When We Were Strolling Players in the East

by Louise Jordan Miln

CHAPTER XXVIII

BAMBOO

The Orient is wreathed with bamboo. A considerable proportion of the houses in the East are built of bamboo. And at one season of the year many thousands of natives are fed on bamboo.

There is nothing else that I should find so impossible to wipe from my memoried picture of the East as bamboo. It is the one characteristic common to all the East. Indigo, rice, opium, tea, coffee, cochineal, gems, spices—they all mean the East, but no one of them means the entire East. Bamboo is symbolic of all the East. It lifts its graceful, feathery heads among the cocoanut trees and cinnamon groves of Ceylon. It touches with rare beauty every few yards of the Chinese landscape. It breaks up into lovely bits the fields of India. It grows at the base of the Himalayas. It softens again the soft, fair face of Japan. It thrives in Singapore, it runs riot in Penang. And wonderfully deft are the natives in their use of the bamboo. The Chinamen excel in its manipulation. I have come home, after a sojourn in the East of some years, with an idea that the Chinamen excel in almost everything mechanical in which they have an entirely fair chance. There are few things that a Chinaman cannot make out of bamboo; houses, boxes, and baskets, furniture, palanquins, ’rickshaws, hats, shields, carriages, scaffolding, fences, mats, portières,—those are a few of the simplest uses to which Chin-Yang puts bamboo.

There is nothing else in the vegetable kingdom at once so pliable and so strong as bamboo. The fingers of Chinese children weave it; the hands of Indian women pluck it. Yet from it is made scaffolding, upon which stand a multitude of Chinese workmen.

Once, in Hong-Kong, I saw the Chinese prepare for their Soul Festival. The Soul Festival is a unique expression of the artistic yearnings of this peculiar people. It occurs once in every four years. A temporary house is built of bamboo, it is lined with shelves of bamboo; on those shelves are placed pictures, vases, flowers—in brief, anything and everything that marks Chinese progress in the fine arts. The Soul Festival is the Chinese World’s Fair—but a World’s Fair from which all the world is rigorously excluded except China. There was a great deal about the Soul Festival I saw that was incomprehensible to me; and a Chinese mystery is apt to remain a Chinese mystery to the most inquiring European. One thing, however, was clear to me at the Soul Festival. That one thing was the preponderance of bamboo. Not only was bamboo an important ingredient in the building, and of half the semi-useful articles displayed, but it was in evidence on the majority of the pottery, and in many of the pictures. It was the saving grace of the most hideous carvings. It gave the utmost touch of beauty to the finest ivories.

Bamboo is as light as it is strong. That makes it invaluable for receptacles that must be carried. I used often to stop in the streets of Shanghai to buy Chinese sweetmeats from a chow-chow seller, who had a portable booth or cabinet. I wondered at the ease with which he carried it, until one day I lifted it myself. It was inexpressibly light,—it was made of bamboo. The minor Chinese bridges are made of bamboo; very quaint and effective they are.

The Foundlings Home at Shanghai was the prettiest sight (humanly speaking) I saw in China. It was a Roman Catholic Institution. The Sisters were Chinese. They wore the full, dark-blue trousers and the light-blue smock, the hideous head-dress, and the green, jade earrings of the ordinary amah; but each wore upon her bosom a large cross. The poor little Chinese waifs lay asleep in queer, tall, bamboo cradles. Some of the elder children sat in sturdy little bamboo chairs, and the celestial romps of the institution capered beneath the shade of the bamboo trees.

