We are now sailing towards Shangae, no very long way northward from Ningpo, to the last of the five ports we came out to visit. It is not necessary to return to the Yellow Sea, for all this part of China is so freely intersected with canals that we may sail to Shangae among farms and rice-grounds. While among the farmers, we may call to mind that the great lord of the Chinese manor is the Emperor, to whom this ground immediately belongs, and who receives as rent for it a tenth of all the produce. A large part of this tenth is paid in kind. The Emperor is the great father also; his whole care of his enormous family distinctly assumes the paternal form, and embodies a good deal of the maxim, that to spare the rod will spoil the child. To govern is expressed in Chinese by the symbols of bamboo and strike; and the bamboo does, in the way of striking a vast deal of business. The central legislation is as a rule beneficent, and based upon an earnest desire to do good; for the father is answerable for the welfare of his children. National calamities have, at all times, been ascribed by the Chinese directly to their Emperors; who must by personal humiliation appease the anger of the gods. So large a household as this father has to care for requires many stewards, mandarins, and others; all these officers of state are those sons who have proved themselves to be the wisest, on examination into their attainments. A grand system of education pervades China; and, above the first school, to which all are sent, there is a series of four examinations, through which every Chinese may graduate if he will study. Not to pass the first is to be vile, and the highest degrees qualify for all the offices of state; but Chinese education means, after reading and writing, and moral precepts of Confucius, little beside a knowledge of Chinese ancient history and literature. The Emperor, belonging to a Tartar dynasty, bestows an equal patronage on Tartars and Chinese. The officers throughout the provinces are, as a further precaution, obliged to serve in places distant from their own connections, in order that no private feelings may destroy their power to be just. They are scantily paid, however; and, as a Chinese likes profit with his honor, the minor officials drive a trade in bribery, which often nullifies the central edicts, and which very directly helped to bring about the Opium war. The Emperor himself is, of course, too sublime a person to be often seen; the Son of Heaven, he robes himself in the imperial yellow, because that is the hue of the sun's jacket; but, once a year, in enforcement of a main principle of the Chinese political economy—Honor to Agriculture—he drives the plough before a state procession; and the grain sown in those imperial furrows is afterwards bought up by courtiers, at a most flattering price.
Where are we now?—we have shot out upon a grand expanse of water, like an inland sea. An horizon of water is before us—we cannot see the other bank of the Yang-tse-Kiang, the "child of the ocean," the great river of China; the greatest river in the old world, and surpassed only by two on the whole globe. Here, eighty miles above the sea, it is eight miles in breadth, and sixty feet deep, flowing five miles an hour; and far up, off the walls of Nankin, its breadth is three thousand six hundred feet, and its depth twenty-two fathoms, at a distance of fifty paces from either shore. Well, this is something like a river; from its source to its mouth, in a straight line, the distance is one thousand seven hundred and ninety-six miles; and the windings nearly double its real length, making three thousand three hundred and thirty-six English miles; of which two thousand, from the mouth upwards, are said to be quite free from all obstruction. At its mouth it is, comparatively, shallow; much of this vast body of water is diverted from its course and carried through the country in canals. We are not far, now, from the great canal which cuts across this river and the Hoang-Ho, another grand stream farther northward, with a course of two thousand six hundred and thirty miles. Between the Yang-tse-Kiang and Hoang-Ho the country is so flat that, if we may judge by the scene from the mast-head of the Phantom, not a hillock breaks the level waste of fertile land. In ancient times this country was subjected to desolating floods, which, in fact, caused the removal of the capital. The canal system was commenced, then, as a means of drainage, by a wise man, who was made an emperor for his sagacity. Now the canals serve the purposes of commerce, and agriculture also, since water, in abundance, is essential for the irrigation of the rice-fields. We are sailing up the Shangae river, a tributary of the Yang-tse-Kiang; this river, at Shangae, we perceive is about as broad as the Thames at London Bridge; for we are at Shangae. We sail through a water-gate into the centre of the town, and land beside a fleet of junks, into which heaps of rice are being shot; these are grain junks sent from Pekin to receive part of the imperial tribute.
