Rice Papers

by Hugh Leigh Norris

“Yes, but then it points to heaven and leads men’s minds in that direction.”

Hing Fai was astonished. Here, thought he, he had found a most complete liar. A man who built a watch-tower (for some purpose unknown), spent money on it, and then said it was simply to point to heaven. He could hardly restrain himself, but to all appearances calm, he replied: “Points to heaven! So does a man when he walks, so does a tree, so does every blade of grass, so do the hills, and so does nearly everything on earth except worms and snakes.” Hing Fai then left, more deeply suspicious of the Christians than ever. So these two parted, and each worked in his own way. Now a period of distress fell on the province of Fo Kien; crops failed, continual drought prevented the young rice growing, and then, when the rains did come, and the young rice was some six inches in height, floods came and washed rice and fields and everything away. Hing Fai’s business grew worse and worse; the Rev. Jones’ spire continued to grow; and the hard times drove many a starving coolie to embrace Christianity so as to procure some dole of rice for himself and family. To Hing Fai it seemed that his own gradual ruin was but keeping step with the growing popularity of the mission-house. With the famine came the pestilence, and the district, in addition to being impoverished, was attacked by cholera. The river was now filled with blackened and swollen corpses. The people were too poor to buy coffins, so the dead were wrapped in matting and thrown into the river; sometimes three or four corpses were made up into a bundle, rolled in a mat, and thrown into the stream at one time for the sake of economy. Rich as well as poor were attacked, and the wife of Hing Fai succumbed to the disease. Hing Fai’s sorrow was great: his business losses seemed as nothing beside the loss of his beloved wife; and while in this state of anger against fate came to him the evil Wang.

Hing Fai was willing to accept his fate as such, but Wang, the beggar, for his own ends, wished to arouse Hing Fai’s anger against the missionaries. The beggar approached in the most abjectly humble manner, and having been bidden to speak, began thus: “Of the recent severe loss of the honourable Hing Fai this contemptible person will not speak, but what of the foreign devils who have built a tower to overlook this graceful residence? Know! O honourable Hing Fai, their wicked actions increase. They have begun to compass your ruin, and now they compass the ruin of the whole neighbourhood. Both of them suffer from bad eyes and find spectacles a necessity, and now, behold! they are buying our children, and for what purpose? Why, to take their eyes out and heal their own diseased vision by the application of certain medicines cruelly concocted from the eyes of our own innocents.”

Hing Fai signified that he did not credit the suspicions of Wang, and curtly dismissed him.

The truth was that the Rev. Jones in this season of famine found that the poor starving mothers were willing to sell him their children to save them from starvation. The missionary bought them, intending to bring them up in the Christian faith. Unfortunately most of the children when bought were moribund, and the Rev. Jones soon found that he was continually employed as grave-digger for the purpose of disposing of the pitiful corpses of his tiny converts.

Owing to the famine, Hing Fai’s business went from bad to worse, his pecuniary losses were considerable, and he took to brooding over his misfortunes, so that the evil words of Wang soon took such a hold of his mind that he began to imagine that the Christians had bewitched him by the erection of their spire. Soon his hatred grew and grew, he took stimulants to assuage his troubles and promote sleep, but soon the idea that the missionaries had exerted an evil influence on the whole of his life became paramount in his mind. Suspicion now grew in the minds of all the neighbours of the mission. The Rev. Jones’ compound had become full of graves; he continued to purchase infants, and had found it necessary to bury the baby corpses outside his grounds. The accursed Wang took on himself one night to dig up one of the newly-buried babes. The eyeballs had fallen in in the ordinary course of decomposition, and this the beggar showed to all and pointed out as proof against the foreign devils. It was obvious to all that the missionary and his wife had bad eyes, as they wore spectacles, and here was an explanation of their purchase of babies, to take their healthy eyes to make medicine to cure their own diseased vision. The feeling became acute in the district,—such inhuman monsters must perish. The poor people, being already rendered desperate by hunger, were ready for any excess. Moreover, Wang, in an impassioned speech, said that their misfortunes, the famine even, were all produced by the workings of the foreign devils and the evil influence of their tower. The people were frenzied, mad, and made clamorous for blood by this speech.

“We will go to the honourable Hing Fai,” said Wang, “and get him to lead us against our common enemy.”

The whole crowd, lusting and thirsting for blood, surged to the house of Hing Fai, calling on him as their deliverer. Hing Fai was partly drunk, and in a state of recklessness born of his misfortunes. The clamour of the rabble had its effect, and, arming himself with a sword, he led the rabble against the mission-house with shouts and the glare of many torches. The gates of the mission compound were closed, as the noise of the crowd had already penetrated the mission, and they feared the intrusion of disorderly persons, imagining that some drunken carousals had taken place in the neighbourhood. The gate was soon broken down by Hing Fai’s orders, and someone slew the aged gate-keeper. The sight of blood roused the lust of killing in the famished and misery-stricken crowd; headed by Hing Fai they rushed through the compound, hacking and maiming the terror-stricken Chinese servants, straight to the missionaries’ house. The Rev. Jones stood in the lighted doorway, his arms upheld as though commanding silence; but Hing Fai, blind with rage, rushed forward and cut at his head with his sword. The missionary fell, and was kicked and clubbed into a shapeless mass of flesh. Lamps were overturned, doors dashed open, and upstairs was found Mrs. Jones praying wildly and screaming with fear; twenty knives were plunged into her as she knelt, and the now frenzied rabble hacked, smashed, and kicked everything in the house, spreading a ghastly ruin over all. Then arose a quick alarm of fire. An overturned lamp in the hall had set the wooden house in a blaze; the stairs were already ignited, and the rush of the rabble to descend caused them to fall. A frightful scene now ensued: the house was well alight, the stairs were gone, and a leap from the upper landing meant leaping into hell. Hither and thither the murderers rushed, trying to find some means of escape. Wang, the beggar, had already rushed down the stair before it was destroyed by the flames, but Hing Fai remained above in an atmosphere already becoming intolerable; he rushed to a window, cutting down two or three in the way with his sword, and leapt out. Others remained and suffered an awful death in the blazing house.

Hing Fai writhed and groaned in the lurid light of the burning mission, and was soon found by the beggar Wang. He had broken a leg, and was carried on the back of the evil-smelling Wang to his own residence. The home authorities were justly indignant, and demanded full reparation from the Chinese Government, and the Viceroy of the province was ordered to investigate and punish the guilty parties.

The unfortunate Hing Fai with a broken leg was painfully dragged to the execution ground and there decapitated. A brand new mission with a particularly fine stone church and spire was built at the expense of the already overtaxed and famine-stricken community, and there reside a yellow-haired Scotch missionary named McTaggart with his wife.