Читать книгу Among the Head-Hunters of Formosa - Janet B. Montgomery McGovern - Страница 5

“There are nine-and-sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,

And every single one of them is right.”

Then I met a missionary acquaintance. So preoccupied was I with thoughts suggested by the visit I had just paid that I almost passed the missionary without speaking. Turning back, I apologized both for my seeming discourtesy in not speaking, and also for the barbaric chant, to the tune—if tune it could be called—of which I was humming Kipling’s words.

“A visit I have just made suggested the words, I suppose,” I explained, laughing, “or brought them up from some depth of the subconscious; I was rather fond of quoting them once.” Then I told the missionary of the visit from which I was returning.

“Disgusting heathen!” she exclaimed. “Besides, what have ‘different ways of constructing tribal lays’ to do with heathen immorality?” She frowned and looked puzzled. Then added more gently, as if explaining to a child: “ ‘Lays,’ you know, means poetry, and ‘constructing tribal lays’ just means writing poetry; nothing whatever to do with the heathen and their horrible ways.”

When we parted she adjured me to be more careful about wearing my sun-helmet, assuring me that it was necessary in that climate. “If one does not,” she explained, “something might happen to one—to one’s head, you know,” she added significantly, “and it would be a dreadful thing in a heathen country. …”

To go back for a moment to the day of my landing:

As my first glimpse of Formosa from a passing steamer, a few years before, had fascinated me, so did my first glimpse of the island after I had landed. Not the Formosa of Keelung quay with its hordes of starving, skin-and-bone dogs—several of them dragging about on three legs or with paralysed hindquarters—nosing for food among the refuse,[24] or its crowd of screaming, guttural-voiced ricksha-coolies and vegetable-and-fish pedlars; or the arrogant Japanese officials—all in military uniform, with swords strapped at their sides[25]—bullying the Chinese-Formosans. But the Formosa of the country through which I passed in going from Keelung to Taihoku; the Formosa of scenery surpassing that of Japan proper, both in natural beauty and in the picturesqueness of the tiny peasant-villages, each village protected from tornadoes by a clump of marvellously tall bamboos, whose feathery tops of delicate green seemed to cut into the deep blue of the tropical sky; each house protected from evil spirits by cryptic signs—said to be quotations from Confucius—written, or painted, in black on red paper,[26] and pasted above and at both sides of each doorway. Every village was further protected by a temple of brilliant and varied colouring, on the roof of which wonderfully moulded dragons writhed or reared. The inhabitants of these villages were, of course, Chinese-Formosans. Very picturesque were these too, in their bright blue smocks and black trousers; men and women dressed so much alike that at a little distance they were indistinguishable. Only on nearer view was it clear that those who wore tinsel ornaments in their hair and walked as if on stilts were women. When these hobbled still nearer the cause of their queer stilted walk was obvious. Their feet were “bound,” i.e. deformed and distorted, pathetically—and to Western eyes abhorrently—out of shape.

Up to this time I had always supposed that only among the “upper classes” in China were the feet of the women bound; those of the class who could afford to go always in ricksha or sedan-chair. But all the women of the Chinese-Formosans—except those of the despised Hakkas—bind their feet; rather, have them bound in infancy. A woman with unbound feet is regarded as a sort of pariah, and her chances of a “good marriage”—that goal of every Chinese woman—are almost nil.[27]

These peasant and coolie-women hobbled nearer to see the train as it stopped at the little stations between Keelung and Taihoku, especially when it was reported that there was a white woman aboard. Many of them could not walk without the aid of a stick or without resting one hand on the shoulder of a small boy, thus maintaining their balance. “Lily feet” were obviously a handicap in the carrying of such burdens as most of these women had on their backs. In some cases the bundles consisted of babies strapped Indian-papoose fashion to the shoulders of the mothers—a custom common to both Chinese and Japanese women; in other cases, of heavy bundles of food or of faggots. Unattractive as were the figures of the women—the entire leg being undeveloped, as the result of the cramping of the feet from infancy—their faces were generally attractive; sweet, with a wistful, rather pathetic expression. Only the lips and teeth of the older women were often hideously disfigured from the habit of beetle-nut chewing. The women out of doors who were not burden-bearing were kneeling at the side of the streams and canals, used for irrigating the rice-paddies, busily engaged in washing the family linen—very much in public—or pounding it between stones. As these washerwomen—and they seemed legion, for the Chinese devote as much time to the washing of their clothing as the Japanese do to that of their bodies—knelt, I saw the soles of their feet. In the case of some of the poorer and more ill-dressed women, the splashing water had displaced the rags with which their feet were bound, and the “shoes” which were supposed to cover them. The feet themselves—those members which every lily-footed woman most carefully conceals—were exposed. The sight was not a pleasant one.

