Mrs. Archibald Little

“ With the sickly sweet smell of the opium, and to the sound of the vast ear-drum-splitting army of China's schoolboys, all must for ever associate life in a Chinese city. And through it all, and up and down its flights of stairs, painfully hobbles the Chinese girl-child, the most ungraceful figure of all girl-children,—poor little 97 mutilated one, with her long stick and dreadful dark lines under her sad young eyes! Whatever the men may be, certainly the little girls of China are brought up as Spartans even never were, and those who survive show it by their powers of endurance. ”

“ And when the ladies divest themselves of their skirts—you always ask a Chinese lady to lay aside her skirt, as in England you ask her to lay aside her cloak—any dress more ugly could hardly be imagined than the long, sloppy-looking under-jacket over rather full, straight-cut trousers, possibly of red satin, gorgeously embroidered with life-size butterflies. There is no single feature in the face that we could call pretty, and in accordance with etiquette the face is entirely devoid of expression. ”

“ Every woman has a white gardenia flower stuck on the left side of her glossy black hair. And all outside the city is inspiriting, when the sun shines and the blue rivers laugh back at the blue sky. But inside the city it is still all dark and dank, and all is pervaded by a sickly sweet odour, the emanation from the opium-pipe; while the lean ribs and yellow faces of the opium-smokers controvert without the need of words all the scientific assertions about the non-volatilisation of the opium poison. ”

“ In the spring-time what can be prettier than the environs of a Chinese city? The rape-fields are all fragrant with their bright-yellow flowers; whilst the still sweeter scent of the bean blossom makes it a real pleasure to walk along the narrow paths by the river-side. Every one is walking about with a bunch of 94 roseate peach blossom, and the tangles of trees in the gardens are all flowering and all scented. ”

“ Often and often have I wished that it was not so, and that in going to a house I could talk with the wistful young daughters-in-law, who glance at me from under their eyelids, and look as if they would be so receptive of new ideas, being, like most ill-used people, quite ready for a revolt of some sort. But it is the elder lady who does the honours, entertains the guests, and regulates the household. ”

“ But even without stoning, what a business it is shopping in a Chinese city! If you go to a shop, and begin looking at things and asking prices as you might in Europe, all the rabble of the street pours in after you. You cannot make yourself heard, you cannot breathe, you cannot see for the crowd, till the poor shopkeeper by his imploring gestures at last succeeds in making you go away before his shop is sacked, or 258 at least half the things in it broken. ”

“ And how luxurious to be carried next day in a sedan-chair along the beautiful banks of the swift-flowing Tung! Then six days' travelling, against time now, along the great brick-tea road, through scenes of varying beauty, among gigantic ferns and waxen begonias nestling into the walls, past long ranges of black-and-white farm-buildings, shadowed by large, beautiful shade-trees; a day and a half on a bamboo raft down the exceedingly pretty but turbulent Ya, with the waves washing up to our knees at all the bad rapids; after which five days down the conjoined rivers Ya, Tung, and Yangtse ”

“ We knew of course—we all sat sadly weighted by the thought—that feet are the most risqué subject of conversation in China, and no subject more improper can be found there. And some of us felt as if we should blush before those impassive blue-gowned, long-tailed Boys, who stand behind our chairs and minister to our wants at tiffin and at dinner, when the latter knew that we—we, their mistresses—were responsible for a book upon footbinding, a book that any common man off the streets could read. ”

“ Let no one lightly enter on a Chinese dog as companion; they make themselves too much beloved, become too completely members of the family. Even Nigger, the black Chow dog that my husband kept before our marriage, and whose greeting he looked forward to all the long voyage out to China—even Nigger seems like a living personality to me, and I can hardly believe I never saw him. Beloved dogs, companions of a life too solitary, because amongst an uncompanionable race, Requiescant in pace! Good-bye, Shing-erh! ”

