Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2007 witii funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation littp://www.arcliive.org/details/englishlifeincliiOOknolricli THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESENTED BY PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID ENGLISH LIFE IN CHINA ENGLISH LIFE IN CHINA * BY MAJOK HENRY KNOLLYS ROYAL ARTILLERY AUTHOR OF 'FROM SEDAX TO SAARBRUOK ' EDITOR OP ' INCIDENTS IX THE SEPOY WAR ' ' INCIDENTS IN THE CHINA WAR ETC. LONDON SMITH, ELDER, & CO, 15 WATERLOO PLACE 1885 PEEFACE The statements contained in this book have, at all events, the advantage of having been recorded on the spot, and at the time when they were originally deduced. Taken down day by day in shorthand, I venture to hope that the opinions may possess the freshness, sometimes so conducive to accuracy, of first impressions ; while the authenticity of the facts has been safe-guarded by subsequent careful revision. HENRY KNOLLYS, Major, Royal Artillery. Arthur's Clur, St. James', London CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. OUR FARTHEST BRITISH OUTPOST— HONG KONG. I'AGK Ignorance concerning Hong Kong — Beauty of harbour — Interior of houses— The bank — Shops— Flowers — Means of trans- port — Shipping — Chinese funeral — Population — Pedlars — The ' Happy Valley ' — Precautions against rain^Hourly record of a hot day — Botanical Gardens — Hong Kong healthy or unhealthy ? — Dinner-party — Ascent of the ' Peak ' — Insect annoyances — Hong Kong Sunday — English mail signalled — Chinese • boys ' — Pidgin-English — The native qu3,rter— Queen's birthday parade — Military funeral — Thomas Atkins' routine— Lascars —Defences— The Birming- ham standard of success 1 CHAPTEE II. A MODEL BRITISH REPUBLIC — SHANGHAI. Shanghai a republic — Yellow Sea— English imperiousness — Busy aspect of town — Frontier territories — Chinese immi- gration — American settlement — French Concession — Their faulty administration— Gloomy outlook — English Council — •Finance — Law — Police court— Adjudications — Social life— ' The old folks at home '—Gambling — Kacing — Sunday promenades — The incomprehensible English^ Agriculture — Graves — A Chinese theatre — Music — Stage — Audience , 65 viu CONTENTS. CHAPTER III. INSIDE CHINA— THE EIVER YANG-TSZE-KIANG. PAGE A China Company's steamer — Mixture of nationalities — Euro- peans in the power of the Chinese — Natives at meals — French missionary — Chinkiang — Square miles of grave- yards—Highways and byways — Railroads —Education — Nankin— The 'Little Orphan '—Wildfowl— Sport— River scenery — Kiukiang— Features of the river Yang-tsze-Kiang — Hankow - -The English concession — The small European community — Tea and tea-tasting— Brick tea— The currency — Suburban market gardens 115 CHAPTER IV. MEDICAL MISSIONS AND THE MISSIONARY QUESTION. Chinese ignorance of physiology — Principal maladies — Opera- tions — Italian medical mission — Clinical practice — A de- formed foot — Nurseries— The process of foot bandaging — School — Religious instruction — Wesleyan medical mission — The service and singing — Secular and religious teaching — Misrepresentation in missionary reports — Unpractical principles — Foochow Mission — Its general superiority — Missionary difficulties — Zic-a-wei — Vespers — Chinese science a fallacy— Deductions from past experience— Charges brought against Protestant missionaries — Failure thus far — Incumbent to persevere — Suggested reforms . . . 163 CHAPTER V. A CHINESE INLAND METROPOLIS — HANKOW. Novelty of the experience — Entrance to the native quarter — Pestilential alleys — Revolting inhabitants — Inharmonious voices— Horrible sights— Foul stenches — Chaffering — Ab- sence of machinery — Unfriendly demeanour — Hair-dressing CONTENTS. ix PAGE — Food — Funeral cortege — Expression of the emotions — Joss houses — Administration of law — Prisons — Torture — Executions — Mandarin state— Chinese guilds — Their con- tents and splendour — Gardens — Opium shops— The opium question — Exaggeration of evils— Experience of opium smoking — The dragon devouring the moon .... 215 CHAPTEE VI. CHINESE EIVEE AND TOWN LIFE — FOOCHOW. Magnificent coasting steamers — Forts — Anglo-Chinese hospitality — Animated aspect of River Min— Boat life— Chinese child- hood — Ducks — Panorama of Foochow — English mercantile community — Chinese dinner-party — Female guests — Small talk — The food — Singing — Slaves— A journey across country — Buffaloes— Dogs— House-boat — A night voyage — Scenery — A rapid-boat — Disembark— Ascent of the Yuen Fuh moun- tain — Cultivation — The monastery of Yuen Fuh — Toil up the mountain — The monk's cave — Devils and divinities — Return rapid- voyage — A garden jungle — ' Lead, kindly light ' — Illness — Cross countiT sights — Kuh Shan Monastery — Carp— Chinese language— Chinese capacity for learning — Conclusion 267 INDEX 331 ENGLISH CHINA. CHAPTER I. OUR FARTHEST BRITISH OUTPOST — HONG KONG. Hong Kong — Jericho — Timbuctoo ! Are not these names used indifferently to represent the extreme of remoteness ? Do not nine out of ten, even among well- informed English gentlemen, consider the first named a place with which we have little in common though it be a British possession, or at all events of little momentous interest ? And are they not of opinion that its contingent loss need not, to any material extent, affect our national prosperity? Yet Hong Kong, apart from its military and naval value as our most advanced outpost in the far East, and from its com^mercial interest represented by an annual average British exchange of about forty-two millions sterling, is marked by characteristic advantages unparalleled in any single one of our other possessions. The testimony of many who have preceded me in 2 ENGLISH CHINA. this subject is frequently puzzling from its contra- dictory nature. Hong Kong is alternately described as unquestionably healthy and deplorably sickly ; as pleasantly cool and intolerably hot; as replete with interest and a desert of dulness; as hospitably sociable and savagely churlish — by the large majority, perhaps, as an odious place of exile, and by the minority as a fascinating residence. These dis- crepancies are chiefly due to the special circumstances under which the witnesses may have resided there ; to the freedom from, or existence of, home ties and anxieties; to the extent to which health has been affected by climate, and, above all, according as hot- or cold-season-life has been selected as the type described. Now inasmuch as scorching weather prevails over by far the greater part of the year, it is surely most rational to base our judgment on that period. Let us then assume the date of our arrival to be the beginning of July, and by a detail of first experiences — as valuable in a traveller as first thoughts are valuable in a woman — let us endeavour to reconcile discrepancies and to arrive at just and independent conclusions. As our ship slowly steams into Hong Kong harbour, I defy you to be otherwise than entranced, whatever your previous experience of nature's beauties, with the unsurpassed loveliness of the scene — the brightest sky, and the bluest sea, whereon rest a large fleet of mammoth merchant ships, of men-of-war of every HONG KONG. 3 nation, thousands of picturesque junks and myriads of sampans, or native boats. On our right is the large flourishing town of Vic- toria, very un-Enghsh in its aspect, and in some respects resembhng a French or ItaHan seaboard cit}^ Built along the slope of a steep mountain, the lower part seems to have a constant tendency to be thrust towards the sea; while higher up the houses are large, substantially built edifices, embosomed in the varied green shade of glorious tropical vegetation. Still higher are the steep slopes of the Hong Kong moun- tains, dotted over with patches of wood, or covered with a darker coloured brushwood, which instantly and vividly brings to the thoughts, ' Scotland, deer, grouse,' were it not for the almost perpendicular rays of the sun, which, in lieu of Scotland's charming alternation of light and shade, result in a uniform fierce glare. The whole is crowned by a long, sharp, blue crest ridge, the highest point of which (the ' Peak ') is nearly 2,000 feet above the sea level ; and which, when rain threatens, loses itself in the white woolly clouds. Now turn to the other side of the harbour, about a mile broad, to Kowloon, a promontory of the mainland of China. Here we have a changed scenery in the most rugged, bare, and wild of illimitable mountains, streaked over with large patches of brilliant red granite. As we step on shore, a glow seems to rise from beneath our feet, a very uncomfortable contrast to the B 2 4 ENGLISH CHINA. ever cool sea surface, and, however leisurely one's movements, in a few minutes we shall lapse into a sticky, clammy condition of body, which I warn you will be your normal state for nearly eight months out of the twelve. Disregarding the importunities of a crowd of three-quarters naked, chattering, pigtailed coolies, we make our way to a hotel, large but terribly stifling — second-rate as regards comfort and equip- ment, but first-rate in point of cooking, excelling herein nineteen out of twenty of similar palatial European establishments. It is not comfortably bearable for more than a few hours, and we forthwith rset to work to search out the addresses of our letters of introduction -passports which in Europe are some- what disdained, but in Asia are invaluable. Here we ' are welcomed with a genuine eager hospitality, un- paralleled out of China. Our addressee is, we will suppose, a local merchant-prince, a Government employe, a military officer, or a well-to-do agent of a commercial firm. Steer clear of the rank and file of the civilian community, inasmuch as they are not on the whole a favourable set either in their associates or in their ways of life. Our friend does not merely invite us to dinner or reluctantly offer us a bed, in the fashion of grudging home conventional civility ; he peremptorily orders you to come and stay with him ; he instantly despatches his own coolies to fetch your baggage ; he instals you in a suite of luxurious, large, lofty apartments, consisting of bedroom, bath-room, HONG KONG. 5 and sitting-room ; and, best of all, he avoids that fatal error of hounding you with amusements and occu- pations. Life indeed would be very agreeable if it were not for its amusements, and he extends to you the immeasurable bliss of leaving you entirely to your own sweet pleasure. The interior of these houses, indeed, presents an aspect of luxury — I might almost say, of splendour — peculiarly characteristic of the East, and yet at- tainable at comparatively small expense. The shell, certainly, is exceedingly fragile, but every room and passage is of a magnificent size. Carpets, curtains, hangings, and rugs — those devouring expenses in a cool climate — would here be offensively out of taste, and insufferably uncomfortable. In lieu thereof we have beautifully stained floors, high, wide windows, and folding doors, prettily coloured rattan mattings, large bamboo chairs of every ingenious form to con- duce to repose and coolness, feather-weight hand- tables, which can be shifted about almost at a thought, a multiplicity of bright fans scattered conveniently about for use, plenty of handsome lacquer-work, and enough revoltingly ugly china to satisfy the most vitiated taste of a depraved virtuoso. Then there is a pro- fusion of lovely flowers and foliage which can never be out of place, while overhead, solemnly, gracefully, wave the white punkahs— huge oblong fans which stretch completely across the room. They move noiselessly by means of pulleys and ropes worked by 6 : ENGLISH CHINA. a coolie outside, and set up regular waves of cool air, each puff of which gives a feeling of relief. The room is wisely darkened towards the attainment of a lower temperature. A broad, covered verandah lines the entire exterior length of the house, and, in fine, the combination of surroundings produces on a new- comer a strange, Arabian-night sensation. ' Stale trifles,' sneers the military habitue of the East. *Eien si bete qu'un vieux militaire, or a dried-up Anglo-Indian,' is my reply. ' The above minutiae are striking and even interesting to those who have the luck to stray for a time into a new country, and the good fortune to have been saved from a lifelong expatriation from the civilised centres of ex23erience, and the scenes of the true battles of life.' Not improbably our first night's slumbers wijl be broken by a mighty roar of thunder, by blinding flashes of lightning, and by a dashing down of rain. At about six o'clock in the morning we shall be roused by A ' house boy ' bringing to our bedside the invariable cup of tea, which will be followed by a nine o'clock breakfast, generally disposed of in solitude, but whereat in some households the whole family is wont to assemble. Afterwards the comparative coolness, due to last night's storm, tempts us to sally forth on a tour of exploration. Why, the slopes of the moun- tains are covered with alabaster white ! Chalk patches ? No, only large drying grounds of the native washer- men of European linen, the stock of which is of HONG KONa. 7 necessity four times more abundant here than in a temperate chmate. All the roads seem to lead straight down hill into the town, and after passing many a handsome bunga- low, each with its tract of bright garden, sheltered by clumps of graceful bamboo, we find ourselves in the midst of the Anglo- China metropolis. Here European employes and heads of commercial houses are has- tening to their business rendezvous, or bustling about with true English vigour, and a comparative indiffer- ence to climate, which we cannot but admire. Their numbers are almost swamped by swarms of coolies and Chinese shopmen, interspersed with specimens of Arabs, Parsees, Sikhs, Madrasses, Negroes, and half- caste, or rather quarter-caste, Portuguese. The streams to a great extent converge towards the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, where we get a glimpse of the outside forms of local business. Under the porticoes are sacks of Mexican dollars — the principal current coin — and each coin is being tested one by one by the Chinese servants of the bank. The man, squatted on his hams according to the national attitude, which in five minutes would cause an Englishman to yell with cramp, shovels into his hands a heap of these rough, clumsy pieces from the open sack. Balancing each separately, on two fingers, he instantaneously decides on its fitness for currency. The undoubtedly good he tosses into one heap ; the undoubtedly bad into another, and the doubtful coins into a third for 8 ENGLISH CHINA. future test. These latter comprise the spurious and the Hght, many of which have had their original weight materially diminished by the ' chop ' or trade mark of different firms. Each punch has withdrawn a tiny atom of silver, which the Chinese dealers have, with characteristic economy, carefully preserved for sale in the aggregate. The rapidity and accuracy with which the scrutinisers will detect a slightly depreciated or spurious coin by its mere weight on the finger is truly extraordinary, and can only be ac- quired after years of practice. The interior of the bank consists of a large sombre hall, kept fairly cool by the waving of innumerable punkahs, and here are employed a small proportion of European clerks, working in their shirt sleeves, according to the sensible universal custom of the place, and a large proportion of white-clothed natives swiftly ready to do their bidding. As Englishmen J we are treated with the utmost civility, and though strangers, with the utmost liberality in the etiquette of business procedure. We wish, suppose, to cash a cheque. * Schroff ! ' shouts the clerk, and immediately answering to the above term — not German, but a corruption of the Hindu word Sarraf, Sharraf, banker's clerk — there glides forward one of the native cashiers with smooth-shaven skull, a four-foot pigtail, and spotlessly white flowing garments. He is silent and rapid in his movements, and though his scanty stock of English is scarcely intelligible to you, he speedily HONG KONG. 9 carries out to your satisfaction the transaction in hand, your own pencil and paper complicated conver- sion of pounds into dollars and cents being easily distanced by the schroff's peculiar method of calcula- tion. Taking up a counting machine, a precise counterpart of the coloured wired balls used in our village schools, his long lithe fingers move over it far more quickly than the eye can follow — he plays on it with the rapidity of lacemaking. ' All right as regards the total — now give me, say, 3/. of small change,' for a large supply of five-cent (about ^id.) pieces is here indispensable. A means has been devised of avoiding the weari- ness of counting out one by one the 300 tiny silver coins representing the sum in question. A pile of them is poured on to a small fiat wooden tray contain- ing 100 recesses, each of which is just deep enough to lodge one five- cent piece, and just shallow enough to prevent the possibility of two such lurking together. A jerk of the wrist— the 100 recesses are instantly filled, the surplus is sw^pt off, and at a glance you perceive you have your correct tale, which is then funnelled into your hand, the schroff tucking up his enormous sleeves to disarm suspicion that he is playing at legerdemain by concealing stray coins in the folds. The idea is so simple and yet so oddly clever that it never fails to elicit a smile of amusement on first experience. The streets and the shops in that part of Victoria 10 ENaLISII CHINA. which is frequented by Europeans bear a mingled Eastern and Western aspect, which is very striking and by no means displeasing. Order is maintained among the multitudes of nude chattering coolies by the red-turbaned, picturesque-looking, stalwart Sikh policemen, gravely promenading in Eegent Street fashion, and there is a general sense of brightness and activity, regularity and cleanliness. British wares, and Chinese and Japanese products, are blended together in amusing confusion, the first named at a robbery price, and the latter to be pur- chased after a long and humiliating bargaining. The native shopkeepers are emulative of London fame. One announces himself as ' Hoby, shoes- maker,' another ' Sam Hing Stulz, tailor,' another ' John Bull,' a fourth and fifth bear the suggestive names of * Old-ah-you,' and ' Wink-kee.' Given a pattern they will produce a copy so exact as to com- prise patch, darn and tear, but woe to you if you entrust them with any originality however trifling. I once ventured to direct the variation of about an inch in the position of a button as shown in the pattern coat. In the copy the button was shifted sure enough, but no alteration whatever had been made f:r the corresponding button-hole. Do not believe the oft-repeated statements that tropical flowers have little scent, and are in appear- ance less charming as a mass than the products of an English garden. Squatting under a long stretch of HONa KOXG. 11 banyan trees, in one of the broad, hilly side streets, are knots of flower-men, making up bouquets of the most beautiful contrasts of green, scarlet, orange, blue, and white, and with the scent of frangipanni, or gardenia, or tuberose, or jessamine predominating according to the season. They arrange their flowers with extreme dexterity, I might almost say taste, according to certain prescribed patterns ; and we are importuned to purchase for about 4:d. a wonder of loveliness and perfume, which in London would cost four guineas, if indeed it could there be procured at any price. ' Beauty and the Beasts ' is the parallel mentally suggested by the sight of these hideously repulsive Mongolians and their lovely wares. On our way we look in at the Club, where our host has inscribed our names as honorary members. This inevitable institution of all Anglo-Chinese communi- ties is not at Hong Kong favourably represented, although the premises and cooking are fair ; it contains a few good bedrooms, and the library is remarkably extensive and good. It is, however, the hottest, most stifling Acheron in the town. How entire and conspicuous is the absence of wheel transport on these wide, well-paved thorough- fares ! You may wander about them for days without seeing a single carriage, cart, horse, or even pony. The reasons are that the roads are mountainous inclines except in the lower part of the town ; that forage in this small, and for the most part unfertile, 12 ENGLISH CHINA. island is preposterously dear, and that manual labour is ridiculously cheap. Look at those pairs of coolies, each one supporting on his shoulder the end of a bamboo pole, in the centre of which is slung a heavy weight. If the burden be bulky but light, a single bearer will suffice, supporting his bamboo by the centre and the weights at the extremities ; or again, if the object be indivisible, the coolie, with an amusing recognition of the mathematical principle of the lever, will constitute his pole into a long arm to which he fastens his goods, and into a short arm to which he affixes a counterpoising stone. The coolies shuffle along at a hybrid walk-and-trot pace, partly for speed, partly because this jog more easily fits into the regular springing of the bamboo poles. By these agents you can cause your heavy portmanteau to be conveyed nearly two miles for about 4^f?. Even five- year old children are sometimes to be seen toddhng along carrying light objects of domestic use on little bamboo canes. As for personal conveyances, we have at an infinitesimally small cost a light, luxurious kind of sedan-chair, or a singular, small, two- wheeled carriage holding one person, and called a ' Jinricksha,' habitually abbreviated into Eicksha, both of which are transported by coolies. The Jinricksha, mean- ing ' man-power-cart,' was introduced from Japan only a few years ago. We jump into one of them, as possessing the greatest novelty, and smoothly HONG KONG. 13 and comfortably are dragged along at a rate of six miles an horn- by the one native in the shafts, who labours mider this sweltering smi with an unfaltering energy absolutely astounding, and of which no Englishman who ever breathed would be capable under similar circumstances.