of old lime — when men had not lost the art of dreaming, but had lost the ideal hopes which to us are no dream — interpreted into Nirvana. The poetic elements of theoretical Buddhism have been evolved out of lotus petals. But in these unpoetic days the aesthetic sense has well-nigh died out in Chinese country places. The priest- monk in the accompanying picture is not Chinese at all, but Japanese. The characteristic admiration of flowers among these "Eastern oceaners " exists but as a well-nigh forgotten 12 A STRING OF CHINESE PEACH-STONES. tradition among the populace of the Flowery Land. The very last man " within the four seas " to be seen sitting in rapt contemplation of the lotus flower, is the illiterate mendicant who acts as temple-keeper. The wealthy may plant their rock-orna- mented grottos with various flowers and flowering shrubs, may peer at times into their miniature lotus tank, or watch the growth of the flower in an earthen pan, call- ing their literary friends to " taste the flowers," as the phrase goes, per- haps pouring their wine through the hollow stalks of the lotus flower ; then, with such wine before them, they may engage in rhythmical puz- zles redolent more of wine fumes than of lotus fragrance; but as the proverb has it, life is now a mere matter of " fuel, rice, oil, salt, soy, pickles, and tea." As a fact, the only poetical saying on the lotus which is at all current is to the effect that, " The lotus may be severed, but the silk is not broken," which is doubtless in- explicable to the Western reader until it is explained that there is no reference here to the lotus flower ^ at all, but only to the excavated tubers, and these after boiling for food. In biting such lumps, the fibrovascular tissue is uncoiled, and stretches from the piece held between the teeth to that held between the chopsticks. To the lotus 1 The lotns flower appears in one or two Chinese sayings, but it is hardly idealised in any of them. A VILLAGE DISTRICT IN LIGHT AND SHADE. 13 eater ^ is thus suggested the silken cords of affection between two far - severed friends. Thus we see that poetry lies dormant in the black mud of the lotus pond for three of the seasons, emerging therefrom in the winter to hide in the kitchen, but pays a flying visit to the dinner-table occasionally. Enough has been said to show that the Nine Sages Region is a little world to itself. Were it actually isolated by an impregnable wall, it would stand a thousand years' siege. It is self-contained, and somewhat self-opinionated. It professes to have a complete knowledge of the facts concerning itself. The Athenian dictum, " Know thyself," it has kept from its youth up. The rest is dreamland. Everybody knows everything about everybody within the charmed circle. Those who are said to earn a dishonest livelihood in the The Iron towns by means of an iron abacus, on which they Abacas. can reckon up all the earthly belongings of the house at whose door they use their magical instrument to meditate burglary in person, or perhaps by means of a monkey trained for that purpose, bring not their iron abacus here. The exact state of a man's belongings is known. There are no burglars, for they would be caught at early dawn. In the times with which we have to do — the historic present of the '40's — they have just heard of the exist- ence of foreigners, though ancient traditions affirmed their presence in various parts of the outer dreamland. A ^ Homer seems to use the word ' ' lotos " in a double sense. The term seems now to denote a water plant, now a tree. This double use of the word is not unknown in China, for besides the much-quoted water lotus of Buddhism, there is a tree mallow {hibiscus mutabilis), which in poetry is sometimes called the lotus tree. It, however, has no "... enchanted stem, Laden with flowers and fruit," such as that concerning which Tennyson (in elucidation of Homer's Island of the Lotophagi) sings. No part of the tree mallow is used for food, and the insipid tubers and seeds of the lotus proper have no toxic properties. This water plant, or one similar. Homer seems to have in mind, in the lines — " The flakes continuous fall, And lotus-oover'd meads are buried deep. And man's productive labours of the field." Iliad, xii, 306-9 (Lord Derby's Trans.), 14 A STRING OF CHINESE PEACH-STONES. oracle of the tea-shop, who boasts that he once a thousand li (a U is a.- third of a mile) in the a mandarin, " a distant relative of his," claims the respect due to a man of such world-wide explorations. He affirms that foreigners have holes in their chests, which render the use of the sedan chair unnecessary; the wealthier of them being would-be travelled train of Perforated Chest Kingdom. transported from place to place by means of a bamboo passed through the said hole. But a rival of his, a fisherman, who once went down the Han to Hanyang, though not doubting the fact of such a kingdom, denies both the originality of the information and the universality of the phenomenon. The village teacher's grandfather once showed him an ancient book, The Hill and Sea Classic} wherein that and also many other kingdoms are ^ The mil and Sea Classic is almost the oldest geographical treatise extant ill the Far East. Its compiler lived, it is supposed, somewhere in the dynasty which saw the Scripture Provcrhs written and collected in Old Judsea. Like Solomon himself, the Chinese scholar "spake of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes," but his marvellous collection points to an early "community of goods," for the birds, beasts, and fishes have, doubtless from A VILLAGE DISTRICT IN LIGHT AND SHADE. 