I know of no place where music, lanterns, romantic mountain scenery, seascapes far below and delightful society in an alien setting combine more pleasantly than at the Peak Club, Hongkong. Above the passing clouds which now and then whirl around as in Rubens’ pictures, over the purple Pacific Ocean which foams around hilly islands, over the high hills as you ascend from the royal colony of Victoria, on a terrace, they have graded a velvet lawn. Here the military and naval bands are brought for a promenade concert in the soft night of the fragrant Orient, beneath Bowring’s “wide Cathayan tree”. The band of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, from Mt. Austin barracks, plays the stirring Welsh national march, The Men of Harlech. The men sing the chorus:
“See! the bonfire light before ye,
How its fiery tongues do call ye,
Come as one to death or glory,
Heroes of the fight.
“Lest by fire they kill and plunder,
Harlech! Harlech! make them wonder
At thy power that none can sunder;
Freedom thou wilt give.”
Flowering plants in large colored Chinese kongs are set out everywhere. The stars and moon shine. The pictured lanterns gently swing, and the horn lanterns of Ningpo are opal soft. The light flashes from swords, uniforms and jewels. The blue-gowned Oriental servants noiselessly pass refreshments. Not a Chinese house is in view, though half a million Chinese live hidden in the foothills. On the hundred peaks of Hongkong Island, the lights of a hundred palaces and villas of the merchant princes shine out. Down the winding cement paths, chairs bearing lanterns and carrying guests are borne with their rhythmic swing.
Every lady and every man present has come from far, and knows much of life and geography. The conversation tires not, for there is something of great interest to tell. Kitchener’s brother (Kitchener himself would not come—he never moves in “society”); General Wood, of the United States Army; Commander Greeley, United States Navy, of North Polar fame; Admiral Scott, of the British Navy, who invented the large gun “dotter” that made the heavy marksmanship possible, and whose 4.7 gun saved Ladysmith; Nathan, the hero governor of the typhoon and Hankow holocaust; the governor of the Philippines at the far stretched-out line of America’s new fame and empire; Kipling himself full of his colored phrases; authors of books on China, many of whom live in Hongkong; German, French and Russian commanders, whose impetuous ambition has made many moves that have nearly started world wars; ordnance and commissariat colonels, who, without a hitch, have provisioned famous international military relief expeditions; prince and pauper explorers who are one in the camaraderie of adventure for science; curio collectors who are raking the world to enrich western museums with enravishing art; Ponting, the photographer who went with the intrepid Commander Scott to the South Pole; seven-year indentured “griffins” who are second sons of noble houses and whose inheritance of style is a millstone around the necks of their impoverished incomes; subalterns who are chafing at the bit to be let make a mark like Kitchener; visiting lieutenants from Manila who would emulate Funston in the Philippines; Japanese doctors who have beat the world in discovering Bacillariaceæ; Parsees who have founded universities and have, therefore, dined with “my friend, the king”; the merchant princes and the missionary apostles of China, whose knowledge would fill books; women of grace, beauty and learning, nibbling at sweet cinnamon, musk and lotus; international spies of both sexes from the notorious Brussels headquarters; all move over the quiet grass, listening to the haunting strains of the bewitching music, which makes the heathen hills unalien under the swinging lanterns and the white-riding moon.
When you lift your glass to say “prosit”, “here’s how”, “à bon santé”, or “here’s to you, old man”, with no national reservations, and a feeling that all traveled men are brothers; and some fraternally wider day possibly you will not shiver when John Celestial, Friend Nippon, and Aryan Bengal are admitted to the delightful company gathered under the whispering bamboos and floating sandal scent of the Peak Club of Hongkong.
