Sidelights on Chinese Life

by J. Macgowan

The general was a man of consummate ability, but he recognized that in military tactics he was no match for the man that was singing so blithely on the walls above him. Fearful lest his army should be involved in some terrible disaster by the wily foe with whom he had to contend, he gave orders to retreat, and every man under his command felt that he was not safe until some miles had been placed between him and the famous general who had been entertaining them in so strange and unlooked-for a manner.

Thus by this famous ruse Kung-Ming saved his town for his master, and at the same time gave him an opportunity of gathering together his forces for a new campaign with his enemies. The story has come down the ages, and to-day is perpetuated in the language in the well-known proverb, “Kung-Ming offered the empty city to his enemy,” which is often applied to clinch an argument about something that is happening in daily life.

Another story is told that is always listened to with wrapt attention, and it is that of a Prince that ruled in the far-off distant times who was often in collision with the Barbarians that lived just outside the frontiers of the Empire. He was a valiant man and greatly beloved by his feudal barons and earls that owed him military service, and who were bound to call together their retainers and follow him to the field whenever they were summoned by him to active service.

After a time he came completely under the fascination of a beautiful concubine whom he had in his harem. Through her influence he neglected the duties of the State, and the greatest disorders prevailed throughout it. The wild and warlike tribes across the border who used to be restrained by the firm hand of the Prince, now made incessant raids into his dominions and ravaged the lands of the people, and murdered or carried off into slavery many of the inhabitants, without any action being taken to punish the marauders or to protect the people against their inroads.

Several years went by and frequent appeals were made to their ruler to take up arms and drive back the robbers into the wilds and steppes of their native land, but the fatal influence of the court beauty had made him careless whether his people were protected or not. At length the predatory excursions of the Mongols and the Kins and the Huns, the roving migratory tribes that found China such a fruitful field for plunder and robbery, became so incessant and so destructive to his dominions that he was compelled to organize an expedition to drive them across the border.

Lighting the beacon fires throughout the State, which was the usual signal for the assembling of the feudal chiefs to repair to the capital with their various quotas of men and arms, there was soon assembled a formidable force prepared to follow their Prince wherever he desired to lead them against the enemies of their country. On the morning of the day on which the army was to start to punish the robbers who were desolating the northern districts of his dominions, a select body of the chiefs had an interview with their ruler, and they declared that not a soldier would obey the orders to march until he had consented to grant them one request, and that was that he should order the instant execution of the concubine who had wrought such injury to the State, and that her head should be handed over to them, so that they might be sure that she had really been put to death.

The Prince, who was desperately in love with the unfortunate woman, at first resolutely refused to do what they asked. As the very existence of the State, as they believed, depended upon its being granted, they were firm in their determination not to march against the enemy until the bloody deed had been carried out. After holding out for several days, and finding that the leaders were inexorable, the executioner was sent into the palace, and soon the head of the famous beauty was delivered to the barons, and the army took its march to avenge the wrongs that the wild and lawless tribes had so long inflicted upon the country.

The story-teller has an inexhaustible store of adventures, and romances, and love scenes, and great episodes in history upon which to draw. He has also the free use of his pictorial powers in drawing the scenes and pictures with which he would stir the imagination and the enthusiasm of his audiences. Many of these men are real artists in their profession, and they can hold their hearers spellbound whilst they give a realistic picture of some stirring event that happened ages ago, or of some great catastrophe in which a dynasty disappeared amidst scenes of carnage and bloodshed, and the new one came in to the sound of music and amidst the rejoicings of a nation. They are, however, a vulgar, dissipated set of men, and though they do occasionally get inspired with their subjects and rise to high flights of eloquence, there is not a single noble feature about them. It is not love for their art that makes them reproduce the comedies and tragedies of the past, but an irrepressible longing for the opium, which has put its leaden hues on their faces, and its fierce and unholy craving into their hearts.

There is another profession that ought to stand the very highest amongst all the honourable occupations that give men employment in this land, and that is the one that might in a rough and general way be called that of “interpreter of the gods.” This individual occupies the position he does not by any human choice, but by the special selection of the idol for whom he is to act. A vacancy, say, occurs in a particular temple, and a man must be appointed who can report to the worshippers the answers that the god has to give them to the particular petitions they have made to it. Without such a man the idol is dumb. It has a mouth, but it cannot speak; it has eyes, but they look out of wooden sockets, and no tears of sympathy have ever been known to fall from them; and it has a face with human features, but no story, the most pathetic that was ever told in the hearing of man, has ever been known to cause it to be suffused with emotion or to touch the cold and passionless features with a touch of pity.

The man that aspires to occupy this high position must go through a certain ordeal before he can be accepted by the temple authorities as the one whom the idol is willing to employ to be the medium by which it shall communicate its purposes to the people. A certain weird ceremony is performed in front of the god during some dark night, when only a candle or two show the idol surrounded by the mystery of darkness. Incantations are slowly chanted, and invocations made to the wooden image to inspire the man that stands motionless in front of it. The tap of a drum now and again sounds as a kind of bass note to the higher notes of the reciter of the vague and mystic language that is supposed to move the idol to a manifestation of its will.