Having stocked our provision basket with the various articles that were absolutely necessary for our comfort by the way, and having seen to our bedding and inserted amongst the blankets a few choice books to enable us to while away some of the dull hours that we were sure to have on the journey, we had to arrange for the chairs that were to carry us for the next few days.
We accordingly sent for the headman of the nearest chair establishment to settle with him the rates we were to pay for the chair-bearers. This is a question of no small difficulty, for these men have an evil reputation for being dishonest, and unless they are carefully watched, one is certain of being cheated by them. The man who shortly appeared in obedience to our summons well sustained the character that his class have everywhere obtained. He had a frowsy look about him as though he had been sleeping all night in his clothes and had not washed for many a long day. That of itself would not be a very serious indictment against him, for the disregard of soap and water is no test whatever of a person’s character in China. There was something about the man’s face that led us to form no very high opinion of him. In the first place he was an opium smoker. That could be seen from the leaden hue that had driven out nature’s colours from his face, and also from something nameless in the eyes that the opium with its subtle alchemy had put into them. In the next there was a low and cunning look about him that made you feel that you were in the presence of a man whose ideas of morality had never been fashioned on the high principles of Confucius and Mencius, or indeed of any of the other sages who have been models to the people of this Empire.
After a considerable discussion and beating down of prices, it was finally settled that we were to pay for one chair with its two bearers at the rate of about five pence a league,[8] with a specified sum for the days when we rested by the way, either because it was Sunday or for any other special reason that might induce us to loiter on the journey. As we were anxious to start early in order to reach a certain stopping-place where there was a well-known Chinese inn, we stipulated that the bearers with their chairs should appear next morning at daylight, when we would have everything ready to make an immediate start.
True to this arrangement we had packed up and had breakfasted before any sign of the coming sun could be seen in the eastern sky, and we kept looking out to see when the dawn would disperse the darkness that lay on the earth, and we could start on our journey. By and by the great banyan-tree near by that looked like a weird and uncanny mass of shadow, denser and blacker than those that concealed everything from view, suddenly and as if with the touch of an enchanter’s hand began to assume a tangible shape, and great boughs swung into view, and countless branches with their evergreen leaves came out of the night as if to greet the day with their smiles. Soon the light had flashed across the fields and on to the tops of houses, and had touched the summits of the hills with its glory and had driven away the last lingering shadows from the landscape, and another day had broken on the world.
Impatiently we waited for the coming of the chairs, but the minutes passed by, and the sun rose higher and higher, and his rays flashed amongst the forest of leaves that sprung from boughs and branches of the venerable banyan, but still no sign of them or the bearers. We had been long enough in China to realize that time to a Chinaman is of no importance whatever, and that the difference of an hour or two in any engagement that is made is a matter so trifling as not to be considered worthy of mention. Still with true Occidental pertinacity and training we clung to the idea that because the daylight had been mentioned and had been agreed to as the time when the men should put in an appearance, the men, of course with the same exact ideas of time that we had, would promptly appear as soon as the first flush tinged the sky in the east.
The foreigner in dealing with the Chinese always forgets that they are usually accustomed to look at things from a different standpoint from ourselves, and that their minds are more turbid and less keen than ours. Daylight, for example, with us has a definite meaning, but with a Chinaman represents a time that begins with the dawn and with the indolence of the East may extend to seven or eight o’clock.
By and by, and just as the clock was striking eight, the men came sauntering up the street smoking their bamboo pipes and chatting and joking with each other. They seemed to be perfectly unconscious that they were fully two hours late, and they tossed the chairs on the ground with an air as though they were in advance of their time and were anxious to be on the road.
They seemed to be mightily taken aback when we asked them, with a good deal of indignation in our tones, why they had not kept to the agreement of coming to us at daylight. “But we have come at daylight,” they replied, with amazement in their looks; “what is it now but daylight?” We speedily showed them from the current use of the word daylight, that that event happened more than two hours ago, and that by this time we ought to have been at least five miles on our journey.
They all seemed really surprised that the present moment could not be fairly called daylight, but with the readiness of the Chinese in repartee one of them said, “We really had to rise before daylight to be here now, for we had to cook our rice and have breakfast, for the work before us is no light one, and we dare not undertake it on an empty stomach. Then we had to smoke our usual quantity of opium. Until we had done that we dare not attempt the long journey that we have before us to-day. You blame us for being late, but just think of what we have had to do before we could come here. We had to cook our own breakfast and eat it, and that took up some time. Then we had to get our opium pipes in working order, and slowly manipulate the opium, and that you know is not like tobacco that you can take a few whiffs of and the thing is finished. We had then to lie on the opium-bench for some time till the drowsiness passed away and we had recovered our senses. How could we come earlier with all these things to do? You decided that we should come at daylight, and here we are. Did you expect us to come without having had our breakfast? You are no slight weight to carry, you know, and if we had done so, we should have had to drop you on the road before we had been an hour on our journey.”
The Chinaman has a wonderful facility for putting the best face upon a bad argument. He has the most ingenious ways of presenting his view of the matter, so that by and by he will have turned the tables, and he will make it appear that he has been altogether right whilst you have been absolutely in the wrong. His favourite method is to confuse the issues, and the Chinese, with their turbid way of looking at things, continually fall into the snare, and having accepted his premises they must perforce accept also his conclusions. Here were these rough, noisy chair-bearers insisting that they had acted upon our agreement to come at daylight, though the sun was high in the heavens and it was getting close upon nine o’clock. They ignored all our attempts to prove that the hour of daylight had passed some hours ago by simply insisting that we were wrong. The hypnotic influence of assertions made confidently and persistently began to have its effect on our mind. Were we really labouring under a mistake, and were the broad daylight and the great sun that glared down upon us simply visions of the imagination? We felt that if we did not stop the discussion we should soon be consenting to all they said, so we got into our chairs and with a peremptory wave of the hand ordered them to go on.