Sidelights on Chinese Life

by J. Macgowan

A third title that is given to the official I am describing is, “The mandarin that is the Father and Mother of the People.” This term is a very pretty one and is given to no other official. It is intended to indicate the very intimate relationship that exists between him and his people, and the tender concern that he ought to have for their welfare. As the child runs to its mother in time of trouble and gets comfort from her sympathy, so the people of a county turn to this mandarin, when they are threatened with injustice or oppression, and so he, in the spirit of a father when he sees his own son in distress, bends all his energies to protect and comfort them. This is a beautiful theory, which the ancient legislators of this country in some moment of inspiration conceived, but the actual fact is that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, instead of being a father or a mother, he is more like a hungry tiger that desires to dig its claws into the flesh of a lamb, to satisfy its appetite upon it.

The mandarin whom I am describing has just received an appointment to the county, say, of “Eternal Spring,” for which he has paid the modest sum of a thousand pounds to the high official who had the disposal of the office. He is an ambitious man, and his great aim is not only speedily to recoup himself this initial outlay, but also to lay by a considerable sum to carry with him to his ancestral home and enable him to live in easy circumstances for some years to come. As his term of office lasts only three years and his salary is not more than three hundred a year, it would seem that he would require to be a conjuror to accomplish these two objects in the limited time at his command.

That he can do, and in the great majority of cases actually does perform, such remarkable financial legerdemain is a fact that is entirely due to the vicious system on which the whole civil service in China is based. It is perfectly understood by the Government that when a mandarin is appointed to any official position under it, the squeezes he has to pay for it, and the inadequate salary he will receive for his services, are all to be met and supplemented by what he can wring out of the people. This system is as old as the nation, and has become so inwrought and worked into its very fibre, that a new creation of national life would seem to be essential before it could be eradicated from the body politic. When the mandarin arrives at his Yamen, which is his residence and the place where all the official business of the county is transacted, he is met by the whole staff of men who are to assist him in the arduous duties that fall to him as the chief magistrate in the large district he has been appointed to rule. These consist of a private secretary, an interpreter, a number of writers who write dispatches and conduct any correspondence that may arise, a large body of policemen, or runners as they are generally called in the East, and a dozen disreputable-looking men who form the retinue of the mandarin, when he is called out to settle disturbances in any part of his large field, or adjudicate on cases that have to be tried on the spot.

Nominally he is responsible for all the salaries that this great crowd of men receive, and one wonders how he manages to pay them all out of his three hundred a year. The real fact of the case is, the only man that receives any salary from him is his private secretary. All the rest purchase the privilege of being employed in his service, and give the whole of their time free simply for being permitted to extract out of the people who come to engage in lawsuits, or from those who have fallen within the grip of the law, fees and squeezes and perquisites enough to give them a very good permanent income.

It is very interesting to watch the way in which these gentry carry on their official work, and how as ministers of justice in executing the decisions of the mandarin their one aim seems to be to extract as much out of the pockets of the people they are operating on as it is possible for them to do.

A farmer, for example, comes one day into the Yamen to lay a complaint against a rich neighbour who has taken forcible possession of some of his fields. He produces the deeds of his lands, and shows how they have been in his family for several generations and that they have never been alienated either by sale or by mortgage. The rich man has simply taken forcible possession of them because he belongs to a formidable clan, he declares, and not because he has any right to the fields.

The runners are delighted with this case, for the fact that there is a rich man in it makes it certain that some of his dollars will be transferred to their pockets. The complaint is formally accepted by the mandarin, and the court fees having been paid, a warrant is issued for the arrest of the man who has been accused.

The runners or policemen start out on their journey with light and joyous hearts. The road that leads away from the main thoroughfare takes them through rice fields, and skirts the foothills, and runs through villages, until at last it brings them by a narrow pathway to the house of the rich man they have come to arrest.

The whole village is excited by the arrival of these messengers of the law, for they are always a sign of ill omen, and the only man that can face them without being terrified is the man who knows that he has the means to satisfy their cupidity and to thus avoid being roughly handled by them. A crowd as if by magic silently gathers round the open door through which the runners have entered, and the women from the neighbouring houses collect in excited knots, and with flushed faces discuss the wonderful news of their village life.

The rich man, with as calm and as indifferent a manner as he can assume, though his heart is beating fast, comes out into the courtyard where the runners are standing and politely asks them what is their business with him. They tell him they have a warrant for his arrest for seizing some fields that belong to one of his neighbours, and the mandarin has ordered them to bring him to his court to be tried for the offence.