Chinaman

“ We have grown so accustomed to John Chinaman, with his innocent yellow face, so smooth and hairless,—except when as a grandfather he wears a moustache,—his obliquely-slit eyes, and his flowing pigtail, with plaited ends of cord and tassels, that we have ceased to observe him. ”

“ From the cradle to the grave, the Chinaman is always a Chinaman, adhering to the traditions of his ancestors, walking in the footsteps of his fathers, careless of the approbation or reprobation of the rest of mankind, except so far as it may affect him pecuniarily. ”

“ Stealth and secretiveness are as much part of the Chinaman in New York as the cat-like tread of his felt shoes. His business, as his domestic life, shuns the light, less because there is anything to conceal than because that is the way of the man. ”

“ He never tries to escape from it because it is not in written form. You see so long have I been away from China, I can view my countrymen in a detached way, almost through western eyes. Much has the Chinaman learned on his long trek through history. He knows that it is well to keep one's face blank and expressionless so that no man may fathom what is in one's thoughts. He hides a shrewd mind behind liquid eyes. Often his manner is almost infantile. You must infer most of his meanings for he will not explain them to you. Only those with keen imagination ever grow to understand a Chinaman. ”

“ The endless inconvenience a Chinaman will suffer without a murmur rather than lay the bones of a dear one in a spot unhallowed by the fiat of the geomancer; the sums he will subscribe to build a protecting pagoda or destroy some harmful combination; the pains he will be at to comply with well-known principles in the construction and arrangement of his private house—all prove that the iron of Feng-shui has entered into his soul, and that the creed he has been suckled in is the very reverse of outworn. ”

“ I stooped over the Chinaman (for a Chinaman it was) who lay at my feet, and directed the ray of my pocket-lamp upon his yellow and contorted countenance. I suppressed a cry of surprise and horror.
Despite the human impossibility referred to by the missing fireman, this particular Chinaman had joined the shades of his ancestors. I think that final blow, which had felled him, had brought his shaven skull in such violent contact with the wall that he had died of the thundering concussion set up. ”

“ By dint of their extraordinary industry, thrifty habits, an unceasing desire to accumulate wealth by any amount of plodding, cunning, or hardship, the Chinaman has wormed himself beyond the Great Wall, built towns and villages, cultivated every rood of land, and is at once the farmer and the trader everywhere. ”

“ I gravely examined two of his pulses—every properly organised Chinaman has four hundred—and finding his heart where it should be in the centre of his body, with the other organs ranged round it like the satellites round the sun—every Chinaman is thus constructed—I was glad to be able to assure him that he will certainly live forty years longer—if Heaven permit him. ”

“ Nature whispers in the ear of the tired, overworked Chinaman, “Rest is the superlative form of happiness. To be idle is to be in paradise.”
The Chinese bind the feet of their women not out of cruelty; they do it partly out of a deformed, over-civilised, national vanity, but still more out of a tender kindness. ”

“ Treat John Chinaman as a man, and exact from him the duties of a civilised man, and you will have no more trouble with him." Which is but a paraphrase of Lord Palmerston's 340 prescription to consider the Chinese as "not greatly different from the rest of mankind." ”

“ There is a very common statement made by persons who have lived in China—among the people, but not of them—and the more superficial the acquaintance, the more emphatically is the statement made, that the ordinary Chinaman, be he prince or peasant, offers to the Western observer an insoluble puzzle in every department of his life. He is, in fact, a standing enigma; a human being, it may be granted, but one who can no more be classed than his unique monosyllabic language, which still stands isolated and alone. ”

“ These myriads of Chinamen, or at least as many as knew of our existence, are by all accounts not only desirous, but eager to accept our offers of commercial intercourse; and so they find their profit in it, be sure that they will not be the first to break the bond. The only point which can yet be affirmed with certainty of John Chinaman is, that he is a keen and shrewd trader. ”

