Sidelights on Chinese Life

by J. Macgowan

China is a country full of lofty ideas. These are found in the writings of the sages. They are pasted up in crimson strips of paper on the doorposts of the houses and shops in every city in the Empire. They are found staring at one over the temples of the gods, and on the lofty doors of the Yamens, so that one would suppose that these latter were churches where the highest morality and the profoundest of theological teachings were being daily expounded. There is no place indeed that is considered so bad that a public sense of decency would demand that they should be excluded from it. Low, miserable opium dens, and houses of ill-fame, and gambling hells, and homes that are the abode of thieves are adorned with the most exquisite sentences full of the highest morality, and seemingly culled with the greatest care from the vast repertory that the language contains, as if to condemn the very vices that are rampant within.

One would imagine that these beautiful and choice epitomes of all the virtues would have made the Chinese a highly moral and virtuous people, but they have not done so. The exquisite sentences that give you a thrill as you read them for the first time, stare down upon the inmates and upon the passers-by without the remotest apparent effect upon any one. The opium-hued runner, and the mandarin whose sole aim is to enrich himself, pass in and out of the Yamen with sentences that extol righteousness and benevolences as the highest virtues, but the Yamen remains unchanged, and continues to be the abode of the greatest villainies. It is an undoubted fact that it has the worst reputation for roguery and cheating and chicanery, and the violation of all justice, of any other place throughout the kingdom.

This is no new development of modern times, but has been in existence from ages immemorial.[4] It is not, moreover, the result of any class legislation, for all the mandarins spring from the masses, and therefore all their vices and defects are inherited from them. There needs a renovation of the whole social fabric to make men honest in life, and to cause them to refrain from the practice of things that would never be tolerated in the common life of the Englishman of to-day. The methods of judicial procedure in China are entirely different from those in the West. There is no jury, no summoning and questioning of witnesses, and no lawyers to defend their clients or to expound the law, so as to deliver them from any penalties they might have incurred. Everything is left in the hands of the judge, who takes whatever view may seem to him to be the best in the case, and to decide without any reference to law books or statutes or to legal precedents.

A case, for example, is going to be tried. A man is accused of robbing a grave, one of the most heinous crimes of which a Chinaman can be guilty. As it is one of the axioms of Chinese law that an accused person is assumed to be guilty, he is brought in forcibly and with brutal roughness by some of the runners, wildly declaring that he is absolutely guiltless of the offence with which he is charged.

This protestation is, of course, taken as a kind of joke that every prisoner is accustomed to make, so he is forcibly bumped down on to his knees, whilst his head is made to strike the ground with a sound that is heard throughout the court. The judge looks on him with a stern and solemn visage, and enlarges on the enormity of his crime. He must be guilty, for how otherwise would he be here charged with this offence? The mandarin calls upon him to confess, but as he refuses to do this, but, on the contrary, adheres to his statement that he is innocent, a signal is given to the runners, who proceed to beat him most unmercifully, till his cries ring throughout the building, and he calls in the most piteous tones to all present to bear witness that he never committed the crime with which he is charged. After a time, seeing that he remains obstinate, the castigation is stopped, and the man, bleeding and wounded, is dragged out by his tail by the runners and thrown into a dismal dungeon, with some dirty straw in a corner, and where he can consider whether he will confess as the mandarin commands him, or whether he will consent to endure the barbarous treatment he will receive till he does.

A few days pass by, and he is again dragged into the court and the same process is repeated, until at last, exhausted by his sufferings and unable to endure the horrible tortures to which he is subjected, he finally confesses that he did rob the grave. This is exactly what the mandarin has been manœuvring for, for according to Chinese common law procedure, no prisoner can be condemned, and there can be no execution of his sentence, until he has signed with his own hand his confession that he is guilty. It would seem to the unsophisticated mind of the Barbarian that has never been enlightened by the civilizing influences of the sages, that criminal law would find itself at a complete standstill, seeing that no man would be willing to sign his own condemnation.

This, however, is an utter mistake. The mandarin has ways and means of persuading a refractory prisoner to make just the very confession that will justify him in punishing him to the full extent that he believes he deserves. There is the prison where a man may be slowly starved, and chains and manacles, and stout bamboo rods wielded by sturdy brawny arms that no touch of pity ever weakens. These can be used with such steady, unfaltering perseverance that life becomes intolerable, and the poor fellow would be ready to sign a hundred criminating documents rather than continue to endure the tortures that are inflicted upon him.

In the above accounts of the methods of judicial procedure in China, I have selected cases that are of constant occurrence throughout the Empire. How a nation with such a system of judicature has managed not only to exist, but also to retain a vitality such as China has to-day, is a marvel that testifies to the law-abiding character of the Chinese race. The mandarin of to-day is about as mean and as ignoble a specimen of a ruler as can be conceived, but he has always been the same. He is a product of the ages. All the teachings of the sages in which he is an adept, have never been able to produce a better. The people universally hate and loathe him. He is the synonym for oppression, injustice, and cupidity, and yet when a man rises from the ranks and is numbered amongst this aristocracy of power, he never remembers the loathing of the people for this class, whose name is distasteful to all honest men. It is quite true that one does occasionally meet with a high-minded and honourable mandarin, but he is simply an exception that proves the rule. The love and devotion that the people manifest to such an exceptional character as this only shows what a longing men have for those to rule over them who shall exhibit in their lives some of the higher virtues by which human life is adorned.

The mandarin being untrammelled by juries or by precedents or by statute books, and often having to depend upon his own mother wit to find out the truth in some intricate case that comes before him, is accustomed to use independent and original methods that would shock the legal mind of our judges in England. Not so in this land, where they are applauded by those who hear of them as being exceedingly ingenious and as showing the subtle character of the minds of those who devised them. A description of some of these may be interesting to the reader.

On one occasion a farmer was going to market with two huge bundles of firewood that balanced on a bamboo pole he was to carry on his shoulder from his farm to the neighbouring market town. Just before leaving, his wife thrust some yards of cotton cloth that she had woven into one of the bundles, and asked him to take them to the draper’s and dispose of them for her at the best price he could get for them.