Читать книгу The War in the East: Japan, China, and Corea - White Trumbull - Страница 11

Table of Contents

Severity of the Judgment of Americans and Chinese Against One Another—Each Sees the Worst Side of the Other—Characteristics of the Chinese, Their Physique, Temperament, and Morals—Tests of Intellectuality—Marriage Customs of the Chinese—The Engagement—The Wedding Ceremony—The Position of Women—Concubinage—Divorce—Family Relationships—Dress of Men and Women—Distorted Feet versus Queues—Chinese Houses and Home Life—Children—Education and Schools—National Festivities—Music and Art—Chinese Religions—Language and Literature.

In treating of the personal characteristics and customs of the Chinese people it is the desire of the writer to get away from the hackneyed descriptions of pigtails, shaven heads, thick soled shoes, assumption of dignity and superiority, and great ignorance concerning many subjects with which we are familiar, which usually mark the pages of articles and books concerning this race. The Chinaman is believed by many to be the personification of stupidity, and many writers who wish to make readable matter gladly seize upon and exaggerate anything which can be made to appear grotesque and ridiculous. It would be but a poor answer to these views to say that they correspond remarkably with those which the Chinese entertain of us. They also enjoy a great deal of pleasantry at our expense, finding it almost impossible to regard otherwise than as ludicrous our short cropped hair, tight fitting, ungraceful, and uncomfortable looking clothes, men’s thin soled leather shoes, tall stiff hats, gloves in summer time, the wasp-like appearance of ladies with their small waists, our remarkable ignorance of the general rules of propriety, and the strange custom of a man and his wife walking together in public! These views we can afford to laugh at as relating to comparatively trivial matters, but they think they have the evidence that we are also inferior to them in intellectuality, in refinement, in civilization, and especially morals. It is evident that one party or the other has made a serious mistake, and it would be but a natural and reasonable presumption that both may have erred to some extent. We should look at this matter from an impartial standpoint, and take into view not simply facts which are comparatively unimportant and exceptional, but those which are fundamental and of widespread influence, and should construe these facts justly and generously. We should take pains not to form the judgment that because a people or a custom is different from our own it is therefore necessarily worse.

There are many reasons why unfair judgments have been formed by us against the Chinese and by the Chinese against Europeans and Americans. Each nation is apt to see the worst side of the other. It so happens that the Chinese who have come to America are almost all from the southern provinces and from the lower classes of the worst part of the empire. We have formed many of our impressions from our observation of these low class adventurers. They on the other hand have not received the treatment here which would cause them to carry back to China kindly opinions of Americans.

In China the same or similar conditions have existed. In the open ports, where a large foreign commerce has sprung up, an immense number of Chinese congregate from the interior. Many of them are adventurers who come to these places to engage in the general scramble for wealth. The Chinamen of the best class are, as a matter of fact, not the most numerous in the open ports. Moreover foreign ideas and customs prevail to a great extent in these foreign communities, and the natives, whatever they might have been originally, gradually become more or less denationalized, and present a modified type of their race. The Chinese being every day brought into contact with drunken sailors and unscrupulous traders from the west, new lessons are constantly learned from them in the school of duplicity and immorality. The Chinese of this class are no fitting type of the race. It is an accepted fact that the great seaports of the world, where international trade holds sway, are the worst centers of vice, and no estimate of a people formed from these cities can be just.

The Chinese as a race are of a phlegmatic and impassive temperament, and physically less active and energetic than European and American nations. Children are not fond of athletic and vigorous sports, but prefer marbles, kite flying, and quiet games of ball or spinning tops. Men take an easy stroll for recreation, but never a rapid walk for exercise and are seldom in a hurry or excited. They are also characteristically timid and docile. But while the Chinese are deficient in active courage and daring, they are not in passive resistance. They are comparatively apathetic as regards pain and death, and have great powers of physical endurance as well as great persistency and obstinacy. Physical development and strength and longevity vary in different parts of the empire. In and about Canton, as well as in most parts of the south, from which we have derived most of our impressions of China, the people are small in stature; but in the province of Shan-tung in the north, men varying in height from five feet eight inches to six feet are very common, while some of them are considerably taller. In this part of China too, one frequently finds laborers more than seventy years of age working daily at their trades, and it is not unusual to hear of persons who have reached the age of ninety or more.

