Life and sport in China / Second Edition

by Oliver George Ready

It was mid-winter and bitterly cold, the ground being covered with almost a foot of snow. I had been to tiffin with the captain and was just coming away when, pointing to some natives in a sampan close alongside, he said, "Have you ever seen those men dive for fish?"

I never had, and being glad of the opportunity, stopped to watch. There were three men in the boat, of whom one worked the paddles, while the other two, stark naked, crouched on the forepart, sheltering themselves from the biting wind with an old straw mat. Having come to a suitable spot, where the depth may have been from ten to fifteen feet, the boat was stopped, and the two divers instantly plunged into the turbid water, to reappear some seconds later with a live fish in each hand, while one of them had also a third fish in his mouth. The diving was repeated several times with varying results before I took my leave, and the captain assured me that this was a common sight on the Yangtse in winter, when the fish were probably lying in the mud torpid from the cold.

When returning to Kiukiang from a fortnight's shooting trip in the neighbourhood of Ngankin, my boat was much delayed by light and contrary winds, which frequently obliged us to anchor in order to avoid being swept back by the strong current. On one of these occasions three of the crew took the jolly-boat and rowed ashore, a distance of some hundred yards, and while smoking on deck I could see them wading along by the bank, groping in the mud and occasionally putting something into a bucket which they had taken with them. Questioned as to what they were doing, the lowdah replied, "Fishing," and my astonishment was not diminished when they returned on board with the bucket half-filled with fine perch, varying from perhaps eight ounces to a pound in weight. Until then I was unaware that perch existed in Chinese waters, nor have I since seen any.

The nearest approach to this kind of fishing that I know of is down in my old home amongst the Norfolk broads, where on warm days, when lying in the weeds, tench can be tickled with the fingers and caught by a sudden nip behind the gills; but the art requires intimate knowledge of local waters, much patience and great skill.

One of the most frequent questions that I am asked at home is, "Do not Chinamen wear the finger-nails very long?" They do. Scholars perform no manual labour, in visible token of which they allow the nails of the left hand to grow an inch or an inch and a half in length, but the nails on the right hand, while also long, are short in comparison with those on the left.

To be classed with literary or educated men is the greatest of all considerations, for which reason there is always a tendency for anyone and everyone to wear a long coat and to don huge tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles, such as are affected by the literati, as well as to cultivate the nails of the left hand. As the use of the word esquire has degenerated in this country until not to apply it to all and sundry is considered to be almost a snub, so the habit of wearing long finger-nails in China has descended through every rank of Society until it is now more often the badge of envious imitation than of any scholarly attainments. So precious to the owners are these claw-like nails that I have often seen them protected by silver sheaths, and have heard that for cases of extraordinary growth the whole of the left hand is even carried in a bag.

There is much outcry in these latter days against the newly-formed habit of cigarette smoking cultivated by ladies of the West. Condemnation of the practice seems if anything to act as an incentive, so, yielding to the pleasant temptation of palliating faults in pretty women, I would suggest as an excuse that they are but following in the foot-steps of their sisters of the Far East, where, it may be roughly stated, the women-folk of a third of the human race smoke pipes.

I cannot say that very young girls appear to indulge much, though women of all ages do to a great extent, inhaling the smoke and puffing it through the nose in thick clouds. The pipes in general use are either small brass ones, having straight wooden stems a foot in length, with clumsy porcelain mouthpieces, or brass water-pipes, which when being smoked make an unpleasant gurgling sound. The bowl of either kind is so tiny that it will only hold a pinch or two of very fine tobacco, which three or four whiffs consume, when it has to be refilled and lighted from a slow-match held ready in the hand until the smokeress has smoked enough. The picture is neither winsome nor sweet.

The Chinese have very few amusements corresponding to our outdoor games, although at treaty-ports, and in those places where there are any roads, men are taking readily to cycling, albeit, from the flowing nature of their garments they generally use ladies' bicycles. Of these few pastimes archery is considered the most distingué, while boys attain to great skill in playing shuttlecock with their feet, being able to keep up the feathered cork for a dozen or twenty times, and passing it considerable distances from one to another. Judge then of my surprise when, on asking a young Chinaman at Peking how he had spent his holiday of the previous day, he replied quite naturally that he had passed the afternoon at his cricket club.

I could hardly believe my ears, for as far as I knew a game of cricket had never been played at Peking, even by Englishmen, there being no suitable ground, and it was only by plying him with questions that I elicited it was the cricket of the hearth to which he alluded, and that his club was a gambling-house to which young men brought their crickets, there to fight grim duels in a basin for the championship, while noble owners staked considerable sums on the prowess of their diminutive gladiators and stimulated their energies by tickling them with straws.