It is curious to observe how some industrial products are universally used here to the exclusion of others. For example, “Bryant & May’s” matches, so common at home, are here supplanted by a neatly made “Tändstickor,” ten little boxes of which are made up into a packet, which sells for as low as six cents, although ten cents is always asked of strangers. In many Chinese and Kling shops European tinned provisions and patent medicines may be obtained at a very slight advance on home prices, as these petty traders watch the sales of old ships’ stores very closely, and are thus enabled to purchase very cheaply.
The Chinese compete with all comers in cheap labour; and their innate capacity for imitation enables them to do so very often with advantage in the case of manufactures. If you can only give a Chinese workman a pattern or sample of the goods you require—whether boots, clothing, cabinet work, or jewellery, he may be trusted to imitate the same even to a fault. They are most industrious, having apparently no regular hours of labour, but often toiling from early morning until far into the night for a scanty pittance; but no matter how small their earnings, they generally contrive to save something. Indeed it is difficult to say whether ’tis their industry or their thrift which most deserves commendation. Of course they have their faults as a people, and most serious some of them are; and wherever they are admitted as emigrants, a strong hand is needed to keep them in order.
For opening up new trading enterprises or colonies in the East their aid is invaluable, as they are most frugal, and possess a peculiar habit of making the best of circumstances. In Sarawak, and also in the British colony of Labuan, the money derived from the opium and spirit farms form a main feature in the revenue, so that eastern colonies, in favouring Chinese emigration, add to their revenue by their expenditure as well as by their labour. Many, by thrift and frugality, rise to positions of affluence, and then it is curious to see how thoroughly they fall into the ways of the class to which they reach. This makes a Chinese colony so prosperous as a rule; for if a man has money he is sure to spend it either in trade, or in a fine house, garden, servants, horses and carriages, and other luxuries. As a rule they deal with their own class, but they take to European luxuries very kindly. I was asked out to dine several times at the houses of wealthy Chinese whilst in the East, and was at first rather disappointed at the thorough European character of the repast. Clean cloth, knives and forks of course; and every course might have been prepared in Pall Mall, if we except the curries; and it is but natural that the curries of the East are inimitable elsewhere. You get most delicately prepared pastry, and ten to one, roast beef and plum pudding, which are all the world over understood to be our national dishes.
A gentleman told me that once when in Paris, just after the war, he was conversing with a friend near the Tuileries, when a wicked-eyed young gamin overhearing his bad French with an English accent, observed, “Ah, M’sieu rost-bif, God-dam,” as he rapidly vanished round the corner. Many of the rich merchants speak English well; if not, then Malay is the medium of conversation. And the wherewithal to wash down your food is not forgotten: indeed, many of the rich “babas” give excellent champagne breakfasts, and “Bass” and good Bordeaux are as common as at European meals. However addicted to “samshu” and “shandu,”—the baleful narcotic immortalised by De Quincey,—a Chinaman may be privately, you will find him courteous, and eagerly apprehensive as to the comfort and enjoyment of his guests on all occasions when he entertains Europeans.
Sometimes you meet with a surprise at a Chinese dinner—a surprise especially prepared for your benefit. I was present at one where we had small dishes of rice and condiments set before us, with “chop sticks” in lieu of knife and fork. Now a native to the manner born will use his two chop sticks as cleverly as Mr. G. W. Moore handles his bones; and as he leans over his dish you see a constant stream of food running up to his mouth, while with your chop sticks awkwardly held you simply demonstrate what “eating porridge with a knitting pin” really means. Well, dish followed dish, and we began to think the whole thing “awfully slow,” when the host arose and requested us to accompany him to the “dining-room.”
