Part 4

In this island of contrasts none is greater than that between the European and Chinese quarters of the town. In the former the houses are large and well built of gray slate-coloured bricks and fine granite, and others, some of which will be real palaces, are in course of construction. In the latter, on the contrary, the houses are low and mean. They are generally built with one story: on the ground floor is the shop with its various goods and quaint perpendicular inscriptions and advertisements; on the first floor, which is thrown out over the footway and supported by wooden posts, so as to form a covered walk, the family live, and here the ugly old women—uglier in China than anywhere—and queer little yellow children may be seen peering out of their dens at the passers-by. Towards evening, when the paper lanterns are lighted and the shops are shut up, not by doors and shutters as with us, but by a sort of cage of bamboo poles, through which the interior is visible, the Chinese house looks very fantastic and strange. This quarter of the town bears a very bad name. It swarms with houses of the worst repute, and low grog-shops which are largely patronised by the sailors. The coolies in the street are a most ruffianly looking lot, not pleasant to meet in a by-road alone and unarmed. Indeed, life and property seem to be by no means so safe in the colony as they should be, considering the force which is kept here. A short time since a gentleman was attacked in broad daylight in the middle of the town, knocked down and robbed; and it is downright dangerous to venture on the hills alone without the moral influence of a revolver. The Chinamen are very clever thieves and housebreakers, and will even venture into barracks, smuggle themselves into the officers’ quarters, burn a little opium under the nose of some sleeping hero, and in double-quick time clear the room of watch, chain, loose cash, and valuables. Sometimes, however, they get caught. The other night a young officer was too quick for one of these light-fingered gentlemen, and pinned him just as he was making off. A mighty pretty dressing he got too—for when the officers were tired of thrashing him, with ingenious cruelty they turned him into the lock-up where the drunken soldiers were, and I leave you to guess what sort of a night he spent. It is said that a Hindoo will rob a man of the sheet he is sleeping on without disturbing him, but I think to clear the goods out of a large warehouse under the owner’s nose, and with the police looking on, is at least as great a feat. This happened in this wise. A “godown” or storehouse full of valuable goods was fixed upon, a number of coolies walked in one fine day with a “comprador” (headman, bailiff, steward, and factotum), and with the utmost innocence set to work emptying the place, the pretended comprador all the while, in the most businesslike manner, making notes of the bales which were sent down to the quay and shipped off in small boats. One coolie is so like another that no wonder the policeman who was standing by thought it was all right, and the very audacity of the robbery put him off his guard. By the time the theft was discovered, goods, coolies, and comprador were well out of reach, and the owner was left lamenting over his empty godown.

It is rather hard on a man when he first comes to these parts to have to learn a new dialect of his own language more bizarre than broad Somersetshire, more unintelligible than that of Tennyson’s northern farmer. This is the Cantonese or “pidgin” English. Pidgin means business, of which word it is not difficult to see that it is a corruption, and the jargon is the _patois_ that has invented itself for transacting affairs with the natives. Use a plain English word to a Chinaman, and he will stare and “no sabé”; but distort it, add a syllable or two, put it in its wrong place, and, in short, make it so unlike itself that its own root would not acknowledge it, and he will catch your meaning at once. Several Chinese, Portuguese, and other words of doubtful pedigree, mixed up with this maltreated English, make up the lingo, which is a literal translation of Chinese syntax, and puzzling enough at first. Here is a specimen. I should tell you that in pidgin bull is _male_, cow _female_. An English gentleman from Shanghai went to call at a friend’s house in Hong-kong. The door was opened by the head Chinese boy. “Mississee have got?” said the gentleman. “Have got,” answered the boy, “but just now no can see.” “How fashion no can see?” The boy answered, grinning from ear to ear, “Last night have catchee one number one piecee bull chilo!” The lady of the house had been safely brought to bed during the night of a fine baby boy! Sometimes the boy will dot his I’s and cross his T’s with unfortunate distinctness as to the occupations in which his master or mistress is engaged, putting one in mind of Gavarni’s _Enfants Terribles_. It is not to be wondered at that the coolies and servant boys should talk this lingo, but that clever, intelligent fellows like the compradors in big houses should not have acquired a better form of English is indeed strange.