15 described, such as the women kingdom,^ the dog-head kingdom, and others. He himself can state with confidence The Water- ^^^^ ^'^^ ^'i'^er Han flows into the Yangtse, the ways of the Yangtse into the Southern Sea, the Southern Sea Universe. j^j-q ^.j^^ Northern Ocean, which feeds the source of the Heavenly Eiver (the milky way), which feeds the source of the Yellow Eiver, and so on. In proof whereof he appeals to the very authoritative tea - shop keeper, who The Legend " "^'^^ " S^^^ to Hanyang, and has therefore seen of the the Han flowing into the Yangtse over and ^ffive^'' over again. As to the Heavenly Eiver, the schoolmaster's grandfather related to him, also from an old book, the story of the " Cowboy and the Spinning Maiden," who love, but are doomed to live apart on opposite banks of the river, until, on the seventh of the seventh month, the magpies col- lect and form a bridge, over which the youth may safely travel to meet his lady lo ve.^ " This must be so," he would add whenever he asserted his dignity by repeating the best motives, exchanged arms, legs, wings, and iins. Our schoolboy friends would describe them as " decidedly mixed up." The book in question is responsible for much modern pride of knowledge in matters ancient, and of much assurance in fables modern. ' Could this be a reference to the Amazons 1 The commentary on the " N"ever-dying people " passage contains what seems to be an Eden tradition. " On a certain hill grows the tree of deathlessness, those who eat thereof live on, and the red fountain, those who drink of which never grow old." ' Persia (according to Torpelius) has a somewhat different legend, which 16 A STRING OF CHINESE PEACH-STONES. the tale, " for it is in an old book, a very old book, which contains a poem thereon by an Emperor " (535-552) — in fact that heaven and earth are wider than the " frog-in-the-well " ^ mind of the tea-shop oracle imagined. On this expressive metaphor, it may be remarked that there is no such thing as complete isolation in the universe. Frog in The Chinese well contains some drops, highly the Well. impregnated indeed with earthly salts, but which have fallen upon a wide area. The atmosphere in the well, moreover, though stagnant, is subject to the law of the diffusion of gases, which sure but tardy process even the croaking of the frog serves to hasten. Our little worlds with their little systems are bounded by nearer or farther horizons, at best contracted. Our own horizon is happily broader than that of the Chinese country- man ; our universe is watered by purely celestial drops. Heavenly visitants, neither cowboys nor spinning maidens, but which we so often materialise into earthly forms', or forget altogether, do guide us in our dreams unless we have materialised their spiritual realms and turned our highest formulas from paths into well-wall barriers. The world of the Chinaman is so contracted that he is forced to dream ; so monotonous that he is forced to dream somewhat wildly. But some of the farmers' dreams are ugly, realistic nightmares. In the ninth or tenth month the TaxExtor- dreaded time of tax extortion comes round, the roorof ^^^"^ ^^^ Capacity of the rulers is supplemented Chinese Ex- by the grasping efforts of their underlings. clusivenesB. That the Chinese are voluntarily exclusive need excite no wonder. The lake is made up of " little drops of water"; its banks of "little grains of sand." The little represents the milky way as a bridge constructed in a, thousand years by far separated lovers. The completion of this bridge is thus described : — ' ' Fear seized the Cherubim ; to God they spake, ' See what amongst Thy works. Almighty, these can make ! ' God smiled, and smiling lit the spheres with joy — 'What in my world love builds,' He said, 'shall I, shall Love itself destroy ? ' "—(Trans, by E. Keary). ' A semi-classical expression of similar import is, " The animalcules in a jar how can they have wide experience ? " A VILLAGE DISTRICT IN LIGHT AND SHADE. 17 country districts know the outer world chiefly in connection with such extortion, and the aggregate of such country dis- tricts, which form the basis of the Empire, naturally look upon outsiders as harmful intruders. The feeling has grown with the centuries. The yamun runners of the present dynasty, moreover, are in the end representatives of powers not Chinese ; and to these go a large proportion of the crops, not easily spared,, especially in years of flood or drought. As to these extortions, a modern instance may suffice. A certain man sold a little plot of laiid not twenty feet square. The land-tax on this was two tael cents, one- fiftieth of an ounce of silver, thirty copper cash, or one penny. The new owner, not being asked for the money, did not pay it until four or five years had gone by, when a representative of the powers that be came round with the tax papers, whereon the sum was marked in plain figures, but demanding a hundred and fifty cash for each one, — five hundred per cent. Woe be to the widow and orphan who do not volunteer to pay at the right time ! The phrase, " a heathen and a publican" needs no commentary for Chinese readers. "With regard to the tax on crops, the old law quoted by Mencius (b.c. 372-289) decrees that every field shall be divided by means of imaginary lines like those of the Chinese character for well (^) into nine parts. The produce of one of the nine divisions is to be regarded as the property of the Emperor. But the Emperor's representatives must live. The mandarin, though always from another part (to prevent collusion with his relatives), is not so much of a foreigner as to be transported from place to place by means of one piecee bamboo passed through a hole in the chest. He must have his gorgeous chair with its four or more bearers, his red umbrellas of state, the bearers thereof, and his inevitable retinue of grown-up ragamuffins, hardly one of them paid by