Sidelights on Chinese Life

by J. Macgowan

Upon the receipt of this, an order is issued to the runners to go and arrest the accused with all possible dispatch and bring him to the Yamen so that he may be tried. The previous farce such as I have already described is once more gone through. The runners are received with lavish hospitality and a certain number of dollars are transferred to their pockets, that put a smile on their features that lights them all up and that spreads away to the back of their necks, till it finally vanishes down their tails into thin air. On their return to the Yamen they report that the man is still away from home, and though they have made diligent inquiries they have not yet been able to trace his whereabouts.

And so the case goes on, bribes being paid by both sides that go to swell the gains of the “Father and Mother of his People,” whilst fees also are squeezed out of them by the runners, who, as in some difficult cases in Chancery in England, grow fat upon the spoils that they extract out of both the complainant and defendant. Finally, after many months of vexatious delays, when the whole hungry tribe in the Yamen see that no more money can be got out of either side, the case is tried, when some compromise is suggested and the parties leave the court fully convinced that there is no such thing as justice in China.

The mandarins in this land take a very Oriental idea of what their duty is in regard to crime. They act upon the principle that unless it is legally brought before them, and a complaint is entered in their court, they will take no cognizance of it. Two large and wealthy villages have a quarrel, a very common thing in China. The feud grows and the passions become excited till finally they determine to take up arms and settle the case by a fight. To get the aid of the supernatural on their behalf, each side appeals to the village god, that is the patron of the clan, to know whether it approves of the taking up of arms. Almost invariably the idol does so, and in addition promises to give their side victory in the coming struggle.

All the old rusty jingals are brought out and furbished up; gunpowder is bought, and spears and cruel-looking pronged instruments that have been hidden away when there was no occasion for them, are thrown into the common stock and are served out to the young bloods who have been getting blue-mouldy for want of a beating.

Fighting now goes on every day, and other villages round about take sides with one of the parties, till sometimes as many as thirty, divided into different camps, are at open war with each other. Fields are desolated, and crops are ruthlessly destroyed. All this time the “Father and Mother of his People” knows exactly what is going on, but as he has never been officially informed of it, he acts on the assumption that the district where men are being murdered is at absolute peace. Not a soldier is sent to apprehend the lawbreakers, and no notice whatever is taken of the fact that combatants are being seized and subjected to the most horrible tortures, whilst they can get no redress from the constituted authorities who ought to protect them.

The fact of the matter is the mandarin is simply waiting his time, and when that arrives he will come in force and rake in the golden harvest that awaits him. In these clan fights it invariably happens that after a time both sides become tired of the whole business, and mediators are appointed to bring the two sides to terms with each other. This process goes on smoothly until the question as to how much blood-money should be paid for those who have been killed on each side arises. Where an even number have fallen in the struggle the solution of the difficulty is an easy one, but when the number of the slain is greater on one side than on the other, it is in nearly every case necessary to appeal to the mandarin to get him to use his authority to settle the matter. It is then that he finds his opportunity of making a lot of money out of both the belligerent parties. They have broken the law, he tells them, by carrying on war in his Majesty’s dominions, and he must fine them for daring to take this liberty. In many cases he has been known to return to his Yamen thousands of dollars richer than when he left it.

In the question of crime, the democracy is allowed a much larger liberty than is the case in the West. With the exception of rebellion, or any overt act against the Government, a Chinaman may commit the most atrocious misdemeanours without being held responsible to the authorities, unless, indeed, some formal complaint has been made against him. Murder, for example, is a crime that in nine cases out of ten is always settled by the families concerned, by a payment of blood-money. They will fight and wrangle, and discuss for days together as to the compensation that is demanded, but when once the amount has been settled and paid the whole thing is finished, and society never dreams that the murderer owes anything to it, or that he ought to atone to it for the injury he has done it in killing one of the members of it.

It is interesting to observe how the mandarin, with his impecunious staff, who all represent the majesty of law in this Empire, systematically assist certain classes of people to evade the law of the land, in consideration of a regular payment being made to allow them to do so. Take gambling, for instance. The gambling instinct is one of the strongest passions by which the whole of the Chinese race may be said to be moved. There is no class exempt from it. The rich and the poor, the men of learning in common with the coolie who earns his living on the streets, refined ladies and the wives and daughters of the labouring classes, all have this passion in their blood. This is so well recognized by their rulers that gambling is strictly forbidden throughout the Empire. There are standing laws against it which forbid the indulgence of it in any form whatsoever. There is only one exception to this, and that is during the first three days in the new year. Then the nation gambles openly, and tables are placed on the streets, around which crowds of men gather; and in the homes the women, forgetful of their duties, are so absorbed over their cards and dice that until the fourth day, when the gambling must stop, they seem to be driven with as mad a passion for gain as are the men on the streets.

Now the mandarin and his low-class, opium-dyed gang of followers take advantage of this terrible weakness of the people to make money out of it; and so a stranger to the ways of China would be immensely astonished to find that in the market towns, and especially in those where regular fairs are held, gambling shops where games of chance are played openly before the public everywhere exist, and crowds of country bumpkins, drawn by the universal passion, gather round the tables and, forgetful of time, lose all sense of everything else, and become absorbed in the changing figures of the board that bring them either fortune or despair.

You naturally ask how it is that in a country where gambling is so strictly forbidden, that here is a shop entirely given up to that vice, and that openly and in sight of the crowds that usually flock to a fair, the place is packed with men who make no attempt at disguising what they are engaged in. You will soon discover that the owner of the place pays a certain settled sum into the Yamen that is divided amongst the “Man that knows the County” and his disreputable set of underlings; and should any policeman happen to have official business in the fair, and were passing along the street and saw the eager, noisy gamblers gathered round the tables, he would profess the utmost ignorance as to what was going on in that disreputable place. Should any of the more respectable inhabitants make a formal complaint against the betting and gambling fraternity, the magistrate would appear to be filled with indignation, and runners would be sent to apprehend the lawbreakers to bring them before him to be punished according to law. They would find, however, when they arrived that every trace of gambling had been removed, and only perhaps a young lad would be found, with an innocent-looking face, selling peanuts and candies. The fact is, before they started with their warrant from the mandarin, they sent on a swift-footed messenger ahead of them to warn the men they were coming, and telling them to clear out.