Читать книгу Intimate China: The Chinese as I Have Seen Them - Archibald Mrs. Little - Страница 8

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One of the most exciting moments of all my life in China was when I first found myself shut up within the walls and barred gates of Wuchang, the provincial capital of Hupeh, one of the rowdiest provinces of China. And of the three cities that meet together and almost join—Hankow and Wuchang being separated by the there three-quarter-mile wide Yangtse, and Hankow and Hanyang separated by the boat-covered Han—Wuchang has the reputation of being the most rowdy. It is there, of course, the Provincial Examinations are held; and when men assemble in their thousands away from their families and friends, they are in all countries apt to be unruly.

Probably, of all the hundreds of foreign tea-men who visited Hankow, barely one or two had been across the river to Wuchang. But a missionary, who was living alone there, and seemed to feel his loneliness, asked us to go over and spend the night with him; and with many doubts as to what kind of accommodation he could give us, and whether we should be inconveniencing him, we accepted. I have often been to Wuchang since then. But I remember still the thrill with which, when I went to bed that night, I stood at the window and listened to the strange, unfamiliar sounds from the street beyond the compound, or garden. There was the night-watchman crying the hours, and clacking his pieces of bamboo together to warn evil-doers to keep off. But he did it in a way I had not yet heard. Then there were such curious long drawn-out street cries, all unknown, and sounds of people calling to one another, and the buzz of a great city. And I suddenly realised, with a choking sense of emotion, that the gates were shut, and I was within there with a whole cityful of Chinese so hostile to foreigners, and especially to foreign women, that it had not been thought safe to let me walk through them to the missionary's house. Even the curtain of my sedan-chair had been drawn down, so that I might not be seen by any one.

Wuchang has always been specially interesting to me, because it was my first Chinese city. And it is so characteristic a one. Every Chinese city is supposed to be placed on hills representing a serpent and a tortoise, although the likeness has often to be helped out by a temple on the tortoise's head, or a pagoda to connect the serpent's coils. But at Wuchang the serpent and tortoise are very plainly visible. Then all Chinese cities are apt to be rude. But the people at Wuchang are so particularly rude. How often have not the gentlemen accompanying me, when in subsequent years I have dared to walk through its streets, had to separate themselves from me, and to walk backwards, exhorting the oncoming crowd of roughs to propriety of behaviour! Curiously enough, the roughest of Chinese roughs get red and uncomfortable, when you tell them you fear they have never learnt politeness, do not observe the rules of decorum, etc., etc. I learnt it as a patter simply from hearing it said in my own defence, and have often raised a blush since then by saying it myself. I doubt if the same results would be obtained by ever so eloquent a paraphrase of the fourth commandment down Whitechapel way. But Chinese, whether they follow them or not, seem all to have been taught to hold in respect the dicta of the ancients. To this day a quotation from Confucius will often settle a moot point in weighty affairs of State. Would that it were so among ourselves with a Christian text!