^ First along the Praya, a two-mile stretch of marine parade, or rather har- bour embankment. The area of the port, almost unsurpassed in anchorage and extent, is ten square miles ; its depth admits of the passage of ships of the deepest draught in the world; here are riding men-of-war of every type and nation, in curious inter- mixture, and the multiplicity of craft which throng it as thick as bees may be estimated from the fact that in 1882, 26,668 vessels, with a total tonnage of nearly five millions, passed into the harbour — a greater amount than entered the port of London during the year Hong Kong was acquired (1842). Moreover, there are five docks for ships of large construction. The boat population of Victoria alone is returned at over 16,000 — I have nearly done for the present with these useful but dry numbers — partly living on board those clumsy, typical junks, but chiefly in little sam- pans, or partly roofed wherries. Each contains an entire family of four or five persons, whose domestic life is entirely restricted to the few square feet enclosed by the few fragile planks. At irregular ' In Japan, however, the performances of the 'Kicksha' coolies are even more astonishing. 14 ENGLISH CHINA. intervals a fusillade on board of ten or twelve crackers indicates the performance of ' chin-chin,' or worship connected with their idiotic superstitions, to which the term ' religion ' can only be metaphorically applied. Yet they are half ashamed of those rites, which never- theless they will not abandon. ' Boy,' I maliciously ask my Chinese servant, 'what is the meaning of those shots in the harbour ? ' ' Hum, I no savvy. I tinkee it P. and 0. ship makee chin-chin before sailing.' As we bowl along in our rickshas we may note many a curious feature of Chinese life if we are only watchful to observe. There a funeral procession passes along the quay. Several gaudily gilt cars convey various eatables for the use of the dead in the next world, such as fruit, sweetmeats, and cakes, together with various joss-house paraphernalia, and gilt paper-money. At various intervals in the cortege are hired mourners and coolies blowing trumpets, banging cymbals, and letting off crackers. The nearest relations of the deceased, men, women, and children, all dressed entirely in white — the sign of mourning — follow the cof&n, which is carried on bam- boo poles by twelve coolies. It is indeed a singularly strange, substantial-looking object, carved, orna- mented, in general shape like the trunk of a tree, and hermetically sealed up with plaster. The females nearest in kin never cease emitting a kind of tearless howl. Each woman is propped up by two supporters, and it is evidently a point of honour to roll about HONG KONG. 15 from side to side as boisterously as possible in a supposed exhaustion of grief. I have observed some of the supporters manifesting much irritation at thus receiving sudden jobs in the side, and clearly mutter- ing to the effect : ' My word ! when will this work be over ? ' The crowd, so far from showing decent sympathy, grin at my curious watching, and tacitly assent, ' Yes, what fools we are ! ' The noisy, grotesque procession, sometimes nearly a mile in length, wends its way to some far-off hillside, pronounced favourable for interment by the soothsayers. But let us watch a ceremonial of a humbler nature, where a junk is to convey the remains to the other side of the harbour. The coffin is first deposited on the quay, where a small fire is lighted, and some refreshment burnt whereby the spirit of the deceased is supposed to be invigorated. The so-called mourners stand chattering around, manifesting the utmost indifference, with the exception perhaps of the widow, who grovels down in the mud, and with a howling between that of a jackal and the miauling of a cat, gabbles forth lamentations, but always without tears. Then the coffin is bundled into a boat, which is rowed away, and the formalities of this repulsive, unfeeling ceremonial are brought to a conclusion. The sorrow of the Chinese for thfeir dead and their compassion for the living are apparently about on a par. The straggling town is about four miles long, and though the houses are chiefly wooden, it contains as 16 ENGLISH CHINA. many as 6,000 buildings of brick and stone. It must be owned that the streets and population are orderly in the highest degree, and the instinctive submission of the Eastern to the Western races is here very strikingly illustrated. The colony numbers about 160,000 ^ in- habitants, exclusive of the military and foreign ships' population, of which the whites compose the utterly insignificant fraction of about 3,100. Yet that a Chinaman should either by speech or action engage in an open stand-up contest with an Englishman would be an almost inconceivable anomaly. The police it is true number as many as about 650, but not more than 120 are Europeans, the balance being Sikhs and Chinese. Here and there in the most crowded thoroughfares a solitary constable is to be seen, and his somewhat imperious directions are obeyed with the most unhesitating submission. As to the dress of the fairly well-to-do natives, I can only refer you to the pictures on our nurseries' willow-pattern plates : flowing white or dark blue robes, with sleeves reaching nearly to the knees ; loose ' In 1881 there were : — Europeans and Americans .... 3,040 Mixed nationalities 968 Temporary 188 Prisoners 682 Boat population — Victoria .... 16,687 Boat population elsewhere — in Hong Kong . 12,302 Chinese (about) 126,133 Total (about) .... 160,000 Exclusive of military and naval forces and police. HOXa KONG. 17 cotton trousers; the typical turned-up Chinese stuff shoes ; and a fan shading the skull, instead of a hat. Several wear spectacles of stupendous size, more for decoration and dignity than for utility. The women's costume differs comparatively little from that of the men, the chief additions being, occasionally, ponderous earrings, jade bracelets, silver anklets, and large pins fastening piled-up rolls of coarse, shiny- looking black hair. They are, however, models of decency. The practice of deforming their feet is now going out of fashion in the south, but a not incon- siderable minority may still be seen, slowly, painfully, waddling along on their poor distorted stumps. _^ Our first impressions of the population as a whole, so far as externals are concerned, is, to say the least, displeasing ; and as, by degrees, we notice their stupid ugly eyes, their air of stolid conceit, their fat, smooth I faces, their shaven, pigtailed skulls, and their cease- less discordant chatter, our feelings deepen into ab- solute disgust. What a clatter of small wooden drums ! It is caused by peddlers calling attention to their wares, mostly consisting of what they are pleased to call eatables ; but, apart from fruit and cigars, of dark, mysterious masses of sweetmeat nastiness, from which the greediest English school boy would turn with loathing. Here we turn down some slums, and, though we choke with close heat and Chinese vapours, English administration has actually prevailed in pre- 18 ENGLISH CHINA. serving a fair amount of cleanliness, and in prevent- ing the accumulation of rotting garbage. Eeally a comparison with the worst districts in Bethnal Green and the Seven Dials would not be unfavourable, a suc- cess which speaks volumes to those who, like myself, had subsequent opportunities of exploring the horrors of the large inland China cities. Emerging from the town, we suddenly arrive at that which is, perhaps, the most beautiful and the saddest acre in the British Empire : the so-called * Happy Valley,' the English cemetery of Hong Kong. No natives are allowed inside, so, leaving our rick- shas at the gate, we pass into the peaceful solitary groves, the silence of which is unbroken, save by the joyful notes of many a singing-bird, and the splash- ing of a burn down the adjacent overhanging rocks. The term * cemetery ' conveys, perhaps, an erroneous impression of gaudy gardens, crowded and disfigured with monuments which are types of bad taste in con- struction, and still worst taste in inscription. I would rather describe it as a carefully tended expanse of turf, with a pretty little chapel shaded with mag- nificent tropical trees, intersj)ersed with beautifully .flowering shrubs, and luxuriant foliage of every tint, where are scattered the graves of our countrymen whose sad fate has been to die * far from the old folks at home.' The inscriptions tell in a few words many a melancholy story, for Hong Kong has been subjected, at intervals, to devastating epidemics. Here we read of HONCt KONG. 19 whole families swept off in a few days by fever ; there is a long record of the losses of a ship's crew, the ' Calcutta.* ' Some men fell while engaged with the enemy, others from the effects of climate.' Here is a hecatomb from the 95th Eegiment, 225 deaths from cholera and various causes, between May 1847 and January 1850 — a little over tw^o and a half years. Of these, 102 cases were carried off by fever alone in four months, viz. from June 1 to September 30, 1848. Of the 1st Battalion of the 9th Regiment there is even a more terrible record, inasmuch as the destroy- ing angel was smiting them so heavily over the longer period of nine years, viz. from 1849 to 1858. We read that, during that time, the battalion lost by sickness a total number of 658, of whom 107 were children.^ Are not our soldiers and sailors as de- serving of recognition when faithfully carrying out dreary routine duty in a trying, depressing tropical climate at the antipodes, as when engaged in a cam- paign which may not, in the long run, claim more victims, with the inspiriting anticipations of prospec- tive public honours, promotion, and abundance of medals within a brief space ? ^ The exact numbers were : — Officers 10 Non-commissioned officers 35 Privates and drummers 470 Women 37 Children 107 Total . . . . . ... 669 c 2 20 ENGLISH CHINA. The picture we are contemplating is, indeed, set in a worthy frame. We are standing in an angle at the base of one of nature's large amphitheatres. Overhead is the unclouded brilliant sky; in front a large green racecourse, bordered in its entire circum- ference with a fringe of graceful bamboo ; through a gap in the hills we catch a glimpse of the harbour, with the red mountains of Kowloon in the far dis- tance, while in our immediate rear rise, almost per- pendicularly, dark rugged rocks besprinkled with firs, and losing themselves in the lofty distant main range. Yet, in spite of all my efforts, I am conscious that * thought hath not colours half so fair ' to paint this scene. It is somewhat heightened by the disadvan- tageous contrast of the neighbouring plot set aside for the Eoman Catholics — over-decorated, gaudy, and glaring with untrue sentiment, almost the only ad- junct in keeping with the locality being the carved inscription over the portals : ' Hodie mihi, eras tibi ' — Your turn next. That little strip reserved for Mahomedan sepulture is surely preferable, for there is, at all events, about it a sort of dismal honesty. Our ricksha coolies, who, during our absence, have been contentedly resting on their hams, and reinvigorating themselves with chewing sticks of sugar-cane, now resume their journey homewards. Suddenly they stop short with a certain amount of dismayed fuss — a few heavy drops are falling. Well, considering that you have little else on but your HONa KONG. 21 * birthday suits,' I do not see how you can be damaged even if you do get wet to the skin. But they think far otherwise. From below the carriages they detach, hitherto unnoticed, enormous mushroom- shaped bam- boo hats, which form admirable umbrellas, and the queerest cloaks of loosely woven mango leaves, in which they envelope their naked hides, at the same .time availing themselves of every atom of roof and tree shelter. In precautions against climate the seasoned abori- | gines furnish useful lessons to the reckless, raw, new- comers. While careful to guard their skulls from the direct rays of the sun, no matter how high the tem- perature they revel in it like salamanders, though in a European brain fever would be the result ; but the moment December comes, with a breeze a little less hot than the blast of a blow-pipe, all the Chinese w^ho can afford the expense swaddle themselves, from crown to sole, in innumerable folds of thick woollen garments, and the most palpably skinny are trans- formed apparently into the most conspicuously obese. As for wet, notwithstanding that they are far more clean in their persons than might be expected, they take the precautions of confirmed hjrpochondriacs against exposing their feet or bodies to the slightest sprinkling of rain. During a few minutes of downpour, such as is experienced only in the tropics, nearly all the Chinese wayfarers improvise some sort of covering : mats, ^ 2 4 ENGLISH CHINA. thermometer may range much higher. This vapour- bath-result exercises a very debiUtating effect. A wet deposit covers the entire exposed surface of the body, but especially the hands, which drip, drip, so con- stantly as to render writing vexatious, a sheet of blotting-paper between the wrist and the paper being absolutely indispensable. Weary at last of your fruitless efforts to keep cool, perhaps you try the inexperienced new-comer's expe- dient of a stroll. In the thinnest of white linen garments, with racquet shoes, helmet, and large sun umbrella, you slowly saunter forth. In a quarter of an hour you return ; with feverish haste you drag off every stitch of your clothes, so saturated that they fall with a thud on the floor. No — swearing will only make you hotter ; you must grin and bear it. You come to the conclusion that there is no escape from this heat — it finds you out in your hiding-places in the shady verandah, or shoots across from the white face of the opposite house. You feel all the better for picking a little bit at luncheon, you succeed in obtaining forty winks afterwards, and you spend the entire afternoon in your room as motionless as possible, for to move into another apartment, even to shift from chair to chair, produces a tendency to renewed soaking. Only, at all hazards, fight against brandy and soda, at any rate until after dinner. The man who dallies with it, like the woman who hesitates, is lost. As for any number of cigars, which, by the way, are h^re of sur- . HONG KONG. 25 passing cheapness and unsurpassed excellence, in crass defiance of the wisest medical dicta, I have not a word to say against them. I liken their prohibition to withholding chloroform in confinements. Smoke as many as you please. They will do you no good certainly, but it is less hard to boil when soothed with their sweet comfort. Half-past six o'clock. The * Victor Emanuel ' in harbour fires its evening gun, and the surrounding junks, as though in imitative chaff, pop off their chin-chin crackers. The sun is down ; you may get a breath of cooler air out of doors, but make haste, for there is scarcely any twilight in these latitudes, and pitch darkness will quickly and suddenly succeed broad daylight. All the English inhabitants, children and their amas (nurses) included, are following suit, and are emerging from their retreats with simultaneous activity. This one hour's walk is the most valuable in the twenty-four ; and though on your return you find yourself once more dripping, you feel tranquil- lised, you can face dinner, and you are consoled with reflecting that after all this pulling down surely bed will be an unmixed enjoyment. Ah, no ! Now you are expecting too much. The night season is to be dreaded above all others. You wriggle into your lair through your carefully closed musquito curtains, for this vindictive enemy is ingenious in finding his way through the smallest aperture, and you close your eyes in presumptuous expectation of the death of 26 ENGLISH CHINA. each day's life. Utterly in vain. You have never felt more thoroughly awake in your life. You are on the coolest, and therefore the hardest, of beds and pillows ; in lieu of a mattress you lie on a rattan mat, you kick off even your sheets ; the draught of night air sweeps directly across you from the wide open windows to the wide open doors. And yet you break out into a lather, you toss about in intolerably feverish weariness, you hear the endless half-hours solemnly tolled forth across the harbour stillness from the ships' watches — until at last, when matters seem to have reached their worst, you lapse into a broken, unrefreshing slumber. At an early hour in the morning you awake in a debilitated condition of body, suggestive of a previous night of wine and wassail, of riot and debauchery. Such is a specimen of an average hot day in Hong Kong, and yet the climate is not without a certain charm of variety. After a definite number of days when the sensation of stifling seems to have reached its climax, the clouds suddenly pile up in black masses, sheet lightning glares all over the horizon, the distant thunder growls, heavy raindrops fall, and at last the storm bursts with a fury of which most of us have read, but which none can realise without a personal experience of the tropics. His must be a dull, torpid mind which is not awed by the incessant blinding, almost scorching, flashes, and by the crackling, rolling roar of a thunder which makes HONG KONG. 27 heaven and earth quiver. The rain is hurled violently down in thick unbroken sheets, in layers of water so to speak, the fall in half an hour being as much as would represent weeks of wet weather in England. One of the chief charms of Hong Kong is that which by the inhabitants is most lightly regarded — according to the way of the w^orld — the Botanical Gardens. Outside the town, part of the way up the mountain, with every advantage which natural site and lavish expenditure can render, surely these grounds are without equal in the world. The Palla- vicini Gardens of Genoa are in comparison vulgar cockney dom. Take the hothouses of Kew and Chats- worth as marionette imitations ; think of acres of green slopes covered with flower beds and flowering shrubs, shaded with giant palms, with towering cocoa- nut trees, with banyans, magnolias, azaleas, gardenias, frangipanni, and ylang-ylang ; picture to yourself enormous ferns and huge-leaved orchids, shrouded beneath a feathery mass of drooping bamboo ; add thereto the beauty of art in skilfully disposed shrub- beries, in