When We Were Strolling Players in the East

by Louise Jordan Miln

I have never known whether the boys were joking or not; but I am inclined to give them and myself the benefit of the doubt and to believe that they were.

At all events, our Cantonese guide was in grim earnest, and evidently felt injured because he was prevented from showing us what he apparently thought the chief glory of his native city.

If you too, good reader, feel deprived of your sanguinary rights, I must refer you to the printed records of more strongly-minded travellers. There have been many such, and in their pages you will find your just due of gory Chinese swords and of ghastly, trunkless Chinese heads in big brown jars.

We spent several hours in a fascinating shop where old Chinese robes and marvellous antique embroideries were sold. My husband bought me a charming, magnificent cape that had belonged very many years before to a mandarin. It was coarsely designed, but superfinely executed open-work. Roses, leaves, and butterflies were the burden of its embroidered song. The points of its irregular edges were finished with queer, silky, crimson knobs and wee golden bells. Last summer I took off the balls and the bells and three of the most prononcé butterflies, and the former cape of the noble yellow man made an inexpressibly effective zouave on my prettiest house gown.

We were a little disappointed in the temple of the five thousand genii and in the five-storied pagoda. But the flowery pagoda was a marvel of quaint beauty; and the changing, panoramic wonder of the streets never palled upon us.

We had a Chinese lunch with a Chinese dignitary, and he let me prowl about his mansion and the ridiculous courtyard. He introduced me to his wife, and she introduced me to her husband’s concubines, with whom she seemed to be on the best of terms.

In China “concubine” means something very analogous to the “handmaiden” of Biblical times. She is not a wife, but to Occidental ears the term is best understood if it is translated “underwife—lesser wife.”

After lunch we visited the sanctum of a Cantonese editor, and from there we went to one of the large popular markets. Shall I describe it? Shall I try? Yes; there were—black ones and white ones and gray ones. The black ones are considered far the most choice. Isn’t it horrible to think of human creatures eating cats and dogs and rats? Is it not most horrible? And yet—why? Can we allege one single sound reason against it? I think not. And yet as I stood in that Cantonese market I did feel for a moment very much as Hamlet felt when he held Yorick’s earthy skull in his hands. As for my husband; he fled. I wonder why men are in so many ways daintier than women?

It was a gruesome sight, that busy market-place, with great piles of meat cut from animals we scarcely mention when we eat. Poor pussies! they looked very pathetic. And I could have cried over the massacre of the puppies. The rats hung in countless numbers upon long, stretched strings. Probably I would better not describe more minutely. It did revolt me. And yet I do not know why it should have done so.

Unless we adopt vegetarianism and abstain from eating aught that has possessed animal life and consciousness, I do not see how we can consistently condemn the Chinaman, because he is less erratic than we in his selection of food, and because he is the creature of a sterner necessity than ours. If we consider the vast numbers of Chinese that must eat to live,—if we consider the proportional density of the population,—I am sure that we shall be just enough to realise that the Chinese must utilise every available atom of wholesome food.