I went to a court of Chinese justice. The judges sat upon bamboo chairs, about a bamboo table. The doors of a Chinese prison are barred with bamboo lattice work. The shields of the Chinese soldiers are made of bamboo. Of bamboo are made the flutes of the Chinese musicians. The Chinese poulterer carries across his shoulder a straight bamboo rod, and on it are hung his feathery wares. The captive song birds of China chirp their sad music behind the bars of bamboo cages. The Chinese woman who toddles from her window to see your strange, pale, European face leans over a bamboo balcony. I had some boxes made in Singapore (Singapore is full of Chinese) and in Hong-Kong. I used to spend hours watching their manufacture from the almost green bamboo. The Chinese are unrivalled in thoroughness and in exactness. I drew a plan of a rather intricate box for a Chinaman in Singapore. I got a tape measure and showed him the dimensions I wished. We bargained, as to price, on our fingers. The day on which it should be completed was determined in the same way. On the day agreed upon, John arrived with my box. He had padded and lined with silk, as I had shown him, the compartment for my wigs; he had lined the little place for “make-up” with tin; my armour fitted into its place to a nicety. In brief, he had done everything exactly as I had indicated. Not from one of my many instructions had he deviated by a hair’s-breadth; and yet I had only shown them on a piece of paper. I had told him nothing. We were equally ignorant each of the other’s language. I paid him the exact sum agreed upon, and he said, “Chin-chin,” and went away very contentedly. That is characteristic of the Chinese: the quality of fidelity to a bargain. In that they differ from the Japanese. If a Chinaman agrees to make you a pair of boots for three yen, and to deliver them on Monday, why then, as sure as Monday comes, come the boots, made as they were ordered. The bootmaker takes his three yen, and says, “Thank you.” Make an identical arrangement with a Japanese. On Monday you never see him. On Tuesday he calls to say that he will bring the boots on Wednesday. On Thursday he actually brings them. He is very polite, far more polite than the Chinese cobbler. He demands four yen, because the boots have taken twice the leather he thought they would. Nine to one they are not just what you ordered; but there will be about them that indefinable something that will stamp them works of art; and the boots the Chinaman made you, though just as you ordered, will be, at the utmost, masterpieces of mechanical workmanship.

In Bengal I have seen women carrying bundles of bamboo three times their own height and quite their own circumference. They cut it, the women of the coolie class, and carry it for miles on their heads. They have a little pad of rags between their skulls and their tremendous burdens. They bring the bamboo to the nearest village and sell it to some bamboo shop.

The Mohurrum is the thriving time for one branch of the bamboo trade, for at the celebration of the Mohurrum festivals, thousands of tâzias are carried about the streets before they are thrown, as sacrifices to the native gods, into the Ganges or its nearest substitute. The tâzias are marvellous concoctions of paper and tinsel, more or less typical of Indian religious history or myth. They are carried upon carts or upon the shoulders of religious enthusiasts. Almost all the Indians, for that matter, are religious enthusiasts. But whether the tâzias are carried on carts, or by men, they rest upon bamboo scaffoldings; and most of them are built upon bamboo framework. The Mohurrum is one of the two great Mohammedan festivals; it is often provocative of riot and bloodshed, and it is at such times, when native fanaticism rides its high hobby-horse, that European interests are most endangered.

Bamboo is a delightful vegetable. Only the young, tender shoots can be eaten, but they are very palatable. They are dressed with a cream sauce, such as Americans serve with asparagus points. The natives use them in an insipid broth. They are a toothsome accompaniment to any game curry. They are often used in all the nicest curries. I claim to have invented bamboo salad, and I assure you it is very nice. You boil the young, tender tips, but not too thoroughly. Then put them in the ice-chest. When they are thoroughly cold, serve them with a French dressing or with a rich mayonnaise. You can serve them with or without lettuce, cucumber, etc., but serve a little celery with them, if possible; and, whether you use the French dressing or the mayonnaise, season it with cayenne until it is quite piquant. The bamboo tips are also very nice served as a confiture with preserved ginger and candied mangoes. I was looking, the other day, over the price-list of an Eastern condiment house here in London; but no Eastern délicatesse was there. The fruits, the queer combinations, that give the Eastern flavour to your food and make every mouthful more delicious and pungent than the last, they are not to be had here; but it is a happiness to remember them.

It is the picturesque aspect of the growing bamboo that I would emphasise. Except in Japan, almost all the beauties of the East are positive—aggressive in colour and in line. Bamboo is soft of hue, graceful, indefinite of outline. It softens and modifies many a mile of Indian scenery which without it would be crude. I remember, with genuine gratitude, one glorious clump of bamboo in Jubbulpore. It was so delicate in tint and shape that it toned to tender half-colours the rough dyes of the garments of the natives who clustered about it. I always made a point of including it in my afternoon drive; and many a starlit night I have walked some considerable distance to see it outlined, like wonderful gray-green lace, against the opalescent sky, from which the sunset had not quite gone.

FAN PALM AT SINGAPORE. Page 255.