a diverted natural waterfall leaping down the granite steeps, in a winding path cut out of yon crag, in carefully mown lawns, and in neatly kept gravel w^alks. Here, too, congregate all the bright plumaged birds in the island, while wild doves in hundreds never cease their soft coo. And you can enjoy almost complete solitude in these enchanted grounds during the greater part of the day. Only 28 ENGLISH CHINA. among certain central broad walks will you sometimes find a queer sprinkling of visitors. The Chinese, in whom appreciation of nature's beauties is strangely non-existent, admit, in their conceit, admiration of English management in two respects only : our administration of law, and our formation of public gardens. There are a few pigtails pointing out the gardening skill of those ' foreign devils.' More numerous are the groups of children: some repulsive, swarthy little Portuguese ; others the pallid, washed-out offspring of English residents. Melancholy indeed is their appearance, as they listlessly, joylessly, creep by the side of their amaSy who, I should mention, are universally represented as proud of and devotedly kind to their charges. Where is the healthy shouting, romping, dirt-pie-making, without which childhood seems so unnatural ? English mothers, do not bring out your children, whatever their age, to Hong Kong except under dire necessity. They will not drop off suddenly, but they will inevitably droop and pine, and drift into weakly health, which not improbably may permanently affect them. Then is the station so very unhealthy ? Yes — very unhealthy for a prolonged residence, though not deadly, and not subjected to the devastating epidemics of cholera and fever except at long intervals. Only that minority whose constitutions apparently defy all unfavourable conditions escapes scathless. The HONG KONG. 29 majority of the men, nearly all the women and the children without exception, succumb more or less, sooner or later, to the enervating effects of severe heat combined with extreme steamy humidity. Dysentery, fever, liver, or a general break down ensues, and it is out of the question to re-establish health thoroughly here after such attacks — a voyage to other climes is inevitable. The most favourable admission I could extort from impartial and experienced witnesses was that Hong Kong is not unfavourable to asthmatic, bronchial, and other pulmonary complaints, provided the health of the patient be maintained unimpaired in every other respect. Truly this is damning with faint praise. In indignant refutation of the above verdict, the remarkably low death rate is frequently quoted as being actually lower than that of temperate and admittedly healthy regions. An illusory argument. All whose circumstances admit fly to other climes as soon as they sicken, for the only question then is w^hether they will be carried away from the island or on the island. During the first years indeed of English occupancy. Hong Kong was little better than a charnel house, in proof whereof we have only to quote the records of the ' Happy Valley.' The neces- sity for climatic precautions was not recognised ; the appalling system of Chinese drainage, or rather the entire absence of all drainage, exercised to the full its pestilential effects ; and, moreover, it was only dis- 30 ENGLISH CHINA. covered by degrees that the wholesale turning up of the ground for building purposes involved a disintegration of the red granite, and the consequent emanation of fatal mephitic vapours. This last evil has now subsided with diminished building, but even now old stagers are careful to avoid loitering about recently ex- cavated ground, as fraught with more or less risk of an attack of fever. Sanitary measures have done much to obviate the other sources of sickness. To sum up I would say : fairly strong people encounter only an average amount of risk, provided their stay is not to extend over a considerable length of time, and provided, above all, they are prepared to quit the island on the first clearly marked development of ill health. I must, however, warn you of the probable ungenerous treatment of your friends when you first return as an invalid. They will make no allowances for the invigorating sea voyage, change of air and scene, and unless you are carried on shore on a stretcher or hobble about on crutches, you will be regarded as a rank impostor. To pass from the locality to the English inhabit- ants thereof, to the general composition of the society. Here we find a small number of heads of banks or of wealthy mercantile houses, whose energy and ability have so largely contributed to raise the colony to its present condition of prosperity. Pleasing in manner, of enlarged ideas, and the essence of liberality, their presence is a credit to Hong Kong — would be an HONG KONG. 31 honour to any community in the world. Then we have a small sprinkling of able administrators from the mother country, a larger proportion of Anglo- Chinese officials whose views scarcely range beyond the town of Victoria, and a number of clerks whose thoughts are engrossed with dollars, and who are seek- ing their fortunes, which probably will be ultimately largely swallowed up in drink, play, and rowdyism. There is, however, a corrective leaven in the shape of the military element, which represents by far the greater proportion of the educated and gentlemanlike stratum. As to the Hong Kong women, born and bred there, the most charitable criticism is that their attractions are on a par with their scanty numbers, and that those with whom an English gentleman would care to exchange two words of conversation are rari nantes in gurgite vasto. Let me detail the ordinary experience of a local dinner-party. You are carried to your destination in a sedan-chair, like a Guy Fawkes, by a couple of coolies struggling with native energy under your English weight — an average Chinese rarely exceeds nine stone. You find the guests — men in black alpaca evening dress or in white jackets and trousers — assembled in lofty spacious rooms furnished with every luxury compatible with a maximum of coolness. The dinner table is a beautiful mass of flowers and foliage arranged by the native servants with native care and skill, and with a taste which they have 30 ENGLISH CHINA. covered by degrees that the wholesale turning up of the ground for building purposes involved a disintegration of the red granite, and the consequent emanation of fatal mephitic vapours. This last evil has now subsided with diminished building, but even now old stagers are careful to avoid loitering about recently ex- cavated ground, as fraught with more or less risk of an attack of fever. Sanitary measures have done much to obviate the other sources of sickness. To sum up I would say : fairly strong people encounter only an average amount of risk, provided their stay is not to extend over a considerable length of time, and provided, above all, they are prepared to quit the island on the first clearly marked development of ill health. I must, however, warn you of the probable ungenerous treatment of your friends when you first return as an invalid. They will make no allowances for the invigorating sea voyage, change of air and scene, and unless you are carried on shore on a stretcher or hobble about on crutches, you will be regarded as a rank impostor. To pass from the locality to the English inhabit- ants thereof, to the general composition of the society. Here we find a small number of heads of banks or of wealthy mercantile houses, whose energy and ability have so largely contributed to raise the colony to its present condition of prosperity. Pleasing in manner, of enlarged ideas, and the essence of liberality, their presence is a credit to Hong Kong — would be an HONG KONG. 31 honour to any community in the world. Then we have a small sprinkling of able administrators from the mother country, a larger proportion of Anglo- Chinese officials whose views scarcely range beyond the town of Victoria, and a number of clerks whose thoughts are engrossed with dollars, and who are seek- ing their fortunes, which probably will be ultimately largely swallowed up in drink, play, and rowdyism. There is, however, a corrective leaven in the shape of the military element, which represents by far the greater proportion of the educated and gentlemanlike stratum. As to the Hong Kong women, born and bred there, the most charitable criticism is that their attractions are on a par with their scanty numbers, and that those with whom an English gentleman would care to exchange two words of conversation are rari nantes in gurgite vasto. Let me detail the ordinary experience of a local dinner-party. You are carried to your destination in a sedan-chair, like a Guy Fawkes, by a couple of coolies struggling with native energy under your English weight — an average Chinese rarely exceeds nine stone. You find the guests — men in black alpaca evening dress or in white jackets and trousers — assembled in lofty spacious rooms furnished with every luxury compatible with a maximum of coolness. The dinner table is a beautiful mass of flowers and foliage arranged by the native servants with native care and skill, and with a taste which they have 32 ENGLISH CHINA. borrowed from their masters. The Chinese attendants with their pigtails and white, fresh-looking, flowing robes, glide noiselessly, ra.pidly about, the perfection of waiters whom no European can match. You have, however, according to custom, brought with you your * boy,' whose special function it is to attend to your wants. The cool puffs from the waving punkahs give a slight spur to your moribund appetite. The cooking is excellent in spite of the difficulty that the meat having been killed the same day, the tissues are apt to be as hard as death stiffened them ; the wines even better. So far good ; but the dinner, which ought to lubricate conversation, soon turns out a dreary affair, and hangs fire terribly. The current momentous incidents of the world, including those of the vast adjacent Chinese Empire, politics, literature, and even educated small talk, are almost ignored, save in a few exceptionally favourable houses, and the topics are limited to inquiries as to how you like the colony, to sordid matters of dollars, to racing speculations, and to spiteful petty scandal. Nor can you take a greedy refuge in the enjoyment of your food. Your appetite allows you little more than to trifle with it, at least until dessert time arrives, when your spirits are raised by the wealth of mangoes, pineapples, leichees, pummelows and bananas, which amply com- pensate, I maintain in opposition to general received opinions, for the absence of English strawberries and peaches. HONG KONG. 33 Cigars, more sleepy talk in the drawing-room, and at an early hour you escape from this house of enter- tainment as from a prison. Outside, the carriage equipage certainly amuses you. There are clustered knots of patient squatting coolies with their sedan- chairs. The ladies and gentlemen emerge, each one steps into his or her own vehicle, which is then hoisted on to the bearers' shoulders, and in strings, or side by side, according as the occupants wish to converse, they are borne off at a rapid jog, two large coloured Chinese lanterns swinging from each set of poles, and gradually disappearing in the darkness of the steep, winding road. Let us avail ourselves of this comparatively cool opportunity and make our way home on foot. The thoroughfares are solitary and silent as the grave, for the Chinese are forbidden, with a Kussian sort of despotism, to wander abroad after 9 p.m. unless provided with a special police permit. We only meet with an occasional red-turbaned, white-clothed Sikh policeman, swarthy, stealthy, and stalwart, provided with a dark lantern and a loaded carbine which he handles somewhat ostentatiously at the approach of footsteps. 'Easy, my friend, with that weapon of yours,' with a slightly jumpy sensation. Neverthe- less this guardianship is expedient, and was abso- lutely necessary a short time ago, when knots of Chinese footpads would, without a moment's hesita- tion, have robbed and made away with any belated D 34 ENGLISH CHINA. Englishman. It is still the practice for a policeman at the wharf invariably to take down the number of any sampan hired to convey a diner-out to one of the men-of-war, lest the rowers should revert to their former favourite practice of suddenly lowering the awning, scragging the passenger beneath, rifling him, and then pitching his body overboard. Our experience of Hong Kong society at this season of the year will, however, be comparatively limited, inasmuch as nine-tenths of those who can afford the expense take refuge from the heat at the cooler *Peak,' a sharply defined range of mountains overhanging the town, and nearly 2,000 feet high. There they betake themselves with their families about the end of May, and do not return to their town residences until October, making the journey backwards and forwards daily to their hongs, or places of business. We have been asked to dine and sleep at one of these mountain chalets, and at 5 o'clock one swelter- ing afternoon we make a start in a sedan-chair, wherein also is stored our baggage, and which is borne by four coolies, for the ordinary team of two would here be quite insufficient for the tremendous work in hand. The path is so steep that it can only attain its objective point by incessant turns and returns, and so narrow that during a considerable portion of the time we are half-swinging over giddy precipices. Our coolies struggle on valiantly, the HONG KONG. 35 two rear bearers being careful to keep out of step with the two leaders, and thus converting the move- ment of our chair from a tiring tilting into a pleasant swing. How horny must be the soles of their feet, which are either entirely unprotected from these sharp rocks and flints, or at most are shod with thin open- work grass slippers. The sun beats down on their tanned carcases, the poles press heavily on their poor protruding shoulder-blades, which are sometimes kneaded into black and blue, and we almost feel a» sensation of shameful sloth at thus taking our ease, while four human beings are slaving under our weight. But they themselves, totally indifferent to heat and fatigue, are jubilant over their remunerative task, and are quite content if we will occasionally wait for a few minutes while the relative positions of the bearers are changed, or while they regain their breath squatting on their hams at one of the broadened angles of the path. After nearly an hour's toil we are at the summit of the range, whence the bird's-eye view certainly is incomparable. On one side and at our very feet is Kowloon, with its encircling framework of mainland mountains ; the harbour swarming with gigantic vessels, whereof I have often counted as many as fifty, exclusive of myriads of junks ; the town and its beautiful slopes. Still higher are the web-like tracings of the mountain tracks, the splashing burns, and the alternate shades of green ferns and scrub, D 2 36 ENGLISH CHINA. and bright azaleas glowing in wild profusion. Creep- ing up the hills are innumerable specks showing the merchants returning in their chairs from their daily labours. As we peer over the reverse side of the range we see the blue expanse of the China Sea, dotted with numerous rugged volcanic islets. Closer in are isthmuses, bays, and villages, which are exceedingly picturesque provided you keep at a distance, and un- utterably filthy if you approach them closely. Scat- tered all over the jagged summit are low, straggling bungalows, simplex mundiiiis, which English taste and coolie labour have rendered gems of picturesqueness among the rough mountainous beauties of nature. Then how delightful is the eight or ten degrees of cooler temperature ! We are no longer stifled and depressed ; we pluck up spirits, vigour and appetite ; we actually welcome a single blanket at night. The Peak is the sanatorium of Hong Kong. Its drawback is the damp, the effects of which are astonishing and vexatious. In a week's time books and clothing are ruined, papers and bindings are transformed into pulp, linen is hopelessly mildewed, and the only alternative to the complete ruin of all such property is a perpetual drying at a large glow- ing stove. Our return journey will be most comfortably per- formed by a start at 9 o'clock the next morning. Plenty of society on the way, for strings of business men are streaming down in their chairs in single file. HONG KONG. 37 Some carry on a shouting bothering conversation with those in front or in rear, some con their business papers, and some are immersed in books. The trans- formation from the mountain coolness to the valley heat is like stepping into the kitchen boiler, and hence many consider that the advantages of cool nights a,t the Peak are more than counterbalanced by the contrasts of temperature, and by various other attendant inconveniences. There is one serious subject of annoyance connected with the island which I cannot pass over in silence : the insect life. The inexperienced will pronounce the place an elysium if its troubles are to be measured by such a standard of comparison, which he will liken to the advertiser's warning, that the only drawbacks to his country place are the littering of the rose leaves and the hubbub of the nightingales. But the expe- rienced stager will burst forth with the eager declara- tion that this evil, though infinitesimally small in its single instance, when incessantly repeated, involves a disgust and a bodily discomfort which cannot be ignored. The butterflies are undoubtedly of sur- prisingly varied and beautiful hues ; the myriad swarms of dragon-flies, which so mysteriously portend the approach of a typhoon, are local and can be ' dodged ; ' but the cockroaches, enormous brown creatures twice the size of an English black beetle, twice as nimble, alternately flying and running, here, there, and everywhere ; eating up bodily the bindings 38 ENGLISH CHINA. of your books and all leather work, rnmmagin^ through and devastating your clothes, and, worse than all, intruding their huge loathsome bodies on to the tablecloth, up your sleeves or down your neck. I have seen an assemblage of middle-aged officers, some of whom had faced shot and shell, rise in simultaneous dismay at dinner, angrily shout for coolies, and decline to resume their seats until a pigtailed myrmidon, pur- suing the agile disgusting insect monster like a terrier pursuing a rat, has triumphantly proclaimed, ' Hab kill 'um ! ' Then the nasty fat-stomached spiders are of Brobdingnag proportions, and surely one may shud- der at centipedes without affectation. Of snakes, there are some cobras and other scarcely less venomous sorts in the island, but we are not often brought face to face with them. The Chinese have a terror of reptiles which is almost morbid. One twilight evening I narrowly escaped treading on one in the prettiest of the Botanical Garden walks. * Snek ! ' screamed a solitary Chinaman standing by, sj)ringing into the air with affright, and excitedly dancing about at a cautious distance, while I performed the easy task of dispatching it. The frogs are more noisy in their croakmg than even a chorus of their congeners called ' Canadian Nightingales.' During the daily few- minutes of twilight they set up a series of short barks so loud that it would seem almost impossible such a noise could be emitted by so small a creature. Eeally it resembles the yapping of a Skye terrier, yet HONG KONG. 39 herein their powers are far exceeded by the tree- cricket, a single one of which will worry one past en- durance with its never-ceasing chirp, so like the rasp of a grindstone that they are locally termed scissors grinders. The noise is produced by the vibration of a horny spring affixed to the stomach. It has been calculated that if a human being in London could shout as loudly in proportion to his size as an Eng- lish cricket, he would be audible at St. Petersburg. It is certain that with a similar comparison of magnitude with these brown Hong Kong creatures, which are about as large as a black beetle, the voice could be heard at the antipodes. Crickets are often kept in jars by the Chinese for fighting purposes, wherein they are considered superior even to the pugnacious quail. At Canton I saw a man tending a collection of these