VI
ON THE SACREDNESS OF FOREIGNERS
You know, I can't believe that it is good for us,—Americans, Europeans, foreigners of all sorts,—to feel ourselves so sacred as we feel in China. Whatever we do, we are always right, no matter how wrong we may be. We always have the right of way, the privilege of walking over the Chinese, and to this privilege they must submit. Our sacredness is not due to admiration for or belief in us. Quite the contrary. It is due to a deep sense of fear of the consequences should they attempt to check or curb our activities or inclinations. The relations between a subject people and their conquerors is fundamentally immoral, and demoralizing to both. A few years ago motors made their appearance in Peking; there are not many even to-day. But there are no speed regulations, and they dash through the crowded streets as rapidly as they choose. After a number of accidents the Chinese sought to establish a speed-limit law, but this was positively objected to by one of the foreign ministers, who said that he did not intend to have his liberty interfered with by the Chinese!
Throughout China are the foreign concessions, small holdings of land which belong to the various European nations. In each of the treaty ports these concessions are established,—Russian, English, French, German,—and although they lie in the heart of a Chinese city, they are absolutely the property of the Russians, English, French, or Germans, as the case may be. The Chinese have no authority or control over them, and are unable to regulate them in any way. This brings about a very difficult situation for the Chinese. For example, the opium traffic. On Chinese soil the sale of opium is strictly prohibited; yet it is freely sold in the foreign concessions, and the Chinese are powerless to prevent it. At present they are making a determined and gallant fight against the opium habit, which was forced upon them by Great Britain as the result of two successful opium wars, and legalized by treaties that, to say the least, were extorted from the helpless Chinese. The ratification of these treaties made it all right for Great Britain to import opium as freely as she liked. Well, ten years ago, after a century and a half of opium traffic, poor old China made a stand against this evil and determined to overcome it. She entered into a contract with Great Britain, by the terms of which England agreed to decrease her opium imports year by year, for a period of ten years, in proportion as China decreased, year by year, her poppy cultivation. Both sides have kept the faith, and the end of the bargain will be celebrated by rejoicing (Chinese) on April 1, 1917, when the ten-year contract expires.
It has been a colossal struggle against almost overwhelming odds. For a nation as weak, as unwieldy, as corrupt as China to undertake such a stupendous task seems almost inconceivable. Accurate statistics are not available, but it would seem that one-half of the Chinese were in the grip of this vice. In some provinces about ninety per cent. of the officials were addicted to opium-smoking, and in all provinces a huge percentage of the people were addicts. Anyway, China has made this gigantic effort to get rid of opium, and she has almost succeeded; April 1 of next year will see the end of the whole sordid business. But no assistance has been given her in this enormous task; she has accomplished it alone. During this ten-years' struggle she has had to contend not only against the inclinations of her drug-sodden people but against the fact that her people could procure opium freely in the foreign concessions, over which the Chinese have no control.
The bargain between China and Great Britain, however, has been lived up to. The Chinese began to plant poppies when they were unable to curb or suppress the British imports. As long as the vice was to be fastened upon the country by treaties, they shrewdly decided that at least all the money spent for opium should not go out of the country; therefore they started in on poppy cultivation on their own account. But this native cultivation has been almost entirely suppressed in the last ten years, and the supplies of both native and foreign opium will reach the vanishing-point on April 1, 1917. But it seems pretty hard to realize that the foreign governments have given China no assistance in this struggle. It is too lucrative a trade. The Peking papers are already talking of the great day, only six months distant, when China will have freed herself from this curse. We are determined to be here in Peking to witness the celebration.
But that brings me back to my starting-point, the fact that foreigners are not subject to Chinese laws. In his own concession the foreigner is amenable to the laws of his own country. If on Chinese soil he violates Chinese law, all that the Chinese can do is to hand him to his nearest consul, who may or may not punish him. And this immunity from responsibility, this arrogant privilege of doing as one likes on Chinese soil, with very small chance of being brought to book for it, has a demoralizing influence upon the average foreigner who comes out here. Between ourselves, the class of foreigners who come to China don't amount to much. "Beach-combers" they were called in the good old days—adventurers, gamblers, shady characters of all sorts, and pretty well dwarfed ethically. But no matter what they did, they were usually supported by their various governments, and the result to-day is a well-defined fear of the foreigner, a desire to sidestep him, to stand from under. It seems rather cowardly, this cringing attitude on the part of the Chinese, but it is the result of a century of experience with the ethics of the West. Brave men, unarmed, have been known to throw up their hands in the presence of a bandit.
An amusing thing happened to-day. After tiffin E—— and I went out in our rickshaws, trying to find a shop where we could buy camel's-hair blankets. And, by the way, there aren't any, so we had a fruitless quest. We each have our own rickshaw now, hired by the month at twenty dollars (Mexican) apiece. It seems miserably cheap, yet they tell us that we have paid five dollars more than the usual rate. It was pathetic when we chose our boys the other day—chose two out of a crowd of thirty or more that presented themselves. The disappointment of the others was pitiable. Competition is keen, and it means much to these boys to know they have an assured income rather than haphazard, precarious employment. My boy is called Kwong, and is a wonderful little runner, much faster than E——'s boy.
By this time we are much attached to them, and our days usually end up at the bazaar out on Morrison Street, that marvelous bazaar where everything made in North China is for sale—furs, silks, jade, jewels, sweetmeats, everything. But it is to the sweet-stalls that we always go, where wonderful Chinese candies and sugared fruits are for sale. We first change a dollar into pennies, and then all four of us eat our way from stall to stall—sesame candy, sugared walnuts, sugary plums on straws. It's wonderful. Germs? Maybe, but we don't care. I am sick of germs, of the emphasis that every one at home places on them. It's restful to get into a country where there aren't any, or at least people don't know about them. The trouble with America is that every one is so busy thinking of clean streets, clean garbage-cans, the possibilities of disease contained in impure food, that much of the beauty and comfort of life is lost. Life is not all in length.
Well, as I say, with our visit to the bazaar reserved for the end of the afternoon, we went into the Chinese City in search of camel's-hair blankets. Soon we turned aside from the big high-street, and dived into one of the narrow, winding, unpaved lanes of the native city, which only the rickshaw-boys can negotiate. Presently, in this maze of narrow streets, we met the usual block; a dozen rickshaws from opposite directions encountered one another, and each claimed the right of way. When an alley is six feet wide, there is neither right nor way, and voluble conversation ensued, mounting rapidly into screams and curses. Coolies and passengers alike took part in the discussion, and as we were the only foreigners, we felt handicapped by our lack of language. The storm of yells mounted higher and higher, when suddenly the crowd gave way a little, and E——'s boy managed to slide through, while Kwong, pulling me, slipped close behind.