Life at Hong-kong passes away pleasantly enough. The residents are very rich, and they spend their money like princes. Their hospitality is boundless, and open house is the rule. I can fancy no better quarters for a naval or military man. The climate is very different from what it used to be, and has become very healthy; but if a man should fall ill he can get away north to Peking, or run up to Japan, or choose between a dozen trips nearer at hand. The usual daily routine here at this season of the year is as follows:—At six your boy wakes you with a cup of tea; you rise and bathe, and read or write till it is time to dress for breakfast at twelve (the merchants, of course, go to their offices at ten or even much earlier). Breakfast, as it is called, is a regular set meal with several courses, and champagne or claret; any one comes in who pleases, and is sure of a cordial welcome, and probably an invitation to return to dinner. After a cup of coffee and a cheroot, office work begins again, and goes on until about five, when every one turns out to ride, drive, or walk until seven, which is the hour for gossip, and sherry and bitters at the club, a first-rate establishment to which strangers are admitted as visitors, and where a man may put up if he pleases. Dinner is at eight, and a very serious affair it is, for Hong-kong is fond of good living and fine vintages; and this rule does not apply only to the heads of houses, for their clerks are lodged and boarded exactly on the same scale as themselves, and a boy who has been content to dine for a shilling at a London chop-house, sits down here to a dinner fit for a duke, criticises the champagne and claret with the air of a connoisseur, and rattles in his pocket £300 or £400 a year for his _menus plaisirs_. Which shows the superiority of vulgar fractions to genteel Latin and Greek.

The rides and drives about Hong-kong are in their way very pretty, though the almost entire absence of trees presents a violent contrast to the rich tropical vegetation of Singapore and Penang. On the other hand, both on the mainland and in the island itself, there are bold, rugged mountain outlines, often shrouded in a mist that reminds one of Scotland and Ireland; huge boulders of rock from which beautiful ferns of every variety (fifty-two species have been classed) grow in profusion; a bay studded with wild barren islands; and to the east, where the colony is only separated from the mainland by about a mile of sea, the picturesque peninsula of Kowloon. The racecourse in the Happy Valley is a lovely spot. It is surrounded by hills on three sides, and from the fourth, which is close to the bay, one looks up a blue glen such as Sir Walter Scott might have described. Here on the slope of the hill is the cemetery, and here and at Government House there are some trees, among which the graceful bamboo is conspicuous. But it is the south-west of the island that is most affected by the residents. At a place called Pok Fo Lum, about four miles off, several of the rich merchants have built bungalows to which in summer-time, after stewing all day in their offices, it is their wont to resort of an afternoon, and let the fresh sea-breeze clear their brains of tea, opium, silk, rises and falls, and such-like cobwebs. On a fine evening these gardens are a very pleasant lounge. At the back rises the Peak, a fine bold rock some 1700 feet high; all around are sweet-scented tropical flowers teeming with strange, many-coloured insects and gorgeous butterflies; while in front the view stretches to the mainland hills across the brilliant sea rippling against little islands, and covered with flotillas of native boats, peaceful enough to all appearance, but ever ready for any little piece of light piracy that may turn up.

I was very anxious before leaving the south of China to see Canton, and accordingly on the 28th April I started with a friend in one of the huge house-steamers that ply between Hong-kong and Canton, and are of themselves curiosities. They are divided into separate parts for Europeans, Parsees, and natives of the poorer class, with loose boxes into which bettermost Chinese families are put. You may form some idea of their size when I tell you that three weeks ago, on the occasion of a festival, our boat the _Kin Shan_ took up 2063 Chinamen to Canton, whither they were bound to “chin-chin” the graves of their ancestors. In all American steamers—and this is a Yankee venture—speed is the great object, and we accomplished the distance, between 80 and 90 miles, under the six hours.

We had a bright sunny morning for our expedition, and the harbour of Hong-kong appeared to great advantage, for there were plenty of fleecy clouds in the sky throwing fantastic shadows over the hills around. The sea was as calm and transparent as a lake, and we could sit in the best cabin, which is a huge building on the forecastle, catching every breath of air, and enjoying the scenery. The river-banks are at first wild, barren, and hilly, like Hong-kong, but higher up there begin to be signs of cultivation. Plantains and rice, which is the greenest of all green grasses, grow in profusion among the snipe marshes. Bamboos spring up close to the water’s edge, and the hills are lower, less savage-looking, and more fruitful. Ruined forts, destroyed when we forced our trade upon the unwilling Chinese, numberless boats and junks, here and there a pagoda with different sorts of plants peeping out of its many stories, tell us that we are drawing near a town, and after about four hours and a half we reach Wampoa, a miserable place, with about as dirty and degraded-looking a population as could be seen anywhere. A few lime kilns, soy or ketchup factories, and dry docks where ships are brought to have their keels cleaned of barnacles and sea-muck, seem to constitute all the business of the place. I shall always henceforth look upon soy as the essence of the dirt of Wampoa.

