CHAPTER XIII.

_UP-COUNTRY SHOPPING AND UP-COUNTRY WAYS._

Buying Curios.--Being stoned.--Chinese New Year.--Robbers.--Protesting Innocence.--Doing Penance.--Medicines.

Before Chinese New Year bargains are to be picked up--in Shanghai lovely embroidered satins, exquisite transparent tortoiseshell boxes, or china of the Ming period. Up-country our buyings are of a different order--a tiger-skin thirteen feet from head to tail, with grand markings, though of course not so thick a fur as is to be had at Newchwang. Head and tail and claws are all intact; and the man who brings it exhibits also its terrible jaws, and points to the holes where the spear entered before the man conquered the tiger. We have besides stone slabs, with the shells of the orthoceras embedded in them, sawn asunder and polished for screens or table-tops. What that most remarkable animal did, with a shell like the horn of an unicorn, not uncommonly over two feet long, and beautifully convoluted, it is hard to think. These pagoda-stones, as they are called, arrive in mass, all to realise money for New Year's debts.

Rocks of various kinds are the special product of the Ichang district, where we could supply all the rockeries of Shanghai with disintegrated conglomerate. Only, unfortunately, at this season fern-stones are not in sufficient beauty to play the part of the Irish pig, and help to pay the rent. But one day an eagle was shown into the drawing-room in splendid condition, with grand yellow beak, and beautiful brown eyes, and neck of blended tints of brown and bronze. The poor creature's feet were tightly tied together; but even as it was, we were careful about admiring its beauties too closely. Eight hundred cash was all that was even asked by its captor, who eventually is said to have parted with the beautiful bird for five hundred cash, or one shilling.

A curious little animal with beautiful long-nailed feet and tiny tail, and a fur so exquisitely thick and soft and feathery one quite longed for a collar of it, had not such luck as the eagle, and died before arriving here; but of these various luxuries--for none of these can quite be reckoned among the necessaries of life--it is a little difficult to choose on which to spend one's spare cash. The fur-shops close before the New Year, which is the more to be regretted as they offer the most fascinating footstool covers--intended for the seats of roomy Chinese chairs--made out of two heads of what are called seven-months' tigers, a thick fur of drab colour with an admixture of rich brown.

Oranges are what colour the scene,--mandarin oranges, of delicious flavour and thinnest possible skin; and other oranges, slightly indented at either end, and of a flavour peculiar to the district, and highly appreciated. But an attempt to examine the orange-market soon roused a row, when mud and brickbats flew through the air, so well hurled by some of the Hunan boatmen as to raise a lump like an egg on the skull of one of the party before we fairly got away, with our hats knocked over our eyes, and generally somewhat soiled. This stoning experience becomes a little monotonous. I have had hot things thrown at me in Hankow, hot things and stones in Itu, bricks and earth in Ichang, and since then so many things in so many less well-known places. There is a certain amount of excitement attached to it at first; but the most passionate lover of excitement could buy it more pleasurably otherwise. The people you look at always run away, if you look firmly enough; but then those from behind come on, and the men on the outskirts of the throng take the opportunity to throw things under cover of the others. After all, the shrieking and shouting they keep up is about the worst part of the proceeding, making one feel like a mad dog. And to walk through the narrow streets of a Chinese town in that character is not the pleasantest possible experience. We enjoyed it to perfection at Itu, where the people consider they have conquered the English; for a missionary, having taken a house there, was not only persuaded by the British Consul into giving up the house, the owner of which had as usual in such cases been thrown into prison, but had even to pay something himself, instead of having compensation given to him.

Had it not been for the uproarious chorus of "Slay the foreigner!" the tune to which we habitually walked about in remote parts of Hupeh Province, the shops of Itu looked rather inviting. There were beautiful sheep-skins in great profusion; and even in passing I was struck by the delicate beauty of some of the fox-skins. Women's embroidered petticoats were also hanging up for sale; but this was probably a bad New Year's sign. In one of the temples at Itu report says there is an inscription in European characters; but the hooting crowd did not predispose us to research, the less so as over all down fell the silent snow, in the midst of which stalked the most formidable beggar I have ever yet seen, stripped to the waist, covered with skin disease, his face plastered with mud of a livid green hue, his hair wild, and his eyes fierce and shining.

How comfortable the familiar house-boat looks, after one of these raids upon the shore, with luncheon on the table, and the armchairs all equally inviting! But we were stoned at Ichang with no pleasant house-boat to make tracks to; and, what is worse, one of the party wounded, which was a bad precedent, to say the least of it. And we were met by a French gentleman, who said, "I was stoned for a whole quarter of an hour yesterday." It seemed to him, as it did to us, that these little breaches of the peace, acquiesced in, might easily lead to serious consequences. The cry of "Slay the foreigner!" was a novelty that year. It has become very common since then.

