Sidelights on Chinese Life

by J. Macgowan

The reason for its existence at all is simply a superstitious belief that everywhere prevails that evil spirits who are at war with mankind have special power to work mischief along roads that have no turnings in them. Mad with glee, they fly swifter than the wind along them, and woe betide anything that lies in their course whilst they are careering along. It is for this reason that the owners of the house that abuts on this racecourse of the gods hasten to put up the stone with its three-worded inscription in order to avoid the baleful effects of their coming full tilt against it. Some calamity, they believe, would certainly be the result, but no sooner do the spirits see the words “I dare defy,” than, paralyzed with fear, and trembling at the mystic words that have struck terror into them, they fly in disorder from the scene.

The Chinese on the whole are endowed with broad common-sense, and in anything that has to do with money-making or with commercial matters they are as wideawake and as shrewd as a canny Scotsman or a Yorkshireman. They are gifted, too, with a keen sense of humour, and yet when they come to deal with the question of spirits and ghosts and ogres, they seem to lose their reasoning faculties, and to believe in the most outrageous things that a mind with an ordinary power of perception of the ludicrous would shrink from admitting.

Quietly sauntering along by a road that skirts a hill, a rock is pointed out that plays an important part in the fortunes of the town that may be seen stretching away over the plain in front of us. Looked at from a certain angle it certainly conveys to one the impression that it is a huge crouching tiger. It has a defiant look about it, and an air of alertness, as though some enemy were about, that it must be on its guard against. Its gaze is fixed on the smokeless city, from which no sound can be heard and which would seem to be a veritable abode of the dead.

It turns out that this great stone brute that nature has so deftly chiselled is the presiding genius of the city that lies so silently in front. The Chinese believe that objects in natural life which, by a freak of fortune, have any resemblance to bird or beast are inhabited by the spirits of that animal, and have all the natural powers of such, only in a greatly intensified degree. The physical strength of the tiger and its naturally ferocious character make it an object of dread, and so when a district is found to possess the figure of such, only in an immensely exaggerated size, then it is seized upon as the embodiment of physical and supernatural forces that can be used for the protection of a city or sometimes of a whole region many miles square.

In this particular instance, the stone tiger, with its massive jaws and huge body that seems to be vibrating with nervous energy, is looked upon as the real protector of the town and region which it overlooks. Through its mysterious influence plague and pestilence are kept away, and trade prospers, and twin sons appear in certain families, and boys are born and the ratio of girls is kept down, whilst a general air of prosperity pervades the city and the villages and hamlets on the plain beyond. This is not the casual belief of a few cranks. It is the profound conviction of the scholars and literary men, who are the leaders of thought. It is also one of the articles in the creed of the working men, and of the coolies and labourers, and it is tenaciously held by every woman in all the region. If any one should have the daring to suggest that this impostor of a tiger should be blown up by dynamite to see what it was made of, he would be looked upon as a dangerous heretic who ought to be put into a lunatic asylum, only there does not happen to be such a thing in the whole of China.

This form of superstition meets one in every direction, and is popularly called “Fung-Shuy,” which means “Wind and water,” chiefly, I presume, because in the province of the natural world these are the two agencies that seem to have a tremendous power in producing changes on the earth’s surface.

We have another instance of its dominating influence in this beautiful valley before us. More exquisite scenery one could hardly find in the whole of China than that which has been grouped here by Nature’s artistic hand. A mountain stream runs right through the centre of it, and night and day the sounds of its music break upon the air. The hamlets and villages scattered over it add to the beauty of the scene, for they give the charm of life to the silent forces that lie around.

The most beautiful feature about the whole, however, is the hills, which group themselves so artistically around this charming valley. They seem like colossal walls that mighty heroes built in ancient days to turn it into a city of which they should form the battlements. So obviously does this seem to have been the purpose, that the place has been called the “Mountain City.” Now the stone of which these hills are composed is a beautiful granite, that is specially adapted for house-building, and one would naturally imagine that the houses in the valley and in the city which lies just over the hills would all be built of the stone that is found in such abundance around.

But such was not the case. A tradition has come down from the past that underneath these hills are mighty spirits who would never tolerate that the granite they contained should ever be quarried, and that should any one dare to lay a chisel upon these rocks they would send disease and death upon the valley and exterminate every human being in it.

The result was that all the stone that was used in this region had to be carried up the river from some place fifty or sixty miles distant, where the geomancers had declared that no spirits were to be found. Such is the force of superstition that all the rocks and boulders and stones of this region are absolutely safe from the chisel of the mason, and the people prefer to go to the expense of importing the material for their homes and bridges, rather than incur the anger of the spirits, who would use all the terrible power they possess to avenge themselves upon them.