The intellectuality of the Chinese is made evident by so many obvious and weighty facts, that it seems strange that persons of ordinary intelligence and information should ever have questioned it. We have before us a system of government and code of laws which will bear favorable comparison with those of European nations, and have elicited a generous tribute of admiration and praise from the most competent students. The practical wisdom and foresight of those who constructed this system are evidenced by the fact that it has stood the test of time, enduring longer than any other which man has devised during the world’s history; that it has bound together under one common rule, a population to which the world affords no parallel, and given a degree of prosperity and wealth which may well challenge our wonder. It is intelligent thought which has given China such a prominence in the east and also in the eyes of Christendom. She may well point with pride to her authentic history reaching back through more than thirty centuries; to her extensive literature, containing many works of sterling and permanent value; to her thoroughly elaborated language possessed of a remarkable power of expression; to her list of scholars, and her proficiency in belles-lettres. If these do not constitute evidences of intellectuality, it would be difficult to say where such evidences could be found, or on what basis we ourselves will rest our claim of intellectual superiority.

China has been so arrogant and extravagant in her assumptions of pre-eminence, that we have perhaps for this very reason been indisposed to accord to her the position to which she is fairly entitled. It should be remembered, that ignorant until recently of western nations, as they have been of her, she has compared herself simply with the nations around her, and a partial excuse for her overweening self conceit may be found in the fact that she only regarded herself as the nations with which she is acquainted have regarded her. She has been for ages the great center of light and civilization in eastern Asia. She has given literature and religion to Japan, to Corea, and to Manchooria, and has been looked up to by these and other smaller nations as their acknowledged teacher. The Japanese have produced no great teachers or sages which they would presume to compare with those of China; and it is clearest evidence of their acknowledgment of the literary superiority of the Chinese that they use Chinese classics as text books in their schools much as we do those of Greece and Rome. It is true that the Chinese know hardly anything of the modern arts and sciences and that there is no word in their language to designate some of them; but how much did our ancestors know two hundred years ago of chemistry, geology, philosophy, anatomy, and other kindred sciences. What did we know fifty years ago of the steamboat, the railroad, and the telegraph? And is our comparative want of knowledge a few years ago and that of our ancestors to be taken as evidence of inferiority of race and intellect? Furthermore, if we go back a few hundred years we are apt to find many things to establish the claims of the Chinese as a superior rather than inferior race. There are excellent grounds to credit the Chinese with the invention or discovery of printing, the use of the magnetic needle, the manufacture and use of gunpowder, of silk fabrics, and of chinaware and porcelain, and there seems no doubt that the Chinese discovered America from the westward, long before the discoveries of Europeans.

Intellectual power manifests itself in a variety of ways, and glaring defects are often found associated in the same individual with remarkable powers and capabilities, as particular faculties both of mind and body are often cultivated and developed at the expense of others. Chinese education has very little regard to the improvement of the reasoning powers, and Chinese scholars are deficient in logical acumen and very inferior to the Hindoos in this respect; but in developing and storing the memory they are without a rival. Again their system of training effectually discourages and precludes freedom and originality of thought, while it has the compensating advantages of creating a love of method and order, habitual subjection to authority, and a remarkable uniformity in character and ideas. Perhaps the results which they have realized in fusing such a vast mass of beings into one homogeneous body, could have been reached in no other way.

The morality of the Chinese presents another subject about which there is a wide difference of opinion. It may be a matter of interest and profit to turn for a moment to the views which the Chinese generally entertain of our morality, and their reasons for these views. They are all familiar with the fact that foreigners introduced opium into China, in opposition to the earnest and persistent remonstrances of the Chinese government; that out of the opium trade grew the first war with China; and that when the representatives of Christian England urged the Chinese government to legalize the trade and make it a source of revenue, the Chinese emperor replied that he would not use as a means of revenue that which brought suffering and misery upon his people.

The Chinese form their opinions of western morality to a great extent from the sailors on shore-leave at the open ports, and these men are proverbially vicious under such circumstances. For years foreigners of this class have commanded many of the piratical fleets on the coasts of China, and foreign thieves and robbers have infested many of the inland canals and rivers. In business dealings with strangers from western lands the natives find that duplicity and dishonesty are not confined to their own people. Replying to our criticism of the system of concubinage, the Chinese point to the numerous class of native women in the foreign communities, fostered and patronized by foreigners alone, who appear in the streets with an effrontery which would be regarded as utterly indecent and intolerable in most Chinese cities. The large importation from Europe of obscene pictures which are offered at every hand, is another fact which the educated Chinese cites in answer to criticisms of his people’s morality.