I turned to watch the men, most of whom were working in the rice-paddies. Some of them were ploughing—with much the same sort of plough as those supposed to have been used by the ancient Egyptians. To these ploughs were harnessed great “water-buffaloes.” Here was picturesqueness unmarred by a suggestion of pain, even of pain proudly borne, as in the case of the women. The greyness of the “water-buffaloes” made a pleasing contrast to the vivid green of the rice-paddies and to the blue smocks and high-peaked, yellow, dried-bamboo-leaf helmets of the men. There are few things more pleasing to the eye than a carefully terraced Chinese rice-paddy in full verdure, with its graceful slopes and intricate curves of shimmering green. If one approaches too near, the olfactory sense is unpleasantly assailed. But on this first day in Formosa I was not too near. I saw only the beauty—beauty of unusual richness and variety; for, as a background to the rice-paddies, and peasant villages and multi-coloured temples, beetled the great mountain crags, all glowing in the brilliance of tropical September sunshine.

So beautiful was the scenery of the island that after I was settled in Taihoku I made frequent excursions through the country, scraping what acquaintance I could—by means of sign language and the few words of Chinese-Formosan dialect that I had learned from my servants—with the peasants, and taking “snapshots” of their houses and temples, and of their children. Attractive as are all Oriental children, these little ones seemed particularly so; perhaps because of the quaintness of Chinese children’s costume, certainly as this is still worn in Formosa.

On one of these excursions into the country I passed through Keelung. My kodak was in my hand, but the idea of taking a picture in Keelung never occurred to me. In the first place, I knew that the taking of photographs of any sort in this port was one of the many things “strongly forbidden” by Japanese officialdom. In the second place, Keelung is a squalid and dirty town, with none of the picturesqueness of the open country or of the tiny peasant-villages. There was no temptation to photograph its ugliness, or the flaunting evidences of its vice—vice of the mean, sordid type of Oriental, sailor-haunted port-towns. I was hurrying through this hideous town as quickly as possible, in order to reach a stretch of open country, which I knew lay beyond, and which commanded a beautiful view of the sea and of fantastically rearing rocky islets, when I felt my arm roughly grasped. Turning around, I beheld a Japanese policeman. Clanking his sword as he spoke, he demanded my name and address; also he peremptorily demanded to know what I meant by coming to take photographs in the great colonial port-town of his Imperial Majesty, and asked if I did not know that this made me guilty of the unspeakably abominable crime of lack of respect for his August Majesty. I explained that I was not taking pictures in Keelung, had not done so, and had no intention of so doing; that there was nothing there worth photographing.

“But the fortifications,” he began; “you may be looking——” Then he stopped, apparently rather abashed.

“What fortifications?” I asked. “I did not know that there were any. Where are they?”

“Oh no, of course,” he answered, with confusion rather curious in a Japanese policeman. “Of course there are not any now. Only there might be some, one day, and——” Suddenly his brow cleared, as if under the inspiration of an idea that would elucidate matters. “Anybody might be a German—a German spy, you know, looking for a site to build some fortifications perhaps.”

Although this was during the Great War, I knew that in Formosa the fear on the part of the Japanese Government of a “German spy” was practically nil. Also the Japanese policeman was sufficiently intelligent to be able to distinguish one to whom English was the mother-tongue (I was speaking with my secretary as I walked) from a German, even though the latter were speaking English.[28] But in those days of war-hysteria when many English-speaking people became excitedly sympathetic at the suggestion of German spies and their machinations——. Yes, it was a clever move on the part of the policeman. But it aroused my curiosity.

Afterwards I made several trips to Keelung, but without my camera. And once, quite by accident, I learned how strongly fortified that port is at the present time, and with what ingenuity the fortifications are concealed. But that forms no part of the present narrative. …

The fact that I had taken a “photographic apparatus” to Keelung was recorded against me in the police records of Taihoku, and brought several calls of an inquisitorial nature from the police.

To inquisitorial calls from the police and from other Japanese officials, however, I became accustomed during my residence in Formosa. My object in going there was to devote my leisure time—that not engaged in teaching—to the study of the aboriginal tribes of the island. There were reports—reports confirmed and denied—of a pigmy race among the aborigines. These reports still further stimulated my interest. I knew there were really pigmies—the Aetas—in the Philippines. Were there, or were there not, such people in the mountains of Formosa? I determined to find out.

