Sidelights on Chinese Life

by J. Macgowan

The recognized place where the idol is enshrined is in the living-room of the family. It thus becomes a silent member of the home and a witness of the daily life of its worshippers. It seems to be treated with but scant courtesy, however, for no care whatever is bestowed upon it, and the dust that comes in at the doors, and that rises from the earthen floors, falls thickly on its head and makes it have a grimy, disreputable appearance. The furniture in the room and the table on which the idol rests may be cleaned and dusted, but no damp cloth may ever be used to relieve it of the dust that has accumulated upon it, lest it should consider itself insulted by such familiarity and express its resentment by sending down some calamity upon the family. The gods are believed to be very human, and to be liable to fits of passion, and to be very anxious to maintain their dignity, and to be cruel and merciless with those that offend against them.

A general theory with regard to the idols is that they have to be propitiated in order that they may exercise their power in the protection of the home. For this reason they are never formally approached on any occasion without at the very least an offering of incense or of paper money burned in front of the idol, which it is believed find their way to the spirit of the god, who can appropriate and use them for his own benefit. It is customary on the days of the new and full moon to burn a number of sticks of incense, just to keep the idol in a good humour, on the principle that a man makes a present to another, in the hope that should circumstances demand it, he will show himself friendly when he is appealed to.

The one great occasion in the year when the idol is worshipped with great ceremony is its birthday. Then special preparations are made to do it honour, and offerings of roast fowl and duck and boiled ducks’ eggs, and certain vegetables, are placed in front of it, and it is called upon to partake of the good things that its worshippers present to it. In the more wealthy homes, where money is plentiful, in addition to the usual offerings of food, the head of the house will engage a band of play-actors, and selecting some popular piece, he will have it performed in the courtyard right in front of the idol, so that it can be amused by the merry performers and be made to remember its birthday with feelings of pleasure and satisfaction.

There is one feature about idolatry that is very striking, and that is that it never proposes to have any effect on character. The theory seems to be that its help is only available when men are in trouble or want to get rich, or when they wish to be avenged on an enemy, or the business is failing and they desire that it should prosper, and so be relieved from the dread of poverty in the future. There may be a thousand things in the same line as these, and it is believed that the idols have resources at their command that enables them to meet all such contingencies in human life and to fill men’s hearts with content.

The idols, however, are never supposed to have any influence for good on the characters of those that worship them. A man never feels that as he has just been making an offering to the household god, he must therefore be a better man. Such a thought never occurs to a Chinaman. The connection between a lavish service to the idols and a life altered for the better is never dreamed of in this land. A man, for example, is an opium-smoker, and every day the habit grows upon him till at last he is perfectly powerless under its grip. He becomes indisposed to work and gradually the home becomes impoverished. The opium craving that comes over a man when the hour for smoking arrives is so intolerable that at all hazards it must be satisfied, but this man has stripped his home of everything he can pawn, and now only a bare and desolate house is left, and his wife is almost starving. Driven almost to despair by the awful pains that fill every joint and muscle of his body with the most exquisite agonies, he sells his wife, and she, only too glad to escape her wretched life, willingly consents.

Now, during the whole time that this gradual descent in the man’s character has been going on, the idol has been a daily witness of his conduct, but it has never entered the thoughts of the opium-smoker that the god that sits on the oblong table and gazes calmly upon him without a wink cares anything at all whether he smokes or not, or is concerned in the slightest degree whether he lives a moral life, or whether he wrecks it by the grossest iniquities.

I once said to a man who looked like an animated skeleton, though not half so cheerful, “Are you not afraid that the idol that is so close to you, and that sees how wretchedly you are living, may punish you for the great wrongs you are committing?” He smiled a grim and sickly smile, as though I was perpetrating a huge joke, and he was vastly amused at it. The idol had no concern with human character, and it was only a barbarian that would ever dream in his unsophisticated nature that such a thing was possible.

Again, a mistress of a home, who was a devout and earnest believer in the Goddess of Mercy, had a young slave girl about fourteen years of age. Whilst drawn by the beautiful and benevolent-looking face of Kwan-Yin to a keener belief and worship of her, she was daily treating this poor child in the most savage and brutal manner. Her body and her legs were all covered with scars caused by the beatings she had received. One of her eyes was nearly torn out of the socket, and she was brought to the hospital, so maimed and wounded that the doctor feared she could never be cured.

It never occurred to this cruel woman that the savage way in which she was murdering her slave girl, in the very presence of an idol who owed her power to the reputation she had universally gained for mercy and compassion, would so set the goddess against her that her prayers and her offerings would be rejected. What had her conduct got to do with the favour of the goddess? Absolutely nothing. The gods have no concern about human motives and mundane morality. They have other things to attend to, and certainly no time to give to such complex questions, and so men and women are left very much to themselves, and if in the cycles of time retribution comes upon men for their evil lives, it is not the gods and the goddesses that men worship that will see to the ordering of that.

That the Chinese have profound faith in their idols is a fact that cannot for a moment be questioned. China is a nation of idolaters, and neither learning nor intelligence nor high birth tends to quench the belief that has come down from the past that these wooden gods have a power of interfering in human life, and of being able to bestow blessings or to send down curses upon men.