“ And could there be a grander grave for a dead man,—the great white mists of Omi his winding-sheet, the Glory of Buddha floating above him his memorial cross, the bosom of Omi's inaccessible precipice his last resting-place? Year by year, day by day, pilgrims kneel, and knock their foreheads on the ground, then hold out hands of supplication over his prostrate form; the bells are struck, the prayers are chanted, the incense burns, above the unburied priest's last resting-place. Never now will hand of man touch him more. ”

“ One of the most remarkable things about Chinese is that, whilst of course it is usual for people of other nationalities to denounce their bad qualities as a nation, there is hardly a European living in China who has not one or more Chinese whom he would trust with everything, whom he would rely upon in sickness or in danger, and whom he really—if he spoke out, as we so seldom do—regards as the embodiment of all the virtues in a way in which he regards no European of his acquaintance. We rarely believe in one another's Chinaman ”

“ To Chinese children I always think life in a Chinese city must be very pleasant. There are the great festivals: the Chinese New Year, with all its countless 90 crackers; the Dragon Boat Festival, when each district of the city mans a boat shaped like a dragon, and all paddle like mad, naked to the waist, and with a strange shout that must be very dear to children. ”

“ With all the nations of the West contending who is to have its bones to pick, it is necessary that some nation or nations should in the first instance stand by China. But once let some great Western nation make it plain to the world that he who attacks China attacks her, and there will be no attack. And let China's feet but once be set firmly in the ways of progress, and there will be no going back. ”

“ The proportions often strike me as very beautiful; and the cunningly contrived perspectives add much to their dignity. But, as in Japan, whilst moved to admiration by the approach, one often has a disappointed feeling of not arriving at anything in the end. At the same time, the conception of a Chinese house, like the design of Peking, strikes me as very lordly; the courtyards are extremely graceful and elegant, whilst the beautiful sweep of the roofs makes European roofs painfully mean by comparison. ”

“ And there, when first I saw it, were all the many varieties of fancy geraniums, so seldom seen in England now, together with heliotropes, and begonias, and rosellias, and cinerarias, all growing in loveliest confusion, though not as I remember them, weighing each other down with their prodigal luxuriance in a garden border, in far-away Madeira, but intermixed with Chinese rockwork and ferns, and generally massed so as to show themselves off to the greatest advantage. In August that house is full of velvety gloxinias of richest hues, and again mixed with waxen begonias. ”

“ At the same time, in writing about Chinese women I am burdened by the reflection that possibly I am in some ways better able to express an opinion about the men, and men about the women. To tell what I can, however: doubtless Chinese ladies' speak of many subjects with the freedom of the days of Queen Elizabeth; but how women can be called mock modest who always remain fully clad in such damp heat as leads men to strip to the waist in all their shops, as also at their dinner parties, when summer is at its height, I cannot understand. ”

“ And at the same time, as all people who know China will testify, the moral conscience of the people is so educated that an appeal to it never falls flat, as it often would in England. Try to stop two men fighting, saying it is wrong to fight, and you will hear no one say in China, "Oh, let them fight it out!" Appeal to the teaching of Confucius, and every Chinaman will treat you with respect, and at least try to appear guided by it. ”

“ We never wished to go outside again to face that vile mews, with its holes, its dust, its smells. We forgot all about it, as we looked at the stately perspective of the inner entrance of the Palace,—its ceilings richest blue and brilliant green, relieved by golden pomegranates and dragons; its mortised beams projecting, all highly 471 painted, green, red—green, red. Not a sound penetrated within its sheltered courtyards. The wood-carvings were beautiful, the galleries long enough to satisfy all desire for walking. The Chinese decorations satisfied our eyes. ”

“ With whom do you think we have been lunching to-day? I have had tea with gold-miners in Alaska, and luncheon in a lumber camp in British Columbia, and dinner with a party of Chinese merchants in Chungking; but to-day, of all people in the world, it was with the chief priest of a Buddhist monastery on the sacred mountain of Omi! And very good the luncheon was! I really felt fed—always a matter of question when one is living upon tinned things. ”

