To one who had received his most vivid impressions of China from her noblest philosopher, Lao-tsze, it was somewhat disconcerting to peep through the porthole just after dawn and find oneself the center of a confusion indescribable. The sleepy, heaving sea was more in tune with the mystic "Way" of the great sage. I had not anticipated being thrust so suddenly among the masses and the babel on which Lao-tsze, that gray-beard child, had tried to pour some intellectual oil.
Yet, I had been living on the top floor of a Chinese "den" for twenty-six days between Sydney and Hong-Kong. On board I was ready to blame the steamship company for the crowding and the uncleanliness. Had there been a dozen murders, I should not have regarded it as unnatural. Had I been compelled to spend three weeks in such circumstances, I should either have committed hara-kiri or killed off at least four hundred and fifty-five to make the decent amount of room necessary for the remaining fifty. So I was prepared to exonerate them, to praise them for their pacifism and their orderliness in such conditions.
But when I peeped out of the porthole that morning and saw the swarming thousands struggling with one another to secure a pittance of privilege, which these five hundred had to offer by way of baggage, my heart went out to the great sage of 650 B. C. He must have been courageous indeed.
Full families of them on their shallow sampans cooperating with one another against odds which would sicken the stoutest-hearted white folk. Yet in that Oriental mass there was the ever-present exultation of spirit. Laughter and good-natured bullying, full recognition of the other man's right to rob and be robbed. No smug morality teaching you to be shy and generous in the face of an obviously bad world, a world ordered so as to make goodness the most expensive instead of the least expensive quality. But I soon discovered that beneath that external jollity only too frequently fluttered a fearful heart, filled with dread of the slightest change of circumstances.
The distance between the ship and the shore was not like Charon's river Styx, but it was a way between the Elysium of an alien metropolis and a Hades of hopeless nativity, none the less. Beyond stood the towering hills of Hong-Kong with its massive palaces in marble at the very summit. Chinese will to live had builded these, but the people had not, it seems, enough will left to build for themselves. From the very foot of the hills upward rose a steady series of buildings which looked surprisingly familiar, yet somewhat alien to my expectations. It was something of a shock to me to find that Hong-Kong was Chinese in name and character only, while being European-owned and ordered. I felt fooled. I had gone to see China, but found only another outpost of Great Britain. My American passport had had most fascinating Chinese characters on the back of it. But the "Emergency Permit" issued to me in Sydney, had none. Between British ports one can always expect British courtesy and that largeness of heart which comes from having taken pretty nearly all there is worth while in the world without being afraid of losing it. So I made some hurried mental adjustments as we chugged our way across, amidst bobbing sampans, and convinced myself that it might have been worse.
In that great future which will put modern civilization somewhere half-way between the Stone Age and itself, the stones of Hong-Kong will give investigators much to think about. Everything in Hong-Kong is concrete and stone. From the spacious office buildings that stand along the waterfront, to the palaces upon the peak, stone is the material out of which everything is built. What achievement! What a monument to Britain! But as the stones become harder beneath one's feet, one senses the toil embodied in them. Male and female coolies still trudge over these stony paths, carrying baskets of gravel, tar, or sand higher and higher. These structures seemed to me like human bridges which great leaders of men sometimes lay for their armies to pass over. Where do they lead to? Perhaps to England's greatness; perhaps to the world's shame.
At first one is prone to be rigid in one's judgment. There seems too much evidence of desire to build securely, rather than humanely or beautifully. The Orient, one hears, builds more daintily, more softly, more picturesquely; America builds more comfortably and more thoroughly. One might add, apologetically, that had not the masters driven these coolies to such stony tasks, the poor creatures would simply have built another Chinese wall at the behest of one of their own tyrants. Cheap labor makes pyramids and walls, and palaces on the peaks of Hong-Kong. But it also makes an unsightly slough of humanity about itself. Considering how costly pyramids and palaces such as those at Hong-Kong are, considering the plodding toil it took to build them, for the sake of humanity it is better that they were built of stone, so that rebuilding may never be necessary.
Everywhere as we climb we pass rest stations, coolies buying a few cents' worth of food, coolies carrying cement. While far beneath lies murky, moldy Hong-Kong with its worm-like streets, its misty harbor waters, its hundreds of steamers, sail-boats, sampans, piers, and dry-docks, and all around stand the peaks of earth and the inverted peaks of air. Returning by another route, down more winding and more precipitous paths, one passes great concrete reservoirs, tennis-courts, an incline railway, water-sheds,—and the city again.
2
The days draw on even here, and sunlight is curtained by dim night. The din of human voices loses its shrill tone of bargaining, the rickshaw men trot regularly but more slowly. Carriers of sedan-chairs lag beneath their loads; their steps slow down to a walk. Women by the dozen slip by, still with their burdens, but their voices have a note of softness, pleasing sadness. And now comes the time of day when no matter in what station one's life may be cast, spirit and body shift to better adjustment. And through the dim blue mist the shuffling of feet is heard, or the sounding of loose wooden slippers like drops of water in a well. Whatever revived activities may follow this twilight hour, now, for the world entire, is rest,—even in toil-worn, grubbing, groveling China, which seems not to have been born to rest.