him. These too must live, partly upon hush-money from their bosom friends the burglars and blacklegs ; principally upon their extortions in the autumn tax collecting. If anyone would interview a mandarin of any rank he must " pay Mr. Li and fee Mr. Wang," until, in the case of a 2 18 A STRING OF CHINESE PEACH-STONES. Viceroy, a sum not less, often much more, than ten ounces of silver has been paid before his card can be presented. Should an audience be granted, the minimum ten must be multiplied by a minimum ten before the " great man " will move a little iinger to help him. The motto of the justice- seeker is in full accord with an aphorism of our old poet Herrick — "Fight thou with shafts of silver and o'ercome When no force else can gain the masterdom." But perhaps his adversary's quiver is fuller than his. What then ? Let the Chinese themselves answer. The case is set forth in an oft-quoted, almost hackneyed tale. A wronged man sought justice of a certain magistrate, The Price and in course of his appeal happened to recollect of Justice, ^iiat he had a hundred taels (ounces of silver) on his person. The inagistrate assured him that he would see that he had the " right." Exit justice-seeker ; enter his opponent with two hundred taels. On the morrow the verdict was given against the former applicant, who naturally expostulated. Quoth the justice of the peace, " You have a certain amount of right on your side; but he has double as much, so I decide for him." The old version of a Chinese proverb declares that, " Eiches are as dung and filth, righteousness is worth thousands of gold " ; the practical application of which is, that a man has often to treat his riches as so much muck, and perhaps spend his thousands — thousands of cash at the very least — to buy the otherwise unobtainable righteousness and justice. The market price is decidedly high. But then the mandarin to whom he appeals is an under- ling of the next higher mandarin. He has not only to live, — and his orthodox stipend may not be more than ten taels per month, the wages of a good servant in Shanghai, — but he has to contribute towards the expenses of his superiors. So that the Chinese science of officialdom has come to be expressed in the formula, " Big fish eat little fish, little fish eat shrimps, shrimps eat mud." ^ ' Compare Sibbes (6. 1577). '' As they say great fishes grow big by devour- A VILLAGE DI'STRICT IN LIGHT AND SHADE. 19 Where one's adversaries are in official employ, the case is hard indeed. Summoning the police would be a hopeless procedure in the East. So from time immemorial they have gone their own sweet way. Yamun underlings are ignorant and unlearned men. They do not know character. The simple "oughts and crosses" diagram is too complicated for their caligraphic abilities. Sometimes a figure formed of two strokes is therefore substituted, sometimes just one straight line is deemed sufficient, and the representatives of the law seize half the results of a year's hard toil. In the Jewish mind publicans were classed as lower than heathens. In the Chinese mind they are earthly types of the fiercest kind of demons. The tormentors of the Chinese purgatories are represented, many of them, as dressed in the garb of yamun underlings. Is there no remedy ? Not far from the Nine Eecluses Hill lives, in these more contented times, a man who had gained a military button, the equivalent of that worn by the literary " B.A." He once tried to resist the extortioners. The only result was the loss of his degree, with all its privi- leges, and lifelong disgrace into the bargain. That " law- defying " man could hardly get a case put through the law courts, however clear his " right " might be, or however much money he used. He is a marked man. " Is there no remedy ? " whispered the country folk fifty years ago. And through the years the whisper rose to au audible cry, and the cry to a wide resounding roar. And the answer came back in one big ugly word, blood- written, the word Eebellion. Early in the '50's the Taiping Eebellion had spread from the south upwards, attracting under its banner many of those who had whole generations of wrong to avenge, and with ever- swelling ranks threatened to invest the greater part of Hupeh, if not the Empire itself. ing many little ones, as a, dragon comes to be great by devouring many little serpents, so many grow great by the ruin of others" (vol. i. p. 347). Chapter 33. EuRAL Scenes and Sounds. A NATION OF VILLAGERS INVISIBLE ONLOOKERS VEGETABLE AND OTHER LIFE CHILDISH SPORTS AND STUDIES AIDS TO VISION. "Declining daybeams liglit each rustic home, Along the lanes the flocks returning come, The aged men their herdsmen sons await, And, staff-supported, stand beside the gate ; The wildfowl fly o'er fields of ripening corn. The silkworms sleep 'mid mulberry boughs half shorn; With shouldered hoe the farmers homeward stride, To spend, in social chat, the eventide." — Wang Wei (699-759).i Before dealing with the excitements of the Taiping Rebellion, it may be worth our while to " seek retirement " among the " mild scenes" — mild at times to insipidity — of a quiet village district. Chinese exclusiveness, as we have seen, is to be accounted ^ A celebrated poet-artist of the Tang dynasty. It was said of him, as in modem times of D. G. Eosetti, " His poems are pictures, and Ms pictures poems. " The above lines are translated very literally. In five and six the reader will note the Chinese antithetical method — wild wings in motion, homely worms curled in rest ; also of harvest fulness and sparcity of leaf. The poet adds two other lines, which may be more freely rendered thus : — " 'Mid such mild scenes I seek retirement sweet, From misruled courts, where crowd the idly great." The accompanying illustration is a composite from ten pictures, chiefly those of the imperial artists of Kang Shi (h. 1662-1723), but in the foreground is a tree ascribed by tradition to the brush-pen of the above eighth century poet-artist himself. 