The attaché at Peking

by Baron Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford Redesdale

Canton itself does not present a very clean face to be washed by the unsavoury river. If any one should come here expecting to see a fine city of quays and palaces, he will be grievously disappointed. Myriads of low dirty wooden houses, built almost in the very water itself, are crowded together higgledy piggledy, without order or method. As if these were not enough, there are whole streets, alleys, and quarters of the foulest boat-houses, all swarming with human, and probably other, life. Junks in numbers, carrying guns for defence, and if a safe opportunity occurs, for offence, are moored in the stream. Strange, grotesque craft they are, with their huge bows built to represent the heads of sea-monsters; a great eye is painted on each side, for the Chinese treat their ships as reasoning beings, and say, “S’pose no got eye, no can see; s’pose no can see, no can walkee,” which is unanswerable—even the Kin Shan carries an eye on each paddle-box in deference to this idea. But as at Hong-kong, the chief peculiarity of the river scene here is the crowd of small boats with female crews. The mother pulls the stroke oar, the aunt the bow, and grandmamma is at the helm with a third. I am sure there must have been several hundreds of these yellow ladies round the steamer at one time. The parrot-house at the Zoological Gardens was silence itself by comparison, for hard work, and strong pulling, have given them lungs of leather. They all claim acquaintance, and employment on the strength of it. “My boatee, my boatee, my no see you Cheena side long tim.” We had our own boat, however, and with patience cleared a way and got to shore. But no description of the Canton River would be complete without an allusion to the famous “flower-boats.” Huge, unwieldy barges they are, moored by the river-side, and tricked out with every paltry decoration of cheap gilding, paper lanterns, and bizarre ornament that the Owen Jones of China can invent. These are the temples of Venus. The priestesses are mostly brown ugly little women in sad-coloured garments, upon whose flat yellow faces the rosy paint looks even more ghastly than on Europeans; some are almost pretty, however, and all have beautiful hands and feet (when the latter have not been wantonly deformed), indeed this is the one gift of beauty common to all the Chinese, and the very men-servants who wait upon one have hands kept delicately clean, and so well formed that many an European lady might envy them; they have no need to wrap a napkin round their thumbs, nor to wear white cotton gloves; their taper fingers and filbert nails are pleasant to look upon. At night, when the lanterns are lighted, and the tawdriness of the decorations is less offensive, the flower-boats look gay enough, and they are one of the sights of Canton. The trade that their denizens ply is not looked upon as disgraceful, nor does it prevent their marrying respectably afterwards,—at least so it is said.

We had had an empty house placed at our disposal, and we took with us a servant, a coolie, and a native cook. And this brings me to the record of a feat. When we arrived at our house we found that the boy in charge (a “boy,” like the boy in Oliver Twist, may be a very old man) had gone off to “chin-chin” his ancestors’ graves, a ceremony which, although our coming had been announced to him, could on no account be deferred. So there we were at half-past three, without so much as a scrap of fuel or a gridiron to put upon it. In spite of this we sat down, four of us, at eight o’clock, to a dinner of mulligatawny soup, soles, for which the river is famous, three entrées, a buffalo’s hump, like boiled beef idealised, snipes, curried prawns, and a dessert of plantains, oranges, rose apples, tasting just like rose leaves, and dried lychees, the whole being decked out in the most excellent taste, with a profusion of the sweetest scented and most brilliant flowers. We had our wine with us, and altogether I never sat down to a better dinner. Could any English servants, arriving at an empty house in London, have done the same? The Chinese, when they have learnt to cook after our fashion, are the best chefs in the world. You see the art requires delicacy of hand, plenty of imagination, and does not involve a knowledge of perspective, so it just suits their talents.

