Outside one of the gateways is a kind of bazaar, which we foreigners generally called "Bird-cage walk," for there the bird-fanciers lived, and birds of many different kinds were exposed for sale, not in cages, but quite tame, and quietly sitting on perches—parrots, larks, Java sparrows, etc., some of them tied by the leg, but not all.
Here, too, were to be seen wicker baskets, much resembling orange crates, full of common sparrows, representing a regular supply for a regular demand. Benevolent old Chinamen, flâneurs and literati would visit this bazaar of an afternoon with the sole object of buying a few of these little birds for two or three cash each and then letting them fly away, a beatific smile betraying the salve to inward feelings generated by a knowledge of merit acquired, any miseries inflicted on the sparrows by capture and confinement counting for nothing in the balance against the good work accomplished by their purchase and release.
The Chinese ideas of life and death are very dissimilar to our own.
With us, the responsibility of parents for the bringing up and well-being of the children is paramount, the fulfilment of such obligations being enforced both by legal and social pressure, while the responsibility of children for the care of their aged parents is almost nil.
Amongst the Chinese, children are considered to be the absolute chattels of the parents, with whose treatment of their offspring neither public opinion nor the country's laws have any right of interference. Infanticide can be, and undoubtedly is to a certain extent, practised, while the father is even said to be legally entitled to punish his grown-up children with death.
Children, on the other hand, are bound by every tie to obey, respect, support and even worship the authors of their being. Filial duty is the greatest of all virtues, and the man who fails in this respect is despised by everyone and takes rank with worthless characters and outcasts.
Our view of life is very finite. We are born, we die, are relegated to the unknown and quickly forgotten.
A Chinaman regards himself as a disseverable part of the stream of life, by which he is borne into this world to live his life here, and then is borne on again to the abode of departed spirits without continuity of existence having been interrupted. At his death he is mourned with a whole-hearted sincerity by his entire family, who perform the obsequies with great respect and as much display as is compatible with their station in life. An imposing grave is built in a spot facing a pleasant prospect, while trees are planted, and sometimes even artificial pieces of water made, so that the disembodied spirit may be able to enjoy shady groves and cooling breezes. Sacrifices are offered at this shrine not once, but year after year, and by his children's children, with an absolute certainty of the spirit's existence and approving knowledge. This is the practice of ancestral worship, and greatly to be pitied is the man who leaves no son to perform sacrifices at his grave.
In Peking funeral processions assume gigantic proportions.
I have seen them more than a mile in length, and of such barbaric magnificence that they must have cost many thousands of ounces of silver.