Chinese mettle

by E. G. Kemp

It rained and rained and rained at Foochow, and the floods rose high round the garden, which is situated on a hill, till we could no longer go through the main entrance. It was dreadfully disappointing, as it put all excursions out of the question. However, the days flew past with great rapidity, and I went on visiting hospitals and schools; the school of sericulture was interesting, and we saw the various processes. On leaving, the director paid me the compliment of offering me a handful of worms! One of the most interesting forms of lacquer work, for which Foochow is famous, is that done on silk. Bowls are made of it and are as light as a feather and flexible. They take about eight to twelve months to make and are wonderfully resistant to water and heat, so that they can be boiled without injury. Other beautiful lacquer things are made on finely carved wood, and the lacquer is most lovely in colour when gold and silver dust are used. They wrap the articles up in the softest, toughest, thinnest paper I have ever seen; it feels like silk.

It was a matter of continual interest to me to be living in the middle of a college, and to see the four hundred boys and youths at work and play. Trinity College is so called because it is part of the Dublin University Fukien Mission, and was the result of the Pan-Anglican Conference in London, 1908. The three schools already existed and were combined to form this college in 1912; a beautiful chapel was also built, a gymnasium, houses for the masters, and a vernacular middle school in memory of the martyr, Robert Stewart. The spirit of the place was fine, and I once again realized how far ahead the mission field is in the spirit of unity and progress, when the headmaster asked me, woman and Nonconformist, to address the boys in the chapel: it was an inspiring audience.

I began to be afraid as the floods continued to rise that it would be a difficult matter to leave Foochow. In order to reach the shipping office (to take my passage) we had to go through the streets in boats, and actually through a garden to the window of the office. Boys were having a great time punting precariously on doors, which served as rafts, and headlong plunges into the water were greeted with shrieks of laughter. I left next day, with the water still rising, and was truly sorry to say good-bye to my friends and Foochow.

The launch took me rapidly down stream to the steamer Haiching which was due to sail at dawn, and the storm clouds and driving rain formed a fine background to the encircling mountains. All down the China coast the scenery is wild, and innumerable rocky islands make navigation very dangerous. The captain beguiled us at meals with stories of the dangers we were encountering in this “dirty weather.” When the weather is bad in the Pacific it alters all the currents round the coast, although the surface may look smooth. At one point he used to allow a margin of seven miles to round certain rocks, yet found himself one day just shaving round them: after that experience he allowed ten miles. The weather is continually wet and foggy in these seas, but this season was exceptionally bad, and for the first time in his experience there had been no cargo from Foochow.

The boat bobbed up and down like a cork. There was a fine mascot on board in the shape of a black sow. She was very clean and very dainty, with an appetite for chocolates, and oranges, which she required to be peeled. She had been five years on board and had gone through the campaign, when the ship visited Basra and other places on war duty. The captain was warm in praise of his Chinese crew, preferring them to all other nationalities: they do their work well and contentedly and require no bullying. A voyage of twenty-four hours brought us to smooth water outside Amoy, and the cook from the English Presbyterian ladies’ house came at 6.30 in a sampan to take me ashore, for there is no landing-stage. It was still raining and very hot.

Amoy is a most extraordinary place, with round black rocks like puddings in every direction. One of the features of the place is the little graves, just like plates on the surface of the ground, due to the curious way they deal with the dead. After they have been buried for a certain length of time, they take up the coffins and carefully count the bones that none may be missing and put them in a jar with a lid on: it is this lid which shows when the jar is put in the earth.

I found my kind hostesses overwhelmed with work, but they nobly made time to take me to see the various schools and colleges, and also a visiting missionary took me across the bay to visit some alms-houses (built by a Chinese lady) and also the first Chinese church built in Amoy. The pastor took us by a delightful paved pathway to see a noted Buddhist shrine. I have occasionally met Buddhist present-day saints, but here I saw one in the making. He is enclosed in a hole in a rock and is locked in, as if in a cage; once a day his food is brought and we saw a monk unlock the door and put it in, speaking no word. The embryo saint must never speak. It takes several years of this stultifying life to attain sainthood. A much more attractive Buddhist was one of the attendants at the temple, on whose head I observed the marks of branding. I asked our guide to inquire how he had endured the torture, and his face quite lighted up as he replied: “Your Christ felt no suffering on the cross, nor did I for the joy of winning salvation.”

A charming Chinese secretary, Mr. Wang, showed us over the Y.M.C.A., which has the most picturesque building imaginable amongst the black boulders, to one of which there is a bright red paved causeway. Mr. Wang took us into the Chamber of Commerce, where we met two Edinburgh trained engineers who are engaged on a scheme for sanitation and a new road. Almost every city in China now has a Chamber of Commerce: this is quite a modern innovation and is a Government concern under the Ministry of Commerce. Only rich merchants can belong to them because the fees are so high. They are not very popular among the people because of their attitude during the student strikes; but they have a certain value for general trade purposes, although the guilds are much more important.