But even without stoning, what a business it is shopping in a Chinese city! If you go to a shop, and begin looking at things and asking prices as you might in Europe, all the rabble of the street pours in after you. You cannot make yourself heard, you cannot breathe, you cannot see for the crowd, till the poor shopkeeper by his imploring gestures at last succeeds in making you go away before his shop is sacked, or at least half the things in it broken. The proper way is to send to the shop. Then a young shopman comes, very chirpy and self-satisfied, with a quantity of goods, but very likely nothing that you quite fancy. Then he asks you to tell him what you want exactly. Do you want brocade, or--or----Here follow names of silks you never heard of, and never consciously saw. Do you want to make yourself a skirt or a jacket? What!--neither! And do you not want a whole piece of the silk either? He packs up his goods and goes off. Then you decide to do the next most right thing--are carried to his shop in a sedan-chair, plumped down at the door of it, and glide into it and through into the sitting-room behind with wonderful celerity. The troubled shopkeeper bars one or two gates behind you, and the curious crowd is shut out. You sit down in peace, among round wooden columns, upon one of the straight-backed chairs beside a little black table. All is tranquil. Tea is brought. A pipe is offered. No one is in a hurry to serve you. And when you begin to explain what you want, they treat you like a silly sort of crazy creature that must be humoured, and somehow induced to go away. If, however, you have the good sense to begin by making one or two somewhat important purchases, everything and everybody in the shop will be at your service. The Chinese like buyers. But they object altogether to pricing after the American fashion.

There is not much more to be bought in Chungking than in Ichang; but there are bed-spreads of deep indigo-blue cotton, with an elaborate pattern traced out on them in a kind of plaster before they are dyed, which consequently become whiter each time the cloth is washed, and which do well for tablecloths. And there are felt rugs, which have been treated in the same way--the whole pattern traced by hand, though, and then the rug dipped in a bright scarlet. Even in Chungking we never can decide whether these rugs look handsome or the reverse. But in the frontier town of Tibet, in the Roman Catholic Bishop's palace, I thought one looked magnificent upon the floor. There are embroideries, of course, to be bought--there are always embroideries all over China. And there are wonderful straw hats from Chengtu, two yards in circumference; and with the straw braid so fine in the centre of the crown, that it has all to be sewn together standing edgewise, not flat, as is usual with hats.

But China New Year is the great time in every Chinese city, and this account of China New Year in Wuchang, the capital of Hupeh Province, is so much the best I have ever heard, that I must borrow it from the _North China Daily News_ of February 20th, 1891:

"It requires a good conscience to get any sleep on Old Year Night in a Chinese city; the whole population watches the Old Year out. Ask them what they do all the time, they will say they enjoy themselves; again ask them how, they will tell you that they sit and chat all night long. No doubt the opium-pipe and game of chance help away the time. Certainly, firing crackers seems to be a large part of the watch-night service. From dark to dawn and everywhere they bang, bang, bang on the startled air of night, being intended as a sort of greeting to the New Year. All the first half of the night hurry and scurry fill the streets; the city gates are left open, so that belated creditors may not be hampered in the collection of their debts. Then towards midnight the last door is shut, and the last lucky inscription pasted up. This is a very important phase of the New Year. Every house in the empire that can afford it buys antithetical inscriptions for the two lintels of the door, and for the various other places of prominence on the walls. The vocabulary of polite ornament is ransacked, and the five happinesses, the points of the compass, rains, snows, winds, sunshine, country and home, wealth and longevity, are woven into the garlands of elegant phrases in every possible combination. On the doors themselves are pasted new pictures of the 'Door-Gods', who once in the fabled past delivered their monarch from the nightly visits of wandering bogeys, and whose pictures have been found ever since sufficient for a similar purpose throughout the empire. Across the windows are pasted strips of paper--'Chieh, the Supreme Duke, is here; bad spirits, get you gone,' for Chieh in his day, some two thousand years ago, gained great power over spirits, and to-day, though they have wit enough to read characters, they have not wit to know that they are being taken in, and therefore sneak away abashed when they find their old controller is within. Over the door-front is fixed a little mirror, so that any foul fiend who wants to enter, seeing his own ugly face reflected, will think another is there before him, and will fear the consequences of poaching. The 'door of wealth' is then closed, and the transactions of the year are ended. The door will in due time be opened once more with great ceremony, and with proper precautions to ensure that wealth shall flow in.

"As the night passes on, the guests refresh themselves with the food cooked in preparation; for cooking must not go on during the first day or so of the year. A banquet is prepared, and with the first glimmer of the dawn the head of the household goes out beneath the sky, and, spreading a carpet and offering viands, bows down with head to the ground towards the direction of the spirit of happiness. This spirit is changeable; he alters his direction every year, and the high authorities of Peking kindly act as his mouthpiece, giving notice beforehand to the people in which direction to bow. This year the dawn of the year saw many a pigtailed head bowed to the south-west; then followed the worship of ancestors by the whole household; while crackers and incense completed the welcome. At the same time the high officials, from the Viceroy downwards, assemble within the red and yellow walls of the Emperor's Temple. Great heaps of reeds are stacked through the neglected courts, which have been hastily weeded, and as the mandarins approach the whole scene is made ruddy with huge bonfires. The great chair of State--somewhat rickety and of simple local manufacture--acts as deputy for the Emperor, all the officials _kʽotow_ in unison, and then for a moment squat in the peculiar fashion observed in the actual presence of their sovereign. The temples of Confucius and the god of war are also visited for similar brief acts of reverence.