20 RURAL SCENES AND SOUNDS. 21 for by our regarding the great Empire as an aggregate of little country districts. And perhaps most Chinese characteristics are best explained by referring them to the life of the village. These little communities are larger families, sometimes of but one surname, with the head of the clan as the parent of the whole, or, if several surnames are represented, some man of light and leading is looked up to instead. The little divisions, answering to our " hundreds," are a still larger family, with a small mandarin as parent. And A Big so on, until each province — a very big village Village. district — has a Viceroy for parent. At the triennial examinations in such large cities as Wuchang, the graduates who seek for the next higher degree come, many of them, in boats, which all display little red flags bearing the inscription, " In respectful accordance with the Decree. Village Examination." This depreciative epithet is partly explainable from the fact that at such times the provincial capital is brought into regimen with the imperial palace. 22 A STRING OF CHINESE PEACH-STONES. whose glories cause the lesser lights to fade away (an excellent illustration of Christian humility), but also from the point of view we are studying. The Emperor is but a bigger mandarin ; the mandarin, as we have seen, is regarded as the . patriarch of a larger or smaller village community. The Emperor is called the parent of the people. The government of China is eminently patriarchal. The monopolising of the worship of the Euler on High may be traced to the days (described in some passages in the Books of Genesis and Job) when the father Imperial of the family was also its priest. Anon the Prerogative patriarchal priest became the king - priest (as of Worship. Meichisedec). Melek is perhaps related to the old root, malel, "to speak." As a fact, the early kings, as the patriarchs before them, voiced the wants of the family to God, and God's decrees to the family. In China their rela- tion to God seems to have been regarded , as bound up with such recognition of their people's wants. " Before the sovereigns of Yin [b.c. 1766-1154] lost the hearts of the people," says Confucius, " they could appear before God." In later days the Chinese sovereigns have proudly arrogated to themselves the sole right to appear before a Great Unknown, who through the ages has been volatilised into a mere phrase. From such exclusiveness, and from such volatilisation of the divine essence, the Hebrews were spared, at first through the medium of a lawgiver, then a representative priesthood, until the Supreme drew near, and the "priesthood" widened in anticipation of the climax where all are found to be king- priests in a heavenly family. Another link which binds the ancient Chinese to patri- archal times is found in some of the characters still in use. Th Ch" '^^^y were originally a pastoral people. Eight- at first a eousness is represented by a character made up of Pastoral sheep and my ; the shepherd who recognised the distinction of neum and tuum was the righteous man. From their later agricultural tendencies we should have expected the sign for field and my. Admirable is represented by a combination of the signs for sheep and large. RURAL SCENES AND SOUNDS. 23 An ancient name for governors of provinces was pastors, which term Mencius applies to rulers generally. The fact that the Chinese originally came from the West is more than suggested in like manner. Chinese characters They immi- ^^^ classed under 214 headings, according to the grated from ruling " radical." The only one of the four t e est. quarters which is used as a " radical " is the West. It is always used in a good sense, and seems to express some of the feelings of the emigrant looking back with affection to the old country. West and woman form the character for desirable, important, or want. West and to return give the idea of unstable. West and mouth mean a happy smile. This traditional affection for the West may have smoothed the path of the Buddhist missionaries, who came in the year a.d. 67. The history of Chinese Buddhism might have been a blank if Buddha had been born in Japan. Having settled down in the north-east, and spreading therefrom to occupy what is now known as China, ^ pastoral _ , characteristics became exchanged for agricultural. Develop- . . o o > ment of in which the heads of the clans seem to have led Agricul- the way. Twice a year the Son of Heaven handles the plough, as do the mandarins at " the reception of spring," the latter being supposed to wear straw sandals during the ceremony. After a while, the early settlers divided themselves into four classes : Scholars, Agriculturists, Artificers, and (travelling) The Four Traders. In this classification the recognition of Classes the village as the unit of which the Empire is the populace multiple is evident. It is the order of importance referable to to villagers. The solitary scholar claims their the Village, highest respect ; the bulk of the villagers are agriculturists, whose supply of their own necessities is sup- plemented by the artisan and the travelling pedlar. The Sacred Edict of the Emperor Yung Cheng (r. 1723- 1736) is written from the same standpoint. Its sixteen in- junctions, texts for sixteen imperially classical style expansions, and stilted colloquial sermonettes, deal largely with village life. ^ The name being derived from the Tsin kingdom, which was nearest to the West (Hebrew, Sinim). Compare the term "Palestine" derived from Philistia. 