insect captives on which large sums are habitually staked. Sometimes a gigantic green grasshopper, with hind legs serrated like a saw and capable of inflicting a nasty scratch, will come in banging with enormous jumps against the lamp, startling the guests as he falls with a thud on the dinner-table. Foremost, too, in nastiness are the ants. At a certain season they develop wings and are attracted in myriads by the gleam of a light — to perform suttee ? Nothing half so convenient. A moment or two after alighting they convulsively wriggle their legs and bodies, ending by stripping themselves of their large wings which in- 40 ENGLISH CHINA. \ stinct prompts them to cast. Thus we have platefuls of their filthy old clothes, while the original owners scamper off on their own hind legs into every possible corner. Purely an ideal sentiment of disgust ? Well, at all events you cannot say as much for the mus- quitoes. A naturalist has discovered that these ubiquitous and indefatigable assassins have their jaws furnished with seven miniature working implements, whereof one is a gimlet, two are lancets, and two saws, by which means they can with the greatest ease stab through thin drawers or silk stockings. Stifled with your musquito curtains, you throw aside their protect- ing segis, or drop off in the daytime in your chair for five minutes, or engrossed in writing, ignore the heralding hum of their sinister intentions. Forthwith you are aware of a number of tiny red spots on your body : twelve hours after you begin to scratch unless, indeed, you are possessed of heroic fortitude ; big lumps, as though from hornets' stings, make their appearance ; again you scratch like a madman, fingers are of no use, nothing but a rusty nail will serve your turn. Most people prefer positive pain to extreme irritation, and if you are one of them, pour a little ammonia into the torn-open bite. It is true you will dance about the room for ten minutes afterwards, but this pain is less severe than, say, the extraction of a tooth, and the intolerable itching will have ceased. I have known soldiers incapacitated from duty and admitted into hospital owing to a musquito bite. But my fullest HONG KONG. 41 sympathy is reserved for the poor women. I have noticed them at dinner-parties, first their eyes wandering aggravatingly in the midst of one's most eager sentences, then almost perspiring with unre- lieved itching, and at last, desperately casting to the winds all conventionality, set to work scratching with might and main arm or — ankle, like the veriest coolie. The Sunday aspect of Hong Kong is represented almost exclusively by service at the cathedral, practi- cally the sole parish church, although divine service is habitually held in other buildings improvised for the purpose. The home sound of the church-going bells falls pleasantly on our ears ; a concourse of English people are wending their way thither, a few in rickshas but more in chairs, especially women. Inside and outside the building is all that could be reasonably wished ; architecturally handsome, fitted up with good taste, comfortable, large and roomy ; almost sadly roomy indeed, since the space available for about 2,000 is only occupied by a scanty congregation of four or five hundred. The majority of our countrymen seem to have left their religion behind them in England. In every point of view, practical and theoretical, it is but coldly regarded here, and it is a poor plea to retort that a large proportion of the shepherds are idle and inferior. At first we are bewildered at the novelty of the scene, chiefly due to oriental expedients for 42 ENOLISH CHINA. obviating the heat and discomfort which otherwise would render attention to the service impracticable. Each seat in the wide spacious pews is partitioned off to prevent neighbours crushing on to each other. Men and women are dressed in the lightest, whitest, and airiest of costumes ; there some ten or twelve natives, forming a strange contrast in their national costumes, have been persuaded thither by the mission- aries. Eows of gigantic punkahs, extending completely across the interior, wave aloft with solemn graceful movement, and with each wave send forth streams of fresh air which render the cathedral the coolest place in Hong Kong ; the heathen Chinee, pigtailed, barefooted, and only just saved from nakedness by a light robe thrown loosely across his shoulders, is monotonously tugging at the punkah ropes through- out the entire service, occasionally refreshing himself by a supplementary flourish of his own hand-fan. He is stolid, unobservant, and un wondering, in the midst of music which he considers harsh, and worship which he considers fetish. The place seems in externals to resemble a Moorish mosque as much as an English church. And yet in these antipodes the familiar hymns and the incomparably beautiful prayers of our simple service stir up many a thought of our own far- off village churches. Once a week there sounds in Hong Kong a note which thrills with the effect of magic. We will suppose ourselves at a large luncheon-party, a sub- HONG KONa. 43 stantial mid-day meal, here ranking almost first in eating proportions. Suddenly there is a roar from a cannon which makes the windows rattle and re-echoes over the distant mountains. In an instant the party is spell-bound in profound silence. ' What is it ? ' we whisper interrogatively to our next-door neighbour, and he answers in an undertone, ' The gun at the Peak is signalling that the English mail is in sight.' Ah ! that sound is indeed a harbinger of joy or a knell of grief. Perhaps that girl's face brightens with eager expectation, or that young fellow's mouth is twitching with the sorrow of the recollection that his nearest and dearest no longer exist to cheer him with a sight of their handwriting. Perhaps that middle-aged man's face grows anxious and overcast in dread anticipation lest he should be about to learn of some calamity which has befallen absent wife or children ; at all events, everyone is stricken with silence, and though after a few minutes the conversation resumes its course, it is forced and abstracted. Each is anxious to get away, to receive and read in solitude the letters of weal or woe which will be shortly delivered to him, and which will darkly or brightly tinge his existence for at least the next week. To enter into some further details of social life. Among the natural productions of the country, the very best and foremost is the race of Chinese servants, or ' boys ' as they are invariably called, whether their age be sixteen or sixty : very quick in learning their 4-1 ENGLISH CHINA. business, sharp all round, clean, attentive, and for the most part singularly honest, so far that they will suffer no one but themselves to pilfer their masters, and that their own depredations are limited to certain recognised ' squeezing ' or extortion in commission. Each one makes the general and particular cha- racter of his master his special study — sometimes to a very amusing extent. The first day I engaged my *boy,' I had carelessly tossed my hat into one corner of the room, gloves on the bed, a stump of pencil at an acute angle with one corner of the mantel- piece, and a pipe at the other corner. For many successive days I found hat, gloves, stump of pencil and pipe carefully deposited in exactly the same spot and at precisely the same angle. He has a proper idea of his own dignity derived from a carefully considered estimate of the status of his master. For instance, he holds a lieutenant in contempt in com- parison with a major, and while he will condescend to do no rough work himself, he takes care that the coolie hired as slavey fulfils every imaginable require- ment to render his master comfortable. He is never by any chance drunk ; he is never in the way or never out of the way ; and in fact is so admirable as to render subsequent experience of the average English man-servant odious. Again, in the transac- tion of minor matters of business with which they may be entrusted, they show a great deal of zeal and aptitude — indeed it is necessary to bew^are lest they HONG KONG. 45 exceed instructions, as in the case of the following local Joe Miller. The Chinese heing totally unable to pronounce our English names with any proximity to accuracy, it is customary for a visitor, even though well known, to send up his card in advance, and it is quite allow- able during the hot siesta hours for the * boy' to bring back the message * no can see.' ' Here is that stupid Mr. Smith,' says the lady to her husband. * Oh, do not let the snob in,' is the drowsy reply. Accordingly the *boy' thus delivers himself to the self-complacent Smith : ' No can see. Master say you snob. Missus-ee say you plenty too much fool-o.' In travelling, the value of the Chinese servant becomes still more apparent. In most steamers the native 'boy' of an Englishman is conveyed free, and whether on board ship, in a , hotel, or as a guest in a private residence, you never have a moment's trouble about his food, lodging, or comfort. You may be quite sure he will turn up at exactly the right moment, encumbered only with a small handbox and a large pile of bedding, on which latter, however, he bestows extreme care. After he has attended to your com- fort, off he marches with the above bedding to the servants' domain, where he at once makes himself at home. An occasional few friendly words will estab- lish your mutual relations on the most pleasant foot- ing, though as for gratitude, do not delude yourself with any such futile expectation, however constant 46 ENGLISH CHINA. and prolonged may have been your kindness. Grati- tude is a plant which does not exist for twenty-four hours in the mental flora of the Chinese. A hairs' breadth of advantage will instantly counterbalance the friendship and obligations of years, and he will throw you over without a grain of regret. The mistress of an English household, tormented for years with the worries of legs of mutton, soap, and candles, enters on a period of holiday in these details when she lands in China. A few directions in the morning to the comprador or native family agent will provide for the whole of the daily requirements of the dining-room. This sleek long-tailed major-domo has a sort of secret freemasonry tie with every native tradesman in the place, but he suffers no one but himself to cheat his employer. The servants cater for their own food, and stow themselves away in myste- rious multiplicity in sleeping nooks according to their own fashion. Apparently they altogether ignore our own exigencies in the matter of space. There is, however, one shady side to the above picture — the language. It is exceedingly vexatious to be compelled to deal with that miserable substitute Pidgin ^ English — not, remember, the imperfect broken jargon of foreigners, but a hybrid gibberish interspersed with a variety of bastard Chinese or Portuguese terms concocted by our nation when we first took possession, on a supposition about as reasonable as would be the • The Chinese pronunciation of ' business.' HONG KONG. 47 idea of an Auvergnafc patois being more comprehen- sible to a stranger than Parisian French. That dreadful pidgin is almost a new language, the basis of which is the conversion of every r into an I, adding final vowels to each word/ and the constant use of certain argot expressions. An * American ' is rendered ' Mellican man ' ; * savvy ' means ' to know,' from the Portuguese ' sabe.' * Speak ' is ' talkee ' ; ' piece ' * piecee ' ; exalted ' rank ' or * excellent,' * number one ' ; * do you understand ' and * that will answer the purpose ' are both translated * can do.' ' Pidgin ' means business in the most varied and illimitable extent of the word; 'joss' means 'religion.' Their periphrases are certainly sometimes rather ingenious. A paddle steamer is ' outside- walkee-can-see,' a screw, ' inside-walkee-no-can-see.' The Chinese designate the officer commanding the Royal Artillery as ' number- one-big-gun-man,' the commanding Engineer as ' number-one-bricklayer-man,' the Bishop of Hong Kong as ' number-one-topside-heaven-pidgin-man,' and really there is no burlesque in the rendering of by My name is Nerval. On the Grampian hills My father feeds his flock . . . My name belong Norval, topside that Glampian hillee My father he chow-chow he sheep-ee. The jargon has now taken a firm root and consti- tutes an indispensable acquirement, for until you can fluently speak, and, far more difficult, understand it 48 ENGLISH CHINA. readily when rapidly slurred over in a monotonous tone of voice, all communication with the servants is a source of constant vexation and misunderstanding. It is urged that if we ourselves were to persist in grammatical English, our employes would soon fall into the way of it. I tried the experiment individu- ally, and it was a dead failure. To be successful, it must be unanimous throughout the community, and to expect this is clearly out of the question. No ; the language is a small thorn in one's side. To attempt to pick up Chinese would, in nineteen cases out of twenty, be a deplorable waste of time, as I will en- deavour to show in a subsequent chapter. Even the pidgin is confined to a small fraction who are in direct communication with Europeans ; the street multitudes of the Treaty Ports do not know a single sentence. French, very rarely spoken even in the F.rench settle- ments, though broken, is not pidgin ; German, Italian, ^nd Spanish are totally unknown to the Chinese. Let us not fall into the frequent English error of dismissing with a mere allusion the native population. True, their submission to the behests of our autho- rities is of a spaniel nature, but inasmuch as for every European resident there are about forty-five Chinese, it is evident that on the latter must largely depend the commercial prosperity and social order of the colony. We set out on a tour of exploration of that part of Victoria which is exclusively occupied by the natives, and is known as * China Town.' On our way we traverse a sort of intervening neutral terri- HONG KONO. 49 tory, the Portuguese quarter — ' Geese,' as they are called in the abbreviation of contempt — a little nucleus of a singularly effete and deteriorated Iberian popula- tion. The women, with traces of mantilla and national costume, missal in hand, are dawdling and gossiping on their return from vespers. The mother-tongue has been maintained fairly unimpaired. The men are modern Portuguese, worn-out descendants of valiant ancestors ; the Senhoritas have bartered part of their national beauty, so entrancing at sixteen years of age, for a Chinese cast of countenance which has ruined the original ; the crones are more haggish than in Pyrenean Spain ; and the muddy- complexioned children, many of whom are the hybrid offspring of effete Portuguese fathers and half caste native mothers, arouse a disgust not entertained towards the pure- blooded Chinese children. Farther on, and we are in the native quarter, quite unlike any of the Chinese cities which I subse- quently visited in the interior, still more unlike any European town, and perhaps the best specimen ex- tant of the possible amelioration of the aborigines under a wise and energetic civilisation. The front part of the houses is entirely open, the upper stories are built with inconsistently handsome balconies, and the exteriors are decorated with oriental colour and gilding which produce rather an imposing effect. Nowhere is there a trace of a chimney or a glass window. There is the usual 'bouquet de Chinois,' 50 ENGLISH CHINA. chatter, and nakedness, but the wares are abundant and of fairly substantial value, and throughout there is an evidence of prosperity and order for which we may search in vain in Canton, Foochow, or Hankow. A large open area, half market, half recreation ground, is thronged with natives, some hucksters, some con- jurors, and some fat old fellows simply taking their pleasure fanning themselves in unclothed indolence. The skinny coolie is a queer sight ; the obese idler is a marvel, with roll upon roll of layers of fat upon his portentous stomach thicker than would be revealed by incision in a sleek oily seal. Englishmen so seldom penetrate into China Town that we are looked at with sm-prise, but are treated with perfect civility. One street, * Kum Lung,' illustrates by its nomenclature the curious transformation of words by the mere lapse of time. It was much frequented during the early years of the colony by English sailors, and * Come along. Jack,' was the persuasive greeting addressed to them by the female denizens. This phrase became modified into ' Kum lung,' which in Chinese happens also to signify ' Eed Dragon,' and when names were painted in both languages on the corners of the thoroughfares, the place was designated as ' Kum Lung ' and ' Eed Dragon ' Street, by which term it is now known. Thus far we have been dealing with normal Hong Kong — with its resident European and native popula- tion. But it contains in addition an important HONG KONG. 51 element, that of the military, without which the colony would lapse into an aggregate of traders at the mercy of the adjacent, ill-governed, overwhelmingly numerous brutish Chinese nation. Not only does the garrison serve to safeguard English interests in a constant condition of a contingent crisis where ex- traneous aid is too remote to be available ; not only does it give the character of a slice of our empire to this farthest advanced British outpost ; but by its mere presence it establishes a nucleus of administration and order, of civilisation and educated society. The normal strength is a battalion of infantry, one and sometimes two batteries of artillery, and a section of the militarj^ departmental adjuncts. We have no reason to be ashamed of the general appearance of our soldiers here, for the immature weeds have been left behind in England, and the chosen residue look very striking in their clean well-ordered array, of course enormously favoured by their contrast with the rabble rout around them. The Queen's birthday parade presented a so strongly mixed oriental and occidental aspect that I am tempted to describe it in detail. The site is a slope of bright green turf in the middle of the town, stretching down to the water's edge, shaded with rows of banyan trees, and overshadowed by the cathedral and lofty, eastern-looking public buildings, with an adjacent background of rugged mountains. Here is drawn up the single line of British soldiers, white in E 2 52 ENGLISH CHINA. feature and still more white in their snowy tunics and helmets. Their bayonets glitter in the bright clear light, though eventide is now approaching; their carefully dressed, serried ranks are motionless, their mere silence and immobility in the midst of the noisy crowd imparting to them an imposing and masterful air. For patches of colour we have the red-turbaned swarthy Sikhs scattered along the margin and keep- ing the ground. A few English ladies and their sickly stalky olive-branches gather languidly round the saluting flag, while on every advantageous spot in the neighbourhood, level ground, mounds, walls, windows, verandahs, and housetops, are clustered in hive-like swarms a multitude composed of numerous nationalities. The black-coated, respectable Parsee gentlemen, who, but for their foolscap-shaped head- dresses, might be mistaken for Europeans with a dab of the tar-brush ; the solemn-looking Arabs with their beards dyed red, such as were the associates of Haroun al Easchid ; mongrel Portuguese ; here and there a Hindoo or a negro, and an overwhelming multitude of Chinese, unanimous in their pigtails, but in every descending stage of deshabille, or rather nakedness. The General (Lt.