Chinese at Home : Or, the Man of Tong and His Land
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THE CHINESE AT HOME J. DYER BALL M.R.A.S. ^0f Vvc.' APR 9 1912 A. Jt'f, & £#f?r;CAL D'visioo DS72.I Section .e> \% Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/chineseathomeorm00ball_0 THE CHINESE AT HOME >Di TSZ YANC. THE IN ROCK ORPHAN LITTLE THE ) THE CHINESE AT HOME OR THE MAN OF TONG AND HIS LAND l By BALL, i.s.o., m.r.a.s. J. DYER M. CHINA BK.K.A.S., ETC. Hong- Kong Civil Service ( retired AUTHOR OF “THINGS CHINESE,” “THE CELESTIAL AND HIS RELIGION FLEMING H. REYELL COMPANY NEW YORK. CHICAGO. TORONTO 1912 CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE . Xi CHAPTER I. THE MIDDLE KINGDOM . .1 II. THE BLACK-HAIRED RACE . .12 III. THE LIFE OF A DEAD CHINAMAN . 21 “ ” IV. T 2 WIND AND WATER, OR FUNG-SHUI > V. THE MUCH-MARRIED CHINAMAN . -45 VI. JOHN CHINAMAN ABROAD . 6 1 . vii. john chinaman’s little ones . 72 VIII. THE PAST OF JOHN CHINAMAN . .86 IX. THE MANDARIN . -99 X. LAW AND ORDER . Il6 XI. THE DIVERSE TONGUES OF JOHN CHINAMAN . 129 XII. THE DRUG : FOREIGN DIRT . 144 XIII. WHAT JOHN CHINAMAN EATS AND DRINKS . 158 XIV. JOHN CHINAMAN’S DOCTORS . 172 XV. WHAT JOHN CHINAMAN READS . 185 vii Contents CHAPTER PAGE XVI. JOHN CHINAMAN AFLOAT • 199 XVII. HOW JOHN CHINAMAN TRAVELS ON LAND 2X2 XVIII. HOW JOHN CHINAMAN DRESSES 225 XIX. THE CARE OF THE MINUTE 239 XX. THE YELLOW PERIL 252 XXI. JOHN CHINAMAN AT SCHOOL 262 XXII. JOHN CHINAMAN OUT OF DOORS 279 XXIII. JOHN CHINAMAN INDOORS 297 XXIV. JOHN CHINAMAN AT WORK 316 XXV. WHAT JOHN CHINAMAN BELIEVES 331 XXVI. NEW LIFE IN OLD CHINA 342 XXVII. WHAT MISSIONARIES HAVE DONE FOR JOHN CHINAMAN • • 355 INDEX .... 363 \ viii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR Frontispiece THE LITTLE ORPHAN ROCK IN THE YANG TSZ . FACING PAGE BARBER . .16 A FEMALE ACROBAT . 1 32 A BLIND SINGING GIRL AND DUENNA . 192 A PERFORMING MONKEY. .... 2 l 6 A BLIND MERCHANT ..... 286 A PHYSIOGNOMIST ..... 34O IN BLACK AND WHITE A CHINESE WATERWAY AND BRIDGE . .2 BRAIDING THE QUEUE . -13 A FAMILY GROUP OF THREE GENERATIONS . 46 A BRIDAL PROCESSION . -51 IX List of Illustrations FACING PAGE A MILITARY MANDARIN AND WIFE . -54 A FAMILY . 2 GROUP • 7 A FAMILY . 2 JAUNT • 7 THREE DISTINGUISHED MANDARINS . IOO ROOM IN GOVERNOR’S YAMEN .... IOO SHANGHAI : FOREIGN MARKET .... 158 EATING RICE ...... 158 THREE WELL-DRESSED LADIES AND SERVANT . 235 A CHINESE CROWD AT AN OUT-OF-DOORS THEATRE . 281 CHINESE GENTLEMAN’S GARDEN . 288 THE DRAGON PROCESSION .... 295 THE GUEST HALL IN A CHINESE GENTLEMAN’S HOUSE, HONG KONG ..... 304 A GAMBLING HOUSE ..... 314 ” THE CHINESE “ BARROW . 314 SHANGHAI CITY TEMPLE .... 338 STREET SCENE : PEKING .... 349 STREET SCENE : MOUKDEN . ... 349 X PREFACE HE Tong (or Tang) Dynasty was so splendid a period in the annals of China that millions in the south of that land glory in the name of Men of Tong. In the north another illustrious dynasty has likewise bestowed its name on other millions, who commemorate its bright annals by taking the name of Men of Han. The Han is noted chiefly amongst a literary people, such as the Chinese, as the epoch of the renaissance of their literature ; while the Tong, also renowned for its literary excellence, has been compared to our Elizabethan age of literature. These two periods of China’s history were not only renowned for literature : the Han, the reign of whose sovereigns extended from B.C. 206 to a.d. 25, was a glorious epoch, whether looked at from a literary, historical, military, commercial, or an artistic point of view ; and it was very fitting that its name should be used to designate its sons, as it was the formative period of Chinese polity and institutions, official and formal. Equally fitting was it that the people of the southern portion of the Empire should appropriate the title of another great dynasty as a name for XI Preface themselves ; for it was during the Tong Dynasty (a.d. 618-908) that they, who had been con- quered before, were now completely civilised and incorporated into the Chinese race. Thus they have immortalised this most illustrious period of Chinese history and kept its memory ever fragrant during many cycles of Cathay, while at the same time their pride has been gratified by this con- tinual reminder in their name of the glories of a wondrous past. The author has dwelt amongst these Men of Tong for more than forty-six years ; he has studied their manners, customs, languages, thoughts ; he has seen their old-world civilisation, which seemed to have secured for itself an indefinite if not eternal future with this conservative people, one of the most conservative on the face of the earth ; and he has seen the bursting of the iron bonds