Later I met the wives of my Chinese-Formosan friend. There were three of them—the intelligent one, the pretty one, and the eldest and most honoured one, who was the mother of the eldest son and heir. At least the last was called the “Great Wife” and the “Honourable One” by the others; but there was no trace of shame or of dishonour in the position of any of the women. All seemed very proud, very happy, and curiously affectionate toward each other and—greater test of a woman’s affection—even toward each others’ children. Nor do I think that they were “showing off” for my benefit; it was said by all who knew them that this was their habitual attitude. Other lands, other manners—and morals, perhaps.
As I went away from that interview with the several Mrs.——, I startled my ricksha-man—who thought I was giving him some incomprehensible order—by humming, to the tune of a chant I had learned from an aboriginal tribe in the mountains (for this was after I had been in Formosa for several months), some words written, I think, by Kipling:
“There are nine-and-sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
And every single one of them is right.”
Then I met a missionary acquaintance. So preoccupied was I with thoughts suggested by the visit I had just paid that I almost passed the missionary without speaking. Turning back, I apologized both for my seeming discourtesy in not speaking, and also for the barbaric chant, to the tune—if tune it could be called—of which I was humming Kipling’s words.
“A visit I have just made suggested the words, I suppose,” I explained, laughing, “or brought them up from some depth of the subconscious; I was rather fond of quoting them once.” Then I told the missionary of the visit from which I was returning.
“Disgusting heathen!” she exclaimed. “Besides, what have ‘different ways of constructing tribal lays’ to do with heathen immorality?” She frowned and looked puzzled. Then added more gently, as if explaining to a child: “‘Lays,’ you know, means poetry, and ‘constructing tribal lays’ just means writing poetry; nothing whatever to do with the heathen and their horrible ways.”
When we parted she adjured me to be more careful about wearing my sun-helmet, assuring me that it was necessary in that climate. “If one does not,” she explained, “something might happen to one—to one’s head, you know,” she added significantly, “and it would be a dreadful thing in a heathen country....”
To go back for a moment to the day of my landing:
As my first glimpse of Formosa from a passing steamer, a few years before, had fascinated me, so did my first glimpse of the island after I had landed. Not the Formosa of Keelung quay with its hordes of starving, skin-and-bone dogs—several of them dragging about on three legs or with paralysed hindquarters—nosing for food among the refuse,[24] or its crowd of screaming, guttural-voiced ricksha-coolies and vegetable-and-fish pedlars; or the arrogant Japanese officials—all in military uniform, with swords strapped at their sides[25]—bullying the Chinese-Formosans. But the Formosa of the country through which I passed in going from Keelung to Taihoku; the Formosa of scenery surpassing that of Japan proper, both in natural beauty and in the picturesqueness of the tiny peasant-villages, each village protected from tornadoes by a clump of marvellously tall bamboos, whose feathery tops of delicate green seemed to cut into the deep blue of the tropical sky; each house protected from evil spirits by cryptic signs—said to be quotations from Confucius—written, or painted, in black on red paper,[26] and pasted above and at both sides of each doorway. Every village was further protected by a temple of brilliant and varied colouring, on the roof of which wonderfully moulded dragons writhed or reared. The inhabitants of these villages were, of course, Chinese-Formosans. Very picturesque were these too, in their bright blue smocks and black trousers; men and women dressed so much alike that at a little distance they were indistinguishable. Only on nearer view was it clear that those who wore tinsel ornaments in their hair and walked as if on stilts were women. When these hobbled still nearer the cause of their queer stilted walk was obvious. Their feet were “bound,” i.e. deformed and distorted, pathetically—and to Western eyes abhorrently—out of shape.