24 A STRING OF CHINESE PEACH-STONES. Individual loyalty and national prosperity are to be fulfilled by the renovation of village life, and the recognition of such relations and duties as arc found in such family-like com- munities. The Empire, then, is a big village ; the village family an empire in miniature. The miniature empire which we have chosen for the subject of our contemplation, like the great Empire itself, can boast of a northern great wall (of hills) and an isolating sea (of lakes). Its capital is undoubtedly the hamlet called the Yang Family Pavilion. Whether it be true, as is fondly imagined, that a remote ancestor of these Yangs held office, we need not decide. With fifteen or twenty houses, mostly built of burnt brick and surrounded by a wall of the same material, who would be cynical enough to dispute the name 1 In China the music of politeness is all written in the key of seven sharps, with a double sharp here and there. The musician " goes up one " with every note. The hamlet is therefore a pavilion. The foreigner's contemplation of normal village life, how- ever, is attended with difficulties which may be set forth by jijg reference to a familiar story of Hume the his- Foreigner'B torian. " I have never seen a cheerful Christian," Difficulties, jjg grumbled one day. " How should you ? " was the rejoinder ; " the sight of you would be enough to make any Christian melancholy." Many a Cnjthrawl Sassenach (or " devil of a Saxon ") complains that he has never seen a normal Chinaman at home. His approach is greeted by cries of Fan Kwei in the south, and Yang Kwei tsz in the mandarin-speaking districts; and he may have to abandon his original intention, and ponder over the fact that in Chinese, and in another still older language (as Welshmen affirm), he is described as being a native of a somewhat unearthly realm, the singularity of which coincidence he would commend to the philologists. Can they not construct a theory thereon ? The foreigner, having had a lesson on the points of contact between ancient languages, has to be content therewith, and must defer his contemplation of quiet village life a decade or so. RURAL SCENES AND SOUNDS. 25 A way out of the difficulty of seeing the villagers minus the disturbing effect of the foreigner's presence, was once The s 1 proposed by a friendly native. It may be given tion thereof in the spirit in which it was received. According being an In- ^q the country folk, many a district is blessedly visible Hat. , ,,, .' c i, ji haunted by a certain personage, tor whose delec- tation they are wont to set aside a little bowl of rice now and then. They strive to avoid hurting his feelings by cautioning their children against tying empty egg-shells on the ends of a stick when playing at water coolies, seeing which, the dwarf — for he is a very tiny little fellow^ — might think they were stealing his buckets. Grandfather Three, as he is called, is invisible. The discovery of his existence happened on this wise. An ox-boy was once hitting his beast with a switch. As he did so, he saw a tiny hat fall to the ground, and a dwarf run away for fear of receiving a second blow. He picked up the hat, put it on, and went home. " Eice is ready ! " cried his mother, as she saw the ox come back, but where was her lad ? "Here!" he shouted. "Where?" "Standing in the doorway," was the reply, which, being accompanied by a removal of the magic head- gear, made the lad apparent to her ocular demonstration. He seems to have returrjed the hat. 'Now, if the foreigner could but meet this dwarf, and knock off his hat with his stick, he could go any- where unmolested, unseen but seeing. Availing our- selves of some such method, we put our heads together, and proceed in peace. One other qualification is needed ^dSiz^o\'3^J,%^ 26 A STRING OF CHINESE PEACH-STONES. besides the invisible hat, however. It is an appreciative And a Heart '^®^^*' ^"°^ ^^ *^^ favourite deity, Kwan Yin, Ukethatof is credited with possessing. Kwan Yin means Kwan Yin. .. go^^^^ contemplator," a god in the north, and a goddess in China and Japan, who " looks down and listens to the sounds of earth and the voices of men." Unseen as this fabled onlooker, we must have a little of his or her kindliness ; without that we shall see very little to interest us. As English men and women, we note that where in our own land there is found a solitary farmhouse, the more rapidly bearing soil of mid- China (more highly seasoned than ours, and with a tropical sun overhead for half the year) supports one or two little communities. Most of the denizens of the " Pavilion " before us are of the surname Yang, but one or two other surnames are represented. The hamlet is built on a slope ; the hill begins from the hinder wall. In front are the threshing- floors of rolled and dried mud, which are fringed with trees of varied leaf, the majority being buckthorn (Zizyphus jujiiba), the fruit of which, though re- sembling when ripe the taste of a half-ripe acorn with the least suspicion of sugar added, is sometimes preserved in honey, and rendered pleasant to the palate of the most fastidious. Here and there are graceful pomegranate bush trees. Their bright scarlet flowers are almost dazzling to the eye, as they catch the sun amidst the rich green leaves of the slender twig branches. Each branch tip displayed a beautiful gradation of tints, from russet to red, when the new leaf buds appeared. A grove of pomegranate trees would appear autumn-tinted in the later spring. For genuine autumn tints, China is largely dependent upon the planes and maples, several of which are to be recognised here. The characteristic aster- like touches seen on some Chinese drawings are derived from the sturdy " medlar trees," known to South Sea colonists as the pibo or bewa {Ericbotrya japonica), which grow to a large size in Japan. The pine adds dignity to the verdant village fringe. It is much revered, much painted, and its evergreen virtues often sung by Chinese poets. Its " sworn friend " is the bamboo, over a clump of which it spreads one of its longer RURAL SCENES AND SOUNDS. 