CHAPTER XX.

_CHINESE SENTIMENT._

In Memory of a Dead Wife.--Of a Dear Friend.--Farewell Verses.--Æsthetic Feeling.--Drinking Song.--Music.--Justice to Rats.

It is so much our habit in China to think the Chinese have no sentiment, that I have thought it might be interesting to gather together what indications I have observed during eleven years' residence among them, leaving the reader, if of a judicial frame of mind, to sum up and formulate his own conclusions.

One of the most poetic events in history used to seem to me in childhood that crowning of his dead Queen by King Pedro, to which Mrs. Hemans consecrated some of her most pathetic verses. To this day I cannot think of the beautiful dead Inez de Castro in all the grandeur of her coronation robes, seated upon her throne, without feeling something of the faint, cold shuddering which the poetess imagines. Yet when I went for the first time to a grand Chinese house in the Arsenal at Shanghai, and found it all dressed out with signs of mourning, white cloths, and balls of twisted white cotton, people all in their best dresses, and preparations complete for three days of theatrical performance, though I was startled to find that all this was to commemorate the birthday of the wife of the master of the house, lying quiet in her grave already these twenty years, the twenty-years-in-China-and-not-know-a-word-of-the-language men all said it was quite usual, and seemed surprised and annoyed that I should find it affecting. Alas! to this day I have never learned whether he loved her very much, nor quite satisfied myself whether it was really her birthday or the day of her death they were thus celebrating. But, interpret it all after whatever fashion, there was surely in this some indication of sentiment.

Again, there are many suicides in China, and habit seems to make both Europeans and Chinese callous. Yet when a German who had returned to China happy in the belief a girl he knew would follow and marry him, and on hearing she had changed her mind, or for some other reason would not come, thought it better to leave a life that for him held no promise, the following poem appeared in a Shanghai paper:

"AVE ATQUE VALE!

In memory of the late ----.

'Es lebe, wer sich tapfer halt!'

--_Goethe's 'Faust.'_

The wild prunes blossom, red and white, In wintry air.[1] Heavy with orange, in sunlight, The groves are fair.

The pearl-like river, silent, sure, Glides to the sea: A spirit, mutinous but pure, Sets itself free.

Love, flowers, and music erst were thine; But love, to thee A blight, was bitter as the brine Of the salt sea.

From these thy noble spirit yearned Towards nobler schemes; Dreams of a nobler age returned, Alas! but dreams.

Last on the river-girdled spot-- Thy spacious home, Spacious but lone, for one was not That should have come--

We sat and talked of modern creed And ancient lore; Of modern gospel--gush and greed, Now to the fore.

Thy fervent hope it was to join The best with best; To break down the dividing-line Of East and West.

O friend! albeit of alien race, For evermore Shall be with me thy noble face, Too sicklied o'er

With a world-sorrow e'en too great For thy great heart, Since from us, who still serve and wait, Thou wouldst depart.

Farewell! The swift-wheeled ship will bring To thy far West The tidings, while I, grieving, sing Thee to thy rest.

KU HUNG MING.

VICEROY'S YAMEN, WUCHANG, _December 4th, 1893_."

The Englishman who could write as good a poem in Chinese has not yet been born; but I quote it because of the sentiment it expresses.

The young Chinese to whom I tried to teach English took leave of me, when I left for England, in very elegant Chinese verse, to which I wish I could do justice by translation. The sentiment of it was very appropriate. He regretted my departure, wondering what he should do without me; for to him I had been like the snow, which, by covering up and protecting the plants, makes the young shoots grow, as I had made his intelligence burgeon. This struck me as a very happy expression of sentiment, and, as I was assured by Chinese scholars, equally felicitously expressed.

The Chinese love of beautiful curves, spending time and money on the roof-cornices and outside ornaments of even quite a poor cottage, indicates a deep-seated sentiment for the beautiful, as do also the trees in their towns, some of which have almost as many trees as houses, as also their love of flowers. In the flowering season a bough of blossom may be seen in a vase on the counter of even the darkest little shop; whilst no literary man would think his writing-table complete without a vase for one lovely blossom, and no woman would think herself dressed until she had stuck a flower on one side of her glossy hair. But every one probably would acknowledge that the Chinese have a very strong æsthetic sentiment. Here, however, is an adieu to the Old Year much resembling one of Burns' songs in its sentiment, or want of it:

"ADIEU TO THE OLD YEAR.

The voice of the cricket is heard in the hall; The leaves of the forest are withered and sere; My spirits they droop at those chirruping notes So thoughtlessly sounding the knell of the year.

Yet why should we sigh at the change of a date, When life's flowing on in a full steady tide? Come, let us be merry with those that we love; For pleasure in measure there's no one to chide."

_Translated by W. A. P. M._

But this Chinese drinking-song, which could without exciting any special comment appear upon a New Year's card of to-day, was published in the Chinese Book of Odes 500 B.C. Twelve centuries later we find a decidedly prettier sentiment and finer touch in Li-tao-po, one of China's favourite poets A.D. 720. It is interesting to notice that four of China's poets, Tze-ma-hsiang-yu, Yang-hsiung, Li-tao-po, and _Su-tung-po_, were all born and spent their earliest years in Szechuan, on the borderland of Tibet, and the yet unconquered Lolo country, like our own English Border country, China's cradle of legend and song.