My teaching duties occupied only four days a week. The other three days of each week, besides all the days of the rather frequent vacations, were supposedly my own, to employ as I felt inclined. It was supposed apparently by both school officials and police officials (the duties of the two seem curiously interlinked in the Japanese Empire) that inclination would lead me to devote this leisure to attending tea-parties at the houses of the missionaries in the city and to distributing pocket Testaments among the young men of the school. My predecessor (who had resigned the school-post in order to take up avowed missionary work) had, it seemed, so devoted her leisure, and to the mind of Japanese officialdom it was incomprehensible that what one seiyō-jin woman had done all others should not, as a matter of course, wish to do. When it was learned that my inclination lay in another direction—that of tramping the island, especially the mountains, and getting into as close touch as possible with the aborigines—I received several calls from horrified officials. The Director of Schools was especially insistent (he said he was requested to be so by the Chief of the Police Department) in wishing to know why I was not satisfied with ricksha-rides about the city. This after I had made him understand that I was not a missionary and that I was not particularly interested in either pink teas or Testament distribution. “Why you want to walk?” he demanded. “Japanese ladies never walk; only coolie-women walk.”

I explained that obviously I was not a Japanese, also that I was not at all certain that I was a lady, and that if the distinction between coolie-woman and lady lay in the fact that the one walked and the other did not, I much preferred being classed in the former category.

He scratched his head rather violently—a Japanese habit when puzzled or annoyed. Suddenly the light of a great idea seemed to dawn upon him. “Ah,” he exclaimed exultantly, the recollection of some missionary speech or sermon evidently being made to serve the occasion, “but they will say you are immoral, and Christian ladies do not like to be thought immoral.”

This struck me as being amusing—for several reasons.

“Yes,” I said, “and who is likely to think me immoral?”

“Oh, everybody,” he answered impressively. “And they will publish it in the papers—all the Japanese papers in the city, and in the island,” he emphasized, “that you are immoral. And, anyhow, you must do in Rome as the Romans do,” he added triumphantly, evidently thinking he had convicted me out of the mouth of one of the sages of my own Western world. Ever afterwards this: “Do in Rome as the Romans do” was a favourite phrase of his when he tried to insist upon my regulating my life in every detail upon the model of that of a Japanese woman.

AUTHOR IN RICKSHA IN THE CITY OF TAIHOKU.

USUAL FORM OF TORO (PUSH-CAR).

(Author has vacated seat by the side of Japanese policeman, in order to take “snapshot.”)

I am afraid I did not conceal my amusement on this occasion as well as I should have done. Japanese officials take themselves, and like to be taken, very seriously. I did not wish the Director to know that I saw through his ruse—and that of certain other of the Japanese officials—a ruse directed towards keeping me from coming into personal contact with the aborigines of the island and with the more intelligent Chinese-Formosans, except when under the immediate surveillance of the Japanese.

The Director said that it would be “all right” if he accompanied me on my excursions into the mountains. Now the Director happened to be a married man; his wife happened to be a Japanese lady who “of course did not walk.” I tried to explain that if he really thought there was danger of a scandal, the companionship of a married man on these excursions, one whose wife was left at home, would not tend to lessen this danger.

“I am afraid I must continue to go my wicked way without the protection of your companionship,” I said; “and if ‘they’—whoever ‘they’ may be—annoy you with questions as to the object of my excursions into the mountains, or if they are inquisitive as to whether I go there for the purpose of a romance, legitimate or otherwise, tell them that I am one of those who like to ‘eat of all the fruit of the trees of the garden of the world——’ ”

“Huh?” roared the Director. Both hands were at his head now.

“Tell them ‘Yes’ to anything they ask about me,” I said, “if that will set their minds at rest and prevent their annoying you with impertinent questions, as you say they annoy you.”

“I’ll tell them you are immoral, that’s what I’ll tell them; if you don’t just go about where you can ride in rickshas, like other ladies,” wrathily exclaimed the Director, attempting to rise and make a dignified exit. Unfortunately, however, the Director happened to be fat, and happened not to be accustomed to sitting in a chair.[29] Also his sword had become entangled in the wicker-work arm of the chair, so that, when he rose, the chair rose with him. This slightly spoiled the effect of the dignified exit. It may have been due to the fact that it was necessary to extricate him from the chair, that, before leaving, he became sufficiently mollified to concede: “If you want exercise more than other ladies, you may play tennis-ball on the school-grounds.”