27 branches by way of segis. The inevitable willow thrives near the long irregular pond, which occupies an important place at the head of the forty or more terraced fields which stretch away down to the shores of the lake. As with the common herbage of the region, so with the microscopical riches of the lake shores, very little unknown The Herb- in England is to be found. The microscopist is *'Ss- somewhat disappointed, but the familiar wild flowers help onb to feel at home here. A dwarf lilac is characteristic of the district. It is scentless, as are all the violets we may find in spring. Wild pinks, also scentless, abound here and there. Pale-purple daisies enliven many a hollow. Buttercups brighten the never emerald grass. Many Butterflies familiar butterflies flit around, and Moths. (-jjg common sulphur butterfly being most frequent. But splendid black and yellow, or black and purple varieties, large and swallow-tailed, tell us we are not in the homeland. The warmer nights are made melancholy from the suicide of many a moth in the flame of the rush pith wick'd saucer-lamps. A paraffin oil lamp will slay its thousands of smaller moths each summer evening. It is hard to write then. Public opinion is aroused by one's literary efforts, and critics, only too friendly, swarm around. Among the unbidden, but in this case not unwel- come guests, are the pure white silkworm moths in the autumn. If butterflies are the fairies of the insect world, surely these are the angels. But the entomology of China . would need a volume to do it justice. A larger volume of imprecations might be compiled from numberless authorities upon the subject of mosquitos, with a tale once told at the tea - shop on the Main " Eoad," a hundred yards from the " Pavilion," to enliven its dreary, woe-filled pages. " The country mosquitos once invited their cousins of the town to a banquet. Plenty of human flesh 28 A STRING OF CHINESE PEACH-STONES. was provided, but it was thick-skinned and tough. Town manners, however, made it necessary to return the invitation. On their way back the town-bred connoisseurs of flesh con- sulted as to what was to be done. Mosquito-nets were on the increase, and country cousins are so voracious. There would be no food left for the hosts. 'Take them to the temples,' suggested the wisest of them. The suggestion was received with buzzing acclamation. The guests came, and, had to try the points of their knives and lancets upon gilded and painted stucco. They declared, however, with all polite- ness, that they had enjoyed the repast, but inwardly resolved never to invite or accept such invitations again." The story, though related in English more elegant than the original, could be proved by internal evidence to be thoroughly Chinese. A foreigner would have modified it to say, that in the spirit-filled idols the mosquitos recognised their relatives grown large. Had Milton visited China in the summer, he would surely have described the demon council as contracted to the size of mosquitos, not bees. " They anon, With, hundreds and with thousands, trooping came," would then have served for the motto of the massive volume. But to our rustic contemplatioiis. The " sounds of earth " — chirpings, tickings, whirrings, and buzzings being eliminated — are chiefly harmonious. There is The Mono- an occasional dispute at the tea-shop, — wine is tony of Life. gQi(j there, — and occasional squabbles among the women in the hamlet itself, not unconnected with the unre- generate nature of a neighbouring youngster, pig, chicken, or dog.^ And amid the prevailing monotony such little excite- ments are regarded by the Chinese country folk as almost welcome diversions. In every town fight, however, there are sure to be a couple of peacemakers. Without these, a fight would be as unorthodox as a duel without seconds. Peace with excitement is a country ideal, but genuine happy ^ ' ' Our domestic dogs are descended from wolves and jackals " (Darwin's Descent of Man, sec. 130), with which part of the evolution theory every resident in China fully agrees. RURAL SCENES AND SOUNDS. 29 excitement is rare. Minor squabbles must supply the place. The " voices of men " here remind one of Leigh Hunt's .definition of bagpipe music, " a tune tied to a post." Here there are two posts, crops and cash. The women add one or two more. With them it is clothes, marriage, babies, crops, and cash. Babies are a perpetual break in the monotony of life. They refuse to be tied to any post, actual or metaphorical. They do their utmost to raise life above the dead level. Their cries belong to a universal language, the one music common to all the nations of the earth. Has music been developed up from their cries ? Ancient music seems to have been minor and plaintive. Such cries may indeed have had their part in the forma- tion of the Chinese language. An Englishman once amused a little crowd in a village tea-shop by remarking of Infant that the baby was crying in English. But on Cries in carefully noting the sounds uttered by his own ° °^' babies, he seems to have discovered that it was rather they who cried or chuckled in Chinese. It is a curious fact, that Chinese characters could be found for most infantile sounds. Most "mandarin Chinese" sounds (in Central Hupeh there are only about three hundred) are at one time or another uttered by infants, it is presumed, the wide world over. " Foreign children " born in China show a tendency to pick up Chinese far more readily, under evenly-balanced conditions, than the more complex sounds of their parents. The bearing of all this must be left to the philologist. But the fact is hereby recorded that we all begin life hy talking Chinese. If the Goddess of Mercy be a philologist as well as a linguist, such facts may assist her in her contemplation of the growing, prattling treasures of Chinese villages. But such contemplation, if indefinitely prolonged, would need all the patience and superhuman motherliness with which she is said to be endowed. The Chinese father, and, perhaps, at times, the patient Chinese mother, sees not so much the infant, as the future boy, or just "half a girl."