“ Above all, the Chinese seemed to muster strongly—those busy, patient, plodding people, who are ready to squeeze themselves into any vacant hole, round or square, and to make themselves fit therein. Barbers, carriers, purveyors of fruit, washers of clothes, shampooers, tailors, cooks, waiters, domestic servants, always ready, patient and willing, childlike and bland—John Chinaman swarms in Singapore, and can be found there as the meanest workman or artisan, up to the wealthiest merchant or banker, like the late Mr Whampoa, whose gardens were one of the lions of the place. ”

“ The thirst of blood had made men mad. The pettiest and most despicable whipper-snapper who happened to have seen the light of day in Europe or Japan had uncontrolled power over the life and limbs, the body and soul, of the most highly-cultivated Chinaman in the city. From his decision there was no appeal. A Chinaman never knew what might betide him an hour hence, if the European lost his temper. ”

“ If I had not heard you speak,' he added, addressing Ping Wang, 'I should never have believed that you were an Englishman.'
'I'm not one,' Ping Wang declared merrily; 'I'm a Chinaman.'
'Well, who am I to believe?' the skipper exclaimed in bewilderment.
'They are the Englishmen,' the manager answered, pointing to Fred and Charlie; 'the other gentleman is a Chinaman. But to come to the point, I want you to take my three friends to Tien-tsin. They wish to be undisturbed, and do not want it to be known that they are not Chinamen. ”

“ Nothing in the world is holy to a Chinaman but his family; a single glance from 'the Western devil' at the wife of any man who does not belong to the lowest class is regardad as an irretrievable disgrace, and a European may live for a quarter of a century in China without seeing any more of a Chinese house than the antechamber. ”

“ He is not unpleasing-looking, but you feel that as a Celestial he looks down upon you. If you ask a question in a merchant's office, or change your gold into satsu, or take your railroad or steamer ticket, or get change in a shop, the inevitable Chinaman appears. ”

“ The great qualities of obedience to parents, of courtesy to strangers, are being forgotten. The Chinaman educated in the States is rude and abrupt; he fancies that it is Western and business-like. Every Chinese gentleman to whom I talked, allowed that one of the worst results of Western teaching had been that a Westernised Chinaman was less obedient and respectful to his parents. On the other hand, the Westernised Chinaman does not acquire the peculiar virtues of the Englishman. ”

“ In China, he is placed at the left. If you meet a friend in the street, out goes your hand in greeting. The Chinaman shakes hands with himself. If an American or European is perplexed about anything he scratches his head. When the Chinaman is puzzled, he scratches his foot. ”

“ This is all the thanks a Chinaman gets for making a pleasant little green oasis and feeding the whites on cabbages and peas. To be a gardener is looked upon as a Chinaman’s profession. In fact pottering about with a watering pot, and hawking vegetables, is the greatest height to which a Chinaman’s soul is supposed to rise.
Ah Foo, when he came to Thursday Island, started a garden. How things were to be induced to grow, nobody could conceive. That was the Chinaman’s business. If there is a second Aden in the world, it must be remembered that it is well represented by Thursday Island. ”

“ The moral character of the Chinaman depends upon—or shall I say in—his tail. A Chinaman sans pigtail is an outcast. The Manchus live and dress like the Chinese, and supply the best food for powder in China.
We had some trouble—more perhaps in my imagination—on our way to the town, over whose walls the terrible Dragon was waving on banners and flags in most defiant fashion. If the Chinese resistance would only accord with their preparations and defences, the little Japanese would certainly be repulsed, I thought. ”

“ It seems to be argued that because, in a great many matters, the Chinaman takes a diametrically opposite view to our own, he must necessarily be a very eccentric fellow; but as these are mostly matters of convention, the argument is just as valid against us as against him. "Strange people, those foreigners," he may say, and actually does say; "they make their compass point north instead of south. They take off their hats in company instead of keeping them on. They mount a horse on its left instead of on its right side. ”

