From Burma I returned to north China by slow and easy stages, covering a period of two and a half months. As, however, I visited no part of the Far East which is not thoroughly well known to the ordinary tourist, I will spare my readers an account of peoples and localities which have been often and well described by others. Leaving Rangoon by steamer on 19th July, I reached Colombo on the 24th, and as the guest of Sir Henry Blake, G.C.M.G., then Governor of Ceylon, I spent six delightful weeks in touring through the island by train and motor-car. At Anuradhapura I obtained a seedling from the famous Bo-tree[393]—probably the oldest surviving historical tree in the world—and took it away to plant in the Public Gardens of Hongkong. I trust it is still there, and that it will do credit to its illustrious origin. From Ceylon I passed through Singapore, Hongkong and Shanghai, and crossed thence to Japan. After nearly a fortnight in the island of Kyūshū I paid a short visit to Korea, and finally returned to Weihaiwei on 5th October, after an absence of exactly nine months. My faithful dog, which had accompanied me through all the vicissitudes of my journey and had never had a day's illness, died suddenly, shortly after my return to China.
RUINS AT ANURADHAPURA, CEYLON.
RETURN TO CHINA
After the various journeys that I have made in different parts of China, I am often asked how I have been treated by the Chinese people, and to what extent I have suffered inconvenience from their notorious hatred for foreigners. The reader who has been so indulgent as to follow me carefully through the preceding pages has probably a good idea of what my answer to such questions is likely to be. In the course of more than nine years' residence in China I have travelled in ten provinces, and have never had cause for a single serious complaint against any class or any individual. By the official classes I have almost invariably been treated with scrupulous courtesy, and at the hands of the people I have experienced only kindness and hospitality. It is hardly possible for me to cite a single exception to this rule; and if it were not for the fact that other Europeans—missionaries and travellers—have sometimes had a different tale to tell, I should have no hesitation in saying that no more kindly or hospitable people exist than the people of China. They have certainly not the charm and grace of manner that are so characteristic of some of the Shan tribes or the people of Burma, Siam and Japan, and it is sometimes a little disconcerting to see them hurrying their children out of sight in case the Western ogre should want to cut out their eyes to make into foreign medicine. There are Chinese and Chinese, and good manners are less characteristic of one locality than of another. My own experience of the peasantry of eastern Shantung, with whom I am best acquainted, goes to show that they are good-tempered, reasonable, orderly and law-abiding, inveterate gamblers, quick to appreciate a kindness, good husbands and devoted fathers, neither more nor less intelligent than others of their class elsewhere, rather too fond of flattering the foreign official because they think he is fool enough to like it, singularly lacking in the proverbial conceit of his race, full of humour, a liar in the law-courts but truthful and honest outside them, and courageous in facing hardship and disappointment. My slighter acquaintance with the agricultural classes of other provinces forbids me to attempt any general characterisation, and even in our little territory of Weihaiwei—about 300 square miles in extent, with 160,000 people—there are differences and exceptions which must modify any general statement. The people of Kuangtung—the province from which issue the majority of Chinese emigrants—are in my opinion less attractive than those of many other provinces. They have sturdy qualities, are sober and industrious, enterprising and independent, but are rather too truculent and too much given to brawling. But this applies only to the lower classes, and especially to the "rolling-stones" that find their way to the coast-ports, for the typical Cantonese gentleman would be an ornament to any society in the world.
A VILLAGE FAIR IN CHINA, WITH OPEN-AIR THEATRE.