Sure enough we found ourselves in a large and well lit interior. There was a dinner-table laid in European style, the silver and glass irreproachable, and floral decorations rather tastefully arranged graced the board. Of course there was a good deal of laughter as the neat Chinese “boys” handed round the sherry and bitters as we stood in groups; and a few minutes afterwards the gong was beaten for dinner in quite a homely fashion. A jolly old Spanish priest was present, and our long-tailed host did not omit to ask him to say grace, which he solemnly did, first in English, standing the while, and then we were all surprised as the rubicund-cheeked friar rolled out a Chinese prayer interlarded with choice maxims from Confucius, and all in the Hokien dialect of Chinese. The whole thing was much enjoyed. We had soup oxtail and “birds’ nest,” the latter extremely good, but perhaps rather too sweet for European liking; fish of several kinds, beef and mutton cooked in various ways, also pork cutlets excellently cooked, as indeed only Chinese cooks can prepare them; pastry, cheese, and such fruits for dessert as no money could procure from Covent Garden. Fat juicy mangoes, delicate mangosteen, rambutan, bananas, and other kinds, never eaten in perfection anywhere but in the tropics—the gardens of the sun.
A “wyong” or Chinese play had been organised by our host, one portion of his house being fitted up as a private theatre, and to this we adjourned after dinner. The performers were a celebrated troupe just arrived from China, and very clever they were, especially in pantomime. Of course we understood not a word of what was spoken; and yet so expressive were the actions that the plot and motive of the play was perfectly comprehended even in detail. The music of shrieking two-stringed violins, and the rattle of gongs and tom-toms which accompanied them, however, might fairly be added to Mr. Sothern’s list of things which “no fellah can understand.” The plot was of an undutiful daughter of poor parents who was beloved of a youth of her own age and station. A rich mandarin, however, loves and marries her. Her young lover is the most dutiful of sons, and a good spirit helps him on; while at the same time a bad one causes the mandarin heavy losses by sea and land. The undutiful daughter has her parents driven from her husband’s gates, where they had come to beg, while her former lover succours them, and they ultimately die, blessing him. Eventually the mandarin is degraded, and the dutiful youth is elevated to his place for some service he has rendered to one of the emperor’s favourite ministers. He then makes a speech, telling how good and clever he has been, and ultimately marries the tiny-footed daughter of the minister who has befriended him. Nor does the play finish until his “poor, but honest parents” and the audience are convinced by ocular proof that a son and heir has been born of the union, a piece of good fortune for which the rich but wicked mandarin before him had hoped in vain. The character of the youth was excellently played throughout by a young Chinese lady from Hong Kong, and I do not remember to have seen a male part acted much better by a female actress anywhere. So that the Lottie Venns and Kate Vaughans of our own stage must look to their laurels, as ere long they may possibly have to compete with the “cheap Chinese labour” of the Eastern mimes.
“KAYU KUTOH.”
It was late that night as we drove back to our hotel, and such a night as one can see only in the tropics, where the moonlight is bright enough to read by, and streams down like a gloriously brilliant bridal veil over sweet-scented blossoms wet with dew, and the most elegant of palm-trees, over the gorgeous floral treasures of eastern gardens, and over the homes of thousands of dusky brides. The sounds heard during the otherwise still hours of evening or night are peculiar, the clucking sound of a lizard in the tree overhead is quite bird-like, you hear some frog-like croaking in the wet ditch beside the road, the subdued humming of distant tomtoms reaches you from the hut of a Hindoo Syce, and the almost mournful cadences of a Javanese prayer chanted by a party of labourers in a garden-house or field-hut reach you on the cool breeze. Then comes the boom of the “Kayu Kutoh,”[1] or wooden gong on which the Malay “mata mata,” literally “man with eyes,” or watchman, beats the hour at one of the outlying police-stations. Fires are not at all uncommon, and then you are roused out of a sound sleep by a couple of shots from the signal battery, which shake the whole place. As you lean from your window enjoying just the last sweet whiff ere turning in for the night you may, perchance, hear the silence broken by snatches of song familiar to your ears—the songsters being a party of rowdy sailors returning to the ship after a “wet night” on shore. I am sadly afraid that the low grog-shops monopolise much of “Jack’s” time and money when ashore, notwithstanding that there is here an excellent “Sailor’s Home,” furnished with many conveniences, and supplying the comforts of an hotel at a cheap rate. Towards morning the chattering of sparrows and the shouting of rival roosters are among the most familiar of sounds which remind one of home.