Sidelights on Chinese Life

by J. Macgowan

After sitting for a moment listless and drooping, with apparently no strength to utter a word, one of my men held up his hand deftly fashioned into the shape of a bowl, when the shopkeeper, who had kept a keen eye upon the newcomers as possible customers, at once dipped out a bowlful of steaming rice from a huge cauldron that was kept on the boil, and placed it within the bowl-shaped fingers with a pair of chopsticks laid across it, ready for the immediate use of the weary coolie. At the same time he placed before him a tiny little platter in which were some nicely browned strips of fried bean curds to act as appetizer to the rice, and to arouse his flagging appetite.

After a few minutes of solemn stillness, when the only sounds that were heard from the weary men were the music of the chopsticks and the satisfied sighs as the rice was driven down their throats by the two “nimble boys” (a pleasant title given by the Chinese to the chopsticks), the faces of the men began to lighten up. The weary look vanished, smiles covered the yellow visages, and soon jokes were cracked and bantering language was tossed from table to table, until the air rang with the echoes of their laughter.

At this juncture two farmers stepped out from a number who were hanging about in a listless fashion, and asked my men if they did not wish to hire for the next stage, which was about three miles long. At first they pretended that they did not, but that was simply bluff and intended to knock the price down. After some noisy discussion, the men said they would carry for forty-five cash. It must be remembered here that one cash is the thousandth part of two shillings. My men objected that the sum asked was extravagant, and offered ten less. Another wordy contest ensued, when the farmers came down to forty, whilst my men came up to thirty-eight.

Both sides refused to budge an inch, so my chair was once more hoisted upon the shoulders of the chair coolies, and we issued from beneath the branches of the banyan into the glare of the great sun, and the weary march along the toilsome roads was once more begun. We had proceeded on our journey fully a third of a mile, and the whole incident had passed from my mind, when loud sounds of voices calling out were heard behind. In an instant my men let the chair slip from their shoulders on to the road, and stood quietly within the bamboo poles, as though they were expecting some one. “What is the matter,” I asked, “and why do you stop?” “Oh,” one of them replied, with a twinkle in his eyes, “the farmers have consented to carry you this stage for thirty-eight cash, and so we are going to have a rest.”

By this time the men had come up, and putting on their straw sandals to protect their feet from the rough stones, tightened their girdles, twisted their tails round the crowns of their heads, and tossing the chair on to their brawny shoulders, they started with a run on their three-mile race. They might have been chair coolies all their lives, considering the easy manner in which they manipulated the chair, and the perfect way in which they kept step, and yet they were simple farmers, whose lives are spent in the cultivation of the soil, but whose poverty has compelled them to devise some rough methods to enable them to drive the wolf from their doors. Some idea of the strain that has been put upon them may be gathered from the fact that these men were willing to carry me for three miles and walk back the same distance for the trifling sum of thirty-eight cash, which was to be equally divided between the two, and which would thus give each one a little under a halfpenny.

The Chinese farmer stands second to none in all the world. It would seem, indeed, as though nature recognized in him a master hand, and that she responded to his touch, and poured out her riches in willing obedience to a mind that understood her and had learned her secrets. There is nothing in the world of agriculture that a Chinese farmer does not understand—that is, as far as the products of this land are concerned—and he seems to know the peculiarities of each, and their moods and their whims, and to be able to coax them to show their best face when the time of the harvesting comes round.

This is all the more remarkable since he has really so few implements with which to work the marvels he produces. These are the hoe, the plough, and the harrow, and beyond these the Chinese farmer never dreams of desiring any other. The first of these seems never to be out of his hands, for it is the one upon which he relies the most, and the one that is really the most effective implement that he possesses for the cultivation of the soil. It really takes the place of the spade in England, though the latter is never put to such extensive and general uses as the hoe. The Chinaman can do anything with it but make it speak. A farmer well on in years can easily be recognized amidst a number of working men by the curve his hands have taken from holding the hoe in the many years of toil in his fields with it.

With it, if he is a poor man and has no oxen to plough the ground, he turns up the soil where he is going to plant his crops, and with it he deftly, and with a turn of his wrist, levels out the surface so that it is made ready for the seed. With a broad-bladed hoe he dips to the bottom of a stream or of a pond, and he draws up the soft mud that had gathered there, and with a dexterous swing he flings the dripping hoeful on to his field near by to increase its richness by this new deposit. The stump of a tree will send out its roots wandering for moisture underneath a choice little plot where his potatoes are growing, and the farmer feels that these are an infringement upon the rights of the plants that look to him for protection. He seizes his hoe, and with a few sturdy strokes of its keen, sharp edge driven into its very heart in a short time the stump has vanished, and the roots have ceased tapping the moisture that the potato tubers require for their own growth.

But it would take up too much space to describe all the thousand and one ways in which this truly national implement is used by the farmers of China. It is quite enough to say that without it they would be left quite helpless, and if the agriculture of the country was to be carried on, some other implement equally serviceable would have to be devised to take its place. The plough and the harrow are of secondary importance to the hoe, but still they occupy a prominent position in the agricultural economy of the nation. They are of course antiquated, for they have come down from the remote past untouched by any inventive genius during the long centuries that have elapsed since they were devised in the early dawn of Chinese history. To alter them, or even to make a suggestion that they could be improved in any way, would be such a monstrous heresy that the nation’s hair would turn grey, and would cause the spirits of their ancestors such misery and shame that there is no knowing what calamities they might send upon the Empire to avenge their wrongs.

The ability of the farmer in this country is measured by the crops he is able to produce. China is an old country, and for countless generations the teeming populations have had to get their living out of the land. There is no rest given it, for one rarely sees any of the fields being allowed to lie fallow in order to give them time for recuperation. The pressure of the hungry mouths is upon it, and to satisfy the needs of the people they must go on indefinitely producing sustenance for them. It is here where the genius of the Chinese farmer comes in. If hungry stomachs can only be satisfied by a supply of food, so the impoverished, famished land can be made to bear the strain upon its resources by putting into it a liberal supply of manures.