Narrow, dirty streets, low houses, brilliant open shops, painted with red and gold. Here is a fragrant fruit-shop, where a poor Chinese is buying an iced slice of pine-apple for less money than a farthing. Here is the chandler's, gay with candles of the tallow-tree coated with colored wax. The chandler deals in puffs; and what an un-English appeal is this from the candle-maker on behalf of his wares—"Late at night in the snow gallery they study the books." Study the books! Yes; through the crowd of Chinese, in their picturesque familiar dresses, look at that man, with books upon a tray, who dives into house after house. He lends books on hire to the poor people and servants. Who is the puffer here? "We issue and sell Hong Chow tobacco, the name and fame of which has galloped to the north of Kechow; and the flavor has pervaded Keangnan in the south." Here we have "Famous teas from every province;" and you see boiling water handy in the shop, wherewith the customer may test his purchases. Here, on the other side of this triumphal arch, we peep through a gateway hung with lanterns into a small paved paradise with gold fish, (China is the home of gold fish), and exotics, and trellis-work, and vines, and singing birds; that is a mercer's shop, affecting style in China as in England, only in another way. We will walk through the paradise into a grand apartment hung with lanterns, decorated also with gilded tickets, inscribed "Pekin satins and Canton crapes," "Hang-chow reeled silks," and so on. Here a courtly Chinese, skilled in the lubrication of a customer, produces the rich heavy silks for which his country is renowned, the velvets or the satins you desire, and shaves you skilfully. Talking of shaving, and we run against a barber as we come out of the silk shop. He carries a fire on his head, with water always boiling; on a pole over his shoulder he balances his water, basin, towels, razors. Will you be shaved like a Chinese? he picks you out a reasonably quiet doorway, shaves your head, cleans your ears, tickles your eyes, and cracks your joints in a twinkling. Where heads are shaved, the wipings of the razors are extensive; they are all bought up, and employed as manure. The Chinese have so many mouths to feed, that they can afford to lose nothing that will fertilize the ground. Instead of writing on their walls "Commit no nuisance," they place jars, and invite or even pay the pilgrim.
The long tail that the barber leaves is to the Chinese his sign of manhood. Beards do not form a feature of Mongolian faces; a few stray coarse hairs are all they get, with their square face, high cheek bones, slanting eyes, and long dark hair upon the head. A plump body, long ears, and a long tail, are the respectabilities of a Chinese. The tail is magnified by working in false hair, and it generally ends with silk. There is a man using his tail to thrash a pig along; and one traveler records that he has seen a Chinese servant use the same instrument for polishing a table. It is, of course, the thing to pull at in a street fight. Here is a phrenologist, with a large figure of a human head mapped into regions, inviting Chinese bumpkins to submit to him their bumps. Here is a dentist showing his teeth. Here—we must stop here—with a gong for drum, but raised on the true pedestal, with a man inside, who knows the veritable squeak, are Punch and Judy, all alive. This is their native land. "Pun-tse," the Chinese call our friend, because he is a little puppet, after all—Puntse meaning in Chinese, "the son of an inch." Here is the very Chinese bridge that we have learned by heart along with the pagoda, from a willow-patterned soup-plate; steps up, steps down, and a set of Chinese lanterns. Here is a temple, flaming with red paint. Let us go in. Images, votive candles burning on an altar, and a woman on her face wrestling in prayer. After praying in a sort of agony for a few minutes, she has stopped to take a bit of stick, round on one side, for she purposes therewith to toss up and see whether her prayer is granted. Tails! She loses! She is wrestling on her knees again—praying, doubtless, for a "bull child." Girls are undesirable, because they are of no use except for what they fetch in marriage gifts, and to fetch much they must be good-looking. Poor woman—tails again! Never mind, she must persevere, and she will get heads presently. Here comes a grave man, who prays for half a minute, and pulls out one from a jar of scrolls. Having examined it, he takes one of the little books that hang against the wall, looks happy, and departs. He has been drawing lots to see whether the issue of some undertaking will be fortunate. Poor woman—tails again! We cannot stop for the result; but I have no doubt that if she persevere she will get heads up presently. Here is a man in the street with a whole bamboo kitchen on his head, nine feet long, by six broad, uttering all manner of good things. The poor fellow who drove the pig stops in the street to dine. What a Soyer that fellow is, with his herbs, and his peppers, and his magic stove, and what a magnificent stew he gives the pig driver! Do you know, I doubt whether the Chinese are fools. What place have we here steaming like a boiler? This, sir, is one of the public bath establishments, where a warm bath, towels, and a dressing closet are at the service of the pig driver after his dinner, for five le—less than a farthing. There, too, his wife may go and obtain boiling water for the day's tea, which is to that poor Chinaman his beer, and pay for it but a single le. It would cost far more to boil it for herself; fuel is dear, and except for cooking or for manufactures, is not used in China. There are neither grates nor stoves in any Chinese parlor. The continent of Asia, and with it China, has a climate of extremes, great summer heat and an excessive winter cold; so that even at Canton, within the tropic, snow falls. But the Chinaman warms not his toes at a fire; he accommodates his comfortable costume to the climate; puts on more clothes as the cold makes itself felt, and takes some off again if he should feel too warm. That