On the general subject of morality and Chinese moral teaching, two quotations from the writings of eminent Englishmen who lived in China for many years are pertinent. Sir John Davis says: “The most commendable feature of the Chinese system is the general diffusion of elementary moral education among the lower orders. It is in the preference of moral to physical instruction that even we might perhaps wisely take a leaf out of the Chinese book, and do something to reform this most mechanical age of ours.” The opinion of Thomas Taylor Meadows is thus expressed: “No people whether of ancient or modern times has possessed a sacred literature so completely exempt as the Chinese from licentious descriptions and from every offensive expression. There is not a single sentence in the whole of their sacred books and their annotations that may not when translated word for word be read aloud in any family in England.”

It must be acknowledged that the Chinese give many evidences, not only in their literature, but also in their paintings and sculpture, of a scrupulous care to avoid all indecent and immoral associations and suggestions. In referring to the above peculiarity of Chinese views and customs, these remarks are not, of course, concerning the private lives and practices of the people, but of their standard of propriety and of what the public taste requires, in objects which are openly represented to be seen and admired by the young and old of both sexes.

The government of the empire is modeled on the government of a household, and at the root of all family ties, says one of the Chinese classics, is the relation of husband and wife, which is as the relation of heaven and earth. Chinese historians record that the rite of marriage was first instituted by the Emperor Fuh-he, who reigned in the twenty-eighth century B.C. But before this period there is abundant evidence to show that as amongst all other peoples the first form of marriage was by capture. At the present day marriage is probably more universal in China than in any other civilized country in the world, for it is regarded as something indispensable and few men pass the age of twenty without taking to themselves a wife. To die without leaving behind a son to perform the burial rites and to offer up the fixed periodical sacrifices at the tomb, is one of the most direful fates that can overtake a Chinaman, and he seeks to avoid it by an early marriage.

Like every other rite in China that of marriage is fenced in with a host of ceremonies. In a vast majority of cases the bridegroom never sees his bride until the wedding night, it being considered a grave breach of etiquette for young men and maidens to associate together or even to see one another. Of course it does occasionally happen that either by stealth or chance a pair become acquainted; but whether they have thus associated, or whether they are perfect strangers, the first formal overture must of necessity be made by a professional go-between, who having received a commission from the parents of a young man, proceeds to the house of the young woman and makes a formal proposal on behalf of the would-be bridegroom’s parents. If the young lady’s father approves the proposed alliance, the suitor sends the lady some presents as an earnest of his intentions.

The parents next exchange documents which set forth the hour, day, month, and year when the young people were born, and the maiden names of their mothers. Astrologers are then called in to cast the horoscopes, and should these be favorable the engagement is formally entered into, but not so irrevocably that there are not several orthodox ways of breaking it off. But should things go smoothly, the bridegroom’s father writes a formal letter of agreement to the lady’s father, accompanied by presents, consisting in some cases of sweetmeats and a live pig, and in others of a goose and gander, which are regarded as emblems of conjugal fidelity. Two large cards are also prepared by the bridegroom, and on these are written the particulars of the engagement. One is sent to the lady and the other he keeps. She in return now makes a present to the suitor according to his rank and fortune. Recourse is then again had to astrologers to fix a fortunate day for the final ceremony, on the evening of which the bridegroom’s best man proceeds to the house of the lady and conducts her to her future home in a red sedan chair, accompanied by musicians who enliven the procession by wedding airs. At the door of the house the bride alights from her sedan, and is lifted over a pan of burning charcoal laid on the threshold by two “women of luck,” whose husbands and children must be living.

In the reception room the bridegroom awaits his bride on a raised dais, at the foot of which she humbly prostrates herself. He then descends to her level, and removing her veil gazes on her face for the first time. Without exchanging a word they seat themselves side by side, and each tries to sit on a part of the dress of the other, it being considered that the one who succeeds in so doing will hold rule in the household. This trial of skill over, the pair proceed to the hall, and there before the family altar worship heaven and earth and their ancestors. They then go to dinner in their apartment, through the open door of which the guests scrutinize and make their remarks on the appearance and demeanor of the bride. This ordeal is the more trying to her, since etiquette forbids her to eat anything, a prohibition which is not shared by the bridegroom, who enjoys the dainties provided as his appetite may suggest. The attendants next hand to each in turn a cup of wine, and having exchanged pledges, the wedding ceremonies come to an end. In some parts of the country it is customary for the bride to sit up late into the night answering riddles which are propounded to her by the guests; in other parts it is usual for her to show herself for a time in the hall, whither her husband does not accompany her, as it is contrary to etiquette for a husband and wife ever to appear together in public. For the same reason she goes to pay the customary visit to her parents on the third day after the wedding alone, and for the rest of her wedded life she enjoys the society of her husband only in the privacy of her apartments.

