Mencius relates the story of a thief who, when apprehended, promised that if he was not punished, he would gradually reduce his peculations until he reached the stage of honesty; that it was cruelty to stop him short; that as he had been used to the privilege so long, he did not know any other way in which to gain his livelihood. If Grover Cleveland were living he might say that this Chinese was the first attorney for the tariff, and its progeny.
The humorous pirate, who infests Kwangtung province waters near Hongkong, seldom kills his victims now, as he has as effective a way of escape with the loot, while the helpless bark drifts at the mercy of the waves to the wonder of the foreign navigator, who afar off spies its strange actions because of the unmanned rudder. Lately at Mui Shah, a swift snake boat pulled up in the darkness alongside a slow-sailing junk, which was boarded. After robbing the crew, the pirates battened them down beneath secured hatches, and made good their escape, smiling at their aptitude in carpentry.
It is well known that Chinese doctors are only rewarded for cures and for keeping their patients well. A physician was called in to see a sick tax-collector (yamen runner). “You’ll have to call in another doctor,” said the physician. “Am I so bad that you must have a consultation?” inquired the alarmed patient. “No. You will remember, however, if you have as good a memory as I, that last week you searched high and low and taxed me the last cash on the limit of my property and maximum income. I have too much conscience to kill you, but I’m honest enough to say that I want as little as possible to do with curing you, so good-by.”
There are more Chinese Macks and Mc’s in Canton and Hongkong than in all Argyleshire, Scotland. I recall a particularly droll character, Mak, who was our godown-man at West Point, Hongkong. Mak (we never called him his personal name, which was Fun) was in full charge of the warehouse, and came to the office twice a month with proper accounts, which always checked up with the yearly inventory. When, by appointment, I went down to supervise that inventory, all was as it should be. Mak had a clean warehouse, in which neither rats nor coolies were tenants, and his wharf was kept free of junks and sanpans. I returned unexpectedly one day and found Mak collecting wharfage for himself from junks which he had allowed to tie up at the wharf, and rent from coolie families whom he had allowed to camp, with possibly their plague Bacillariaceæ, between the aisles of gunny bales in the godown. Longfellow speaks of “folding their tents like the Arabs and silently stealing away,” but on this occasion, the retreat of the enemy with their camp paraphernalia was accomplished with both confusion and noise, because of the haste involved. “How is this, Mak?” I shouted as a stern typan should. “Oh, cousins overnight, you sabee; plenty bobbery, but Confucius says, shelter your kin,” Mak blandly replied. I made him assure me that they were all sailing for parts known or unknown on the morrow, but I knew that if I caught them there again, they would be “other cousins” who had claimed hasty hospitality under the same law and the same necessity. There was only one way to match the blandness of Mak Fun, or any other godown-man, and that was to move in myself. As Mak was in other respects a good godown-man, I was blind in the port eye thereafter to this adaptation of the “cumshaw” by the clan of Chinese Macks, though as I passed, to quote from the same verse of Longfellow’s poem, “the night was filled with music” in Chinese Mak’s direction.
The Chinese accept the saddest thing in the world in a droll cheerful manner. A son, who had grown prosperous in Hongkong, sent his father, who lived in the silk district outside of Canton, a splendid lacquered coffin, which he was to keep before him in the best room for friends to see. The son’s letter said: “Here is something gorgeous for The Event” (that is, his father’s death).
The North China Herald gives the following as a sample of a Chinese boy’s request upon his employer for a recommendation, after he had been discharged by the officious butler: “Before I have leaved here the services, was troubled by here butler. He squeezes (steals), lies, and makes private of anythings, and also he said wrong of my bad conducts as a rascal. He discharged me for his brother in secret. After that you lost things which are determined in my brain. Now I beg you to request of Missy (the employer’s wife) which as possible as you can. But I am unliking at there Master to do anythings, I am much obliged to come to my new place under of your charges (recommendation) and beg you to bless me as boy or coolie business for my content at all, or please you to commence the any other places you know of. So I hope you to grant me a good report, for I am beg it to you on knees. Shall be much obediently and obliged. Address me to here as ‘No. 2 boy’. I remain, Sir, That obedient coolie servant, etc.”
For centuries there has been an amusing burglary insurance system and a droll code of courtesy between watchmen and robbers in China. If you do not wish to run the risk of being robbed, you pay the Head Thief, or Chief of the Robber Beggars, a fee, and he protects and insures you from loss and annoyance. Your watchman pounds his drum to show you that he is earning his salary, and at the same time to let the thief know where the watchman is, so that he may operate in safety if the owner has not taken out the usual insurance.
A coolie urged his cousin “for ten thousand reasons” not to go into the foreigner’s church, where the powerful orator was “sending people who stole to hell.” He was fully convinced that if no one spoke over him the dreadful words of objurgation, he could steal and run no chance of going to the inferior regions. In ignorantia salus!
On the subject of compressed feet, here is the Oriental side: “It’s fear, not modesty, that denies you white men more than one wife,” said the Chinese joker. “You equip your women with first-class feet, and they are as strong and swift as your men. What would one lone man do in a retreat before many claimants?”
There is a law prohibiting fortune-tellers soliciting on the streets. The Hongkong Telegraph writes that a fakir is standing at a hotel door, desiring to peer into the future of the passers-by. The paper, with its usual wit, suggests that an officer of the law should peer into the fakir’s immediate future!