“ All the day through there were invitations to tea and sugar-plums with the abbot and past abbots (each only rules for three years, and then retires into a picturesque suite of rooms and garden to himself) , and all the while again and again sounds of gongs and drums and chanting, and peeps at strange novices, young people with shaven heads, clad in "Liberty-tinted" gowns—dull red, ruddy brown, old gold, cream—kneeling, or prostrating themselves quite flat, or winding in and out with pacings and slow and quick movements. ”

“ During these three years the girlhood of China presents a most melancholy spectacle. Instead of a hop, skip, and a jump, with rosy cheeks like the little girls of England, the poor little things are leaning heavily on a stick somewhat taller than themselves, or carried on a man's back, or sitting sadly crying. They have great black lines under their eyes, and a special curious paleness that I have never seen except in connection with footbinding. ”

“ But his port and his attitudes were those of a lion, or, when engaged in worrying a piece of cord dangled invitingly before him, for all the world just like those of a Chinese monster, only in miniature. In some ways he was like a kitten rather than a puppy, so graceful and gentle in his movements, with long claws, too, at the tips of his little feathery feet, and a way of purring when he was pleased. He made many little plaintive sounds, as if he were talking to himself ”

“ While the fortune-teller was on his knees, earnestly praying his god to deliver the absent husband from the clutches of the evil one, who was obscuring the lucky star, the door was abruptly pushed open, and there, standing on the threshold with a bag over his shoulder, full of shoes of silver and gold bars, was the long-absent husband. The wife gave a cry of joy and rushed forward. The confused fortune-teller, terribly frightened, hurriedly sought an exit by the back door, but slipped, fell, sprained his ankle, and broke his head. ”

“ It is, however, true that in Chungking, the only Chinese city I know really well, there is to this day an artist who paints flowers as a connoisseur, the head of an English technical school, pronounced only one man in England could. And how does this poor artist sell his pictures? Of course, it will never be believed in England that he is an artist at all, when I tell the sad truth—he sells them by the square foot! And when you decide to buy a picture, he—measures it!
The popularly received opinion is that there is no architecture in China. ”

“ When a man has enormous wealth, and is degraded, every one naturally feels it is a pity nothing should be got out of him, and he equally naturally is willing to pay much in order to be reinstated in a position to make more. Until the officials of China are properly paid, it is unreasonable to expect them to be honest. And yet some are so even now: not only Chang-chih-tung, the incorruptible Viceroy of Hupeh and Hunan, who, it may be noticed, is constantly being invited to Peking, but—never goes. ”

“ Not only must you take off the roof, but you must take down the whole building, and even raze the foundation. How could you expect your present old Ministers to reform? They have never had any Western education. They have never studied anything thoroughly about Western civilisation, and they could not study now if you asked them. They have no energy left. To instruct them to carry out reforms is like asking your cook to become your tailor, your tailor to become your cook, or your barber to become your chair-coolie and your chair-coolie to shave you. ”

“ How is it that every man shrinks with horror from the idea of an opium-smoking wife? And this in a land in which all important business dealings are concluded over the opium-couch, where, indeed, alone, with heads close together, is privacy to be obtained, and in which all important military posts are confided to opium-smokers, not to speak of most of the important civil offices! ”

“ But probably we shall some day know how much the Empress has used for her private pleasures, according to the recent indictment of her by the one great incorruptible Viceroy, Chang-chih-tung, and how much has been absorbed by Li Hung-chang, and all the army of Palace eunuchs and hangers-on.
The Chinese are a people of traders, and patient; they look on, and say mentally, "No belong my pigeon," that is, "Politics are not my business." But they dislike the Empress; they know the young Emperor has been used merely as a puppet ”

“ And as in our men-of-war I have heard that in battles in old days mattresses would be hung over the ships' sides to protect them, so we might do worse than interpose between fiery, mysterious India and the other nations of Asia the impenetrable, apparently yielding, but never really yielding, big feather-bed of vigorous, healthy China, relieved from her corrupt and disastrous Mandarin system, with her men's minds freed from the cramping influence of a too ancient system of education, and her women set upon 615 their feet so as to be once more able to bear noble sons. ”