DISCIPLINE ON THE MARCH, IN THE CHINESE ARMY.

The lives of women in China, and especially of married women, are such as to justify the wish often expressed by them that in their next state of existence they may be born men. Even if in their baby days they escape the infanticidal tendencies of their parents, they are regarded as secondary considerations compared with their brothers. The philosophers from Confucius downward have all agreed in assigning them an inferior place to men. When the time comes for them to marry, custom requires them in nine cases out of ten, as we have seen, to take a leap in the dark, and that wife is fortunate who finds in her husband a congenial and faithful companion.

There is but one proper wife in the family, but there is no law against a man’s having secondary wives or concubines; and such connections are common enough wherever the means of a family are sufficient for their support. The concubine occupies in the family an inferior position to the wife, and her children, if she has any, belong by law to the wife.

There are seven legal grounds for divorcing a wife: disobedience to her husband’s parents; not giving birth to a son; Dissolute conduct; jealousy; talkativeness; thieving, and leprosy. These grounds however may be nullified by “the three considerations:” If her parents be dead; if she has passed with her husband through the years of mourning for his parents; and if he has become rich from being poor.

So many are the disabilities of married women, that many girls prefer going into nunneries or even committing suicide to trusting their future to men of whom they can know nothing but from the interested reports of the go-between.

The re-marriage of widows is regarded as an impropriety, and in wealthy families is seldom practiced. But among the poorer classes necessity often compels a widow to seek another bread winner. Some, however, having been unfortunate in their first matrimonial venture, refuse to listen to any proposal for a re-marriage, and like the young girls mentioned above seek escape by death from the importunities of relatives who desire to get them off their hands. A reverse view of matrimonial experiences is suggested by the practice of wives refusing to survive their husbands, and putting a voluntary end to their existence rather than live to mourn their loss. Such devotion is regarded by the people with great approbation and a deed of suicide is generally performed in public and with great punctiliousness.

The picture here given of married life in China has been necessarily darkly shaded, since it is, as a rule, only in its unfortunate phases, that it affords opportunity for remark. Without doubt there are many hundreds of thousands of families in China which are entirely happy. Happiness is after all a relative term, and Chinese women, knowing no higher status, are as a rule content to run the risk of wrongs which would be unendurable to an American woman, and to find happiness under conditions which are fortunately unknown in western countries.

The family tie in China is strong and the people are clannish. They seldom change their place of residence and most of them live where their ancestors have lived for many generations. One will frequently find the larger portion of a small village bearing the same name, in which case the village often takes its name from the family. Books on filial piety and the domestic relations recommend sons not to leave their parents when married, but to live together lovingly and harmoniously as one family. This theory is carried out in practice to some extent, in most instances. In the division of property some regard is had to primogeniture, but different sons share nearly equally. The eldest simply has a somewhat larger portion and certain household relics and valuables.

The position of woman is intermediate between that which she occupies in Christian and in other non-Christian countries. The manner in which they regard their lot may be inferred from the fact related on a previous page, that the most earnest desire and prayer in worshipping in Buddhist temples is, generally, that they may be men in the next state of existence. In many families girls have no individual names, but are simply called No. One, Two, Three, Four, etc. When married they are Mr. So-and-so’s wife, and when they have sons they are such-and-such a boy’s mother. They live in a great measure secluded, take no part in general society, and are expected to retire when a stranger or an acquaintance of the opposite sex enters the house. The claim of one’s parents and brothers upon his affections is considered to be paramount to that of his wife. A reason given for this doctrine in a celebrated Chinese work is that the loss of a brother is irreparable but that of a wife is not. Women are treated with more respect and consideration as they advance in years; mothers are regarded with great affection and tenderness, and grandmothers are sometimes almost worshipped. It must be further said that the Chinese have found the theory of inferiority of women a very difficult one to carry out in practice. There are many families in which the superiority of her will and authority is sufficiently manifest, even though not cheerfully acknowledged.

