Part 13
One of the funny things among the many funny things I have encountered in China is the peculiar way of buying or selling land, as reported to me by Rev. Dr. R. T. Bryan. If you buy land from a Chinaman, about Shanghai at least, without knowing the custom of the country, you may have to make him three additional payments before you get through with him. For, according to the custom, after the first payment he will give you a deed, but after a little while will come around sighing, regretting that he sold the land and complaining that you didn't pay enough. Accordingly, you will pay him a little more, and he will give you what is called a "sighing paper," certifying that the "sighing money" has been paid. A few days or weeks pass and he turns up again. You didn't pay him quite enough before. Therefore, you make another small payment and he gives you the "add-a-little-more" paper showing that the "add-a-little-more" money has been paid. Last of all, you make what is called the "pull-up-root" payment, and the land is safely yours.
Of course, the impatient foreigner hasn't time for this sort of thing, consequently he pays enough more in the beginning to cancel these various dramatic performances. Doctor Bryan's deed certifies that the "sighing money," "add-a-little-more money," and "pull-up-root money" have all been settled to start with.
"Pidgin English," or the corruptions of English words and phrases by means of which foreigners and Chinese exchange ideas, is also very amusing. "Pidgin English" means "business English," "pidgin" representing the Chinaman's attempt to say "business." Some of the Chinese phrases are very useful, such as "maskee" for our "never mind." Other good phrases {151} are "chop-chop" for "hurry up," "chin-chin" for "greeting," and "chow-chow" for "food."
"Have you had plenty chow-chow?" my good-natured Chinese elevator-boy in Shanghai used to say to me after dinner; and the bright-eyed little brats at the temples in Peking used to explain their failure to do anything forbidden by saying they should get "plenty bamboo chow-chow"! Bamboos are used for switches (as well as for ten thousand other things), and "bamboo chow-chow" means the same thing to the Chinese boy as "hickory tea" to an American boy!
A Scotch fellow-passenger was telling me the other day of the saying that "The Scotchman keeps the Sabbath day, and every other good thing he can lay his hands on." Now, the Chinaman, unlike the Scotchman, doesn't keep the Sabbath, but he does live up to all the requirements of the second clause of the proverb. Nothing goes to waste in China except human labor, of which enough is wasted every year to make a whole nation rich, simply because it is not aided by effective implements and machinery. The bottles, the tin cans, the wooden boxes, the rags, the orange peels--everything we throw away--is saved. And the coolies work from early morn till late at night and every day in the week. Their own religion does not teach them to observe the seventh day, and this requirement of Christianity, in China as well as in Japan, is regarded as a great hardship upon its converts.
Buddhism in China, as in Japan, it may also be observed just here, is now only a hideous mixture of superstition and fraud. As I found believers in the Japanese temples rubbing images of men and bulls to cure their own pains, so in the great Buddhist temple at Canton I found the fat Buddha's body rubbed slick in order to bring flesh to thin supplicants, while one of the chief treasures of the temple is a pair of "fortune sticks." If the Chinese Buddhist wishes to undertake any new task or project, he first comes to the priest and tries out its advisability with these "fortune sticks." If, when dropped to the {152} floor, they lie in such a position as to indicate good luck, he goes ahead; otherwise he is likely to abandon the project.
Let me close this chapter by noting a remark made to me by Dr. Timothy Richard, one of the most eminent religious and educational workers in the empire.
"Do you know what has brought about the change in China?" he asked me one day in Peking. "Well, I'll tell you: it is a comparative view of the world. Twenty years ago the Chinese did not know how their country ranked with other countries in the elements of national greatness. They had been told that they were the greatest, wisest, and most powerful people on earth, and they didn't care to know what other countries were doing. Since then, however, they have studied books, have sent their sons to foreign colleges and universities, and they have found out in what particulars China has fallen behind other nations. Now they have set out to remedy these defects. The comparative view of the world is what is bringing about the remaking of China."
In China, no doubt, the men who have brought the people this "comparative view of the word" were criticised sometimes for presuming to suggest that any other way might be better than China's way; but they kept to their work--and have won. Doctor Richard himself did much effective service by publishing a series of articles and diagrams showing how China compared with other countries in area, population, education, wealth, revenue, military strength, etc. Such comparisons are useful for America as a country, and for individual states and sections as well.
Hong Kong, China.
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XVI
WHAT I SAW IN THE PHILIPPINES
Of the cruelty of Chinese punishments I have already had something to say, but there is at least one thing that should be said for the Chinese officials in this connection: No matter how heinous his crime, they have never sent a criminal from Hong Kong to Manila in an Indo-China boat in the monsoon and typhoon season.
