The rural population is arranged in village communities, each village having its own head-man and elders, to whom great respect is shown. Sometimes there is a feud between two villages over disputed boundaries or smaller matters, in which case, if the elders cannot arrange matters, the quarrel may develop into a fight in which many lives are lost. Nobody interferes and the matter is settled vi et armis.
But this absence of local government control has its drawbacks; for as sugar attracts ants, so unprotected wealth attracts robbers, and gang robberies are frequent, generally by armed men, who do not hesitate to add murder to robbery. Nor are these attacks confined to distant rural districts. Only a few months ago an attack was made upon a strongly built and fortified country house belonging to one of the wealthiest silk merchants in Canton, who had specially designed and built the house to resist attack, and had armed his retainers with repeating rifles. Twenty-five boats, containing about three hundred men, came up the river, and an attack was made at six p.m. that lasted for seven hours. At length the fortified door was blown in by dynamite and the house taken. Eighty thousand dollars' worth of valuables was carried off, and the owner and his two sons were carried away for ransom. Several of the retainers were killed and thirteen of the robbers.
The country people are very superstitious and dislike extremely any building or work that overlooks the villages, as they say that it has an unlucky effect upon their fung sui, a term that means literally wind and water, but may be translated freely as elemental forces. This superstitious feeling sometimes creates difficulty with engineers and others laying out railways or other works. The feeling is kept alive by the geomancers, whose mysterious business it is to discover and point out lucky positions for family graves, a body of an important person sometimes remaining unburied for years pending definite advice from the geomancer as to the best position for the grave, which is always made on a hill-side. They also arrange the lucky days for marriages, etc. When the telegraph was being laid between Hong Kong and Canton, the villagers at one point protested loudly against the erection of a pole in a particular position, as they were informed that it would interfere with the fung sui of the village. The engineer in charge, who fortunately knew his Chinese, did not attempt to oppose them; but taking out his binoculars he looked closely at the ground and said, "You are right; I am glad the geomancer pointed that out. It is not a favourable place." Then again apparently using the glasses, he examined long and carefully various points at which he had no intention of placing the pole. At length he came to a spot about twenty yards away, which suited him as well as the first, when after a lengthened examination he said, with an audible sigh of deep relief, "I am glad to find that this place is all right," and the pole was erected without further objection.
While gang robberies are frequent, there is not much petty theft, as in small towns the people appoint a local policeman, who is employed under a guarantee that if anything is stolen he pays the damage. In small matters this is effective.
The necessity for making villages secure against ordinary attack is palpable, and many villages in country districts are surrounded by high walls that secure them from such attack. In some, guns of ancient pattern are mounted on the walls.
The prosperity of a town is shown by the number of pawnshops, which are always high towers solidly built and strongly fortified. The Chinese pawnshop differs from those of Western nations, as it is not merely a place for the advance of money upon goods deposited, but also the receptacle for all spare valuables. Few Chinese keep their winter clothing at home during summer, or vice versa. When the season changes the appropriate clothing is released, and that to be put by pawned in its place. This arrangement secures safe keeping, and if any balance remains in hand it is turned over commercially before the recurring season demands its use for the release of the pawned attire. Sometimes very valuable pieces of jewellery or porcelain remain on the hands of the pawnshop keeper, and interesting objects may from time to time be procurable from his store.
Next to agriculture in general importance is the fishing industry, in which many millions of the population are engaged, the river boat population forming a class apart, whose home is exclusively upon their boats. To describe the variety of boats of all kinds found in Chinese waters would require a volume. The tens of thousands of junks engaged in the coasting trade and on the great rivers vary from five to five hundred tons capacity, while every town upon ocean river or canal has its house boats, flower boats, or floating restaurants and music halls, passenger boats, fishing boats, trading boats, etc. On these boats the family lives from the cradle to the grave, and while the mother is working the infant may be seen sprawling about the boat, to which it is attached by a strong cord, while a gourd is tied to its back, so that if it goes overboard it may be kept afloat until retrieved by the anchoring cord. In Hong Kong, where it is computed that there are about thirty thousand boat people in the harbour, the infant is strapped to the mother's back while she sculls the boat, the child's head—unprotected in the blazing sun—wagging from side to side until one wonders that it does not fly off.
