In a school for girls taught by a missionary lady, the visitors saw pupils from five to fifteen years. The feet of these children were generally swathed, and the girls showed, by their faces, great pain. Mothers came in to listen while the teacher was talking to the children. The girls, when reciting, stood with their backs to the teacher, a mark of respect. They sang several of our familiar Sabbath-school hymns.
AMOY.
The Steamer from Shanghai to Hong Kong put in at Amoy to bring the cargo of a disabled bark to Hong Kong. This gave some of my family who had been making a visit to Shanghai an opportunity to see Amoy. It is situated on a barren, hilly island; its streets are as narrow as lanes. Going through them in chairs, you come out upon a hilly district, with few trees, covered with remarkable rocks, many of them bowlders, not settled so far in the ground as most rocks, but lifted from it, some of them on their smallest ends, and some leaning towards each other, making natural rooms, with mossy floors, and an opening at the top. Some of them are used as temples on a small scale; idols, discolored by age and damp, are perched in them. Some real temples are built of the largest bowlders. In one of them, as one of the party was sitting on the stool in front of the idol, looking at the hideous images with which the temple was filled, expressing her wonder that human beings prayed to such things, one of the missionaries present asked an old priest if they really did believe in them. He said he could not tell whether the people did believe in them or not. The images might, or they might not, be gods; but “it was the custom to worship them; and, after all, whether they heard or not, it amounted to about the same thing as the worship by christians of their God.”
The foreigners, merchants, missionaries, and others, do not, as a general thing, live in the city, but on a small island across the harbor, rocky, like the larger island where the city is built, but not quite so dreary and barren. Attempts have been made to fertilize it, not wholly without success. Many of the houses are attractive, commanding a good sea-view.
From a great cave called the “Tiger’s Mouth,” formed by two rocks projecting from the side of a hill, a flat one forming the lower jaw, or the floor of the cave, and the upper stone curving over it, making a good resemblance to an animal’s mouth, you look down upon a wild, barren tract of country, where the rocks, my informant said, reminded her of almonds stuck into the top of a Christmas pudding, or as if giants had been having a battle, and their missiles had been left on the field in the reckless position where they fell. One rock, about eighty tons in weight, was balanced on another larger rock so evenly that one man, putting forth all his strength, could make it tilt slightly. They say that a typhoon makes it rock perceptibly. Just below it is a small Chinese cottage. The woman who occupied it was asked if she was not afraid to live there, for if the bowlder should tilt a little too much, one end of it would go through her roof. But she said, “No, it is good ‘Fung Shuy,’ and will bring good luck to my dwelling,”
FUNG SHUY. [Page 237].
FUNG SHUY.
This leads me to speak of “Fung Shuy.” Though the literal meaning of “Fung Shuy” is “wind and water,” this does not give any idea of the thing.
The Chinese regard the south as the source of good influence, inasmuch as vegetable life, with all the genial influences of spring and summer, are from that region. The north, they perceive, is the source of death to the vegetable kingdom. As animals partake of the diverse influences proceeding from these two opposite regions, they infer that men are susceptible to the same. They suppose, therefore, that there is a vital influence moving all the time from south to north. This may be obstructed. To secure its full effect, they prefer to have their dwellings front south; for they hold that from the north evil influences are constantly proceeding. Even the dead, they believe, are susceptible to these adverse influences. If graves are placed so as to meet good influences, it is called good Fung Shuy. It is a subject of great study to ascertain the influences which promote good Fung Shuy and hinder the bad. Anything, as a hill, rock, trees, standing due north and not very remote, especially if the region toward the south is unobstructed, and particularly if water is in that direction, is good Fung Shuy. There are men who may be called professors of Fung Shuy, who are experts in the science. The woman in Amoy thought that the bowlder near her house was good Fung Shuy. The term may be defined, the science of positions favoring good, and shielding from bad, influences. This is related to the extensive subject of ancestral worship, which would lead me too far from my narrative.