Dante could have found new horrors for the "Inferno" in the voyage as I made it. From Saturday morning till Sunday night, while the storm was at its height, the waves beat clean over the top of our vessel. A thousand times it rolled almost completely to one side, shivered, trembled, and recovered itself, only to yield again to the wrath and fury of mountain-like waves hurled thundering against it and over it. The crack where the door fitted over the sill furnished opening enough to flood my cabin. In spite of the heat not even a crack could be opened at the top of the window until Monday morning. A bigger ship a few hours ahead of us found the sea in an even more furious mood. The captain stayed on the bridge practically without sleep three days and nights, going to bed, spent with fatigue and watching, as soon as he came at last into sight of Manila. Two weeks ago the captain of another ship came into port so much used up that he resigned and gave his first mate command of the vessel, while still another vessel has just limped into Manila disabled after buffeting the storm for a brief period.
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At any rate, the trip is over now, and I write this in Manila, with its tropical heat and vegetation, its historic associations, its strange mixture of savage, Spanish, and American influences. The Pasig River, made famous in the war days of '98, flows past my hotel, and beautiful Manila Bay, glittering in the fierce December sunlight, recalls memories of Dewey and our navy. But the moss-green walls about the old Spanish city remind us of days of romance and tragedy more fascinating than any of the events of our own generation. In the days when Spain made conquest of the world these streets were laid out, and the statues of her sovereigns, imperious and imperial, still stand here to remind us that nations, like men, are mortal, and that for follies or mistakes a people no less surely than an individual must pay the price.
Nor let our own proud America, boasting of her greater area and richer resources, think she may ignore the lessons the history of her predecessors here may teach. The statue of Bourbon Don Carlos in his royal robe that stands amid the perennial green of the Cathedral Park--it may well bring our American officers who look out daily upon it, and the other Americans who come here, a feeling not of pride but of profound and reverent humility:
"God of Our Fathers, known of old. Lord of our far-flung battle-line. Beneath whose awful hand we hold Dominion over palm and pine. Judge of the nations, spare us yet, Lest we forget, lest we forget!"
In order to see what the Philippine country looks like, I left Manila Thursday and made the long, hot trip to Daguban, travelling through the provinces of Rizal, Bulacan, Pampanga, Tarlac, and Pangasinan. The first four of these are known as Tagalog provinces; the fifth is inhabited by Ilocanos and Pampangans. Three dialects or languages are spoken by the {155} tribes in the territory covered. Not far beyond Daguban are savage dog-eating, head-hunting tribes; taos, or peasants, buy dogs around Daguban and sell to these savages at good profits.
The provinces I travelled through are typical of Filipinoland generally. Rather sparsely settled, only the smaller part of the land is under cultivation, the rest grown up in horse-high tigbao or Tampa grass, or covered with small forest trees. Among trees the feathery, fern-like foliage of the bamboo is most in evidence; but the broad-leaved banana ranks easily next. The high topknot growth of the cocoanut palm and the similar foliage of the tall-shanked papaya afford a spectacle unlike anything we see at home. About Daguban especially many cocoanuts are grown, and the clumps of trees by the Agno River reminded me of the old Bible pictures of the River Nile in the time of Pharaoh--especially when I looked at the plowing going on around them. For the Filipino's plow is modelled closely on the old Egyptian implement, and hasn't been much changed. A properly crooked small tree or limb serves for a handle, another crooked bough makes the beam, and while there is in most cases a steel-tipped point, some of the poorer farmers have plows made entirely of wood. A piece of wood bent like the letter U forms the hames; another piece like U with the prongs pulled wide apart serves as a singletree. Then, with two pieces of rope connecting primitive hame and single-tree, the Filipino's harness is complete.
Before going into any further description of the plows, however, let us get our picture of the typical country on the Island of Luzon as I saw it on this hot December day. Great fields of rice here and there, ripe for the harvest, and busy, perspiring little brown men and women cutting the crop with old-fashioned knives and sickles; the general appearance not unlike an American wheat or oat harvest in early summer. Bigger fields of head-high sugarcane at intervals, the upper two feet green, the blades below yellow and dry. Some young corn, some of it tasselling, some that will not be in tassel before the last of {156} January. Some fields of peanuts. Here and there a damp low-ground and a sluggish river. Boats on the rivers: small freight boats of a primitive type and long canoes hewed out of single logs.
Most striking of all are the houses in which the people live, clustered in villages, as are farmhouses in almost every part of the world except in America. Surrounded in most cases by the massive luxuriance of a banana grove, the Filipino's hut stands on stilts as high as his head, and often higher. One always enters by a ladder. In most instances there are two rooms, the larger one perhaps 10 x 12 feet, and a sort of lean-to adjoining, through which the ladder comes. A one-horse farmer's corn crib is about the size of the larger Filipino home. And it is made, of course, not of ordinary lumber, but of bamboo--the ever-serviceable bamboo--which, as my readers probably know, strongly resembles the fishing-pole reeds that grow on our river banks. The sills, sleepers, and scaffolding of the house are made of larger bamboo trunks, six inches or less in diameter; the split trunks form the floor; the sides are of split bamboo material somewhat like that of which we make our hamper baskets and split-bottom chairs; the roofing is of _nipal_, which looks much like very long corn shucks.