The rules and conventionalities which regulate social life are exceedingly minute and formal. Politeness is a science, and gracefulness of manners a study and discipline. The people are hospitable and generous to a fault, their desire to appear well in these respects often leading them to expenditures entirely disproportionate to their means.

When under the influence of passion, quarrels arise, the women resort to abuse in violent language, extreme in proportion to the length of time during which the feelings which prompted them have been restrained. Men bluster and threaten in a manner quite frightful to those unaccustomed to it, but seldom come to blows. In cases of deep resentment the injured party often adopts a mode of revenge which is very characteristic. Instead of killing the object of his hate, he kills himself on the doorstep of his enemy, thereby casting obloquy and the stigma of murder on the adversary.

In matters of dress, with one or two exceptions, the Chinese must be acknowledged to have used a wise discretion. They wear nothing that is tight fitting, and make a greater difference between their summer and winter clothing than is customary among ourselves. The usual dress of a coolie in summer is a loose fitting pair of cotton trousers and an equally loose jacket; but the same man in winter will be seen wearing quilted cotton clothes, or if he should be an inhabitant of the northern provinces a sheepskin robe, superadded to an abundance of warm clothing intermediate between it and his shirt. By the wealthier classes silk, satin, and gauze are much worn in the summer, and woolen or handsome fur clothes in the winter. Among such people it is customary except in the seclusion of their homes, to wear both in summer and winter long tunics coming down to the ankles.

In summer non-official Chinamen leave their heads uncovered, but do not seem to suffer any inconvenience from the great heat. On the approach of summer an edict is issued fixing the day upon which the summer costume is to be adopted throughout the empire, and again as winter draws near, the time for putting on winter dress is announced in the same formal manner. Fine straw or bamboo forms the material of the summer hat, the outside of which is covered with fine silk. At this season also the thick silk robes and the heavy padded jackets worn in winter are exchanged for light silk or satin tunics. The winter cap has a turned-up brim and is covered with satin with a black cloth lining, and as in the case of the summer cap a tassel of red silk covers the entire crown.

The wives of mandarins wear the same embroidered insignia on their dresses as their husbands, and their style of dress as well as that of Chinese women generally bears a resemblance to that of the men. They wear a loose fitting tunic which reaches below the knee, and trousers which are drawn in at the ankle after the bloomer fashion. On state occasions they wear a richly embroidered petticoat coming down to the feet, which hangs square both before and behind and is pleated at the sides like a Highlander’s kilt. The mode of doing the hair varies in almost every province. At Canton the women plaster their back hair into the shape of a teapot handle, and adorn the sides with pins and ornaments, while the young girls proclaim their unmarried state by suttingsutting their hair in fringe across their foreheads after a fashion not unknown among ourselves. In most parts of the country, flowers, natural when obtainable and artificial when not so, are largely used to deck out the head dresses, and considerable taste is shown in the choice of colors and the manner in which they are arranged.

A TYPHOON.

Thus far there is nothing to find fault with in female fashions in China, but the same cannot be said of the way in which they treat their faces and feet. In many countries the secret art of removing traces of the ravages of time with the appliances of the toilet table has been and is practised; but by an extravagant and hideous use of pigments and cosmetics, the Chinese girl not only conceals the fresh complexion of youth, but produces those very disfigurements which furnish the only possible excuse for artificial complexions. Their poets also have declared that a woman’s eyebrows should be arched like a rainbow or shaped like a willow leaf, and the consequence is that wishing to act up to the idea thus pictured, China women with the aid of tweezers remove all the hairs of their eyebrows which straggle the least out of the required line, and when the task becomes impossible even with the help of these instruments, the paint brush or a stick of charcoal is brought into requisition. A comparison of one such painted lily with the natural healthy complexion, bright eyes, laughing lips, and dimpled cheeks of a Canton boat girl, for example, is enough to vindicate nature’s claim to superiority over art a thousand fold.

BANDAGING THE FEET.