-Gen. J. Sargent) comes on the ground, and forthwith is carried out a ceremonial which bears with it a strange aspect under such novel circumstances. A salute of twenty-one guns from the volunteer field-battery echoes over the mountains ; the crack of the feu de joie rolls up and down the HONG KONG. 53 ranks, and the magnificent * God save the Queen ' almost justifies the legendary remark of the Indian potentate, ' Is your sovereign a divinity that you worship her with such music ? ' The native popula- tion, which has hitherto been jabbering like talking machines, is instantly hushed into wondering silence w^hich lasts throughout the operations. Then comes the trooping of the colours, when ' Meet me by moon- light,' and ' 'Tis my delight of a shiny night,' played by the band marching down the line, arouses curious mixed emotions, half smiles and half sighs. Finally, the march past in the now rapidly deepening twilight by the mathematically dressed companies, with their regular tramp and their resolute warlike demeanour, convince us that this 'thin white line,' notwithstand- ing its tenuity, would without difficulty cut through and through like a razor any aggregate thousands of Chinese soldiery in the open. While guarding against the folly of despising an enemy, it is not, surely, too much to say that the idea of these miserable wretches offering any serious resistance in a fair stand-up fight, seems preposterous beyond measure. Nor is this view confuted by the recent ill success of the French. They were baffled by sun, sw^amp, sickness, and mal- administration, certainly not by the fighting powers of their antagonists. Once more let us turn to a military display, but of an exactly converse nature — a soldier's funeral. Most of us are acquainted with its impressive sim- 54 ENGLISH CHINA. plicity at home, and here too is the * Dead March ' with its funeral cadence, the firing party with reversed arms, the lengthened files of the deceased's comrades, the coffin borne on the gun-carriage with the Union Jack, the dead soldier's helmet and bayonet. But the white clothing of our men, the red-turbaned Lascar gunners dragging the carriage in default of horses through the grotesquely built native streets, the crowd of ugly chattering Chinese, unmoved in their grinning materialism by the saddest strains of music and the most touching form of ceremonial, present additional features which almost make us feel as if we were taking part in some dream pageant. We reach the * Happy Valley,' and here we can shake off these vermin. The coffin is borne on soldiers' shoulders through those beauteous groves of which I have already spoken ; the long white procession winds slowly up the mountain side, standing out clear against the varied green and red dazzling tropical foliage ; the three volleys are fired with an effect augmented by the echo ; the drums beat the Point of War, * Fall in. Quick March,' and homewards to a lively tune. For aught I know, technicalities may render the scene unsuitable for a painter's delinea- tion, but as an episode in real life no human inge- nuity could devise a more extraordinarily impressive combination of sight, sound, and circumstance. Are deaths among the soldiers frequent? No — although the hospital returns are startlingly high, HONG KONG. 55 and I have had as many as 20 per cent, of my battery on the sick Hst, during part of a season by no means exceptionally unhealthy, and with every con- ceivable precaution for the preservation of health. The patients are sent off to the roomy hospital ship, ' Meanee,' a teak-built three-decker, which formerly belonged to the East India Company ; should they continue to droop in spite of the sea air, they are transferred to the cool sanatorium high up on the * Peak ; ' and should this fail, they are unhesitatingly invalided home. The precautions taken by the military combatant authorities to avert sickness are wisely minute and incessant, inasmuch as the conveyance of each soldier to China costs the Imperial Government about lOOL ; but they involve such apparent though necessary pampering that a new comer will in his inexperience bristle with horror. The men are strictly prohibited stirring out of barracks between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. during the hot season ; or if some emergency renders the despatch of a European orderly necessary, he is pro- vided with an immense sun-parasol, a certain number of which are furnished by the commissariat. To wear a forage cap instead of a helmet before sunset is a punishable offence, and inspections are held to ascer- tain that each man has on a cholera belt. Barrack accommodation is luxuriously spacious — commissariat coolies are told off to work punkahs in orderly rooms, schools, workshops, and guard-rooms during the day, 56 ENGLISH CHINA. and during the night in the barrack-rooms — though, as an old gunner explained to me in one pregnant sentence, * Them punkah coolies are not of much count, sir, unless you keep a boot handy by your bedside ' — i.e. to use as a missile. The following may be taken as a fair sample of Gunner Thomas Atkins' daily routine during the hot months. At 5 a.m. he awakes with a soft punkah breeze fanning him. 5.15. Cup of cocoa and a biscuit brought to his bedside by a coolie. (N.B. A silver salver is dispensed with.) 5.30. The barber coolie shaves him, still in bed. 6. Bathing parade. 7.30. Breakfast, of which Jib. of beef-steak forms an invariable component. 8 to 11. Nothing what- ever to do, and plenty to help him to do it — the everlasting coolies perform nearly all the cooking, sweeping, and cleaning up in barracks. 11. A short spell of school and theoretical instruction in gunnery. After dinner unanimous repose on bamboo matting, as being cooler than a mattress. 5 p.m. One hour's easy gun-drill. 6 to 10. Sally forth to chaff the Chinese folk, try a trifle of ' samshu,' and practically ascertain that this potent rice spirit will prostrate with splitting headache the seasoned old soaker to whom a tumbler of brandy would be but as a glass of water. In fact during the hot weather he merely mounts guard, and is available for emergencies ; in the cool season he is of course made to rub up his drill. His idle life is not a happy one, destitute as it HONG KONG. 5l is to him of interest and active amusements, and in a very short time he becomes listless, depressed and pulled down, contrasting painfully with his newly landed, fresh-looking comrades. This unfavourable condition seems to' extend to the officers. I have known it asserted that no efforts of a commanding officer can keep European troops permanently sta- tioned at Hong Kong in a state of military efficiency. As a supplement to the British force, two com- panies of gun-Lascars have been brought from India, and they form most useful adjuncts for dutfes such as orderly and fatigue, involving an exposure to the sun, which they can face with impunity, but which would surely entail sickness on Europeans. Both companies are dressed like gunners, except that the Sikhs wear turbans. The Madras company is, however, in most respects, miserably inferior to the Sikhs. Undersized, feebly built, contemptible in cast of features, they approximate to the usual type of the cringing eastern. Those splendid Punjaubees, on the other hand, of powerful physique, handsome features, grave and dignified, are fine specimens of orientals. In the bygone period of the Sikh war they put forth all their powers to try conclusions with us, and after a valiant struggle were defeated. Since then they have accepted their fate with dignity, and, without self-abase- ment, have acknowledged us as their masters. They rely with implicit faith on the justice of their British officers, and are confident in the efficacy oi an appeal 58 ENGLISH CHINA. for redress in any of their little grievances. I can imagine few prouder positions than the command of such a splendid body of men on active service. Owing, however, to the general ignorance of any language but Hindustani, and to the consequent necessity of the services of half-instructed native interpreters, adjudi- cation and administration are frequently attended with difficulties. Their diction, both written and verbal, is of an amusing grandiloquence. * Sahib,' was the translated peroration of a proud, swarthy, turbaned Sikh — nobleman, shall I call him — who con- sidered that he had been both defrauded and insulted : * I no care for dollar, I care only for shameful disgrace how I treated before all peoples.' Another, presenting a written petition for discharge, explains that he * had the determined resolution to pass my life as a soldier. But the Almighty's decision cannot be rescinded. I try to satisfy you that this is true.' Another, re- porting on a drain, says : * It (the drain) had a great, disagreeable, and bad smell, quite impure, causing the men to be in unhealthy state . . . according to the rules of sanatory.' They entertain a most exaggerated idea of the far-reaching authority of the British officer. One man draws up a petition setting forth that a girl in India to whom he had been engaged was about to be bestowed by her avaricious father on a more wealthy suitor, and praying the commanding officer to issue an injunction which would restrain the father irom such a measure for two years. HONG KONG. 59 Hong Kong harbour is well adapted for defence, and the expense of the small garrison stationed there, to which the colony annually contributes 20,0001., is money well spent. It is urged that under any cir- cumstances a landing could be easily effected on the opposite side of the island, but it must be first assumed that our fleet would be either absent or perfectly inactive ; and, secondly, granted the landing, the invaders would be compelled to fight their way against the defenders along a single road easily broken up, or to toil up to the crest of the main range of mountains. Eestricted in either case to field-j)ieces, they could, after a considerable expenditure of time and ammunition, effect a great deal of damage on the open town below ; but they could not hold it : the merchant ships would be well under the shelter of the detached forts, and if the latter were strengthened and more efficiently armed, their guns could both effectually hold the harbour and checkmate any further operations on the part of the enemy by land. These forts and batteries, six in number, even now command the narrow eastern or Lye-moon sea-pass, only a quarter-mile broad, the western entrance, which to a great extent is blocked by shoal water, and, in fact, the entire area of this incomparably splendid harbour. It is, however, greatly to be desired that the Imperial Government should resolve upon the expenditure of some small additional sum in strengthening the defences according to some reso- 60 ENGLISH CHINA. lutely carried out scheme, and thus take full advan- tage of the natural capacities for rendering this important post absolutely impregnable.^ It is worth while to cross over to the promontory of Kowloon on the Chinese mainland, acquired at the conclusion of the war of 1860 so successfully con- ducted by Sir Hope Grant, on the indisputable ground that its possession is tactically indispensable for the efficient defence of the harbour. On this strip of ground, about two miles in length and an average of three-quarters of a mile in breadth, commercial enter- prise has been so busy as to imperil the attainment of the proposed military objects. Forts and barracks have, it is true, been erected on a stunted scale, and a small detachment of infantry is habitually stationed here for rifle practice ; but docks, wharves, godowns, hongs, and villa residences have sprung up with flourishing rapidity, and every year tend more and more to elbow the military out of the field. Kowloon is occasionally resorted to during hot afternoons, as a more breezy spot where lawn tennis may be played, with the pleasant sequence of a cool return voyage in the evening across the harbour. Steam ferries ply constantly to and fro. The barren, uncultivated red ground presents a curious feature in the large patches of the sensitive * Since this was written the Home Government has taken mea- sures of a practical and comprehensive nature for rapidly putting Hong Kong in a far more efficient state of defence. TLO'^G KONG. 61 plant so well known in English hothouses. The waving of a stick over them seems to produce a withering curse as in the case of the wand of a malignant necromancer. The green plants simul- taneously quiver, shiver, shrivel, and close, showing streaks of leafless, dry, withered stalks. A steam-launch voyage round the island — the extreme length of which is eleven miles, maximum breadth five miles, and area, including Kowloon, thirty-two miles — gives us a good epitome of our survey of details. Throughout, the coast scenery is of that rugged, towering nature characteristic of igneous formations, but the back part of the island differs from the harbour side in its wide, unlandlocked expanse of the China Sea, in the rougher nature of its waters, in its precipitous little islets dotted about in every direction, and in its solitude and entire absence of all shipping save for a few piratical-looking junks, which, sallying forth from semi-hidden inlets, perpetrate abominable crimes for wretchedly small game. These wasps are, however, fairly cleared out from their former Hong-Kong haunts. Here we arrive at the little village of Stanley, in the bend of a bright, quiet, yet breezy little bay. It is now occupied by a few Chinese, in their usual tumble-down pigsties. It once formed a sanatorium, and here are the officers' quarters, the barracks, now utilised by the police, hospital, surgery, and the various accompaniments of a military establishment. But, for some occult reason, 62 ENGLISH CHINA. it was not found to answer its purpose ; and, indeed, the justice of this conclusion is justified by the terrible extent to which its unduly large cemetery was in a very short time filled. English officials have cared for these sepulchres, first whitening, then crumbling, and finally blackening under the full glare of a tropical sun, with an unfailing solicitude. The ground is trim, even as an English village churchyard, and the renovated records still tell their tale of how, say, Sergeant Smith, died of fever on 3^^ Aug*, his wife on 5*^, and their 2 children on 7*^, and so on. A large proportion of the tombstones are in memory of officers who died in China as far back as forty years ago, and whose bodies were apparently brought here for interment. Let us now apply to Hong Kong the Birmingham standard of £. s. d. — the inexorable test of receipts and expenditure. Its estimated revenue for 1884 was 1,200,000L; its expenditure, 1,190,000L; its exports to the United Kingdom in 1882 were of the value of 1,429,000Z., and its imports 3,143,000L ; and it is the only one of our colonies which, so far from being burdened with a public debt, has for many successive years been accumulating a surplus for unforeseen emergencies. In 1845 it cost the British taxpayers 50,000L plus its military expenses. Now, it draws not a farthing from the home exchequer, and actually contributes 20,000L a year towards defraying the expenses of the troops quartered in the garrison, the HONG KONG. 63 total strength of which, all told, is about 1,200 men. Its shipping, trade, and wealth are annually in- creasing, and, as already pointed out, have now assumed enormous proportions. Its local government, which is of an admii'able simplicity, is smoothly and prosperously administered by a Governor and an Executive Council of six members, aided by a Legis- lative Council of eleven — one of whom is a Chinese — nominated by the Crown. Well — have I succeeded in persuading you, even by this sketchy account, that Hong Kong is one of the most singular spots in the world ? Other localities possess their own special characteristics and as great beauties — superior of their kind they can hardly be. But this island, owing to its extreme remoteness from all centres of European civilisation, and to its strange population, which only resembles ourselves — apart from the theological point of view — in being two- footed, unfeathered, grinning mammals, possesses a novelty unequalled elsewhere. In addition to the advantages which I have already endeavoured to set forth, it is conspicuous by the fact that during the past thirty years its opulence has been increasing without a substantial check, and that, of all our vast colonial possessions, it may be considered, on the whole, as the most prosperous. Ceded in January 1841, and confirmed to us by the Treaty of Nankin, August 1842, its retention has never cost a drop of blood, or involved a single diplomatic difficulty, and 64 ENGLISH CHINA. there has never heen a breath of allegation against a harsh or unjust sway. Indeed, its large native popu- lation, far from resisting our rule, flies to us from their own misgoverned country as to a haven of rest, justice, and security. As a nation, we are in the habit of contrasting our public measures unfavourably with those of other European countries, of pro- claiming our shortcomings, of minimizing our suc- cesses. Here, at all events, we may point proudly to results, and quote Hong Kong as an instance of what may be achieved by English rule, English industry, and English integrity of administration. 65 CHAPTEK 11. A MODEL BRITISH REPUBLIC SHANGHAI. British Kepublic ! The very title sounds like a parody. Is this chapter a mere repetition of those numerous prophetic fables which endeavour to delineate the supposed conditions of existence, when England shall have learned antiquity of usage is not identical with excellence, and America that innovation is not per se amelioration ? No. I seek to draw a picture of a small British community, over 10,000 miles distant from England — a nucleus which contains the elements of importance and aggrandisement in a future when, according to modern Chinese philosophers, the history of China will be the history of the governing world, while the annals of the British Empire will be com- prised in a marginal note, to the effect that this active, intelligent race started into a sudden and ephemeral existence for a couple of thousand years, or so, and then vanished from the face of the earth. Even now, our fellow-countrymen in the Shanghai settlement, though theoretically English subjects, practically owe no allegiance to the Foreign Office, F 66 ENGLISH CHINA. Colonial Office, or Horse Guards ; the settlement ad- ministers its own government with an independence little short of that exercised by Switzerland, and, in fact, the tiny Kepublic realises the supposition of an English tribe without a sovereign. In 1884 British Eepublican Shanghai having requested British Imperial Hong Kong to send an officer to inspect their volunteers, horse, foot, and artillery, I was selected for this duty. Our stormy four-days' voyage between the two places resembled a prolonged Dover and Calais crossing, the discomfort of which no size of ship or luxury of accommodation could obviate. As we enter the Yellow Sea, the hitherto blue water assumes the colour and consistency of pea-soup ; we steam a short distance up the Yang-tsze-Kiang Kiver, the mere pronunciation of which brings on a sore throat, and arriving at its confluent the Hwangpoo, are transferred to a tug to enable us to cross the rapidly silting-up Woosung bar, which subsequently assumed importance as a tactical obstacle to French operations. We paddle through slime, amidst dark- ness and bitter cold, for about ten miles to Shanghai. Here some dozen brilliant meteors, the last efforts of that electric light which here, as elsewhere, suc- ceeded in enriching the directors and impoverishing the shareholders, reveal some large English buildings standing out in weird distinctness through the sur- rounding darkness, and the scene is rendered still SHANGHAI. 