Intimate China: The Chinese as I Have Seen Them

by Mrs. Archibald Little

In other countries besides China an assurance that a thing is to be done quite satisfies people.

Fung shui was the great obstacle to the erection of telegraph-posts, and is a difficulty in the making of railroads; but it seems to be easily overcome by an official assurance that the interference with it is of no consequence. The carefully chosen sites for houses show, however, how deep-rooted it is in the national life, the most unfortunate fact about it being that in their solicitude for the dead the Chinese generally assign the very best spots to graves, which must never be meddled with except at a change of dynasty; and, unfortunately, when the Manchu Dynasty came in, they omitted to level the graves. It would be almost worth while to have another change of dynasty, if only for the purpose of restoring to the use of the living much of the best ground in China.

A stranger Chinese belief is that when the phœnix and dragon of fable come together an egg is laid which leads to the devastation of the country. Such an egg was said to have been hatched at Matung, a little way below Chungking on the river. Certainly, the city magistrate went down to inspect the spot. It is the duty of all the officials to destroy these eggs all over China, their whereabouts being discoverable by the snow refusing to lie over them. But as we have mostly no snow in Chungking, perhaps that was held as an excuse for the officials; for we did not hear of any being beheaded or otherwise punished for letting the egg be hatched. The magistrate, indeed, refused to be drawn on the subject and say what he actually saw. "All nonsense, all nonsense!" he said. One curious part of it was that we never should have heard of his visit and its object but for noting the extraordinarily heavy rain that seemed to pour and pour over Matung. We were many of us dwellers on the hill-tops that summer—though not at all after Mr. Grant Allen's fashion, I fancy; and one of our daily entertainments was to watch the thunderstorms marching along the lower country, investing first one mountain, then another, dividing here, converging there. And one could not but notice how the most awful thunderstorms passed by all obstacles to concentrate themselves on Matung. Commenting upon this as we sat in the starlight in the evening watching our other entertainment, the play of the lightning, we remarked it might be worth while to go to Matung to see what had happened there, and then were told of the magistrate's visit to inspect the egg that had been hatched, and that before all these great storms, which we had looked down upon at intervals, in a small way being at times ourselves partakers. There evidently must therefore have been some striking indication of coming calamity to call for an official visit; and judging by what we saw ourselves, that indication had been realised. "It is the people's own fault, if they build their houses in a river-bed. Of course they are washed away," said the magistrate. But how many were washed away we never knew. One often regrets the absence of a newspaper in the interior of China. Twice in one week we saw in the distance great fires—saw the flames rise up, towering like a bonfire, spread, then after some time die out, a blackness settling down on what one imagines were once happy homesteads. In England, next morning we should be reading all the particulars; next day would follow the subscription list, after we had already sent our cast-off clothes, etc., to the sufferers. Thus would our sympathies be called forth at the same time that our interests were aroused. In China—nothing! No more is heard of the conflagration we even ourselves witness, of the inundation to which we also—at least, our hill-tops did their part—may be said to have contributed. Is it not partly this that makes life in China so dull? Is it possibly this also which leaves denizens in China looking so much younger than their years, their faces unmarked by the traces of emotion experienced, whether pleasurable or the reverse?

MONASTERY.
By Mrs. Archibald Little.

Materialistic though our worthy compradores (business managers) and invaluable boys (butlers) appear to us, with their expressionless faces and highly coloured explanations of popular beliefs in racy pigeon English, yet in reality no people believe themselves more surrounded by spirits than do the Chinese. Unfortunately, their spirits are generally evil spirits, requiring cunning handling to frustrate their designs—as when at New Year's time you stick on your door a red paper announcing that some sage of old or other celebrity lives in this house. In all countries the general belief seems to have been that the devils are very easily outwitted. But it is noteworthy how this belief in evil spirits gains upon the foreigners in their midst. Dr. Nevius, one of the most high-minded and noblest missionaries I have come across, a delightful man of apparently most healthy mind in a healthy body, wrote a deeply interesting volume on Demon Possession, giving instances to prove that this still exists in all its old Biblical terrors in China. I have known another missionary who is under the belief that by heartfelt prayer he himself was instrumental in driving out a demon; also others, of good social position and first-class English education, who felt their own powers for good almost paralysed whilst in the west of China by the presence of active evil spirits. Nor have I been able to divest myself in certain temples of the belief that the air was full of them, though I spent a long, long summer's day there once, alone, trying either to dispel the idea or to determine that it was so. Matters like these, if we believe, we none of us like to speak about. Certainly, it is during residence in China—supposed generally to have such a materialising effect—that I have become so convinced of spiritual agencies as to believe this faith unshakable. Happily for me the spirits, of whose presence and help I cannot doubt, have been uniformly good. And believing in their care, it has been impossible for me to be afraid in many circumstances with regard to which people often ask, "Were you not frightened?" Yet I have been frightened, very much frightened too, at other times. Probably, to many this confession will seem to rob my account of all trustworthiness. But all through this volume I try to write down what I have seen or think of things, always without asserting the correctness of my views. Some day we shall know; meanwhile, "It seems so to me" appears to be the truest phrase with reference to things Chinese.

To pass to lighter beliefs. In the west of China, at the foot of every fine old hoangko-tree, Ficus infectoria, a kind of banyan, is a little stone shrine, showing how at one time reverence was entertained for the spirit of this very beautiful shade-tree, growing on the top of so many hills in the windless province of Szechuan, always alone, and often giving enough shade to shelter the whole village near it under its branches in summer evenings; whilst in the autumn in the east of China, when the air is full of floating masses of gossamer, the Chinese say it is the "thread of niang-niang," or "heavenly silk." By the wayside, everywhere throughout China, the traveller comes upon pretty little shrines with one or two incense-sticks giving out a sweet fragrance; and if ever the whole land is converted to a higher, purer faith, I cannot but hope that these graceful little shrines may not be done away with, but consecrated anew with a figure of the Virgin Mother and Infant Saviour, or a crucifix, or a figure of some high and holy man of old, an ensample to us of these latter days, that so, like as in the neighbourhood of Méran, the peasant may feel called to offer upon it his beautiful white gardenia flowers, or a bunch of pink azaleas from the mountain-side, or a blossom of the gorgeous red dragon-claw flower, or even a white tea blossom or wild camellia, and, so doing, pray to Him above all, Whom they, as we, believe even now to see all they do, and Who, whatever our belief about Him, must for ever remain the same.

But I am wandering again and again into the sacred groves of religion, and must return into the devious paths of superstition. When a cargo-boat of my husband's once became a complete wreck, he could not help, even under the depressing influence of the news, being amused to hear his Chinese manager saying: "They would do it. They would do it. I told them not to. We must never again carry a cargo of dried shrimps. Of course, their spirits spoke to the spirits of their brother-fishes in the river, and they raised the waves that they might jump up and release their imprisoned relations. Well, there's a good deed done: a lot of lives set free. But we must not take shrimps again. You see, it is a dead loss. And I said so from the first."