But the chief offense of Chinese women is in their treatment of their feet. Various explanations are current as to the origin of the custom of deforming the women’s feet. Some say that it is an attempt to imitate the peculiarly shaped foot of a certain beautiful empress; others that it is a device intended to restrain the gadding-about tendencies of women; but however that may be, the practice is universal except among the Manchoos and the Hakka population at Canton, who have natural feet. The feet are first bound when the child is about five years old and the muscles of locomotion have consequently had time to develop. A cotton bandage two or three inches wide is wound tightly about the foot in different directions. The four smaller toes are bent under the foot, and the instep is forced upward and backward. The foot therefore assumes the shape of an acute triangle, the big toe forming the acute angle and the other toes, being bent under the foot, becoming almost lost or absorbed. At the same time, the shoes worn having high heels, the foot becomes nothing but a club and loses all elasticity. The consequence is that the women walk as on pegs, and the calf of the leg having no exercise shrivels up. Though the effect of this custom is to produce real deformity and a miserable tottering gait, even foreigners naturally come to associate it with gentility and good breeding, and to estimate the character and position of women much as the Chinese do, by the size of their feet. The degree of severity with which the feet are bound differs widely in the various ranks of society. Country women and the poorer classes have feet about half the natural size, while those of the genteel or fashionable class are only about three inches long.

Women in the humbler walks of life are therefore often able to move about with ease. Most ladies on the other hand are practically debarred from walking at all and are dependent on their sedan chairs for all locomotion beyond they own doors. But even in this case habit becomes a second nature and fashion triumphs over sense. No mother, however keen may be her recollection of her sufferings as a child, or however conscious she may be of the inconveniences and ills arising from her deformed feet, would ever dream of saving her own child from like immediate torture and permanent evil. Further there is probably less excuse for such a practice in China than in any other country, for the hands and feet of both men and women are naturally both small and finely shaped. The Chinese insist upon it that the custom of compressing women’s feet is neither in as bad taste nor so injurious to the health as that of foreign women in compressing the waist.

The male analogue of the women’s compressed feet in the shaven forepart of the head and the braided queue. The custom of thus treating the hair was imposed on the people by the first emperor of the present dynasty, in 1644. Up to that time the Chinese had allowed the hair to grow long, and were in the habit of drawing it up into a tuft on the top of the head. The introduction of the queue at the bidding of the Manchoorian conqueror was intended as a badge of conquest, and as such was at first unwillingly adopted by the people. For nearly a century the natives of outlying parts of the empire refused to submit their heads to the razor and in many districts the authorities rewarded converts to the new way by presents of money. As the custom spread these bribes were discontinued, and the converse action of treating those who refused to conform with severity, completed the conversion of the empire. At the present day every Chinaman who is not in open rebellion to the throne, shaves his head with the exception of the crown where the hair is allowed to grow to its full length. This hair is carefully braided, and falls down the back forming what is commonly known as the “pig tail.” Great pride is taken, especially in the south, in having as long and as thick a queue as possible, and when nature has been niggardly in her supply of natural growth, the deficiency is supplemented by the insertion of silk in the plait.

The staff of life in China is rice. It is eaten and always eaten, from north to south and from east to west, on the tables of the rich and poor, morning, noon, and night, except among the very poor people in some of the northern non-rice producing provinces where millet takes its place. In all other parts the big bowl of boiled rice forms the staple of the meal eaten by the people, and it is accompanied by vegetables, fish and meat, according to the circumstances of the household. Among many people, however, there is a disinclination to eat meat, owing to the influence of Buddhism. The difference in the quality and expense of the food of the rich from that of the poor, consists principally in the concomitants eaten with the rice or millet. The poor have simply a dish of salt vegetables or fish, which costs comparatively little. The rich have pork, fowls, eggs, fish and game prepared in various ways.

Before each chair is placed an empty bowl and two chop-sticks, while in the middle of the table stands the dishes of food. Each person fills his basin from the large dishes, or is supplied by the servants, and holding it up to his chin with his left hand he transfers its contents into his mouth with his chop-sticks with the utmost ease. The chop-sticks are held between the first and second, and the second and third fingers, and constant practice enables a Chinaman to lift up and hold the minutest atoms of food, oily and slippery as they often are, with the greatest ease. To most foreigners their skillful use is well nigh impossible. To the view of the Chinese the use of chop-sticks is an evidence of superior culture; and the use of such barbarous instruments as knives and forks, and cutting or tearing the meat from the bones on the table instead of having the food properly prepared and severed into edible morsels in the kitchen, evidences a lower type of civilization.

