Besides most well-known varieties of conveyance the celestial mind has evolved one or two remarkable models of its own, notably, a kind of victoria, the body of which takes the form of two large inverted sea-shells gaudily painted with flowers and butterflies, and running on light iron wheels with bright spokes and rubber tyres. A liveried coach-man on the box, a footman with a smart rug over the arm standing on an iron step behind and balancing himself by grasping two straps attached to the back corners of the carriage, a shabbily-harnessed China pony in the shafts, and the equipage is complete.
The occupants of this triumphal car are either three or four prosperous-looking Chinamen, clothed in many-coloured silks, or a posse of gaily-dressed celestial beauties, who, with faces painted white, lips dyed vermilion, hair caked with oil, garlanded with flowers, laden with jewels, displaying their tiny satin shoes and toying with fans in their small and beautiful hands, furnish a tout-ensemble sufficiently original if not too painfully grotesque.
At Shanghai, certainly, many thousands of ponies are employed, but it is owing entirely to the influence and example of Europeans.
The majority of men taking up appointments in China are barely out of, if not still in, their teens, and whether they come straight from school, from business in the city or from the universities, it is seldom they have had any large experience of horses. In very many cases they do not even know how to mount, but finding ponies so cheap, or, better still, getting a discarded racer as a cumshaw, they take to riding as naturally as if to the manner born, so that there are but few residents of either sex who cannot ride, and China ponies consequently hold a place in the estimation of foreigners which is altogether denied them by the natives.
From hacking to racing is but a step. The man who has learnt to ride (or thinks he has), being already a member of the race club, takes his steed for a quiet canter round the course. The old racer no sooner finds himself on the familiar track than he is off with the speed of flames, and our young friend, being powerless to check him, with his feet out of the stirrups and hanging on to the back of the saddle for dear life, is carried a mile or so before a sudden swerve at the exit rail deposits him on the turf.
No bones are broken but the damage is done. Unless the dismounted cavalier be devoid of all enthusiasm the spirit of racing has assuredly entered his veins!
In future he will haunt the course with his own luckless hack, he will attend the training regularly each morning in hopes of getting a mount on any rank outsider, and will think of little else all day than riding and ponies.
To some men riding comes naturally, like cricket, while others can never acquire a good seat.
A light-weight who is fortunate enough to possess the necessary knack will soon be in request as jockey at the forthcoming meeting, when, if he should happen to secure a win, the confidence it immediately gives him does more than any other thing to transform him into a really good horseman.
It costs no more to feed a good pony than it does a bad one, so he now decides to dispose of his hack for a trifling sum, and in its stead to purchase a griffin, which may be a potential winner of the champions. He orders his mafoo to inspect the new season's griffins as they arrive, and arrange with the dealer to bring three or four of the best for his approval. This the mafoo does with great pleasure, as, apart from the keen interest he takes in racing—all Chinese being inveterate gamblers—it is an understood thing that he will receive a good cumshaw from his master for each race that his stable wins.