"By this time the day has well dawned, and shortly the round of calls begins. Everybody dons his best attire; and the number of buttons of gold on the top of juvenile or rarely respectable heads is marvellous. Most careful must everybody be to utter no word of ill-omen; tiger, death, devil, etc., etc., are all tabooed. For once in the year the foreigner may go on the streets with a fair prospect of not being greeted by the ordinary affectionate terms of abuse; for should any unfortunate youngster in his wonder call out 'foreign devil,' summary chastisement is sure to teach him that the luck of the family is not to be sacrificed even for the pleasure of baiting an outside stranger. The streets are filled with all the world paying calls; the world's wife does not venture out these first few days. And the work-worn city keeps its sabbaths for the whole year all in a fortnight."

Like our Easter, the Chinese New Year varies; but it generally comes some time in February.

In a small Chinese town, where there was no buying to be done, one evening we had the gentleman in charge of the telegraph station to tea. He brought his operator with him, a most determined young man of fourteen, who to everything said, "Yes!" Between them they send two messages a day, morning and evening, "Yes" and "All right," and that is all they have to do. "And conceive," said the superior, "that I spent £12 learning English, and therewith bought five thousand words, and then am set down in a place like this, where there is not even anything to eat."

On many of the farmsteads round about Ichang may be seen a large hieroglyph painted in white, the character "Fang," with "Shang" on the top of it, in a circle. It is always very conspicuously placed, and signifies, "This household pays its yearly tribute to the robbers, and must not be molested." The village of Kolopei, just below the Tiger's Teeth Gorge, is said to consist wholly of the class of whom it may be said--as was said to me once of the inhabitants of a network of common lodging-houses not far off Spitalfields, wondering at seeing them dancing and making merry at two o'clock in the afternoon--"What do the people here do? Why, they none of them _works_ for their living."

A day or two after a great fire at Ichang a strange sight was to be seen. A man, who had been accused of helping to steal away some poor woman's child during the confusion, with a white calico placard pasted on to his coat behind attesting his innocence, his pigtail hanging unplaited, and wearing a crown of coarse paper cash, with long streamers of paper cash hanging from it, was going round from shrine to shrine, at each protesting his innocence. A man went before him with a gong, shouting out the whole story. It is to be hoped he was not one of the eight beheaded next day. What would be thought of eight executions in one day in Stamford or Teignmouth? But not so long ago England was equally bloodthirsty. We must remember that.

Another year we saw a similar sight, only much more picturesque. As we were going up-river, we met a boat coming down, and in the bow of it there was a man kneeling quite upright, with hands held up as if imploring. In the great beauty of a still reach in the Gorges it was a very moving spectacle; but it was only a rough-and-ready way of punishing a man accused of having tried to steal from his fellows.

I see I have said nothing of medicines. You can buy rhubarb in bulk quite fresh in Szechuan. It grows chiefly on the Tibetan border. Even under the Sung Dynasty the Chinese had three hundred and sixty-five kinds of drugs and one hundred and thirteen kinds of formulæ. But they use rough decoctions, and make tisanes from their drugs; they never make extracts, nor use minute and accurate weights to dole them out.

The ancient Chinese used metal models to exhibit man's inner structure; and everything that is most rare and dear they think must be useful for a medicine,--snakes, scorpions, the velvet off a deer's horns, a dead caterpillar with grass growing out of its head, tigers' bones, beautiful orchids, of which last whole boatloads float down from Chungking to Ichang. A Chinaman loves medicine; nothing pleases him better than to take it; and the European is always being asked for remedies, not so much because he believes foreign remedies to be good, but because he has found out to his delight and amazement that they are to be had for nothing. One doctor, delighted at the great reputation he thought he was acquiring amongst Chinese, was disgusted to find that as soon as he ceased giving away bottles with his medicines patients ceased to apply for them. But the benefits of quinine are so striking, that a Chinaman is ready to ask for this, even when you put it into his mouth for him. They suffer very much from fever, poor people! and when one thinks how many years they have stood the violent changes of their climate without ever a respite, and how much we ourselves lose our energy when exposed to them, one begins to feel more tolerance for a Chinaman's apparent inertia. Besides, what has he to gain by exerting himself? If he become rich, is not the life of a rich Chinaman so dull that only opium makes it possible to endure it? Once let Chinamen get a taste of the enjoyment of life, and they will be a different people. Now they suffer from fever as we do; they dislike bad smells, too, it seems--for no nation more delights in sweet-smelling flowers; they get depressed, and hipped as we do; and they have no light literature, no sports, very little of a newspaper press, no picture-galleries, no concerts, no bands, no intercourse with women, except of the baser sort. No wonder they look dull. And how they love to be amused!