Sidelights on Chinese Life

by J. Macgowan

Wherever there is an efficient executive, the men who prey upon society are compelled for the time being to take to honest courses to earn a living for themselves and their families. It is very interesting to watch how a whole district may be kept in order and laws obeyed and confidence restored by the action of one vigorous mandarin. On one occasion a certain region was in a most disturbed condition. Travellers passing through it did so at the greatest risk of being seized and held to ransom. They were compelled to go in companies for the sake of the protection that numbers would give them, and even then they had to pay the headmen of a certain large and turbulent village stipulated fees for passes that would carry them for a few miles on their journey without being molested by other blackmailers. Even the very poorest in going from one place to another were called upon to pay a few cash before they were allowed to proceed, and men were stationed outside the village to collect the toll from every one that passed by.

There were loud grumblings and complaints at this distressing state of things, but no steps were taken by the local authorities to put an end to it. The lawbreakers were rich enough to bribe the mandarins and every member of their Yamens, so that the story of their misdeeds was quietly ignored and they were allowed to grow rich on their illegal exactions.

After a time a new general was appointed to take military charge of the whole district. He was an exceedingly active and intelligent official, and had the reputation of being impervious to a bribe. A tremor of excitement ran through the ranks of the blackmailers when they heard of his appointment, but they contented themselves with the idea, that if he could not be reached by money, his subordinates, whose livelihood depended upon such perquisites as they were prepared to give them, would certainly not refuse the liberal sums they could have for the asking.

The general soon found what a disgraceful condition his district was in, and he quietly took measures to restore law and order in it. He knew that he could get no reliable information from the members of his own Yamen, so he used to go out every evening after dark in various disguises and mingle with the people. He would sit in the tea shops and hobnob with coolies, or he would enter the restaurants and converse with the more staid and respectable citizens and glean from their conversation information upon all manner of subjects that would be serviceable to him in his government of the people.

He found that the greatest disorders existed and that it would require very stern and decided measures to put an end to them. He got a complete history, too, of the particular village that had become so notorious for its exactions, with the names of its leading men and all their cruelties to the victims that had been seized in order to extract large sums out of them. He knew that these very men had spies even in his own Yamen who were ready to report any action that he might be going to take with respect to them, and therefore he had to keep his plans a profound secret even from his most confidential advisers.

At length after weeks of patient waiting, during which the suspicions of the lawbreakers were lulled to sleep, he decided upon immediate action. He had not informed any of his officers what he was going to do, neither had any of his troops the slightest suspicion that anything special was going to take place. Rousing the camp at midnight, he ordered five hundred men to prepare for instantly marching to a destination that he would reveal to no one. Taking the lead, the troops, who had been commanded to keep the most profound silence, glided like spectres through the dark and gloomy streets till they reached one of the great gates of the city. These were thrown open at the command of the general, and the soldiers trooped along the high road wondering what was the meaning of this midnight march and what scheme was working in the fertile brain of their leader.

Ten miles had been travelled and darkness still lay upon the land, and the trees and the houses, as they suddenly loomed up, looked like ghosts that had wandered out of “The Land of Shadows,” and were waiting for the dawn to return to their dreary abodes in that sunless world. Suddenly the order was whispered through the ranks to halt, and in tones of stern command the soldiers were ordered to surround the village that lay in the profoundest stillness at their side. They were to see that no one of its people were allowed to escape, and that for every one that managed to do so the life of the soldier on guard would have to pay the forfeit. The men knew too well the temper of their general to imagine that this was an idle threat.

With noiseless tread each man took up the station assigned to him by his officer, and the whole command stood in breathless silence until the dawn in the east lifted up the curtain of the night and revealed the village to them. A detachment of men were marched into it, and half-a-dozen of the leading men of the clan were seized and marched to an open space outside of it, where the general was standing with some of his officers. The executioner with bared arm and gleaming sword awaited but the word of command, and six heads rolled on to the ground and the tragedy was over. The bugles sounded and the men fell into their ranks, and almost before the whole of the village had time to rub their eyes to assure themselves that they were awake, the avengers of law were hurrying back to the city they had left at midnight.

The effect of this stern act of justice was perfectly magical in its effects. The news spread with the rapidity of lightning through the length and breadth of this famous general’s jurisdiction. With the fall of those heads, every trace of lawlessness vanished from the great clans that had been terrorizing society. Men could now travel freely without any danger of molestation, and even in the darkness of the night no one dared to lay his hand upon a member even of the weakest of the clans. The fear of the general was in the hearts of the transgressors, for conscience made cowards of them all, and stories were circulated about the almost supernatural knowledge that he had of men’s doings, and which every one implicitly believed in.

And so during the term of his office there was an end to blackmailing, and the region became as peaceful as though the gamblers had burnt their cards and had taken to reading religious books, and the opium smokers had become reformed, and the passion for unlawful gains had died out of the hearts of the men who had made it impossible for honest men to travel freely either for business or for pleasure very far from their own doors. But whilst this was the case, there was no real reformation in the hearts of a single one of those who had made society unsafe for men and women who wished to live a law-abiding life. They were simply afraid of the man that had the instant power of life and death, and who without trial of judge or jury, and without the fear of any superior court to call in question his decisions, could hand over a person at a moment’s notice to the man who held the gleaming sword, and who with one stroke of it could decide in two seconds a matter that lawyers in England would wrangle over for months.