The upper ranks indulge at home in the use of opium. Great quantities of this intoxicating drug are smuggled into the country, notwithstanding all the precautions taken by the government to prohibit the importation of it; but it is too expensive to be used by the common people. The officers of the customs are not beyond a bribe. After receiving the sum agreed upon between the importer and themselves they frequently become the purchasers of the prohibited article. Most of the country ships from Bengal carry opium to China; but that of Turkey sent from London in the China ships is preferred, and sells at near double the price of the other. The governor of Canton, after describing in one of his late proclamations on the subject the pernicious and fatal effects arising from the use of opium, observes, "Thus it is that foreigners by the means of a vile excrementitious substance derive from this empire the most solid profits and advantages; but that our countrymen should blindly pursue this destructive and ensnaring vice, even till death is the consequence, without being undeceived, is indeed a fact odious and deplorable in the highest degree." Yet the governor of Canton very composedly takes his daily dose of opium.
The young people have no occasional assemblies for the purpose of dancing and of exercising themselves in feats of activity which, in Europe, are attended with the happy effects of shaking off the gloom and melancholy that a life of constant labour or seclusion from society is apt to promote. They have not even a fixed day of rest set apart for religious worship. Their acts of devotion partake of the same solitary cast that prevails in their domestic life. In none of the different sects of religion, which at various times have been imported into, and adopted in China, has congregational worship been inculcated, which, to that country in particular, may be considered as a great misfortune. For, independent of religions considerations, the sabbatical institution is attended with advantages of a physical as well as of a moral nature; and humanity is not less concerned than policy in consecrating one day out of seven, or some other given number, to the service of the great Creator, and to rest from bodily labour. When the government of France, in the height of her rage for innovation, fell into the hands of atheistical demagogues, when her temples were polluted and every thing sacred was invaded and profaned, the seventh day was considered as a relic of ancient superstition and the observance of it accordingly abolished; and, about the same time, it became the fashion among a certain description of people to use specious arguments against its continuance in our own country; as being, for example, a day for the encouragement of idleness, drunkenness, and dissipation. Such a remark could only be applied to large cities and towns; and in crowded manufacturing towns the mechanic, who can subsist by working three days in the week, would be at no loss in finding opportunities, were there no sabbath day, in the course of the other four to commit irregularities. And who, even for the sake of the mechanic and artificer, would wish to see the labouring peasant deprived of one day's rest, out of seven, which to him is more precious than the wages he has hardly earned the other six? What man, possessed of common feelings of humanity, in beholding the decent and modest husbandman, accompanied by his family in their best attire attending the parish-church, does not participate in the smile of content which on this day particularly beams on his countenance, and bespeaks the serenity of his mind? Having on this day discharged his duty to God, refreshed his body with rest, enjoyed the comfort of clean clothing, and exercised his mind in conversing with his neighbours, he returns with double vigour to his daily labour; having, as Mr. Addison observes in one of his Spectators, rubbed off the rust of the week.
The first of the new year in China, and a few succeeding days, are the only holidays, properly speaking, that are observed by the working part of the community. On these days the poorest peasant makes a point of procuring new clothing for himself and his family; they pay their visits to friends and relations, interchange civilities and compliments, make and receive presents; and the officers of government and the higher ranks give feasts and entertainments. But even in those feasts there is nothing that bears the resemblance of conviviality. The guests never partake together of the same service of dishes, but each has frequently his separate table; sometimes two, but never more than four, sit at the same table; and their eyes must constantly be kept upon the master of the feast, to watch all his motions, and to observe every morsel he puts into his mouth, and every time he lifts the cup to his lips; for a Chinese of good-breeding can neither eat nor drink without a particular ceremony, to which the guests must pay attention. If a person invited should, from sickness or any accident, be prevented from fulfilling his engagement, the portion of the dinner that was intended to be placed on his table is sent in procession to his own house; a custom that strongly points out the very little notion they entertain of the social pleasures of the table. It is customary to send after each guest the remains even of his dinner. Whenever in the course of our journey we visited a governor or viceroy of a province, we generally found him at the head of a range of tables, covered with a multitude of dishes, which invariably were marched after us to the yachts. Martial, if I mistake not, has some allusion to a similar custom among the Romans. Each carried his own napkin to a feast, which being filled with the remains of the entertainment was sent home by a slave; but this appears to have been done more out of compliment to the host, to shew the great esteem in which they held his cheer, than for the sake of the viands; for the Romans loved conviviality.
The Chinese also, like the ancient Egyptians as exemplified in the enormous mess which Joseph gave to little Benjamin above the rest of his brothers, testify, on all occasions, that they consider the measure of a man's stomach to depend more upon the rank of its owner than either his bulk or appetite. The Embassador's allowance was at least five times as great as that of any person in his suite. In this particular, however, these nations are not singular, neither in ancient nor in modern times. The kings of Sparta, and indeed every Grecian hero, were always supposed to eat twice the quantity of a common soldier; and the only difference with regard to our heroes of the present day consists in their being enabled to convert quantity into quality, an advantage for which they are not a little indebted to the invention of money, into which all other articles can be commuted.