Canton itself does not present a very clean face to be washed by the unsavoury river. If any one should come here expecting to see a fine city of quays and palaces, he will be grievously disappointed. Myriads of low dirty wooden houses, built almost in the very water itself, are crowded together higgledy piggledy, without order or method. As if these were not enough, there are whole streets, alleys, and quarters of the foulest boat-houses, all swarming with human, and probably other, life. Junks in numbers, carrying guns for defence, and if a safe opportunity occurs, for offence, are moored in the stream. Strange, grotesque craft they are, with their huge bows built to represent the heads of sea-monsters; a great eye is painted on each side, for the Chinese treat their ships as reasoning beings, and say, “S’pose no got eye, no can see; s’pose no can see, no can walkee,” which is unanswerable—even the _Kin Shan_ carries an eye on each paddle-box in deference to this idea. But as at Hong-kong, the chief peculiarity of the river scene here is the crowd of small boats with female crews. The mother pulls the stroke oar, the aunt the bow, and grandmamma is at the helm with a third. I am sure there must have been several hundreds of these yellow ladies round the steamer at one time. The parrot-house at the Zoological Gardens was silence itself by comparison, for hard work, and strong pulling, have given them lungs of leather. They all claim acquaintance, and employment on the strength of it. “My boatee, my boatee, my no see you Cheena side long tim.” We had our own boat, however, and with patience cleared a way and got to shore. But no description of the Canton River would be complete without an allusion to the famous “flower-boats.” Huge, unwieldy barges they are, moored by the river-side, and tricked out with every paltry decoration of cheap gilding, paper lanterns, and bizarre ornament that the Owen Jones of China can invent. These are the temples of Venus. The priestesses are mostly brown ugly little women in sad-coloured garments, upon whose flat yellow faces the rosy paint looks even more ghastly than on Europeans; some are almost pretty, however, and all have beautiful hands and feet (when the latter have not been wantonly deformed), indeed this is the one gift of beauty common to all the Chinese, and the very men-servants who wait upon one have hands kept delicately clean, and so well formed that many an European lady might envy them; they have no need to wrap a napkin round their thumbs, nor to wear white cotton gloves; their taper fingers and filbert nails are pleasant to look upon. At night, when the lanterns are lighted, and the tawdriness of the decorations is less offensive, the flower-boats look gay enough, and they are one of the sights of Canton. The trade that their denizens ply is not looked upon as disgraceful, nor does it prevent their marrying respectably afterwards,—at least so it is said.

We had had an empty house placed at our disposal, and we took with us a servant, a coolie, and a native cook. And this brings me to the record of a feat. When we arrived at our house we found that the boy in charge (a “boy,” like the boy in Oliver Twist, may be a very old man) had gone off to “chin-chin” his ancestors’ graves, a ceremony which, although our coming had been announced to him, could on no account be deferred. So there we were at half-past three, without so much as a scrap of fuel or a gridiron to put upon it. In spite of this we sat down, four of us, at eight o’clock, to a dinner of mulligatawny soup, soles, for which the river is famous, three _entrées_, a buffalo’s hump, like boiled beef idealised, snipes, curried prawns, and a dessert of plantains, oranges, rose apples, tasting just like rose leaves, and dried lychees, the whole being decked out in the most excellent taste, with a profusion of the sweetest scented and most brilliant flowers. We had our wine with us, and altogether I never sat down to a better dinner. Could any English servants, arriving at an empty house in London, have done the same? The Chinese, when they have learnt to cook after our fashion, are the best _chefs_ in the world. You see the art requires delicacy of hand, plenty of imagination, and does not involve a knowledge of perspective, so it just suits their talents.