In short, imagine an enormous hamper basket, big enough to hold six or eight hogsheads, put on stilts, and covered with shucks: such in appearance is the Filipino's house. Around it are banana trees bent well toward the ground by the weight of the one great bunch at the top, and possibly a few bamboo and cocoanut trees. For human ornaments there are rather small and spare black-haired, black-eyed, brown-skinned men, women, and children in clothing rather gayly colored--as far as it goes: in some cases it doesn't go very far. The favorite color with the women-folk is a sort of peach-blossom mixture of pink and white or a bandanna-handkerchief combination of red and white. Bare feet are most common, {159} but many wear slippers, and not a few are now slaves enough to fashion to wear American shoes. The men, except the very poorest, wear white, nor is it a white worn dark by dirt such as Koreans wear, but a spotless, newly washed white. Nearly every Filipino seems to have on clothes that were laundered the day before. A sort of colored gauze is frequently the only outer garment worn by either men or women on the upper part of the body.
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[Illustration: A FILIPINO'S HOME.] Nearly all the native houses I saw in the rural Philippines were of this type--about this size, set on stilts, and constructed of similar material. The scene is not quite natural-looking, however, without a banana grove and a fighting cock or two.
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[Illustration: THE CARABAO, THE WORK-STOCK OF THE FILIPINOS.]
[Illustration: AN OLD SPANISH CATHEDRAL.] Of all the native Oriental peoples, the Filipinos alone have become thoroughly Christianized. The great majority are Catholics.
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The beast of burden in the Philippines, the ungainly, slow-moving animal that pulls the one-handled plows and the two-wheeled carts, is the _carabao_. The _carabao_, or water buffalo, is about the size of an ordinary American ox, and much like the ox, but his hide is black, thick, and looks almost as tough as an alligator's; his horns are enormous, and he has very little hair. Perhaps his having lived in the water so much accounts for the absence of the hair. Even now he must every day submerge himself contentedly in deep water, must cover his body like a pig in a wallow: this is what makes life worth living for him. Furthermore, when he gives word that he is thirsty Mr. Tao (the peasant) must not delay watering him; in this hot climate thirst may drive him furiously, savagely mad, and the plowman may not be able to climb a cocoanut tree quick enough to escape hurt.
I saw quite a few goats, some cattle, a few hogs, and, of course, some dogs. Much as the Filipino may care for his dog, however, he always reserves the warmest place in his heart for nothing else but his gamecock, his fighting rooster. Cock-fighting, and the gambling inseparably connected with it, are his delight, and no Southern planter ever regarded a favorite fox-hound with more pride and affection than the Filipino bestows on his favorite chicken. In grassy yards you will see the rooster tied by one leg and turned out to exercise, as we would stake a cow to graze, while his owner watches and fondles him. I shall never forget a gray-headed, bright-eyed, barefooted old codger I saw near Tarlac stroking the feathers of his bird, while in his eyes was the pride as of a woman over {160} her first-born. A man often carries his gamecock with him as a negro would carry a dog, and he is as ready to back his judgment with his last _centavo_ as was the owner of Mark Twain's "Jumping Frog" before that ill-fated creature dined too heartily on buckshot. Sundays and saints' days are the days for cock-fighting--and both come pretty often.
I wish I could give my readers a glimpse of the passengers who got on and off my train between Manila and Daguban: Filipino women carrying baskets on their heads, smoking cigarettes, and looking after babies--in some cases doing all three at once; Filipino men, likewise smoking, and with various kinds of luggage, including occasional gamecocks; Filipino children in most cases "undressed exceedingly," as Mr. Kipling would say; and American soldiers in khaki uniforms and helmets. At one place a pretty little twelve-year-old girl gets aboard, delighted that she is soon to see America for the first time in six years. For a while I travel with an American surveyor whose work is away out where he must swim unbridged streams, guard against poisonous snakes, and sleep where he can. An army surgeon tells me as we pass the site of a battle between the Americans and the Filipino insurgents eleven years ago: the Filipinos would not respect the Red Cross, and the doctors and hospital corps had to work all night with their guns beside them, alternately bandaging wounds and firing on savages. In telling me good-bye a young Westerner sends regards to all America. "Even a piece of Arizona desert would look good to me," he declares; "anything that's U.S.A." A young veterinarian describes the government's efforts to exterminate rinderpest, a disease which in some sections has killed nine tenths of the _carabao_. A campaign as thorough and far-reaching as that which the Agricultural Department at home is waging against cattle ticks is in progress, but the ignorant farmers cannot understand the regulations, and are greatly hindering a work which means so much of good to them.