The meats most commonly eaten are pork, mutton, and goat’s flesh, beside ducks, chickens, and pheasants, and in the north deer and hares. Beef is never exposed for sale in the Chinese markets. The meat of the few cattle which are killed is disposed of almost clandestinely. There is a strong and almost universal prejudice against eating beef, and the practice of doing so is declaimed against in some of the moral tracts. Milk is hardly used at all in the eighteen provinces, and in many places our practice of drinking it is regarded with the utmost disgust.

It must be confessed that in some parts of the country less savory viands find their place on the dinner table. In Canton, for example, dried rats have a recognized place in the poulterers’ shops and find a ready market. Horse flesh is also exposed for sale, and there are even to be found dog and cat restaurants. The flesh of black dogs and cats, and especially the former is preferred as being more nutritive. Frogs form a common dish among the poor people and are, it is needless to say, very good eating. In some parts of the country locusts and grasshoppers are eaten. At Tien-tsin men may commonly be seen standing at the corners of the streets frying locusts over portable fires, just as among ourselves chestnuts are cooked. Ground-grubs, silkworms and water-snakes are also occasionally treated as food. The sea, lakes, and rivers abound in fish, and as fish forms a staple food of the people the fisherman’s art has been brought to a great degree of perfection. The same care as in the production of fish is extended to that of ducks and poultry. Eggs are artificially hatched in immense numbers, and the poultry markets and boats along the river at Canton are most amazing in their extent.

THE SEAT OF THE WAR.

The funerals of grown persons, and especially of parents, are as remarkable for burdensome ceremonies, extravagant manifestations of grief and lavish expense, as those of children are for their coldness and neglect. Candles, incense and offerings of food are placed before the corpse, and a company of priests is engaged to chant prayers for the departed spirit. An abundance of clothing is deposited with the body in the coffin and various ceremonies are performed during several days immediately after that, and on every subsequent seventh day, closing with the seventh seven. When the coffin is carried out for burial, men and women follow in the procession clothed in coarse white garments, white being used for mourning.

Inasmuch as the coffin must remain in the hall for forty-nine days, naturally they are prepared with a great deal of care. Very thick planks are used in its construction, cut from the hardest trees, caulked on the outside and cemented on the inside, and finally varnished or lacquered. Sometimes a coffin containing a body is kept in the house for a considerable length of time after the forty-nine days have expired, while arrangements are being made for a burying place and other preliminaries are attended to. The lids being nailed down in cement they are perfectly air-tight.

The notions which Chinamen entertain concerning the future life rob death of half its terrors and lead them to regard their funeral ceremonies and the due performance of the proper rites by their descendants as the chief factors of their future well being. Among other things the importance of securing a coffin according to the approved fashion is duly recognized, and as men approach old age they not infrequently buy their own coffins, which they keep carefully by them. The present of a coffin is considered a dutiful attention from a son to an aged father.

The choice of a site for the grave is determined by a professor of the “Fung Shuy” superstition, who, compass in hand, explores the entire district to find a spot which combines all the qualities necessary for the quiet repose of the dead. When such a favored spot has been discovered a priest is called in to determine a lucky day for the burial. This is by no means an easy matter and it often happens that the dead remain unburied for months or even years on account of the difficulties in the way of choosing either fortunate graves or lucky days. The ceremonies of the interment itself and of mourning that follows are most elaborate in character, and too much involved for detailed description here.

THE PUNISHMENTS OF HELL.—From Chinese Drawings.

But universal as the practice of burying may be said to be in China there are exceptions to it. The Buddhist priests as a rule prefer cremation, and this custom, which came with the religion they profess from India, has at times found imitators among the laity. In Formosa the dead are exposed and dried in the air; and some of the Meaou-tsze tribes of central and southern China bury their dead, it is true, but after an interval of a year or more, having chosen a lucky day, they disinter them. On such occasions they go accompanied by their friends to the grave, and having opened the tomb they take out the bones and having brushed and washed them clean they put them back wrapped in cloth.

The necessity in the Chinese mind that their bones must rest in the soil of their native land with their ancestors, has made to exist some peculiar practices among the colonizing Chinese in the United States and other countries. The bones of those who die thus far away from home are carefully preserved by their countrymen and shipped back, sometimes after many years, to find a resting place in the Middle Kingdom.

