In our month of August occurs the festival of the goddess of needlework. It is customary for the women to exhibit the wealth and ornaments of the family during this festival. In 1911, at Fatshan, near Canton, where Sunyacius was born, robbers disguised as women arrived in closed chairs before the yamen (compound) of the Li family, and pretending to be relatives, they broke past the doormen. When inside the home, they drew weapons, and with the inmates intimidated, ransacked the house of jewels and valuables, escaping to the river, where the pirate boats took them on board and made off for the reaches and canals. Owing to the paucity of maritime police, because of a limited revenue, piracy has swept over China’s waters since her Captain Kidd, Koxinga, operated from Amoy in 1657. The West River of Kwangtung province has been notorious in recent years, and in my former book, The Chinese, I have related the attacks upon Europeans in the steamers Sainam and Shui On.
The most startling attack in many years was upon the well-known Pacific Mail steamer Asia, in April, 1911. Known previously as the Coptic, this steamer sailed from San Francisco for twenty years in the trans-Pacific service, and she was therefore well known to many thousands of Americans. She was a graceful Belfast-built boat of low freeboard, and easily boarded. In a fog on April 23rd she ran against the precipitous Finger Rock Island, which rises off the coast of Chekiang province. Wireless was immediately sent out, and the Chinese Merchants’ S. S. Company’s vessel Shoa Shing started for the rescue. Before she could arrive and after her departure with the sixty rescued passengers, Chekiang pirates, in swift snake boats and sanpans, put off to the attack, and despite revolver defense, boarded the Asia and her boats. They even demanded under duress that passengers should sign “chits,” promising to pay sums of money for rescue. When the steamer was temporarily abandoned, they boarded and stripped her of almost everything except the smokestack paint. Fisherman and pirate are about as synonymous on some waters of China as Cornishman and farmer, Panamanian and placer miner are in some of our romantic novels! Thrilling engagements with pirates not infrequently occur almost under the windows of the fashionable Boa Vista and Hing Kee Hotels on romantic Macao’s Praya Granda.
On July 13, 1910, a party of Chinese students, women and children were kidnapped in Macao, by pirates led by the second of the swashbuckler Leungs, and by the leader Luk, and taken to Ko-Ho (Colowan) Island, where they were chained to the walls of caves and of a Portuguese fort, after the latter had been stormed, and the blue and white flag of the castles hauled down to be succeeded by the triangular red flag of the pirates. The governor of Macao sent the Portuguese gunboats Patria and Macao, and an expedition of artillery and infantry of the “Legionaries Coloniale.” The possession of this island by the Portuguese has long been disputed by China, and the Chinese gunboats, which now drew up only watched the engagement. Two thousand pirates fought with modern weapons and smokeless powder, which had been smuggled from Japan. The Portuguese bombarded with four-inch guns, and dropped so many shells into so many compartments of two pirate junks, as with skull and sail they made for rocky Wung Kum Island, that they sank with all on board. In an armistice, Commander Wu, of the Chinese navy, a brave commander of whom we shall hear more, disguised as a coolie, courageously spied on the pirates’ stronghold and ascertained where most of the women were imprisoned, so as to save these retreats from being bombarded. The pirates were smoked out of these caves with sulphur and the women resuscitated.
Not only South China, but North China also has experienced piratical attacks in recent times. In September, 1910, a large band of Hung-Hutz pirates, disguised as bean merchants, sailed down the Liao River to Newchwang and captured for ransom fifteen wealthy Chinese merchants under the walls of the foreign settlements. They safely made retreat with captured arms to their mountain stronghold, one hundred miles up the river, near Liaoyang, and settled down for a siege. The Chinese desire to build more railways through this section, but the Japanese and Russians have opposed American backing of another road and have hoodwinked Britain and Europe into a disinterested attitude, which is the status quo, but not the permanent settlement of the question.
The Chinese have a saying regarding courts, retainers and the animals outside, as follows: “When the mandarin swears, the dogs bark, and when the mandarin laughs the dogs grin, and the terrible tsai ren (yamen court runners, corresponding to our detectives) stroke their rough fingers.” Some of their legal proverbs are:
“When two rascals differ, the truth is near; when they agree, the truth is hid.”
“Don’t jump to conclusions in evidence, for a grain of sand is not the seashore, nor a tree a forest.”
“It is hard to rise, but easy to fall.”
“No one would believe a blind man who tried to tell a ghost story.”
“It’s easier to twist the road than the mountain.”