It is the same interesting story on ladies’ night at the Bund Club of Canton; the Jockey Club of Shanghai; the Hankau Club; the Tientsin Club; the delightful conversazioni at Sir Francis Aglen’s on Customs Street, Peking, when the National Customs Band plays; the Gouverneur’s “Palais” at Saigon and Hué; the International Club at Harbin; Government House at Wei-Hai-Wei; or the consulate at Chifu. It whets the imagination to be dancing within sight of the stacked rifles at the front, and you reverse Tennyson and say in Locksley Hall: “Better one night in Cathay than a cycle of Park Lane” (or Fifth Avenue)! You recite the thrilling incidents, such as the ball which Wellington attended on the eve before Waterloo, etc.! Certainly the foreigner in recent years has never known when he would be called upon at Hongkong, Canton, Hankau, Shanghai, Tientsin, Amoy, Macao, Fuchau, etc., to rush out, in either his dress or his business suit, or possibly his night pajamas, with his gun, to defend property, some kind of government, and the white man’s rights and habits of trade and international civilization. Not only white men have suffered and borne, but the foreign heroines of diplomacy, missions and trade of Wuchang, Hankau, Canton, Peking, Tientsin, Chingtu, Chungking, Amoy, Fuchau, etc., are numbered in hundreds.
The foreigner in China enters upon his sporting and social enjoyment keenly, because his sufferings from climate, alienation and danger are also keen. Taking his life altogether, he deserves more than he receives as a reward for his work, and he and his wife are unusually interesting people to meet, as I know from three years’ life in their honored midst.
The human beasts of burden—the rickshaw coolies of Hongkong, Shanghai, and the treaty ports—are directed by little of their own language. Only a few of the mercantile men on station learn the language. The foreign tourist generally learns two words, “kwai se” (go) and “man-man” (stop-stop), and the coolies, like beasts, therefore depend for directions as they race along in the heat, on a tap on the left or right shaft to indicate which street the “fare” desires to turn up. Hongkong proposes to have printed on a large bill-board at every chair and rickshaw stand a list of fares. Hongkong and Shanghai have become great tourist centers, whole shiploads landing there from New York and San Francisco, and the tourist’s generosity or lack of local information permits him to pay so large a fare that the expenses of the resident are raised beyond endurance. The example of Hongkong might well be copied at every tourist center over the world. “A fair price, but not a foolish price” is the watchword in these new days of economy and efficiency, because world-waste can be tolerated no longer.
The regiments which from time to time come to garrison Hongkong reveal many interesting traits in their customs and uniform. The Royal Welsh Fusiliers, fresh from the Boer War, wore three silk ribbons down their backs. They are the only British regiment which is permitted thus to mourn the deprivation of the old “pig tail” of the bewigged regiments of the Georges, which custom they were the last regiment to discontinue. The Lincolnshires wear a band of green to show that they are foresters recruited in Robin Hood’s country. The Inneskilling Fusiliers and the Somersets at Tientsin retain their traditional territorial peculiarities. The Cameronians are the only British regiment which is allowed to bear arms into church service, as a reminder of the old strenuous days of surprise when the clans might leap like a wolf from behind even the pulpit. There are so many branches of the historic British service in Hongkong’s, Tientsin’s, etc., garrison life that American tourists are delightfully entertained and instructed in tradition that is far from uninteresting. The British have found that to recruit and fight a man as a number is not a success, as compared with the picturesque traditions in a territorial army of uniform, customs, names, fetish, romance, glory, flags, distinctive rights, etc. In other words, they humor Tommy Atkins as a boy, and he fights for them like a man, every time it is necessary. This was shown when the swagger regiments of the Guards of London, under Generals French, Paget and Roberts hit the Boer lines as hard as the Royal Welsh, who are recruited from sturdy fearless miners. Bret Harte’s “Caucasian showed that he was no more played out” on those occasions than he was when he rushed El Caney and San Juan Hill led by Roosevelt, Lawton, Chaffee and Wheeler. The Chinese of Peking and Tientsin in 1900 had a chance to see the brilliant performance of the American Fourteenth Infantry, Sixth Cavalry, and the marines under Captain McCalla of the cruiser Newark, and recently the fine Fifteenth Infantry, U. S. A., has renewed the very favorable gentlemanly impression at Tientsin and along the railway line to Peking.