building on the walls is the temple of Spring, to which ladies repair to dress their hair with flowers when the first buds open. This handsome structure is the temple of Confucius. Yonder is the hall of United Benevolence, which supports a free hospital, a foundling hospital, and makes other provision for the poor. The Chinese charities are supported generously; the Chinese are a liberal and kindly race. Here is a shoemaker's shop, with a huge boot hung over the door, and an inscription which might not suit lovers of a good fit, "All here are measured by one rule." "When favored by merchants who bestow their regards on us, please to notice our sign of the Double Phœnix on a board as a mark; then it will be all right." These signs are in common use on shops in China as they were formerly in England. In this shop there is a wild fellow, who is beating a gong fearfully, and who has rubbed himself with stinking filth, that he may be the greater nuisance. This is his way of extorting charity. That shopkeeper, not having compounded with the king of the beggars for immunity from customers of this kind, seldom lives a day without being compelled to pay as he is now paying for a little peace. The beggar takes his nuisance then into another shop. This is a vast improvement upon our street fiddle and organ practice. There is a pawnbroker's three-per-cent. per month shop. Here is a tea-house, surrounded with huge vases for rain-water which is kept to acquire virtue by age—of course imaginary virtue—for the making of celestial tea. In that house there is the oven for hatching eggs. Gateways are fitted at the end of the wide streets, locked at night to restrain thieves; and in the first house through the gateway here a girl is screaming dreadfully. Very likely it is a case of sore feet. The small feet of the Chinese women—about three inches long—are essential, for without them a girl cannot get a husband; as a wife, she is her husband's obedient, humble servant, but as a spinster she is her parents' plague. The operation on the feet takes place when the girl is seven or eight years old. A young naval surgeon, in his walks, heard screams (like those) proceeding from a cottage, and went in; he found a little girl in bed, with her feet bandaged; he removed the bandage, found the feet of course bent, and ulcerated. He dressed the wounds, and warned the mother. Passing, another day, he found the child still suffering torment, and in a hectic fever. He again removed the bandages, and warned the mother that her child's life would be sacrificed if she continued with the process. The next time he went by he saw a little coffin at the door.
The tea-gardens are in the centre of the town; we will go thither and rest. We might have dined with a hospitable townsman, where we could have been present at a theatrical entertainment, in which the Chinese delight like children. But a dinner in this country is a work of many hours; the list is very long of things that we should have to touch or eat. Chinese eat almost any thing; their carte includes birds' nests, delicate meal-fed puppies, sea-slugs, sharks' fins and tails, frogs, snails, worms, lizards, tortoises, and water-snakes, with many things that we should better understand, and a great many disguised vegetables. A Chinese dinner is so tediously long that we escape it altogether. Milk is not used; it is thought improper to take it from the calves; and meat plays no very large part of the Chinese diet. During our late war it was seriously stated, by several advisers of the Emperor, that to forbid the English tea and rhubarb would go a great way to destroy the nation; "for it is well known that the barbarians feed grossly on the flesh of animals, by which their bodies are so bound and obstructed," that rhubarb and warm tea were necessary to be taken, daily, as correctives. Now we are in the tea-gardens, and have passed through a happy crowd, sipping tea, smoking, eating melon pips, walking or looking at the jugglers. Into a fairy-like house of bamboo, perched over water, we ascend. Here is an elegant apartment, which we claim as private. We recline, and take our cups of tea; the cups that have been used are wiped, not washed; for washing, say the people here, would spoil their capacity for preserving the pure flavor of this delicate young Hyson; upon a spoonful of which, placed in the cup, hot water is now poured. Opium pipes, bring us! Ha! a hollow cane, closed at one end, with a mouthpiece at the other; near the centre is the bowl, of ample size, but with an outward opening no bigger than a pin's head. We recline luxuriously—looking down on the gay colors of the Chinese crowd, we take our long stilettos, prick off a little pill of opium from its ivory reservoir, and burn it, dexterously, in the spirit lamp; then twist it, judiciously, about the pin's head orifice. Three whiffs, and it is out, and we are more than half deprived of active consciousness. Let us repeat the operation. Practised smokers will go on for hours; a few whiffs are enough for us. Another languid gaze at the pagodas, and the flowers, and the water, and the Chinamen; now some more opium to smoke!
The Phantom finding us intoxicated, like a good servant may have brought us home; for, certainly, we are at home.
From "Reminiscences of an Attorney" in Chambers's Edinburgh Miscellany.
THE CHEST OF DRAWERS.
I am about to relate a rather curious piece of domestic history, some of the incidents of which, revealed at the time of their occurrence in law reports, may be in the remembrance of many readers. It occurred in one of the midland counties, and at a place which I shall call Watley; the names of the chief actors who figured in it must also, to spare their modesty or their blushes, be changed; and should one of those persons, spite of these precautions, apprehend unpleasant recognition, he will be able to console himself with the reflection, that all I state beyond that which may be gathered from the records of the law courts will be generally ascribed to the fancy or invention of the writer. And it is as well, perhaps, that it should be so.