I am afraid I can give you but a poor description of Canton; the inventory is too large to be taken in a letter. Mr. Sala or any of the professed literary appraisers would find matter for at least a chapter in the bad smells. The streets are very narrow. Three men might walk abreast in them, and perhaps you might throw in a boy if he was very tiny indeed. On each side are small, low shops, which throw out such a multitude of lanterns and perpendicular notices, like the attenuated ghosts of many-coloured banners, that they look as if a solemn procession in a pantomime had been changed by a tap of the harlequin’s wand into a scene of streets and advertisements. As if the gangway were not narrow enough, hucksters and costermongers, offering every kind of goods for sale, hold their stalls on each available square foot of pavement. There are meat stalls, fruit stalls, sweetmeat stalls, sugar-cane stalls, fish stalls, and what can only be designated as offal stalls. The yellowest crowd in the world hustles along pell-mell at a furious rate, for every one is busy and every one is in a hurry. Coolies carrying every conceivable burden balance-wise, from a load of timber to a bundle of leeks, rush at one, and it needs a sharp look-out to steer clear of their bamboo poles. Round the corner, lolling in his chair, for all the world like one of those “magots” Frenchwomen are so fond of, a Chinese dignitary is borne along, attended by five or six policemen in white caps and red tassels, nearly upsetting a small-footed lady, who has just time to totter out of the way on her rickety legs. If there is a clear space, you may be sure there is a doctor or fortune-teller peering into his patient’s mouth, like a groom examining a horse’s teeth, or tapping his head mysteriously with a fan, to the wonder of a small gaping circle. Barring in very rare instances a dog or two—for the wary little beasts seem to know the danger that they run of being turned into butchers’ meat if they stray out of their own domain—no animals are to be seen. Beasts of burden are represented by the men, and beasts of draught there are none; indeed, no carriage, cart, or costermonger’s barrow could thread its way here. The amount of industry to be seen in a single street is something surprising. Carpenters, cobblers, turners, carvers—artisans, in short, of all guilds, are toiling away for dear life—no one is idle. The butcher is busy separating the coarser from the finer parts of the meat; the fishmonger gutting his fish, and setting the entrails carefully on one side—there is no part too vile or mean, none too dear and delicate to find a customer. Chow-chow dogs (I saw such a pretty little puppy being carried off to execution; he looked like a brown spitz, and I felt inclined to buy his release), birds’ nests, rice-birds, the beccafichi of China, and all manner of delicacies, are cheek-by-jowl with equally numerous abominations, not to speak of rats and “such small deer.” The greengrocers’ are the most tempting of the provision shops; they at least show nothing offensive, and they make their fruit look to the greatest advantage, setting oranges, apples, lychees, and vegetables in curious patterns, while ropes of bananas, leeks, young lettuces, and other greens hang from the ceiling. Competition is great, and with the utmost labour it is hard to earn a living, for the two cities, Tartar and Chinese, with their suburbs, hold an immense population, not to speak of the thousands who are born, live, and die in the boats, and have no part or share in the land until they come in for that property six feet by three, which is the common inheritance. Altogether, taking both sides of the river, there are probably a million and a half of inhabitants, of whom not more than one hundred are Europeans.

Until the return of the English to Canton, it used to be a point of honour with the Chinese at Hong-kong to try and persuade people that the bombardment of 1856 had not done much damage. If they were asked whether Yeh’s Palace or Yamên had been injured they would answer, “Not too muchee; my hab hear they breakee that cup that saucer; that alloo.” But the fact is that the city still bears the marks of the punishment it received; considerable spaces have been laid waste by fire; Yeh’s Yamên has been razed to the ground and its site “annexed” by the French, who are building a cathedral and Jesuit college upon it. Notwithstanding the havoc made by shot and shell, however, there is much to be seen. The Yamêns of the Viceroy, the Governor, and other high functionaries are standing. I only saw the outsides of these palaces. They are all pretty much alike. An arched gateway, with a colossal warrior painted in fresco on either side, faces a blank wall, on which is drawn the outline of some fabulous monster, and this appears to be used for notices and announcements; marble kylins and grotesque beasts adorn the courtyard, which is crowded with functionaries and dependants. The roofs are fretted into a thousand quaint designs; but you are as familiar with their style as I am, and as I shall probably in some future letter have an opportunity of saying something about the interior of a Chinese officer’s palace, I had better let the subject alone now.

Of course we went to see the “Temple of Punishments” and that of the Five Hundred Saints, which last is one of the celebrities of China. The former is so called from its containing models of all the various modes which Chinese ingenuity has invented for torturing malefactors. Guarding the portals are two colossal “josses” or idols, represented with vermilion faces and a prodigious corpulency. Bits of paper, as votive offerings, some with inscriptions, but more without, are pinned or fastened to them by the pious: this is a Chinese method of showing respect to the graves of their dead, and to their gods. Inside the gate is a large courtyard, which we found crowded with people; all around were little tables at which sat fortune-tellers, some young men, others veterans with scanty beards and enormous tortoise-shell spectacles, writing as solemnly as judges. Here in bamboo divisions are the dolls which give the temple its name, and very horrible are the scenes which they represent; beyond the courtyard is the real joss-house, from which I carried away a confused idea of tinsel, artificial flowers, scraps of paper, and gloom.