67 more striking by the sudden influx of swarms of hideous chattering Chinese cooHes springing on board from the adjacent wharf, Hke a flock of sheep through a gap. The master of the tug, thinking this influx in- opportune, quietly knocks down the foremost cooHe, and intimates his intention of bestowing similar marks of favour on the others. Were there cries of * Shame ! ' or threats of vengeance from the mob of his outraged comrades ? Oh dear no. The knocked- down coolie submissively slips away, and his outraged comrades fall back like frightened partridges. A few minutes afterwards, when the master's attention is diverted, they again swarm on board and handle the luggage with such dangerous freedom that I interpose. Merely stretching my leg across the gangway, I shout out in the ridiculous pidgin-English : * Plenty too many coolie ' ; and these men, about 120 in number, keen for hire and shrouded in darkness, who could have brushed me aside like a fly, never dream of dis- puting the self-assumed authority of the single Englishman, but submissively and instinctively fall back until, in my good pleasure, I graciously permit one or two of their number to pass. Why do I dwell on this triviality ? Because ^ I want to illustrate the fact, so incomprehensible to those who have never dwelt in the East, that a solitary resolute Englishman can cow into spaniel submissiveness, under certain circumstances, an almost unlimited number of Asiatics. F 2 68 ENGLISH CHINA. Herein, too, lies a tendency to grievous oppression, against which it behoves us to be on strict guard — that tendency on the part of Anglo-Indians to strike and ill-use those who, they well know, will never lift a finger in their defence. At Shanghai I was once rowed by some taciturn, quiet, respectable blue-jackets to a jetty crowded with native boatmen, who did not show sufficient alacrity in getting out of our way. Whereupon the blue-jackets, quite as a matter of course, metho- dically banged their heavy oars about the heads and the shoulders of the unfortunate Chinese, shoved the sampans right and left into the swiftly running river, and then the coxswain respectfully touching his hat, * Beg pardon, sir, but them Chinamen are very slow in getting out of the way unless you hurry them a bit.' Sallying forth in broad daylight, the first impres- sion on my mind is that the English part of the settlement is a collection of small palaces. No alter- nation of houses and hovels, of neatness and filth, of luxury and squalor characteristic of most Anglo- Eastern towns. The private residences, the public banks, the wholesale warehouses, and even the retail shops, are large substantial stone buildings, con- structed on a scale of absolute grandeur, externally handsomely decorated, internally equally handsomely fitted up. Along the whole frontage a broad marine parade called the ' Bund ' — I presume from the Indian SHANGHAI. 69 term Bunder — with an expanse of beautifully mown turf, slopes down to the water's edge and marks the European highway where commercial activity is at its highest. On the ^.djacent river, Hwangpoo, huge European ocean steamers are loading or discharging, while Chinese junks, Chinese sampans, and even Chinese steam-launches are fussing about in every direction. Their business-like appearance is en- hanced by the six or seven foreign ironclads show- ing their teeth in the shape of monstrous guns, but riding in dignified repose at anchor, and by some large unwieldy opium hulks freighted with a burden which many pronounce to be somewhat more deadly, and infinitely more disastrous, than 25-ton guns and 400-lb. projectiles. Then the streets are as busy as a swarm of bees. Innumerable rickshas dash along at a sustained speed which would soon distance the whole tribe of Westons and pedestrian competitors. Innumerable pairs of coolies, with burdens suspended on bamboo poles which they bear on their shoulders, shuffle eagerly along. Their weights seem perfectly back-breaking, a contingency which they recognise by the most absurd rhythmical groans which apparently solace their minds and ease their bodies. Innumerable ' chit '-carriers, with that useful contrivance a chit book, wherein the recipient of the letter signs his name, hurry to and fro, imi- tating the businesslike anxiety of the English which foreigners pronounce to be our uncomfortable charac- 70 ENGLISH CHINA, teristic, but which perhaps is merely an incident due to the fact that that which we do, we do with all our might. But where are the master minds, the irresistible potentates, in whose service these ricksha-men, these coolie labourers, these factory agents are working with an unwearied striving energy which only these pig- tailed Chinese can exercise ? There are numerous tangible signs of them, from the street lamp-post, the invariable concomitant of English settlers in the most remote regions, to the vast storehouses of wealth which line the river frontage ; but their presence in the body is comparatively rare. They are but as single salmon in a river teeming with myriads of smelts. Yet here and there the imperious subduer is seen striding through the crowds of the subdued, who carefully avoid jostling the Saxon potentate, intuitively fall back from his path, and obey his behests with the docility of well-broken spaniels towards their stern but not unkindly masters. Let us now walk round the frontier territories of our republic, which we must remember is outside, and completely separated from, the enormous adjacent native city of Shanghai. Its strict limits, indeed, comprise an area of not more than one square mile, yet within this narrow space are assembled upwards of 250,000 human beings. One side is bounded by the river, two sides by brooks, and the fourth by a dry ditch. The top of the local Piccadilly is marked by SHANGHAI. 71 its corresponding Hyde Park under the jurisdiction of the RepubHc Woods and Forests. About an acre of neatly turfed, prettily planted garden is railed in with handsome iron palings which no turbulent Reform mob has ever yet carried away. For nearly a mile the main road runs in a straight direction, then turn- ing to the right we find ourselves in the Chinese section of the European settlement. Here a vast number of natives have established themselves, re- joicingly submitting to our taxation and incompre- hensible cranks respecting sanitary laws. Some seeking that security of person and property for which they vainly search elsewhere ; some hoping to escape from the spite and tyranny of their own rulers, and others, women, about 13,000 in number, concerning whom the least said the better. Yet these immigrants under such unfavourable auspices are a thoroughly law-abiding, orderly community on the whole. Under the restrictions of the Board of Works, even the poorest streets contrast most favourably with the back slums of Bethnal Green, and in general aspect are far handsomer and wider than the handsomest and widest in the native capitals of Foochow and Canton. The walls are, it is true, the thinnest possible shells — merely the three-inch thickness of a single brick — but a brick shell must surely be deemed superior to a thick mud and dirt crust. Most wonderful of all, there is not a garbage heap within nose-shot. The thorough- fares are a marvel to all Celestials ; amply broad and 72 ENGLISH CHINA. well paved, and lighted sometimes with gas and some- times with electricity, and strikingly supplemented by the painted paper lanterns swinging in front of the windowless tenements, under the provisions of the Defence Committee they are patrolled by policemen in dress and appearance the very dittos of the London Cerberus, and differing only in being more stalwart, more useful, and less meddlesome. The densely thronged thoroughfares at first pro- duce an impression of market day, instead of a normal condition of business. The dwellings of narrow frontage but of wonderful horizontal depth — I still insist on their comparative salubrity — are packed as closely as corpses in a speculator's cemetery. The dis- gorging process never comes to an end ; the stream of human beings is incessantly pouring out of the doors into the streets and vice versa, and we can now more readily understand how in China vast seething masses are compressed into minute areas, and why the ordi- nary European rules for estimating population are in this country entirely fallacious. Here we are outside the pale of the luxurious ricksha conveyance, but the thrifty Chinaman still finds a little opening for swagger according to his notions, by means of a double-seated wheelbarrow, whereon I have seen as many as three specimens of flesh, fat, and pigtail conveyed by a single coolie, struggling, staggering, sweltering, and inwardly groaning. A few years ago, indeed, these wheelbarrows were the sole means of SHANGHAI. 73 conveyance for diners out. Now they are largely used at a fare of one cash — about twenty-five cash make a penny — by the Chinese women, and for a very suffi- cient reason. The practice of forcing their miserable feet into a shapeless mass, which is becoming less universal in Southern China, here prevails with un- abated unanimity. The push of a little finger will cause a pedestrian thus deformed to topple on one side, and the accomplishment of a few yards on their own hind legs is more formidable and tedious to them than to the traditional tortoise. It may interest Darwinites to learn that this disuse of the feet muscles has called into play those of, shall I say, the dorsal vertebrae, thus developing enormous curves which, according to Chinese taste, constitute a line of beauty, and are held in far higher estimation than mere facial attractions. Dear to the heart of the Chinese are the pursuits of bargaining, buying, and selling, but they despise any ostentatious display of their wares. Nastier, dirtier, more trumpery, and, in fact, more loathsome shops I have never seen in Whitechapel or the Seven Dials. Here is a display of cakes, of sweetmeats, and of black quivering jellies ; they remind me of child- hood's dirt pies. Here is a butcher's shop. Oh the horrors of the dangling fragments of fish, flesh, and fowl, carrion which they call food ! they would be beneath the notice of a London cat's-meat-man, while the street is ornamented with extraordinary frequency 74 ENGLISH CHINA. with the strange, artistic, cheerful productions of the coffin makers. Next crossing a bridge over a creek, I find myself in the American settlement Honkiew, a long straggling strip fairly busy and prosperous, and yet, according to the fashion of American locations, only half occupied. Indeed it bears in every lineament the stamp of its imported nationality, which, mixed up with local abo- riginal features, forms an amusing mongrel medley. Large pretentious mansions, but without any features of details ; embryo factories and incipient storehouses, not unlike a mushroom town in a Colorado clearing, indicate commercial enterprises which may result in enormous wealth or wholesale bankruptcy, for there will be no medium. The one long unfinished-looking street ambitiously called Broadway contains an excel- lent hotel and a few flourishing shops. The majority are, however, Chinese, and have accumulated their trumpery wares in true Yankee ' store ' fashion, the principal dealer proclaiming his name as * chop- dollar- Jack,' anglice 'Honest John.' In the course of my exploration of the British settlement, I pass abstractedly over a narrow stream and bridge, and in an instant am roused into con- sciousness that the scene has changed. Why, where is the business activity, where the handsome mansions, where the throng of populace ? All is languid and unenterprising. I stare in surprise. * Kue Mon- tauban ' and ' Quai des Fosses ' meet my eyes, while SHANGHAI. 7b * voulez-vous croire ' and * sapristi ' strike my ears. Oh, I see, I have wandered into the French conces- sion, spiritless, unprosperous, an instance supporting Mr. Forster's assertion in his 'Manual of Political Economy,' that of all nations who have had recourse to colonisation the English and the Chinese alone have been conspicuously successful ; a warning to other settlers ' how not to do it.' The two settlements are side by side with every possible identity of circum- stances and equality of advantages. Yet our success could scarcely be surpassed, their failure scarcely ex- ceeded. Why this remarkable contrast ? I suggest because the French national character is innately antagonistic to successful colonisation ; and this in spite of Algeria glorious as a conquest, invaluable as a military school, and disastrous as a £. s, d, transaction. At Shanghai, for example, they seem to be unable to modify their system of administration and business, suitable in Normandy and Auvergne, to meet the altered and inexorable requirements of the far East; they have tried to introduce a fraction of France and have failed. Their administration is imperious, auto- cratic, and at the same time injudiciously paternal. Enterprise and independence are strangled ; wealth and the producers of wealth drift into another habitat — unwilling to be encumbered with the vexations of official cross-questionings; official permits, official stamps and official blotting sand. Neither Europeans 76 ENGLISH CHINA. nor Chinese can endure that their private transactions should be supervised by pubHc functionaries, and consequently there is a steady flow from this atro- phied district, the French population of which does not at the utmost exceed 200, across a few feet of planking into the English settlement, where an exactly converse state of affairs results in an expanding prosperity. Still more gloomy is their outlook. Erst flourishing firms are now deplorably consumptive, the population is actually diminishing, and there is little or no young blood, fresh money, or enterprise flowing in to recuperate the ravages of a premature decay caused by over-fostering. Why, the very sergents de ville are absurdly fish out of water. The ' il est defendu,' the ozone of municipal atmosphere in France, is here amusingly out of place. The Chinese chatter and cannot comprehend ; the English mockingly grin and will not obey ; the officers of state look outraged and woe-begone, but are perforce silent. Their language scarcely finds a place in China generally ; it is rarely employed in international commerce, nor have the coolies manufactured a pidgin-French corresponding to pidgin-English. Address these officials, with a redundancy of galons and a scantiness of clean linen, in their own tongue, and the floodgates of their national garrulity will be opened ; they will feelingly expatiate on their sensation of isolation, on their aversion to a country so dissimilar to la belle France, SHANGHAI. 77 and on their longings — fatal feature in a colonist — to return to the home of their fathers. Again, at long intervals native rowdyism breaks out into a feeble spasmodic ebullition, which we English consider is best quelled by a body of police dealing whacks all round on the heads of the most noisy. But the French, with a vast amount of turmoil, turn out all their employes with rifles — unlike our- selves, they have no volunteer corps — and fire with wanton precipitancy on the mob, entailing a deplorable sacrifice of human life, and engendering much bad blood against the European community generally. An instance of the above occurred some years ago, when a new road having been marked out to run through a Joss house, the Chinese populace became turbulent. A little timely concession in slightly de- viating from the original track, even a few conciliatory words, would have calmed them down. Instead of which the French rushed to arms, and with little semblance of leadership — for they failed in dragging their consul from his refuge under the bed — they charged down the street, bayoneting on their way innocent wayfarers, and finishing up with a rain of bullets. Quitting the sombre, unprosperous-looking main thoroughfare, gardenless and Bundless, lining the river, I strike into some squalid side streets, with their names engraved Paris fashion at the corners in white porcelain on a blue ground, a trace, however slight, of 78 ENGLISH CHINA. an imported practice. Every external is strongly suggestive of an effete provincial French town. Here and there is a hairdresser, a pastry-cook, a marchand cle modes, with a shadow of their habitual taste in their window displays. But there are few shops, and those few have scarcely any customers. Dinginess, dulness, and depression of trade reign throughout. There is indeed one oasis. The ' Hotel des Colonies ' is a very fair counterpart of the ' Hotel des Deux Mondes ' in Paris. A French landlord, French waiters, or Chinese, who for a marvel speak the language excellently, French floors, French furniture, French cooking and French atmosphere ; in fact, thoroughly French, inside and out. And now that we have surveyed the domains of our model British Eepublic — have scanned its outward appearance, its size, its population, and its wealth — avoiding indeed the bare statement of facts which in Colonial reports are habitually only less deceptive than the bare statement of figures, our next logical step is to investigate how so successful a system of adminis- tration has been attained, now is maintained, and will be sustained. Happy the country whose previous constitutional history may be summarised in such few words. In 1842, during the first China war, Shanghai was captured by the British, but was not subsequently claimed as an appanage of our crown. Foreign commercial residents, among whom the English from SHANGHAI. 79 the very outset immensely preponderated, began to settle down — first of all in the native city. But in 1850, finding the horrible purlieus intolerable to civilisation, they shifted their habitat to the present adjacent open area. * Veni, vidi, vici,' but in this instance with little or no physical violence. Gradually, peacefully, they elbowed out of the way the native administration, and the native administration, philosophically admitting the inexorable logic of facts, tacitly recognised three settlements : one English, one American, and one French. The two former, wisely content with the substance without the shadow, accept the term * settlement,' and lay no formal claim to the privileges of British territory. The French, on the other hand, persists, in season and out of season, in designating itself a 'concession,' a portion of France, and struggling to obtain its individuality merely succeeds in prolonging a struggling and somewhat -contemptible existence. Since 1843 the English settlement has steadily and without a material check been increasing in population, wealth, and prosperity, threatened, it is true, by dangers from Chinese rebels, especially by the Taepings, who held the native city from 1853 to 1855, and desolated the province up to 1862, and by the hostile operations carried on by the English and French in 1860, but always successful in dealing with those perils through the resolution and courage of the settlers. Here I must explain that the American conces- 80 ENGLISH CHINA. sionists have dealt with certain difficulties arising out of their inferiority of numbers by merging their administration into that of the English. Smoothly and harmoniously does the plan work at present, our cousins are excellent neighbours and valuable mercantile coadjutors. But we are on delicate ground, perhaps the Sleswick Holstein of the Shanghai future ; and it is a question whether, with increasing prosperity and numbers, there may not be a development of friction. The Government at the present moment (1884) is carried on by a council of nine, which comprise a chairman, who to all intents and purposes is President of the Eepublic, a vice-chairman, and seven members, four of whom are English, two German, and one Frenchman who formerly was actually President of the council for his own settlement. The absence of any special American representative is an eloquent index of the extent to which the two tribes of cousins have merged their interests into one. The Parliament is annual, but the members are eligible for re-election, and the propriety of the substitution of a biennial or triennial one has been actively mooted. The franchise is extended to every European adult in the English and American settlement who is rated to the extent of lOOL a year. They number about 300 persons. Subjects of Great Britain pay a poll-tax of $5 a month, ^1 for artisans, which entitles them to registry in their consulate, and to be heard as plaintiffs in their own SHANGHAI. 81 court. The council assembles in conclave once a week, and the minutes of its proceedings are published. At the end of each financial year a sitting is held, which is freely open to the general public, and on which occasion are stated "the various measures, executive and financial, which have been adopted during the past year, the existing state of the treasury, and the Budget for the coming twelve months. The absence of an organised opposition is clearly a great evil; but this is, to some extent, counter- balanced by healthy internal bickering and spite, a tolerable substitute for the clap-trap, stump-oratory of certain sections of English politicians, whose first thought is the acquisition of place or power, and whose last thought is the public welfare. The council is, moreover, subdivided into three working committees : one for finance, one for public works, and one for watch and police, who, of course, render accounts of their stewardships to the main conclave. The following is an epitome of the printed Budget, dated, I think, January 1883 : — Keceipts (in round numbers). Taels. Land taxes 31,800 Municipal rates 112,400 Licences 72,100 Loan 60,000 Miscellaneous . . . . . . 