I have been trying to buy a few things—a sarong, which is a putso which is a dhoti; a pipe; and a "damned Malayan kris." The sarongs come chiefly from Germany, the pipes from the pawn-shops, and there are no krises except little toothpick things that could not penetrate the hide of a Malay. In the native town, I found a large army of Chinese—more than I imagined existed in China itself—encamped in spacious streets and houses, some of them sending block-tin to Singapur, some driving fine carriages, others making shoes, chairs, clothes, and every other thing that a large town desires. They were the first army corps on the march of the Mongol. The scouts are at Calcutta, and a flying column at Rangoon. Here begins the main body, some hundred thousand strong, so they say. Was it not De Quincey that had a horror of the Chinese—of their inhumaneness and their inscrutability? Certainly the people in Penang are not nice; they are even terrible to behold. They work hard, which in this climate is manifestly wicked, and their eyes are just like the eyes of their own pet dragons. Our Hindu gods are passable, some of them even jolly—witness our pot-bellied Ganesh; but what can you do with a people who revel in D. T. monsters and crown their roof-ridges with flames of fire, or the waves of the sea? They swarmed everywhere, and wherever three or four met, there they eat things without name—the insides of ducks for choice. Our deck passengers, I know, fared sumptuously on offal begged from the steward and flavoured with insect-powder to keep the ants off. This, again, is not natural, for a man should eat like a man if he works like one. I could quite understand after a couple of hours (this has the true Globe-trotter twang to it) spent in Chinatown why the lower-caste Anglo-Saxon hates the Celestial. He frightened me, and so I could take no pleasure in looking at his houses, at his wares, or at himself....
The smell of printer's ink is marvellously penetrating. It drew me up two pair of stairs into an office where the exchanges lay about in delightful disorder, and a little hand-press was clacking out proofs just in the old sweet way. Something like the Gazette of India showed that the Straits Settlements—even they—had a Government of their own, and I sighed for a dead past as my eye caught the beautiful official phraseology that never varies. How alike we English are! Here is an extract from a report: "And the Chinese form of decoration which formerly covered the office has been wisely obliterated with whitewash."
That was just what I came to inquire about. What were they going to do with the Chinese decoration all over Penang? Would they try to wisely obliterate that?
The Straits Settlement Council which lives at Singapur had just passed a Bill (Ordinance they call it) putting down all Chinese secret societies in the colony, which measure only awaited the Imperial assent. A little business in Singapur connected with some municipal measure for clearing away overhanging verandahs created a storm, and for three days those who were in the place say the town was entirely at the mercy of the Chinese, who rose all together and made life unpleasant for the authorities. This incident forced the Government to take serious notice of the secret societies who could so control the actions of men, and the result has been a measure which it will not be easy to enforce. A Chinaman must have a secret society of some kind. He has been bred up in a country where they were necessary to his comfort, his protection, and the maintenance of his scale of wages from time immemorial, and he will carry them with him as he will carry his opium and his coffin.
"Do you expect then that the societies will collapse by proclamation?" I asked the editor.
"No. There will be a row."
"What row? what sort of a row?"
"More troops, perhaps, and perhaps some gunboats. You see, we shall have Sir Charles Warren then as our Commander-in-Chief at Singapur. Up till the present our military administration has been subordinate to that of Hong-Kong; when that is done away with and we have Sir Charles Warren, things will be different. But there will be a row. Neither you nor I nor any one else will be able to put these things down. Every joss house will be the head of a secret society. What can one do? In the past the Government made some use of them for the detection of crime. Now they are too big and too important to be treated in that way. You will know before long whether we have been able to suppress them. There will be a row."
Certainly the great grievance of Penang is the Chinese question. She would not be human did she not revile her Municipal Commissioners and talk about the unsanitary condition of the island. If nose and eyes and ears be any guide, she is far cleaner even in her streets than many an Indian cantonment, and her water-supply seems perfection. But I sat in that little newspaper office and listened to stories of municipal intrigue that might have suited Serampore or Calcutta, only the names were a little different, and in place of Ghose and Chuckerbutty one heard titles such as Yih Tat, Lo Eng, and the like. The Englishman's aggressive altruism always leads him to build towns for others, and incite aliens to serve on municipal boards. Then he gets tired of his weakness and starts papers to condemn himself. They had a Chinaman on the Municipality last year. They have now got rid of him, and the present body is constituted of two officials and four non-officials. Therefore they complain of the influence of officialdom.
Having thoroughly settled all the differences of Penang to my own great satisfaction, I removed myself to a Chinese theatre set in the open road, and made of sticks and old gunny-bags. The orchestra alone convinced me that there was something radically wrong with the Chinese mind. Once, long ago in Jummu, I heard the infernal clang of the horns used by the Devil-dancers who had come from far beyond Ladakh to do honour to the Prince that day set upon his throne. That was about three thousand miles to the north, but the character of the music was unchanged. A thousand Chinamen stood as close as possible to the horrid din and enjoyed it. Once more, can anything be done to a people without nerves as without digestion, and, if reports speak truly, without morals? But it is not true that they are born with full-sized pigtails. The thing grows, and in its very earliest stages is the prettiest head-dressing imaginable, being soft brown, very fluffy, about three inches long, and dressed as to the end with red silk. An infant pigtail is just like the first tender sprout of a tulip bulb, and would be lovable were not the Chinese baby so very horrible of hue and shape. He isn't as pretty as the pig that Alice nursed in Wonderland, and he lies quite still and never cries. This is because he is afraid of being boiled and eaten. I saw cold boiled babies on a plate being carried through the heart of the town. They said it was only sucking-pig, but I knew better. Dead sucking-pigs don't grin with their eyes open.