This is an attempt to render the best-known ode of China's favourite bard, A.D. 720:

"ON DRINKING ALONE BY MOONLIGHT.

Here are flowers, and here is wine; But where's a friend with me to join Hand to hand and heart to heart In one full cup before we part?

Rather than to drink alone, I'll make bold to ask the moon To condescend to lend her face To grace the hour and the place.

Lo! she answers, and she brings My shadow on her silver wings; That makes three, and we shall be, I ween, a merry company.

The modest moon declines the cup, But shadow promptly takes it up; And when I dance, my shadow fleet Keeps measure with my flying feet.

Yet though the moon declines to tipple, She dances in yon shining ripple; And when I sing, my festive song The echoes of the moon prolong.

Say, when shall we next meet together? Surely not in cloudy weather; For you, my boon companions dear, Come only when the sky is clear."

_Translated by W. A. P. M._

The fancy if not the sentiment of this song is so pretty, that it is hard to see how the nation that produced it can be rebuked for want of sentiment by the nation that to this day sings, "Drink, puppies, drink." Indeed, I think this Chinese drinking-song dating from the eighth century A.D. the very prettiest I have ever met with in any literature. It has three if not four of such graceful conceits as would alone make the success of a modern bard. But they are old, very old. And China, too, is old; and is said to produce nothing of the kind now.

To turn to comparatively more modern days, _Lu-pe-Ya's Lute_, Englished and reduced into poetry by Mrs. Augusta Webster, shows a sentiment for friendship and for music deep in the Chinese breast. It is, I suppose, because I am so very unmusical that I rather enjoy Chinese music. It seems to me very merry, especially its funereal chants.

People often wonder if the Chinese enjoy European music. Two Englishmen were invited not long ago to a military mandarin's house to hear one of his sons, a great musician, play. The latter could only perform if perfect silence were observed by the audience and a vase of flowers and lighted incense before him to help his inspiration. Unfortunately, after all these preparations, it appeared his was a stringed instrument, to be laid upon the table and played with the nails--the most difficult instrument to play upon that the Chinese possess; and the melody, if it were a melody, was so low, the Englishmen came away quite unable to judge of its beauty. "Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard----" However, some other young military mandarins had played a duet on flutes, and another performed on a flageolet, both very agreeably.

It may interest those interested--and who of us in China are not?--in the great opium question to hear that a young lad of sixteen went away from the dinner-table to smoke opium. "How dreadful!" said one of the Europeans. "A lad of sixteen to smoke opium! He will never live!" "Why, look at my five sons, all born since I smoked," said the host; "I began when I was twenty. But, indeed, his family are rather glad he smokes. You see, my guest is a very rich young fellow from up the river, who has no father; and if he did not smoke opium, he would be sure to be getting into mischief with women or gambling. Now, smoking opium, they think, will keep him at home." Is not this rather a novel view of the question?

The old legend of the Fairy Foxes, which I Englished some years ago, and brought out in Mr. Hasegawa's very pretty _crêpe_ paper series, shows a sentiment of kindness for animals with which some people are unwilling to credit a nation that emphatically does not say, "What a beautiful day! Let us go out and kill something." Both that and _The Rat's Plaint_, translated from the original Chinese and rendered into verse by my husband, and very beautifully illustrated as well as reproduced on _crêpe_ paper by Mr. Hasegawa, might be circulated by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The latter's quaintness--it is a very old Chinese legend--alone makes the reader pass over the very nice sentiment for poor pussy, as well as the homely Chinese sense of justice, stating the rat's case in the first instance so very plainly as almost to make the reader incline to his side.

There is an easy-going live-and-let-live character about the Chinese, which makes them very pleasant employers, as all steamship captains will testify, and which, perhaps, accounts for their not hurrying off the face of the earth the rats that are such a great pest in a Chinese city. An English Consul, on undoing a not yet used camera, found that to get at the gum used they had eaten through each fold of its dark chamber. One year in Chungking they made a hole through a strong wooden case we thought safely closed down, opened the tins of milk just as we should have done ourselves, and evidently dipped their tails in, and fished out all the milk those tails could reach. We have often thought this worthy to be a _Spectator_ story. But, however incredible it may sound, it is true; and when we opened the case, we found all the top layer out of two dozen tins of milk opened and half emptied in this way. Worse still, that same year--there was famine in the land, and human beings were dropping down dead of hunger every day by the river-side--there was a hole one morning in our dear little pony's back, said to be caused by the wicked rats.

The Chinese easy-going liberal disposition and sense of justice have been immortalised in _The Rat's Plaint_, translated by my husband, where the poor rat's case is made out as I never saw it till I read it there; though in the end the rat is awarded punishment, and pussy-cat installed in her high place as favoured friend in every homestead. And so herewith an end of Chinese sentiment.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] The imagery is taken from a line in Chinese poetry--

"In November the wild prunes first blossom on the mountain-pass"--as the death of Mr. ---- took place in that month.