Far more interesting was the Temple of the Five Hundred Saints. In the gateway, as in the former case, two josses of stupendous size mount guard. One is represented as solacing himself with a tune on a kind of mandoline; and I noticed that many of the scraps of paper with which he has been “chin-chinned” were cut in the shape of his favourite instrument. Without let or hindrance we wandered through a maze of white-washed and neatly-kept cloisters, until we came to the refectory (for there is a monastery attached to this temple), where we found the monks at their afternoon meal. Just as we arrived, a tiny musical-toned bell was sounded, at which signal the brethren rose, and what appeared to be a short prayer or grace was recited in chorus, after which a monk of higher rank, preceded by an attendant, left the hall, which was a square room with long tables, and fenced off from the cloisters at one end by a low bamboo railing. As soon as the great man was gone the others fell to at their chopsticks and small bowls with renewed vigour. The monks wear a long light gray robe, and they shave the whole head, but in other respects their dress does not differ from that of laymen. The temple itself is a large hall in which the five hundred, placed in alleys at right angles, sit facing one another in all their majesty. They are all of gilt metal or wood, and under life size, if one may use such a term with regard to idols. They are represented in every variety of attitude, occupation, and expression. Some are playing on musical instruments, and are bland; others are evidently preaching, and are didactic; others are inflicting punishment or doing battle, and are very fierce; one is performing a difficult act of horsemanship on a large kylin, while two smaller kylins are looking on in admiration—one and all are made to look fat and comfortable, with huge paunches. Before each is placed a small green porcelain pot filled with the ashes of the joss-sticks which have been burnt in his honour. The monks were uniformly civil to us, and neither here nor in the Temple of Horrors was any fee asked or expected; how much better it would be if Europeans would follow the example of these heathens, and not ask admission fees in their cathedrals and churches.

You may well imagine that during a first visit to a great Chinese city everything appeared strange and marvellous, but the greatest wonder of all was that we should be able to wander hither and thither, intruding into temples, thrusting our curious noses into every hole and corner, like ferrets in a rabbit warren, elbowing our way unmolested through crowds that a very few years ago would have mobbed and brick-batted at least, and perhaps tortured and murdered by inches, any European that ventured outside the factories. It seems almost a fatality that now that the city is safe, and its inhabitants peacefully inclined, the opening of the Yang-Tse-Chiang should have turned the European traffic with the interior, of which Canton was formerly the headquarters, into a new channel. The prosperity of Canton is evident, and very striking. But it is a native and self-containing prosperity, and in no ways dependent on Europe, and shows that the Chinese were quite right when they asserted that they could do very well without us. Just before the principal English firms withdrew their representatives from the city, finding that the little business there was to do could be more cheaply transacted by agents drawing a small percentage, an arrangement was made with the local government whereby we became the lessees of a small mud island, which had to be filled in at a great cost, called Shah-Meen. This was to become the English quarter. The church and new consular buildings have been erected there, and there are a few empty bungalows belonging to merchants, but the place does not seem likely ever to wear a look of great importance; the merchants see no likelihood of an inducement to return, so Shah-Meen has so far been a poor bargain.

Not far from Shah-Meen are the pleasure-gardens of a merchant named Po-Ting-Qua. Terraces, summer-houses, stairs, drawbridges, carp-ponds, rock-work, and flowers are thrown together most fantastically, exactly like the gardens that the ladies and gentlemen on teacups and plates walk about in. The doors are cut out of the walls in quaint shapes, such as circles, jars, bottles, etc. As the rainy season has set in the garden was not looking its best, but it was very pretty nevertheless, although there was a little too much stagnant water about for our ideas. Lord Bacon in his essay on gardens says: “For fountains they are a great beauty and refreshment; but pools mar all and make the garden unwholesome, and full of flies and frogs.” If this is true in England, how much more does it apply to the East. Such things as flower-beds are unknown here. The plants grow anyhow, without order or arrangement, but they are carefully tended, and indeed the whole place was beautifully kept, and there seemed to be a large staff of gardeners and carpenters, who play a conspicuous part in a Chinese garden.

You will be wanting to hear about the curiosity shops. I went to see them, but found nothing but rubbish at outrageous prices. The Chinese buy up everything good at any price. The dealers carry round their best things to the native connoisseurs, and put off any trash upon chance customers, swearing that everything is “oloo and culew,” old and curious. I bought one small bottle for a few shillings as a souvenir of Canton, but even if I had had heaps of money, there was no temptation to spend it. I found an old friend at Canton in the person of Mr. R., our consul, who was a most amiable cicerone. He has passed the chief part of his life in China, and is a great authority upon all matters connected with our relations with the Chinese. He lives in a fascinatingly picturesque Yamên with quite an extensive garden—a curiosity in itself,—we spent most of the day together and met for dinner, either at my quarters or in his beautiful Aladdin’s palace, every evening.

We returned to Hong-kong on May Day. I found that the P. and O. Co. had put on an extra steamer, to start on Thursday the 4th, so I determined not to wait for the mail, but to start for Shanghai without delay. This prevents me from making a trip to Macao, which is par excellence the “outing” from Hong-kong. But as the rainy season has begun in earnest, perhaps I do not lose much—at any rate, I shall leave my Hong-kong friends with the utmost regret; their kindness and hospitality have known no bounds.