44,000 Total 319,800 = £80,000 G 8'2 ENGLISH CHINA. Expenditure. Taels. Police 49,000 Sanitary 22,800 Public works 73,200 Volunteers 5,300 Municipal expenses, such as lighting, ceme- teries, surveyor's office 38,700 Secretariat and collection of taxes . . 19,400 Public buildings and land and stores . . 49,700 Previous deficit and interest . . . 18,900 Various 42,800 Total 819,800 = £80,000 There is in addition a funded public debt of about £60,000. Thus we see that the bulk of the revenue is derived from a tax on houses and land, and from licences. It is collected with astonishing ease and regularity, albeit in a somewhat high-handed manner. The English, recognising the necessity of adequate supplies for the support of the administration, magnificently and as a matter of course accept their heavy assessment ; while the natives cheerfully contribute their quota, which secures for them a treatment of justice and humanity, instead of a treatment of robbery and cruelty — a boon for which, by the way, they entertain the customary gratitude of recipients towards bene- factors. Finally, as an evidence of the commercial prosperity of Shanghai, I quote the following few statistics for 1882, in fear and trembling all the time for their unutterable dulness : — SHANGHAI. 83 Entered port, steamers (over) . . . 2,000 Entered port, sailing vessels . . . 500 Tonnage 3,850,000 Of these, the percentage was — English . . ' 54-8 Chinese 42*5 Other nations 2'7 Gross vakie of trade of port nearly 31,000,000L, of which the EngHsh percentage was -67. There are four splendid dry docks. The Shanghai Eepublic has framed its laws on the principle of the deflagration of gunpowder — not in- stantaneously whereby the agents and the machine would be simultaneously shivered, but progressively rapid. The Statute Book has been codified from the regulations drawn up from time to time by the residents themselves, assisted in legal and interna- tional technicalities by the foreign consuls ; and here we stumble upon an element of protectorate similar to that exercised in behalf of Belgium by the great European Powers. Laws and transactions affecting the relations of Shanghai with the external world are transmitted, through the combined consular body at Shanghai, to the ambassadors at the Pekin Court for final ratification. The police is composed of 54 European and 240 native constables. After a little experience these latter appeared to be such nonentities that for a time they were entirely suppressed. Whereupon a sudden G 2 84 ENGLISH CHINA. accession of street offences occurred at night, and it then became evident that the mere sight of the func- tionaries of the law, even though they were Chinese dummies, exercised a deterrent effect on Chinese malefactors. They were consequently re-established. The administration of justice in a community composed of such heterogeneous materials as English, Americans, Germans, Portuguese — of whom there are a considerable number,^ many of them descen- dants of the settlers in Macao in 1550 — French w^anderers from their own settlement, Chinese, a few Italians, Danes and Eussians, is a matter requiring the very nicest management, and has been skilfully dealt with. The principle is that every case shall be adjudicated by a tribunal which represents the nationality of the defendant. If, for instance, an Englishman were assaulted by a German, the offence would be disposed of by a court presided over by the German consul, while a Chinaman robbed by an American would seek redress in the Consular Court of the United States. Some modification is, however, necessary in the frequent cases of the Chinese being involved as defendants, for to relegate them to their country's tribunal in the adjacent native city would indeed be to involve the unfortunate offender and not less unfortunate plaintiff in the meshes of systematic extortion and prolonged cruelty. Therefore a ' Mixed Court ' has been organised, presided over by a Chinese ' I conjecture about 300. SHANGHAI. 85 mandarin, who generally plays the part of a puppet with the wires out of order, while the English, Ameri- can, and German consuls act theoretically as * asses- sors,' hut practically as judge, jury, prosecutor, and counsel for the defence. For the trial of important civil suits, and as a supervisor of the general admi- nistration of justice, a member of the English bar, Sir Henry Eennie, has been nominated, or rather lent, by the British Government, furnishing almost the only faint trace of imperial authority over the settlement. So simply and so efficiently is the police admi- nistered that a single court-house and machinery suffices for the enormous Chinese population of about 200,000 souls. I admit that it is chiefly composed of industrious law-abiders, who have taken refuge in European equity from mandarin rascality. Yet, of course, there is a leaven of scoundrelism both among the natives and in the shape of some stray cosmo- politan black sheep, of whom the most conspicuous are seventy * she ' black sheep, chiefly Americans. Chaperoned by an English police superintendent, I proceed to the local Bow Street, in the outside courts of which are collected a large motley crowd of loungers, witnesses, plaintiffs, and prisoners. Here the contrast of silence, so far as silence can be en- forced on these everlasting chatterers, order, the absence of smells, and the presence of the traditionally- garbed British policeman, attest European adminis- tration. The prisoners are tied together in twos by 86 ENGLISH CHINA. their pigtails, looking very much like captured hares, and so shrinking and unintelligent that one would suppose them to be equally incapable of an active deed either of good or evil. The native bystanders, in awe of all European ' casuals ' as representatives more or less of the majesty of the law, awful in its mysterious far-reaching and inflexibility, make way for me with ostentatious deference, and I am con- ducted to the centre of the judgment hall, where, with the strange- looking surroundings of English official tables, chairs, and writing apparatus, is seated the mandarin, who in pigtail and Chinese robes appears an absurd burlesque of ' his worship.' A nonentity and full of effete national self-importance, he holds the scales of justice de jure^ but by his side is the Thetis de facto, the European assessor, Mr. Giles, the vice-consul, full of English acumen and activity. He introduces me to his mandarin worship, Mr. Huang, and in response to the latter's obsequious obeisances I instinctively shake his slender snaky hand with a hearty national grip, by which unaccustomed proceeding he seems totally disconcerted. The first case is called, and a Chinese policeman, dressed exactly like a fair-weather-man in the card- board toy barometer, drives into the open dock, at the magistrate's feet, a prisoner as though he were vermin. Down he flops on his knees, and the pic- ture of oppressed spiritless misery retains his grovel- ling attitude during the whole of the evidence. * But SHANGHAI. 87 perhaps he may establish his innocence,' I whisper to my cicerone, in scandaHsed compassion at this en- forced demeanour of guilt. ' No matter, old-o cus- tom invariably prescribes that attitude for a prisoner ; ' which rather reminds one of the American lynch law system of first the execution, then the verdict, and finally the trial. The natives do not seem to have the courage of great crime, and offences against the person are rare, resort to the knife being almost un- known. Hence the great majority of the charges are of the lightest possible nature. Number one case is, we will say, for gambling in the streets. The evi- dence, to be worth much, must be supported by a European, for both Chinese police and Chinese popu- lace are incurably venal as witnesses, and are quite prepared to exculpate the guilty or to inculpate the innocent for a consideration of a few farthings. One or two pertinent searching questions from the asses- sor ; fair play for the defendant's defence, but no legal quibbling. * Fined 20 cents (lOt?.),' says the Vice- Consul in a low tone of voice to the mandarin. * Fined 20 cents,' echoes the nonentity in a loud tone of voice to the Chinese public. Away scuttles the prisoner with every appearance of relief at the short and decisive nature of the investigation, and number two case is brought forward, a theft at the same time ludicrously trivial and disgusting. * Three days' im- prisonment,' repeats the cuckoo mandarin at the dictation of the Vice- Consul, who, however, treats ihe 88 ENGLISH CHINA. Chinese cypher with affability personified compared with the browbeating of the German or American assessors. ' I should have thought three minutes ample,' was my whispered remark. * Not at Shanghai,' is the reply, the case here affects the whole question of agricultural prosperity. Next appear three Chinamen lashed together by their pigtails, and charged with burglary, which in point of fact amounts, perhaps, to prowling at night about an outhouse and absconding with property of the V3,lue of about three half-pence. The Chinese witnesses set to work in * independent file firing ' in a breathless chorus of gabble, supplemented by the Chinese policeman. There is a certain amount of conflicting evidence, and gradually the case becomes amusingly typical of the people, and the administra- tion of justice in China. Notwithstanding the ener- getic endeavours of the English functionaries to pre- serve silence, they are not even moderately successful. Not only the Chinese official underlings, but the witnesses, the prosecutors, and the general public, at uncertain intervals suddenly shove themselves for- ward, utter in loud simultaneous chatter their opinions and remarks, and — scandal of scandals — even proffer eager advice to the magistrates ! Per- haps in a certain way they perform the functions of a jury, and thus, in a country where even truth is a lie, they assist by this expression of public opinion in the equitable administration of justice. At all events SHANGHAI. 89 the assessor seems to deduce sufficient therefrom to enable him to form his own opinion, for with sudden decision he says, ' Not proven ; released,' and after a moment's, dumb amazement on the part of the prisoners, that anyone accused should thus be dis- missed scotfree, away they shuffle voluble in their delight. But even after the verdict has been pro- nounced, fresh comments are volunteered from the public, and it certainly may be laid down as a general rule that, the less justice is tempered with mercy, the greater the advantage to the community at large. It sometimes actually happens that, after sentence has been passed, the accused and his friends will harangue the magistrates on the iniquity of the judg- ment, and will bring forward new facts to show that the verdict was all wrong. The next captive is charged with unlawful posses- sion, and is led off by the tail to imprisonment for forty- two days. The next, a crafty old offender, has been arrested for returning to his settlement after having been deported, as a penalty for previous offences, to his own city. Cat-like, he will not be driven away ; he prefers an English prison to liberty in his native dens, and is condemned to a further period of incarceration, which appears rather to gratify him than otherwise. The next case is suggestive. The prosecutor, an inhabitant of the French settle- ment, with a mean opinion of the executive of his own countrymen, has so adroitly managed the point 90 ENGLISH CHINA. of venue as to have transferred the adjudication to the English court. The offence is one of pilfering, and the sentence, I think, ten days' imprisonment. ' Won't you order him the cangue ? ' (public exposure in a wooden collar) asks the plaintiff entreatingly, and the peremptory ' No ' of the Vice-Consul conveys to me the satisfactory reluctance of our officials to in- flict a form of punishment which, though when carried out by us is merely a form of discomfort, has nevertheless been borrowed from the severely torturing infliction of the cruel Chinese. I could not but remark that, on passing sentence in each case, there was a general air of exhilaration and surprise among the culprits. Subsequent ex- perience confirmed the explanation thereof which was given me. Chinese offenders subjected to their own tribunals invariably suffer petty extortion, cruelty and suspense, so that our prompt, clear, and dis- interested awards appear to them in the light of positive benefits. The above-described mixed court, unique among modern tribunals of justice, was es- tablished by the late Sir H. Parkes in 1864, and, in defiance of its theoretical imperfections, its practical working is undoubtedly admirable. The Anglo- Shanghai prisons would perhaps barely satisfy finicking humanitarianism in England, but they fully meet the requirements of wise humanity in China ; indeed, in comparison with native dungeons they are so little punitive as to be barely deterrent. SHANGHAI. 01 The prisoners are confined in what I may describe as Brobdingnagian windowless cages, one side of which is barred by bamboo poles at wide intervals, admitting an unrestricted view into the interior, and the pas- sage of extra food, opium, and tobacco to the incar- cerated from their outside friends. The normal temperature obviates suffering from cold, as a rule ; the atmosphere, the unrestricted air of heaven, is untainted, save by the inevitable civet-cat-like accom- paniments of all natives, the Bouquet de Chinois. Here let me be pardoned for adding one word in all seriousness on this unsavoury subject, not so much on the score of interest, but as an admonition to practical forbearance all the world over. There is no living creature whose presence is not accompanied by emanations utterly loathsome to those not of its own species or even tribe. Let the cleanest woman- finger touch a bait and no rat will look at it. Enter a room occupied by four or five young Chinese who have daily been scrubbed in hot water from child- hood, and you cannot abstain from grimaces of dis- gust. ' Why,' asked an Englishman of a highly educated, refined native gentleman, * do your country- men evince such reluctance to hold with us occasional intimate social intercourse ? ' ' Well,' was the em- barrassed reply, * we are many of us fully aware in our hearts that you are very wise, humane, learned, clever, and often very friendly disposed towards us. But, to tell you the truth, there is one feature about 92 ENGLISH CHINA. all you English which we are totally unable to endure. We cannot at any price stand your esprit de corps. \ The actual term used would of course strike the reader very disagreeably in print. To revert to our prisoners. Thirty or forty are incarcerated in each cage, which in our eyes amounts to overcrowding; but they are clearly of another opinion owing to their unmistakable appreciation of a large gathering. I walk along the rows of lock- ups, scrutinising at my leisure the scene within. The occupants are gleefully chattering with their fellow inmates inside, or through the bamboo bars are holding unrestricted converse with their clustering acquaintances outside. They have no sense of shame at this public exposure, because Chinamen have no sense of distinction between virtue and vice otherwise than as it affects profit and loss ; they would consider as pure gibberish the classical invoca- tion, ' Disguise thyself as thou wilt. Slavery, still, still, thou art a bitter draught ; ' and so they sit happily on their hams — Easternlike they always prefer nature's portable chair — congratulating them- selves on this repose from their everlasting toil, toil, toil, and on this chance for healing afforded to their shoulders and neck muscles, habitually bruised and strained by the burden-bearing bamboo poles. A few of the worst offenders are, it is true, subjected to a somewhat more strict form of imprisonment, and a fewer still to the cangue, a wooden collar encircling SHANGHAI. 93 the neck. The Chinese implement is so ponderous as to cause torture, and so broad that the hands below cannot reach the face above, either for purposes of eating, or for brushing away the clouds of per- secuting stinging insects which settle on their per- spiring skins. But that used by the English is so small and light that it inflicts inconvenience rather than pain, and its chief object is to attract the atten- tion of the public to the special crime of which the prisoner has been guilty. Strokes with the bamboo are in rare instances applied to persistent offenders, but in a very mild form. In the social life of Shanghai, where each numeri- cally small nationaHty maintains a resolute exclusive - ness, the prominent features, especially among the English, are unstinted luxury and open-handed hospi- tality, mingled withal with a considerable amount of formality, and the casual ' Globe Trotter ' (i.e. amateur traveller) and the sportsman will find their objects furthered with friendly zeal. Invitations to dinner and to ' tiffin ' are incessant — and at the latter mid- day meal you will not be spared a single item of a luxurious artistically cooked dinner, from which you will rise with a sense that your digestion, brain faculties, and afternoon's leisure have been equally impaired. Indeed, a week's experience of these double daily dinners will make you crave for the simplicity of gruel and parched peas. As regards the company, the element of Englishwoman is very scantily re- 94 ENGLISH CHINA. presented ; the men are usually of the successful merchant class — for Shanghai, offering almost a certainty of ultimate wealth, at all events of com- petence, to the diligent and able, is no place for the bankrupt loafer or the disreputable fool. And the conversation? Well, perhaps it would be improved were there less mercantile and dollar and tael talk, but at all events the outsider gains thereby a faint idea of the world-wide magnitude of English com- merce, a dim insight into the real meaning of the term * merchant-princes.' After dinner it is cus- tomary, especially on Saturdays and Sundays, to drink one of three toasts. * Sweethearts and Wives,' says the host — received with the usual levity con- sidered appropriate to the strongest ties by which mankind can be bound. Or, more gravely, * Absent Friends,' and * Absent Friends ' is warmly repeated, perhaps with a sigh of regret, perhaps with a chuckle at the recollection of former larks carried on with those absent friends. But there is one health, usually given at the Sunday luncheon, which is invariably received with the gravest earnestness : ' The Old Folks at Home,' and in a subdued tone, which bespeaks softened feelings, even the spendthrift, the ne'er-do- weel, or the callous materialist will re-echo the words : * The Old Folks at Home.' And now that I have alluded to kindly influences which have originated probably in childhood's reli- gion, and which more than aught else distinguish SHANGHAI. 