“ Escape for the Chinaman is next to impossible; he can only free himself from the horrible condition in which he finds himself by using his braces or his silken scarf for a halter, or the more quiet way of an overdose of opium.
Treat the Chinaman well, and he is a valuable servant, and happily many thousands of such are to be found along the coast, in several of the great haciendas, and in Lima. The wages of a Chinese slave are 4 dols. a month, two suits of clothes in the year, and his keep. A free Chinaman as a labourer earns a dollar a day, and of course 'finds' himself. ”

“ H. G. Wells's conception of future generations, however grotesque and even loathsome may be his vision of the commonwealths of another planet, the actual people of the great empire of China are to us more ghostly than the unborn generations and more wild than the men in the moon. The Letters of John Chinaman constitute an astonishingly spirited and remarkably able protest on behalf of the idea that Chinese civilisation is, morally, intellectually, and materially, immeasurably superior to our own. ”

“ A Chinaman is taught by precept and example to venerate his parents and to give them divine honors after death. Should a Chinese child be disobedient he would be punished severely by the bamboo or other instrument, and he would bring on himself the wrath of all his family. ”

“ A Chinaman protects his home above all that is dear to him. In my intercourse with the Chinese I have noticed that even the most advanced among them, who have lived for years in England or in France, and who have enjoyed all the advantages of our commercial and industrial achievements, scrupulously avoid imitating the private life of the West. ”

“ That was certainly a good answer,—calling it Chinese prayer.
Undoubtedly our type of features is repulsive to the average Chinaman, certainly his is very much so to us. One looked in vain among the smooth chins, shaved heads, and almond eyes of the crowd for signs of intelligence and manliness. There are no tokens of humor or cheerfulness to be seen, but in its place there is plenty of cunning, slyness, and deceit, if there is any truth in physiognomy. The men look like women and the women like children, except that their features are so hard and forbidding. ”

“ Alike in California and Australia, in our West India colonies and in the islands of the Pacific, the Chinaman may be seen side by side with the European, the Negro, and the Malay; and as he immeasurably transcends the other coloured races in industry and intelligence, so not unfrequently he may compare with the European even in point of that business-like cast of intellect which we self-managing Anglo-Saxons so highly prize. ”

“ Gilead P. Beck.
"Well, Chinamen, of course. But only two of them. They take turns, at forty dollars a month, to cook my dinners. And there is a half-caste, who does not mind running down to Sacramento when I want anything. And so, you see, I make out pretty well."
He opened the window, and blew a whistle.
In two minutes a Chinaman came tumbling up the stairs. His inscrutable face expressed all the conflicting passions of humanity at once—ambition, vanity, self respect, humour, satire, avarice, resignation, patience, revenge, meekness, long-suffering, remembrance, and a thousand others. ”

“ Taking all these things into consideration, I maintain that the Chinaman is a good and orderly citizen and that his good qualities, especially as a revenue-payer in the Far East, much more than counterbalance his bad ones. ”

“ Harte is right, but the Chinaman and his ways are not more peculiar to the American than American customs and contradictions are to the Chinaman. If there is any race on the earth that is peculiar, it is the "Heathen Yankee," the good-hearted, ingenuous product of all the nations of the earth—black, red, white, brown, all but [Pg 132] "yellow." Imagine yourself going out to what they call a "stag" dinner, and having an officer of the ranking of lieutenant shout, "Hi, John, pass the wine!"
Washington can not be said to be a typical American city. ”

“ The way it has dominated the forces of nature gives it a great {41} prestige. As the Chinaman learns about steam and electricity, about the telephone, the flying machine, radium, and a thousand more Western inventions, he cannot fail to be impressed, he must admit that these people have knowledge. Do not for a moment imagine that, after such an illumination, he will be able to go back to the works of Confucius and learn again the old maxims, many of which are antipathetic to Western thought—yes, even more incongruous to Western than they are to Christian thought. ”

“ But it renders existence possible in the over-density of Chinese population.
A Chinaman is forgiven nothing because of his ancestry; nor does he suffer for that ancestry. From the moment of his birth, each Chinaman has, theoretically and, as far as possible, practically, an equal chance with every other Chinaman. Rank is nowhere more venerated than in China. Nowhere does it secure to its possessor more benefits, more privileges ”