of this old-time life, and the commencement of a new era of progress. The vision of an indefinite future perpetuating a never-changing order of things, death-like and stagnant, has changed into a living, active present, which presages good for the new future. Now that he has left all these changing scenes, in the quiet of English pursuits he has found a pleasure in describing some of the many phases life of Chinese ; and he hopes his readers will have an equal pleasure in the perusal of these pages. J. DYER BALL. Hadley Wood. 1911. xii THE CHINESE AT HOME CHAPTER I The Middle Kingdom S it possible by a few broad strokes to picture I what is connoted by the terms China and the Chinese ; to summarise and compress in a few sentences and in general terms a description of the physical features of the country, the charac- teristics of the people, and their mental attitude? The task is a well-nigh impossible one, yet if impracticable, a few bold touches may whet the appetite for a fuller description in the following pages, when different aspects of Chinese life will come under review. China has two of the world’s greatest and most famous rivers—the Child of the Ocean (Yang Tsz Kiang) and the Yellow River—with hosts of other rivers so numerous as to be insignificant and com- paratively unknown in the Western world, though scores of them would rank in importance and size with some of the most famous waterways in the i The Middle Kingdom West. It has mountain ranges, magnificent in their grandeur and scenery, rivalling any to be found in Great Britain or Ireland. It has immense plains, filled with a teeming population, and co- equal in extent with w'hole countries in Europe. It has thousands of cities, great and small ; vast hives of human workers, replete with life and vigour ; enormous provinces, each embracing scores and hundreds of districts or counties ; fleets of junks, fishing -craft, sea-going vessels, and river-boats, in such numbers that no one has ever totalled the grand mass, almost innumerable as they are, to be found at every seaport and each inland riverine or lacustrine city, town, or village. No country can compare with China for natural facilities of inland navigation. Its coast- line winds in and out, giving way in bays and gaining again in promontories, now merely holding its own, now nearly cut off at some peninsula, and then almost losing itself in the delta of some great river. Many small islands stud the Yellow and China Seas, the estuaries of the rivers and the lakes. Some are sacred with religious associa- tions, as Pu To, the haunt of Buddhist temples, or the Little Orphan, in the Yang Tsz. Lakes there are, not a few, amongst which the palm must be assigned to the Tung Ting (two hundred miles in circumference) and the picturesque Po Yang (ninety miles long by twenty broad). Such, then, in a few sentences, is China, form- ing one of the most extensive dominions ever 2 BRIDGE AND WATERWAY CHINESE Its Population swayed by a single Power in any age, or any part of the world, with every variety of soil, position, and temperature. China has a population of 426,000,000, which every schoolboy knows is reckoned as a third of the human race. The three great empires, the British, the Russian, and the Chinese, almost monopolise the world’s people between them. The other nations are content with a few hundreds of thousands or millions each. “ Shut in all round by the vast mountain chains of Manchuria, Mongolia, and Tibet,” “ and watered by a river system unsurpassed in the world, the low-lying plains of China proper were prepared for tillage, in times long previous to the advent of their present inhabitants, by a gradual process of denudation in the highlands, and the resulting deposit of alluvia carried seawards with the streams.” The land was thus made ready for its busy inhabitants and occupants, and the soil ren- dered suitable by its depth and richness for maintaining a large population. “ In the records of the earliest Chinese dynasties frequent allusion is made to waste lands reclaimed by deepening the watercourses, or by cutting channels for the swollen floods. In this way many of the most fertile plains were drained and redeemed, to supply the wants of an increasingly numerous race. “ But the vastness of its habitable territory and the native richness of its soil were not the only 3 The Middle Kingdom features which favoured the growth, stability, and independence of this great Empire. Within the mountain chains which isolate China and its dependencies, almost every variety of climate is to be found.” “ The natural products render the people practically independent of the outer world.” 1 China was shut up for centuries from European intercourse.