95. US from the Chinese — unkindly hearted, their fetish of ancestral worship notwithstanding — I am led to speak a word of the Shanghai Protestant Cathedral. The only fault I can find with the building is that it is of a size and internal splendour absurdly in excess of the requirements of the English Protestant resi- dents, and the money thus spent might have been far more usefully applied in improving the local clerical administration. Outside, a Chinese heathen coolie is summoning Christian worshippers by banging with a bludgeon a huge tongueless bell; inside, the tiny congregation looks even more tiny in contrast with the dreary array of empty seats — though this again is somewhat relieved by the presence of the pleasant-looking, decent blue-jackets from the adjacent British * Champion.' In addition to the cathedral there is a Wesleyan place of w^orship, the frequenters whereof set a conspicuous example of humble sin- cerity, while their affiliatied temperance society effects immense good amongst those who can abstain, but cannot be moderate. Perhaps a China Sunday rather jars upon the old notions of an English Sunday, but perhaps, too, the hard-working, money-making merchants will reply that they are so busy during the week that on this day alone have they leisure to start on shooting expeditions, to play at rackets and lawn- tennis, to look after their racing ponies; and that, after all, church-going is in many cases a mere form. Well, is it wise to acquiesce in the abandonment of a 96 ENGLISH CHINA. form which yet estabhshes a hnk with duty, and in which may be recognised the shadow of a forsaken good? An invariable concomitant of all English settle- ments in the East, large or small, flourishing- or impecunious, is the Club. That at Shanghai, to which casual visitors are made welcome with generous hospitality, is an excellent specimen of its kind. A large, handsomely furnished building, a first-rate library, innumerable European newspapers and periodicals, a good coifee-room, and infrequent rowdyism — it surpasses a considerable number of London clubs in its presence of comforts and absence of scandals. Unfortunately it tends to become a focus for gambling both in the stockbroking and pony- racing line— evils of serious dimensions, especially among the younger members of the community. There is no written or unwritten code among the brokers, whose over-crowded ranks are largely recruited from the Shanghai failures in other a\oca- tions ; there is no regular Stock Exchange, and im- moderate gambling in shares has blasted, not only in Shanghai but in China generally, the fortunes of a number of young men to an extent out of proportion to the total residents. A good deal of money is lost at cards, the whist stakes being portentously high, though the Australian standard of ' sheep points, and a bullock the rubber,' has not yet been intro- duced. SHANGHAI. 97 Then the pony racing — what a boyishly harmless, wisely to be encouraged, pastime does it sound ! But in the majority of cases it is a mere subterfuge for all the evils and none of the advantages of horse racing — little of the plain sailing of the * 4 to 1 bar one ' element, but an elaborate system of selling lotteries, of squaring races, of roping, and of most of the ingredients of racing blackguardism. Its best feature is the racecourse itself, which here, as at Hong Kong, Amoy, Foochow, and even at the far inland settle- ment of Hankow, is the principal natural characteristic of the place — a large, carefully turfed space, just outside the town — fair, fresh, and free from the native throng which elsewhere seems to choke one. Here I see strings of racing ponies being exercised, sometimes thirty or forty belonging to one stables. They are small, rough, wild-looking Mongolian ' Griffins,' as fresh importations are called, well- shaped, singularly strong and enduring, but with no turn of speed, and with a sour temper evinced by their habitual knack of catching hold of an un- suspecting bystander, and with a simultaneous craunch shaking him as a dog would a rat. They are wonder- ful proficients in the art of bucking. If once the aggravating little beast stops short, and arches its back like a spitting cat, it is all over with the best rider who ever sat in saddle. The mafoos, or native grooms, who habitually stick like leeches, the moment they recognise in an apparently placid animal the H 98 ENGLISH CHINA. first signals of an intention to set to bucking, roll off to the ground with grotesque agility. A walk about Shanghai environs on Sunday after- noon will throw on the daily life of the inhabitants fresh lights which we might seek in vain elsewhere. Starting, let us assume, from the Bund or Marine Parade, we pass through the Anglo- Chinese portion of the settlement, and emerge into the country, where a continuous combination of sight and sound never ceases to remind us of England, and yet, at the same time, never suffers us to forget that we are 10,000 miles off, amongst a race almost as divergent from ourselves as Gulliver's Houyhnhnms. The one ad- mirable, metalled, high road would alone mark the presence of Europeans — it has no parallel throughout the whole gigantic empire, for the Chinese routes, for thousands of miles in the interior, are literally wheel- barrow paths. The English have obtained from the Fuhtai, or governor of the district, a concession of this road for a distance of three miles into the imperial territory. Here flock the Europeans of all, and the Chinese of the elite, classes ; and here, too, the amount of gossip would imply that everybody knows a great deal more of his neighbour's affairs than his neighbour knows about his own affairs. Here are merchants bent on a brisk constitutional during the cool season, bearing that aspect of earnest intent which foreigners declare render even our pleasures melancholy and laborious. SHANGHAI. 99 A few family couples are strolling about ratlior spirit- loHsly; you may depend upon it that the wife has been loading up to the never-ceasing Hubject : ' Let us go home,' iuu] lli.il \]\(' huHbantl has replied: 'Lot U8 firht ;l(•(•()rrl|)li^h llii; objoct for which WO came out.' AmaH (( 1 1 1 1 1 ' < n urses), in charge of two or three Eng- liHh childnm, moHt of whom are so pale — here, as else- whoHi in C}ilii:i, I Ik ( litrKih iH Hadly nnldrid to ilu'iri — HO languid, ro J", I' , ;'iiiil 111* ir grotoHquo uglincHH r< mhimI ono of a baboon taking care of kitttaiH. Thoro arc })nt few reproRentatives of the eager * he ' making n rondcizvoim with tlio bashful, modest, Eng- liHh * Hb(},' for all these garden plants are transplanted at an early age to home nurseries, and their would-ba iiKurp(;rH :\rc ]:\v:'c uninlM , >^' Vi ;izon AmericariH, with ifio nioHi i:i;;;;''l "j i( jditm ,■. , iriving fiaultlesH turnH- out, usually Victorias or basket carriages. In their vehicles thoy havcj found a host of imitators, in the Hlin-pe of wcjaltby (JhincHo merchants, who come to Shanghai as the AnK^ricans go to Paris, to spend their money and acquire an illusory veneer. They are an amusing burlesque as they bowl along in a rickety aniiqiuiiod landau, (irjuipptul with tawdry, furhih;}i(;(l-«ji) lianicKH, and driven by a Chinese coach- H 2 100 ENGLISH CHINA. man bedizened in national rags. Their equipage is calculated to hold four, but into it perhaps six fat old mandarins have wedged themselves, conspicuous with their six pendent pigtails lying coiled up in each other's laps, with six flabby parchment physiognomies, and six loud cackling voices. Here, again, are merchants' broughams, which only differ from the best-appointed London ones in that their back panels are of splendid movable plate glass, ensuring a current of air in hot weather, and imparting a pleasing appearance of lightness. I may observe that, except at Shanghai, carriages are almost unknown to the English in China, so impossible are the routes for this species of conveyance. The handsome villas with pretty gardens which line this English road really smack of Peckham and Balham, except that here they are comfortably habit- able, while the illusion is heightened by a pillar-post, and a reproduction of Policeman X patrolling, ap- parently more for ornament than for use, inasmuch as, in this ignorant, semi-civilised country, there is neither drunkenness, rowdyism, nor brawling. There, too, is the Country Club, charming inside and out, well furnished with literature and available for ladies, who resort to it in large numbers. And yet a woman in a club somehow always seems out of place, and is generally sour, masculine, and long in the tooth — a pleasant rosebud is rarely to be found there. But Englishwomen in China are wont to fall away ter- SHANGHAI. 101 ribly. Habitually they abominate the country, and not unnaturally, for there is little to accord with their tastes, or to enlist their interests — they grow languid, listless, out of health, and out of temper. They are in a bad plight, indeed, unless they are wise enough and good enough to find happiness in the conscious- ness that they can safeguard the health and happiness, the material and moral welfare of their husbands, who, but for this influence, have here a tendency to go to rack and ruin in the above respects — prosperous, perhaps, in their business avocations, but deteriorating in almost every other point of view. We pass numerous lawn-tennis grounds, of which game almost everyone here, male or female, who is not a cripple owing to avowed infirmity or dissimu- lated age, is wisely a devotee ; then the racket court and cricket ground, and above all the pack of drag hounds, about nine couple in number, the Chinese never resenting their trespassing. The country is perfectly flat and open, and is sufficiently intersected with big water jumps to ensure a keen pleasure in watching for the calamities of others. The sight of the apparently purposeless, exhausting, and dangerous run quite confirms the natives in their opinion that these * Fung Yang ' (foreign devils), who hold over them such a mysterious and lordly sway, are the maddest lunatics the world ever produced. Their general line of argument is as follows : — * You will spend hours, you will face cold and 102 ENGLISH CHINA. heat, wet and fatigue, in the pursuit of a few snipe or wild duck, which you could obtain far more easily in the shops, and at a mere fraction of the enormous sums you spend on your houseboat and other shooting arrangements. Then a number of you, to whom every hour may mean hundreds of taels, will, after toiling in your offices all day, drill every evening for a month without the slightest compulsion, and without receiv- ing one cash in payment. (Alluding to the Shanghai Volunteers.) Can you maintain that your hunting is a reasonable occupation ? Wherein consists the plea- sure or the profit in riding behind a quantity of barking dogs, risking your lives in jumping over broad wet ditches, when you had much better remain on the safe side ? But of all your insane occupa- tions that which you call athletics is surely the most insane. Coolies stagger under heavy burdens, and toil at other severe manual labour, because it is their sole means of earning a few cash. But you rich Englishmen will actually reduce yourselves to an exhausted condition of perspiration in purposeless lifting of weights, in wearing your mu$cles, in running at full speed, in fact, in performing coolies' work without even coolies' pay — sometimes indeed at a positive expense. Are these the pursuits of reasoning beings, or of hare-brained madmen ? ' My long strolls after spring snipe answered the additional purpose of studying the Chinese farming system and agricultural labourers. Hideously flat and SHANGHAI. 103 naturally marshy — for water may always be found here three feet below the surface — the country had yet a sort of pleasing aspect of its own from its extra- ordinary fertility and careful cultivation. Every iquare yard, almost every square inch, is tilled to the lighest point, and in the main by that hand industry in which the Chinese have no equals on the face of the earth. An inefficient buffalo plough is to be seen on Are occasions — a horse plough never. Fertilising agens, which we in England consider too trumpery or to» disgusting, are here utilised with miserly econony ; the results charm the eye of the practical farmer— the emanations insult the nostrils of the sentimental wayfarer, and this impression is not counter aited even by the vast expanse of sweet smell- ing beanfelds, or by the acres of peach trees spread all over tie plains, and in all the beauty of their spring blosiom. Such inportance do the inhabitants attach to putting plenty^ into the land, by which system indeed they get three full cereal crops annually out of it, that they yearly pough in as manure many a sack of good sound beins, and many an acre of half-grown l)ean crop, to vhich plant they attribute specially enriching qualiies. Indeed the bean crop is the staple Shanghai product, varied with a considerable area of paddy fields (rice), corn, cotton, and roots. Conspicuous by tleir absence are flocks and herds — not an ox or a cow not a sheep or a goat, not even a 104 ENGLISH CHmA. pig, except as a refined member of their hovel society, is to be seen over the entire landscape. There are no products of milk, butter, cheese, mutton or beef. We have little to learn from China in the way of agriculture. In search of further details, tramp with mQ reader, gun in hand, and coolie at heels, over 1/ie fields. The ground must be left entirely to your (Wn selection, for the coolie, useful as a creature of burlen, cannot speak a syllable of English, and wiU not exert himself an ounce to further the game-s(eking objects of his lunatic employer. Strangely mough the agriculturists, with all their minute c^e and industry, let me wander at my own sweet wilUhrough their standing crops, eagerly beckoning me to come on when my farmer instincts would be scanialised at such trampling down, and when a Briti^ yeoman would pitchfork me for less than half th/ amount of trespass. / The beanfields, knee-high with their /v'hite flecked stalks, are the dearly-loved resort of Spring snipe, innumerable, mysteriously fat, and renting here for about a fortnight in their flight fron Mongolia to Cochin China. Now and again a pleasant gets up with the same fuss and under the sai^ie circumstances as his English brother, with whcm indeed he is identical in shape, size, and plumaie. Of course he gets off scotfree at this season of th^ year, being ' pere de famille,' as Alphonse would say /-though, alas ! in SHANGHAI. 105 these climes Alphonse does not usually spare him even under these sacred circumstances. Two or three shots, and up start in every direction Chinese urchins in keen competition for the prize of an empty cartridge' case, which the inscrutable natives turn to some use. They accumulate in numbers such that to fire in almost any direction would produce the same results as to fire into the * brown ' of a dame's school. It is critical work, for it is hardly possible to point your gun without finding a Chinese child at the end of your barrel. * Masquie ' — pidgin-English * Never mind ' — says my coolie encou- ragingly. I know better. Humanity apart, I am fully aware that the parents would rejoice were a couple of pellets to lodge in the eye of one of their offspring, provided I would pay a few dollars indem- nity. I must seek for fresh pastures — a vexatious task, because the entire country is intersected, at , widths sometimes only four or five hundred yards apart, with narrow, seethingly stagnant canals, deep enough to float small junks, broad enough to deter a jump, and muddy enough to entail on failure a mass of execrably smelling nastiness. Sometimes it is necessary to tramp many hundreds of yards in search of a foot-bridge. By far the most astonishing objects in these large, flat, hedgeless fields — for Shanghai stands on a plain without a hillock for twenty miles — are the innumer- able graves. It has been estimated that the area of 106 ENGLISH CHINA. ground thus withdrawn from cultivation in this locality is equivalent to about one-tenth of the total arable space, and I can quite beheve it. Single circular graves, or large grave heaps containing ten or twelve coffins, stand out in bare ugliness in the midst of every beanfield and cornfield, in every roadside patch and thicket. The sites seem to have been chosen in de- fiance of all convenience to the living, the sole require- ment being a thoroughly dry, well-drained spot. The areas thus occupied are held sacred to an extent attained only where bigotry or superstitious folly are rampant. Should the land change hands, the grave mounds still remain the property of those who there interred their relatives ; they remain undisturbed from generation to generation, and to level them, or to cultivate the superficies of the most insignificant or the least known, would be held not only a criminal offence but an outrage shocking to humanity ; yet there is no attempt to decorate them or even to trim them, not a sign of 'that would-be-prettiness over a grave which, prompted by sorrow for the dead, saves it from the sneers applied to mere sentiment. I was once puzzled by observing an English-made bye-road twisting like a snake, apparently in the most stupid purposeless fashion, over a perfectly level sound country. At last I discovered that these expensive deviations were absolutely necessary in order to avoid disturbing the adjacent places of sepulture. Here we have an illustration of the strength of their tenets of SHANGHAI. 107 ancestral worship— tenets which at first appear to pivot on some of the better and softer feehngs of our nature, but which on further examination prove to be merely another feature of that fetish superstition which is so strangely mingled with their repelling scepticism. Even more repugnant than their gaunt graves are their ghastly coffins, standing on the surface of the ground in the ratio, say, of about one to every ten acres. Originally they were constructed with remark- able solidity, were lutened up and made carefully air- tight, and were bound round with thick straw plaits. But time has more or less rotted all away, and the revelation of a weird outline of corpse shocks our sense of decency, still further outraged, by the way, by the unceasing inquisitiveness of our English Ponto. Next we come to a flimsy bamboo fence, im- penetrable to eyesight, but so fragile that a puff of wind would overthrow it. It encloses a collection of some twenty or thirty low, tumble-down-looking sheds. Pigsties? No, only in the sense that they are the habitat of the Chinese human. Mud and wattle, often mud without the wattle, windowless, chimneyless, doorless, filthy outside and curiously loathsome in- side, they can only be paralleled with the worst of those hovels for the retention of which the Irish shoot their landlords, who desire to clear away such eyesores; only the Irish miscreant with national hypocrisy 108 ENGLISH CHINA, whitens his den-sepulchre. Here are a few of the typically ugly, featherless, indecent Shanghai fowls which some years ago a perverted English taste valued at nearly their weight in gold; here some English- looking magpies and sparrows with more than English pertness ; and here, numerous above all, the everlast- ing crow, less of a garbage eater than the Shanghai human. There is a conspicuous absence of trees, gardens, and inside or outside ornament. The approach of a European stranger rouses that aggravating chorus of the jackal-like dogs, which in turn evokes the presence of a population, young and old, so numerous in comparison with the numbers of dwellings that a hive of bees might herefrom pick up a hint in economising space. They all watch the Englishmen with some dislike and contempt, but with still more curiosity. One glance at the interior, one sniff at the atmosphere, causes me to hurry away with unfaltering haste. Strange, striking, other-world like, as are the impressions produced on Europeans by Chinese sur- roundings, these sensations are never so thoroughly developed as in a native theatre. Thither I one evening betook myself, accompanied by my Hong Kong * boy ' as cicerone, on one of those expeditions of personal experience which casual visitors seek and residents shirk. The coolie trots my ricksha through darkness and rain as quickly as a pony, and as comfortably as a brougham, down the broad, well- SHANGHAI. 109 lighted English Bund into the narrow, dim, French settlement, where the principal Chinese theatre is situated in close proximity to the native city. As we draw near, the crowd becomes too thick to be parted asunder by the mere* cry ' Hyah ! ' which habitually announces the approach of a European and ensures the immediate removal of all obstacles. Slowly we thread our way, and finally pull up at an unusually broad entrance, bright with many-coloured paper lanterns, and redolent with that odour peculiar even to clean Chinese atmosphere— a sickly, mingled smell of sandal-wood, joss-sticks, camphor, and opium. The custodian, at the sight of European prey, shuffles obsequiously forward and demands a price of admission which would probably be equivalent to a charge of four guineas for a box at the 'Victoria.' He would gladly have accepted one-fourth of the sum, but I am growing sick of the atmosphere of everlasting chaffering in which I have been living, and prefer to allow the robber to pick my pocket. He ceremoni- ously conducts me through a throng of natives, who stare at the isolated intruding foreigner with the stare of suspicious /er