It is a curious circumstance that in China where there exists such a profound veneration for everything old, there should not be found any ancient buildings or old ruins. That there is an abundant supply of durable materials for building is certain, and for many centuries the Chinese have been acquainted with the art of brick making, yet they have reared no building possessing enduring stability. Not only does the ephemeral nature of the tent, which would indicate their original nomadic origin and recollection of old tent homes, appear in the slender construction of Chinese houses, but even in shape they assume a tent-like form. Etiquette provides that in houses of the better class a high wall shall surround the building, and that no window shall look outward. Consequently streets in the fashionable parts of cities have a dreary aspect. The only breaks in the long line of dismal wall are the front doors, which are generally closed, or if not, movable screens bar the sight of all beyond the door. Passing around one such screen one finds himself in a court-yard which is laid out as a garden or paved with stone. From this court-yard one reaches, on either side, rooms occupied by servants, or directly in front, another building. Through this latter another court-yard is reached, in the rooms surrounding which the family live, and behind this again are the women’s apartments, which not infrequently give exit to a garden at the back.

Wooden pillars support the roofs of the buildings, and the intervals between these are filled up with brick work. The window-frames are wooden, over which is pasted either paper or calico, or sometimes pieces of talc to transmit the light. The doors are almost invariably folding doors; the floors either stone or cement; and ceilings are not often used, the roof being the only covering to the rooms. Carpets are seldom used, more especially in southern China, where also stoves for warming purposes are known. In the north, where in the winter the cold is very great, portable charcoal stoves are employed and small chafing dishes are carried about from room to room. Delicate little hand-stoves, which gentlemen and ladies carry in their sleeves, are very much in vogue. In the colder latitudes a raised platform or dais is built in the room, of brick and stone, under which a fire is kindled with a chimney to carry off the smoke. The whole substance of this dais becomes heated and retains its warmth for several hours. This is the almost universal bed of the north of China. But the main dependence of the Chinese for personal warmth is on clothes. As the winter approaches garment is added to garment and furs to quilted vestments, until the wearer assumes an unwieldy and exaggerated shape. Well-to-do Chinamen seldom take strong exercise, and they are therefore able to bear clothes which to a European would be unendurable.

Of the personal comfort obtainable in a house, Chinamen are strangely ignorant. Their furniture is of the hardest and most uncompromising nature. Chairs made of a hard black wood, angular in shape, and equally unyielding divans, are the only seats known to them. Their beds are scarcely more comfortable, and their pillows are oblong cubes of bamboo or other hard material. For the maintenance of the existing fashions of female head dressing, this kind of pillow is essential to women at least, as their hair, which is only dressed at intervals of days, and which is kept in its shape by the abundant use of bandoline, would be crushed and disfigured if lain upon for a moment. Women, therefore, who make any pretension of following the fashion, are obliged to sleep at night on their backs, resting the nape of the neck on the pillow and thus keeping the head and hair free from contact with anything.

The ornaments in the houses of the well-to-do are frequently elaborate and beautiful. Their wood carvings, cabinets, and ornamental pieces of furniture, and the rare beauty of their bronzes and porcelain, are of late years well known and much sought for in our own country. Tables are nearly uniform in size, furnishing a seat for one person on each of the four sides, and tables are multiplied sufficiently to accommodate whatever number requires to be served. When guests are entertained, the two sexes eat separately in different rooms, but in ordinary meals the members of the family of both sexes sit down together with much less formality.

The streets in the towns differ widely in construction in the northern and southern portions of the empire. In the south they are narrow and paved, in the north they are wide and unpaved, both constructions being suited to the local wants of the people. The absence of wheel traffic in the southern provinces makes wide streets unnecessary, while by contracting their width the sun’s rays have less chance of beating down on the heads of passers and it is possible to stretch awnings from roof to roof. It is true that this is done at the expense of fresh air, but even to do this is a gain. Shops are all open in front, the counters forming the only barrier. The streets are crowded in the extreme, and passage is necessarily slow.

This inconvenience is avoided in the wide streets of the cities of the north, but these streets are so ill kept that in wet weather they are mud and in dry they are covered inches deep in dust. Of the large cities of the north and south Peking and Canton may be taken as typical examples and certainly, with the exception of the palace, the walls, and certain imperial temples, the streets of Peking compare very unfavorably with those of Canton. The walls surrounding Peking are probably the finest and best kept in the empire. In height they are about forty feet and the same in width. The top, which is defended by massive battlements, is well paved and is kept in excellent order. Over each gate is built a fortified tower between eighty and ninety feet high.