All-round idyllic peace did not reign at Kwang-tung-hsien, where I rested over Sunday. Contacts in social conditions gave rise inevitably to causes for conflicts.
Arriving early, my men were able to secure the best room and soon after, with much imposing pomp and show, a "gwan"[[AH]] arrived, disgusted that he had to take a lower room. I bowed politely to him as he came in. He did not return it, however, but stood with a contemptuous grin upon his face as he took in the situation. I do not know who the person was, neither have a wish to trace his ancestry, but his bumptiousness and general misbehavior, utterly in antagonism to national etiquette, made me hate the sight of the fellow. Pride has been said to make a man a hedgehog. I do not say that this man was a hedgehog altogether, but he certainly seemed to wound everyone he touched. He had with him a great retinue, an extravagant equipage, fine clothes, and presumably a great fortune; but none of this offended me—it was his contempt which hurt. He seemed to splash me with mud as he passed, and was altogether badly disposed. In his every act he heaped humiliation upon me, and insulted me silently and gratuitously with unbearable disdain. Luckily, be it said to the credit of the Chinese Government, one does not often meet officials of this kind; such an atmosphere would nurture the worst feeling. It is, of course, possible that had I been traveling with many men and in a style necessary for representatives of foreign Governments, this hog might have been more polite; but the fact that I had little with me, and made a poor sort of a show, allowed him to come out in his true colors and display his unveneered feeling towards the foreigner. That he had no knowledge of the man crossing China on foot was evident. He was great and rich—that was the sentiment he breathed out to everyone—and the foreigner was humble. There is no wrong in enjoying a large superfluity, but it was not indispensable to have displayed it, to have wounded the eyes of him who lacked it, to have flaunted his magnificence at the door of my commonplace.
Had I been able to speak, I should have pointed out to this fellow that to know how to be rich is an art difficult to master, and that he had not mastered it; that as an official his first duty in exercising power was to learn that of humility; and that it is the irritating authority of such very lofty and imperious beings as himself, who say, "I am the law," that provokes insurrection. However, I was dumb, and could only return his contemptuous glance now and again.
To him I could have said, as I would here say also to every foreigner in the employ of the Chinese Government, "The only true distinction is superior worth." If foreigners in China are to have social and official rank respected, they must begin to be worthy of their rank, otherwise they help to bring it into hatred and contempt. It is a pity some native officials have to learn the same lesson.
In several years of residence in the Far East I have noticed respect for the foreigner unhappily diminishing. The root of the evil is in the mistaken idea that high station exempts him who holds it from observing the common obligations of life. It comes about—so often have I seen it in the Straits Settlements and in various parts of India—that those who demand the most homage make the least effort to merit that homage they demand. That is chiefly why respect for the foreigner in the Orient is diminishing, and I have no hesitancy in asserting that the average European in the East and Far East does not treat the Oriental with respect. He considers that the Chinese, the Malay, the Burman, the Indian is there to do the donkey work only. The newcomer generally discovers in himself an astounding personal omnipotence, and even before he can talk the language is so obsessed with it that as he grows older, his sense of it broadens and deepens. And in China—of the Chinese this is true to-day as in other spheres of the Far East—the native is there to do the donkey work, and does it contentedly and for the most part cheerfully. But he will not always be so content and so cheerful. He will not always suffer a leathering from a man whom he knows he dare not now hit back.[[AI]] Some day he may hit back. We have seen it before, how at some moment, by some interior force making a way to the light, an explosion takes place: there is an upheaval, all sorts of grave disorders, and because some Europeans are killed the Celestial Government is called upon to pay, and to pay heavily. Indemnities are given, but the Chinese pride still feels the smart.
[1 Pulling away up the sides of barren, sandy hills in my lonely pilgrimage, I could see wide, fertile plains sheltered in the undulating hollows of mountains, over which in arduous toil I vanished and re-appeared, how or where I could hardly calculate. Suddenly, rounding an awkward corner, a magnificent panorama broke upon the view in a rolling valley watered by many streams below, all green with growing wheat. A high spur about midway up the rolling mountain forms a capital spot for wayfarers to stop and exchange travelers' notes. A couple of convicts were here, their feet manacled and their white cotton clothing branded with the seal of death; by the side were the crude wooden cages in which they were carried by four men, with whom they mixed freely and manufactured coarse jokes. In six days bang would fall the knife, and their heads would roll at the feet of the executioners at Yün-nan-fu.
Coming into Ch'u-hsiong-fu[[AJ]]—the stage is what the men call 90 li, but it is not more than 70—I was brought to an insignificant wayside place where the innkeeper upbraided my boy for endeavoring to allow me to pass without wetting a cup at his bonny hostelry. Had I done so, I should have avouched myself utterly indifferent to reputation as a traveler.
But I did not stay the night here. I passed on through the town to a new building, an inn, into which I peered inquiringly. A well-dressed lad came courteously forward, in his bowing and scraping seeming to say, "Good sir, we most willingly embrace the opportunity of being honored with your noble self and your retinue under our poor roof. Long since have we known your excellent qualities; long have we wished to have you with us. We can have no reserve towards a person of your open and noble nature. The frankness of your humor delights us. Disburden yourself, O great brother, here and at once of your paraphernalia."
I stayed, and was charged more for lodging than at any other place in all my wanderings in China. My experience was different from that of Major Davies when he visited this city in 1899. He writes:—
"The people of this town are particularly conservative and exclusive. They have such an objection to strangers that no inn is allowed within the city walls, and no one from any other town is allowed to establish a shop.... When the telegraph line was first taken through here there was much commotion, and so determined was the opposition of the townspeople to this new-fangled means of communication that the telegraph office had to be put inside the colonel's yamen, the only place where it would be safe from destruction."