Such are a few snapshots of Philippine life.
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Of the vast natural resources of the Philippines there can be no question. With a fertile soil, varied products, immense forest wealth, and possibly extensive mineral wealth; with developing railway and steamship lines; with the markets of the Orient right at her doors and special trade advantages with the United States--with all these advantages, the islands might soon become rich, if there were only an industrious population.
Unfortunately, the Filipino, however, doesn't like work. Whether or not this dislike is incurable remains to be seen. Perhaps as he comes into contact with civilization he may conceive a liking for other things than rice, fish, a loin-cloth, and shade--plenty of shade--and proceed to put forth the effort necessary to get these other things. Already there seems to have been a definite rise in the standards of living since the American occupation. "When I came here in '98," Mr. William Crozier said to me, "not one native in a hundred wore shoes, and hats were also the exception; you can see for yourself how great is the change since then."
Moreover, in not a few cases Americans who have complained of difficulty in getting labor have been themselves to blame: they tried to hire and manage labor the American way instead of in the Filipino way. The _custombre_, as the Spanish call it--that is to say, the custom of the country--is a factor which no man can ignore without paying the penalty.
I am having to prepare this article very hurriedly, and I must postpone my comment on the work of the American Government until later. In closing, however, I am reminded that just as the old proverb says, "It takes all sorts of people to make a world," so I am seeing all sorts. A week ago yesterday the Hong Kong papers announced that Mr. Clarence Poe would be the guest at luncheon of his Excellency the Governor-General, Sir Frederick Lugard, K. C. M. G., C. B., D. S. O., etc., and Lady Lugard, in the executive mansion; yesterday {162} I had "chow" (food) in a Filipino's place, "The Oriental Hotel, Bar, and Grocery," away up in the Province of Pangasinan, and climbed to my room and cot on a sort of ladder or open work stairs such as one might expect to find in an ordinary barn! It was the best place I could find in town.
Nor do the incongruities end here. After getting my evening meal I walked out in the warm December moonlight, past the shadows of the strange buildings and tropical trees--and all at once there burst out the full chorus of one of the world's great operas, the magnificent voice of a Campanini or Caruso dominating all!
Great is the graphophone, advance agent of civilization!
Manila, P. I.
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XVII
WHAT THE UNITED STATES IS DOING IN THE PHILIPPINES
There are so many islands in the Philippine group, which I have just left behind me (I write in a steamer off Manila), that if a man were to visit one a day, without stopping for Sundays, it would take him eight years to get around. Most of these islands though, of course, are little more than splotches on the water's surface and do not appear on the map. The two big ones, Mindanao and Luzon, contain three fourths of the total land surface of 127,000 square miles, leaving the other one fourth to be divided among the other 3138 islets.
The land area statistics just given indicate that the Philippines are about the size of three average American states and the population (7,000,000) is about three times that of an average American commonwealth. There are only about 30,000 white people in the islands, and 50,000 Chinese. Chinese immigration is now prohibited.
The 7,000,000 native Filipinos who make up practically the entire population represent all stages of human progress. The lowest of them are head-hunters and hang the skulls of their human enemies outside their huts, as an American hunter would mount the head of an elk or bear. The great majority, however, have long been Christians and have attained a fair degree of civilization. Even among the savage tribes a high moral code is often enforced. The Igorrotes, for example, though some of their number make it a condition of marriage {164} that the young brave shall have taken a head, shall have killed his man, have remarkable standards of honor and virtue in some respects, and formally visit the death penalty as the punishment for adultery. Because roads or means of communication have been poor the people have mingled but little, and there are three dozen different dialects. In the course of a half day's journey by rail I found three different languages spoken by the people along the route. The original inhabitants were Negritos, a race of pigmy blacks, of whom only a remnant remains, but the Filipino proper is a Malayan.
Filipinos are unique in that they alone among all the native peoples of Asia have accepted Christianity. Fortunate in being without the gold of Mexico or Peru, the Philippines did not attract the more brutal Spanish adventurers who, about the time of Magellan's discovery, were harrying wealthier peoples with fire and sword. Instead of the soldier or the adventurer, it was the priest, his soul aflame with love for his church, who came to the Philippines, and the impression made by his virtues was not negatived by the bloody crimes of fellow Spaniards mad with lust of treasure. The result is that to this day probably 90 per cent, of the Filipinos are Catholics. Before the priests came, the people worshipped their ancestors, as do other peoples in the Far East.