I am afraid I can give you but a poor description of Canton; the inventory is too large to be taken in a letter. Mr. Sala or any of the professed literary appraisers would find matter for at least a chapter in the bad smells. The streets are very narrow. Three men might walk abreast in them, and perhaps you might throw in a boy if he was very tiny indeed. On each side are small, low shops, which throw out such a multitude of lanterns and perpendicular notices, like the attenuated ghosts of many-coloured banners, that they look as if a solemn procession in a pantomime had been changed by a tap of the harlequin’s wand into a scene of streets and advertisements. As if the gangway were not narrow enough, hucksters and costermongers, offering every kind of goods for sale, hold their stalls on each available square foot of pavement. There are meat stalls, fruit stalls, sweetmeat stalls, sugar-cane stalls, fish stalls, and what can only be designated as offal stalls. The yellowest crowd in the world hustles along pell-mell at a furious rate, for every one is busy and every one is in a hurry. Coolies carrying every conceivable burden balance-wise, from a load of timber to a bundle of leeks, rush at one, and it needs a sharp look-out to steer clear of their bamboo poles. Round the corner, lolling in his chair, for all the world like one of those “magots” Frenchwomen are so fond of, a Chinese dignitary is borne along, attended by five or six policemen in white caps and red tassels, nearly upsetting a small-footed lady, who has just time to totter out of the way on her rickety legs. If there is a clear space, you may be sure there is a doctor or fortune-teller peering into his patient’s mouth, like a groom examining a horse’s teeth, or tapping his head mysteriously with a fan, to the wonder of a small gaping circle. Barring in very rare instances a dog or two—for the wary little beasts seem to know the danger that they run of being turned into butchers’ meat if they stray out of their own domain—no animals are to be seen. Beasts of burden are represented by the men, and beasts of draught there are none; indeed, no carriage, cart, or costermonger’s barrow could thread its way here. The amount of industry to be seen in a single street is something surprising. Carpenters, cobblers, turners, carvers—artisans, in short, of all guilds, are toiling away for dear life—no one is idle. The butcher is busy separating the coarser from the finer parts of the meat; the fishmonger gutting his fish, and setting the entrails carefully on one side—there is no part too vile or mean, none too dear and delicate to find a customer. Chow-chow dogs (I saw such a pretty little puppy being carried off to execution; he looked like a brown spitz, and I felt inclined to buy his release), birds’ nests, rice-birds, the beccafichi of China, and all manner of delicacies, are cheek-by-jowl with equally numerous abominations, not to speak of rats and “such small deer.” The greengrocers’ are the most tempting of the provision shops; they at least show nothing offensive, and they make their fruit look to the greatest advantage, setting oranges, apples, lychees, and vegetables in curious patterns, while ropes of bananas, leeks, young lettuces, and other greens hang from the ceiling. Competition is great, and with the utmost labour it is hard to earn a living, for the two cities, Tartar and Chinese, with their suburbs, hold an immense population, not to speak of the thousands who are born, live, and die in the boats, and have no part or share in the land until they come in for that property six feet by three, which is the common inheritance. Altogether, taking both sides of the river, there are probably a million and a half of inhabitants, of whom not more than one hundred are Europeans.

Until the return of the English to Canton, it used to be a point of honour with the Chinese at Hong-kong to try and persuade people that the bombardment of 1856 had not done much damage. If they were asked whether Yeh’s Palace or Yamên had been injured they would answer, “Not too muchee; my hab hear they breakee that cup that saucer; that alloo.” But the fact is that the city still bears the marks of the punishment it received; considerable spaces have been laid waste by fire; Yeh’s Yamên has been razed to the ground and its site “annexed” by the French, who are building a cathedral and Jesuit college upon it. Notwithstanding the havoc made by shot and shell, however, there is much to be seen. The Yamêns of the Viceroy, the Governor, and other high functionaries are standing. I only saw the outsides of these palaces. They are all pretty much alike. An arched gateway, with a colossal warrior painted in fresco on either side, faces a blank wall, on which is drawn the outline of some fabulous monster, and this appears to be used for notices and announcements; marble kylins and grotesque beasts adorn the courtyard, which is crowded with functionaries and dependants. The roofs are fretted into a thousand quaint designs; but you are as familiar with their style as I am, and as I shall probably in some future letter have an opportunity of saying something about the interior of a Chinese officer’s palace, I had better let the subject alone now.

Of course we went to see the “Temple of Punishments” and that of the Five Hundred Saints, which last is one of the celebrities of China. The former is so called from its containing models of all the various modes which Chinese ingenuity has invented for torturing malefactors. Guarding the portals are two colossal “josses” or idols, represented with vermilion faces and a prodigious corpulency. Bits of paper, as votive offerings, some with inscriptions, but more without, are pinned or fastened to them by the pious: this is a Chinese method of showing respect to the graves of their dead, and to their gods. Inside the gate is a large courtyard, which we found crowded with people; all around were little tables at which sat fortune-tellers, some young men, others veterans with scanty beards and enormous tortoise-shell spectacles, writing as solemnly as judges. Here in bamboo divisions are the dolls which give the temple its name, and very horrible are the scenes which they represent; beyond the courtyard is the real joss-house, from which I carried away a confused idea of tinsel, artificial flowers, scraps of paper, and gloom.