^ ^ This is a, genuine Chinese book phrase, and gives us the converse of the 30 A STRING OF CHINESE PEACH-STONES. The " Pavilion " is unusually gay at the Chinese New Year. Eed paper mottoes, antithetical and learned, — for there The Chii- ^® scholarship represented here, — adorn some of drenattheir the doorposts. On New Year's morning every- ^°^ ■ body goes out and fires as many crackers as he can well afford, — a necessary precaution against evil, and an indispensable accompaniment of worship then. Mere child's play it all seems to us. And if the gods and goddesses existed, it would seem such to the kindest of them. But after the mutual congratulations of the early daylight, some of the more favoured children get a handful of loose crackers given them. Without dealing with higher mathematics, we may safely set down the equation — Chinese child + handful of crackers = intense delight. Nay, it is almost deification. The lad in question becomes a juvenile god of war. Who can withstand him ? But several are armed in the same way. And the deification goes to the lad whose crackers last the longest. On this particular day the victor in the mimic battles is a certain Li Seng-teh (Li is the Smith surname of China ; Seng-teh is " victorious virtue.") But no. Here comes the bully Lieu Fah (Lieu is a surname as common as Li ; Fah means to display), who displays certain characteristics which make him the bugbear of the neighbourhood. His father is the tea-shop keeper and cracker-vendor. He thus boasts an easy supremacy, as far as force is concerned. But he does not count. No amount of crackers would deify him. He poes not play fair. The threshing-floor is half cleared till he sulks away. Meanwhile Seng-teh has gone up to the village school teacher, who is standing at the gate ; and, being an intelligent The Phiio- lit'^ls lad, asks a question, which may be quoted : sophyofthe "Why is it, sir, that the character for cracker is the same as that for whip ? " " Because,'' replies the teacher, with a brightened face full of hope for the boy's future, " in ancient times, before crackers were known, bamboo plural of majesty which is so frequent in Hebrew, concerning which it has been well said that it multiplies the conception not externally, but internally. In Chinese, by the way, two stands for a few, while three, the extent of the infantUe powers of counting, stands for many. RURAL SCENES AND SOUNDS. 31 whip-like rods were used instead. These being dried, were lit at the end, and brandished about. As each knot was reached, the bamboo ' whip ' gave a loud pop." " And this frightened away the evil ? " ^ Seng-teh is a well-instructed youth, and so does not utter the word demon on New Year's morn. The mention of evil spirits is sup- posed to bring them.^ They come when they hear their names called. Some well-instructed youngsters, however, on New Year's day come up to mother and father, saying, " I must not say demon to-day, must I ? " " Hush ! " " Yes, I know ; nor death, nor coffin, nor lion, or tiger, or elephant, or snake." Until the bewildered parent sticks up in his house a slip of red paper, which says, " Children's words do not count," or over his front door the words, " Heaven, Earth, Yin, Yang [Male and Female principles] ; all things without danger from unlucky words." But well nigh trembles at the sound of any unlucky word nevertheless. For the Chinese flower of happiness is so delicate, that "one rough blast" in the form of an unlucky phrase may cause it forthwith to droop and die. But the school teacher's reply has not yet been given. " No," he says ; " hardly that, for, as the Household Treasury says [a work of twenty odd volumes, full of concentrated essence of goody-goodiness], ' these sounds agitate the Yang principle [the productive principle] and dispense that of the Yin [which is merely absorptive], and so ensure good luck.' " With the " crossing of the year " begins the lantern Feast of making for the festival of the fifteenth.* In Lanterns. the villages near the towns and cities, that even- ing is marked by processions carrying illuminated dragon ^ There is a legend to the effect that there was once a demon a little more than a foot in height, who lived among the Western hills, and that all persons' who saw him became ill. A certain man of the Sung dynasty fired at him with crackers, and put him to flight ; hence the origin of cracker-firing in modern times. — Lodchm-t. The teacher's explanation, however, goes back before the days of crackers, and is probably the earlier one. ^ The Chinese proverb answering to ours, however, is "Talk of Tsao-Tsao, and he is sure to come." Which striking figure of the third century a.d. we shall meet by and by (pp. 117-120). ' This festival is said to date back to the second century B.C., originating in the worship of a certain spirit by the Military Emperor of the Han dynasty. 