Whatever may be the occasion of bringing together a few idlers, they seldom part without trying their luck at some game of chance for which a Chinese is never unprepared. He rarely goes abroad without a pack of cards in his pocket or a pair of dice. Both of these, like almost every thing else in the country, are different from similar articles elsewhere. Their cards are much more numerous than ours, and their games much more complicated. Nor are they at any loss, even if none of the party should happen to be furnished with cards or dice; on such an emergency their fingers are employed to answer the purpose, which are all that is required to play the game of Tsoi-moi, a game of which the lower class of people is particularly fond. Two persons, sitting directly opposite to each other, raise their hands at the same moment, when each calls out the number he guesses to be the sum of the fingers expanded by himself and his adversary. The closed fist is none, the thumb one, the thumb and forefinger two, &c. so that the chances lie between 0 and 5, as each must know the number held out by himself. The middling class of people likewise play at this game when they give entertainments where wine is served, and the loser is always obliged to drink off a cup of wine. At this childish game two persons will sometimes play to a very late hour, till he who has had the worst of the game has been obliged to drink so much wine that he can no longer see either to count his own or his adversary's fingers. I have thus particularly noticed the Chinese Tsoi-moi, on account of the extraordinary coincidence between it and a game in use among the Romans, to which frequent allusion is made by Cicero. In a note by Melancthon on Cicero's Offices it is thus described. "Micare digitis, ludi genus est. Sic ludentes, simul digitos alterius manus quot volunt citissime erigunt, et simul ambo divinant quot simul erecti sint; quod qui definivit, lucratus est: unde acri visu opus est, et multa fide, ut cum aliquo in tenebris mices." "Micare digitis, is a kind of game. Those who play at it stretch out, with great quickness, as many fingers of one hand each, as they please, and at the same instant both guess how many are held up by the two together; and he who guesses right wins the game: hence a sharp sight is necessary, and also great confidence when it is played in the dark."
The Chinese have certainly the acer visus, but I doubt much whether they have faith enough in each other's integrity to play at the game of fingers in the dark, which, in the opinion of Cicero, was a strong test of a truly honest man. The same game is said to be still played in Italy under the name of Morra.[8]
The officers about Yuen-min-yuen used to play a kind of chess, which appeared to me to be essentially different from that game as played by the Persians, the Indians, and other oriental nations, both with regard to the lines drawn on the board, the form of the chess-men, and the moves, from which I should rather conclude it to be a game of their own invention, than an introduction either from India or by the army of Gengis-khan, as some authors have conjectured.
The spirit of gaming is so universal in most of the towns and cities, that in almost every bye-corner, groupes are to be found playing at cards or throwing dice. They are accused even of frequently staking their wives and children on the hazard of a die. It may easily be conceived that where a man can sell his children into slavery, there can be little remorse, in the breast of a gamester reduced to his last stake, to risk the loss of what the law has sanctioned him to dispose of. Yet we are very gravely assured by some of the reverend missionaries, that "the Chinese are entirely ignorant of all games of chance;" that "they can enjoy no amusements but such as are authorized by the laws." These gentlemen surely could not be ignorant that one of their most favourite sports is cock-fighting, and that this cruel and unmanly amusement, as they are pleased to consider it, is full as eagerly pursued by the upper classes in China as, to their shame and disgrace be it spoken, it continues to be by those in a similar situation in some parts of Europe. The training of quails for the same cruel purpose of butchering each other furnishes abundance of employment for the idle and dissipated. They have even extended their enquiries after fighting animals into the insect tribe, in which they have discovered a species of gryllus, or locust, that will attack each other with such ferocity as seldom to quit their hold without bringing away at the same time a limb of their antagonist. These little creatures are fed and kept apart in bamboo cages; and the custom of making them devour each other is so common that, during the summer months, scarcely a boy is seen without his cage and his grasshoppers.
I have already had occasion to observe that the natural disposition of the Chinese should seem to have suffered almost a total change by the influence of the laws and maxims of government, an influence which, in this country more than elsewhere, has given a bias to the manners, sentiments, and moral character of the people; for here every ancient proverb carries with it the force of a law. While they are by nature quiet, passive, and timid, the state of society and the abuse of the laws by which they are governed, have rendered them indifferent, unfeeling, and even cruel, as a few examples, which among many others occurred, will but too clearly bear evidence; and as the particular instances, from which I have sometimes drawn an inference, accorded with the common actions and occurrences of life, I have not hesitated to consider them as so many general features in their moral character; at the same time I am aware that allowances ought to be made for particular ways of thinking, and for customs entirely dissimilar from our own, which are, therefore, not exactly to be appreciated by the same rule as if they had occurred in our own country. The public feasts of Sparta, in which the girls danced naked in presence of young men, had not the same effect on the Lacedemonian youth, as they might be supposed to produce in Europe; nor is the delicacy of the Hindoo women offended by looking on the Lingam. Thus the Chinese are entitled to our indulgence by the peculiar circumstances under which they are placed, but I leave it in the breast of the reader to make what allowance he may think they deserve.