32 A STRING OF CHINESE PEACH-STONES. lamps, long enough to require perhaps ten or more men to manipulate them so as to imitate the writhings of that monster by a dexterous rotary motion given to the rods which bear the lanterns. The children in such parts are the happy possessors of lamps in the form of fishes (which represent the carp, of dragon - turning propensities), the rabbit (which represents the moon), and other equally significant shapes. There are no dragon-lamp processions ^- here. The children's lanterns are all home- made. Clumsy and indefinite they are, but still possessing the undoubted charm of being made " all by myself." The mimic processions of juveniles armed with such lanterns, as RURAL SCENES AND SOUNDS. 33 their cracker-firing at the New Year, are idolatrous, if you hke; as idolatrous as our own fifth of November squibs and bonfires are anti-papist. Soon after the New Year, the kite-flying season begins. Kites being more packable and portable than the bulky lanterns, are supplied by Lieu of the tea-shop, from Tsaitien. But in this part, with due apologies to early writers, it is the youngsters who fly the kites, and the elders (if they are not too dignified) who look on. There are, however, traditions in vogue at the present day, that in Hankow kite-flying was quite an art before the Eebellion. Enormous centipede kites (the centipede is the rival of the dragon, creeping in at its ears and eating its brains out), fabulously large birds, butterflies and dragon flies used to engage the attention of the wealthier youths, who may have been fathers. Messages are sent up the line ; and see, Seng-teh.has attached a lighted lantern to the string, — a new and very erratic star in the evening gloom. A more earthly excitement is derived from whipping tops, which appear at intervals all the year round. They Whipping ^^^ JTist like those of our own land. These Tops. afford a mild recreation for the little girls too, almost the only one, besides playing at ball (made of cotton thread), which they possess. We may defer our further The Little consideration of the year's sports to notice the Girls. pretty dress of these mild spectators, who are as interested in the rougher games as the fair ladies of old were in the tournaments of chivalry. On New Year's day they appear with faces somewhat ghastly by reason of the application of flour in place of finer face powder. They have also red patches on g^ar^a " ^^^^^ cheeks, suggestive of exceedingly hectic Survival of flushes, and their Ups are wonderfully scarlet. Trojan Each face is adorned with a coronet of satin or Thugs cloth, with large " gems '' or gilded miniatures of the eight Immortals of Taoism thereon. But notice that from the coronet depends a black silk fringe reaching almost to the neck over each ear. These surely are most interest- ing survivals of early classical days. Compare them with the 3 34 A STRING OF CHINESE PEACH-STONES. golden headband and fringe brought by Dr. Schliemann from Hissarlik, and described by Homer in the scene where Andromache bewails her lost Hector. He tells us that her head-dress was fourfold, two of the parts being of textile fabric. The remaining two alone have survived ; to wit, a gold frontlet, and a fringe of golden pendants ^ dropping over the brow, and then at greater length down the side face. The sight of these at the South Kensington Museum suggested the lines — "Gauds that once glittered, spite their present rust, In the ears of maidens fair as could be seen, Sprightly-voiced maidens of soul-gladdening mien." ^ Similar fringes, but of silk, are to be found in China, that wonderful museum of antiquities, and comely too are some of the bright little faces that peer forth from such a classical adornment. Poets have belauded the famous beauties of China, but have forgotten these. Let us greet them at least with the poetry of chivalrous emotions. Life will be a very battle around them. But some of them will be as brave, if as sad, as Andromache. As the weather grows warmer, hats and coronets are laid aside, and boys and girls grow slender. The difference between the broad-as-long style and the later Summer ° *' Attenua- slendemess, is, however, a matter of clothes. tions. Long before midsummer the boys follow the example of their fathers, and when the sun comes out retain but one lower garment. The little girls look sweeter in summer ; their garments are clean with frequent washing. Their younger brothers gain in comfort, if not in elegance. Like the newly -transformed Tom in Kingsley's Water Babies, " they feel how comfortable it is to have nothing on but ^ In Judsea, these seem to have become in after centuries the ten pieces of silver worn on the brow, one of which was lost in the parable, Luke xv. 8-10. The number ten, rather than seven, would seem to argue an early origin of the custom. The Egyptian perfect number (hence ten plagues, seven in the Revela- tion) seems to have predominated in the popular phraseology for about three or four hundred years, then to have taken a secondary place, to be finally ousted by the distinctively Jewish seven. 2 J. "W. Hales. RURAL SCENES AND SOUNDS. 35 themselves." But how they avoid sunstroke, with their clean- shaven pates, is an inexplicable mystery. With the fifth month come the double horse-power castinet cicadas. These have been dormant until now, but SnmmerRe- may be Seen emerging from the ground as ugly creations. "bugs" (see American dictionaries), which make TVith for the nearest tree, split the middle seam of Cicadas. their coat at the back, and walk out. They may be seen doing all this, but now they claim a hearing as well. The maiden speech is duly hesitating. The sound of its voice seems at first to frighten the beastie itself. But with growing confidence comes growing fluency. Only the voice is a rattling apparatus. Here again we are back in classical times. A Greek poet,^ noticing the fact that only the male insects are noisy, vented his spleen on the fair r ^^^^^ n^ ^a § /r """^/■^i/ 1 W///l\ ^^Ww^