Kitabı oku: «Bert Wilson, Wireless Operator», sayfa 9
CHAPTER XIV
The Land of Surprises
“Better fifty years of Europe
Than a cycle of Cathay,”
murmured Dick, yielding once more to his chronic habit of quotation.
They had reached the gateway of Southern China and cast anchor in the harbor of Hong-Kong. It had been a day of great bustle and confusion, and all hands had been kept busy from the time the anchor chain rattled in the hawse-hole until dusk began to creep over the waters of the bay. The great cranes had groaned with their loads as they swung up the bales and boxes from the hold and transferred them to the lighters that swarmed about the sides of the Fearless. The passengers, eager once more to be on terra firma after the long voyage, had gone ashore, and the boat was left to the officers and crew. These had been kept on board by the manifold duties pertaining to their position, but were eagerly looking forward to the morrow, when the coveted shore leave would be granted in relays to the crew, while the officers would be free to go and come almost as they pleased. It was figured that even with the greatest expedition in discharging cargo and taking on the return shipments for the “States,” it would be nearly or quite a week before they began their return journey, and they promised themselves in that interval to make the most of their stay in this capital of the Oriental commercial world.
Now, as dusk fell over the waters, the boys sat at the rail and gazed eagerly at the strange sights that surrounded them. The harbor was full of shipping gathered from the four quarters of the world. On every side great liners lay, ablaze with light from every cabin and porthole. Native junks darted about saucily here and there, while queer yellow faces looked up at them from behind the mats and lateen-rigged sails. The unforgettable smells of an Eastern harbor assailed their nostrils. The high pitched nasal chatter of the boatmen wrangling or jesting, was unlike anything they had ever before heard or imagined. Everything was so radically different from all their previous experiences that it seemed as though they must have kneeled on the magic carpet of Solomon and been transported bodily to a new world.
Before them lay the city itself glowing with myriad lights. The British concession with its splendid buildings, its immense official residences, its broad boulevards, might have been a typical European city set down in these strange Oriental surroundings. But around and beyond this lay the real China, almost as much untouched and uninfluenced by these modern developments as it had been for centuries. Great hills surrounded the city on every side, and temples and pagodas uprearing their quaint sloping roofs indicated the location of the original native quarters. In the distance they could see the lights of the little cable railway that carried passengers to the heights from which they could obtain a magnificent view of the harbor and the surrounding country.
The ship’s doctor had come up just as Dick had finished his quotation.
“Yes,” he assented, as he lit a fresh cigar and drew his chair into the center of the group. “The poet might have gone further than that and intimated that even one year of Europe would be better than a ‘cycle of Cathay.’ There’s more progress ordinarily in a single year among Europeans than there is here in twenty centuries.”
They gladly made room for him. The doctor was a general favorite and a cosmopolitan in all that that word implies. He seemed to have been everywhere and seen everything. In the course of his profession he had been all over the world, and knew it in every nook and corner. He had a wealth of interesting experiences, and had the gift of telling them, when in congenial company, in so vivid and graphic a way, that it made the hearer feel as though he himself had taken part in the events narrated.
“Of course,” went on the doctor, “it all depends on the point of view. If progress is a good thing, we have the advantage of the Chinese. If it is a bad thing, they have the advantage of us. Now, they say it is a bad thing. With them ‘whatever is is right.’ Tradition is everything. What was good enough for their parents is good enough for them. They live entirely in the past. They cultivate the ground in the same way and with the same implements that their fathers did two thousand years ago. To change is to offend the gods. All modern inventions are devices of the devil. Every event in their whole existence is governed by cut and dried rules. From the moment of birth to that of death, life moves along one fixed groove. They don’t want railroads or telephones or phonographs or machinery or anything else that to us seems a necessity of life. Whatever they have of these has been forced upon them by foreigners. A little while ago they bought up a small railroad that the French had built, paid a big advance on the original price, and then threw rails and locomotives into the sea.”
“Even our ‘high finance’ railroad wreckers in Wall Street wouldn’t go quite as far as that,” laughed Tom.
“No,” smiled the doctor, “they’d do it just as effectively, but in a different way.”
“And yet,” interposed Dick, “the Chinese don’t seem to me to be a stupid race. We had one or two in our College and they were just as bright as anyone there.”
“They’re not stupid by any means,” replied the doctor. “There was a time, thousands of years ago, when they were the very leaders of civilization. They had their inventors and their experimenters. Why, they found out all about gunpowder and printing and the mariner’s compass, when Europe was sunk in the lowest depths of ignorance. At that time, the intellect of the people was active and productive. But then they seem to have had a stroke of paralysis, and they’ve never gotten over it.”
“It always seemed to me,” said Bert, “that ‘Alice in Wonderland’ should really have been called ‘Alice in China-land.’ She and her mad hatter and the March hare and the Cheshire cat would certainly have felt at home here.”
“True enough,” rejoined the doctor. “It isn’t without reason that this has been called ‘Topsy-turvy’ land.”
“For instance,” he went on, “you could never get into a Chinaman’s head what Shakespeare meant when he said: ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’ The roses in China have no fragrance.
“Take some other illustrations. When we give a banquet, the guest of honor is seated at the right of the host as a special mark of distinction. In China, he is placed at the left. If you meet a friend in the street, out goes your hand in greeting. The Chinaman shakes hands with himself. If an American or European is perplexed about anything he scratches his head. When the Chinaman is puzzled, he scratches his foot.”
The comicality of this idea was too much for the gravity of the boys – never very hard to upset at any time – and they roared with laughter. Their laugh was echoed more moderately by Captain Manning, who, relieved at last of the many duties attendant upon the first day in port, had come up behind them and now joined the group. The necessity of keeping up the strain and dignity of his official position had largely disappeared with the casting of the anchor, and it was more with the easy democracy and good fellowship of the ordinary passenger that he joined in the conversation.
“They have another queer custom in China that bears right on the doctor’s profession,” he said, with a sly twinkle in his eye. “Here they employ a doctor by the year, but they only pay him as long as the employer keeps well. The minute he gets sick, the doctor’s salary ceases, and he has to work like sixty to get him well in a hurry, so that his pay may be resumed.”
“Well,” retorted the doctor, “I don’t know but they have the better of us there. It is certainly an incentive to get the patient well at once, instead of spinning out the case for the sake of a bigger fee. I know a lot of fashionable doctors whose income would go down amazingly if that system were introduced in America.”
“You’ll find, too,” said the captain, “that the Chinaman’s idea of what is good to eat is almost as different from ours as their other conceptions. There’s just about one thing in which they agree with us, and that is on the question of pork. They are very fond of this, and you have all read, no doubt, the story told by Charles Lamb of the Chinese peasant whose cabin was burned, together with a pig who had shared it with the family. His despair at the loss of the pig was soon turned to rejoicing when he smelled the savory odor of roast pork and learned for the first time how good it was. But, outside of that, we don’t have much in common. They care very little for beef or mutton. To make up for this, however, they have made a good many discoveries in the culinary line that they regard as delicacies, but that you won’t find in any American cook book. Rats and mice and edible birds’ nests and shark fins are served in a great variety of ways, and those foreigners who have had the courage to wade through the whole Chinese bill of fare say it is surprising to find out how good it is. After all, you can get used to anything, and we Europeans and Americans are becoming broader in our tastes than we used to be. Horse meat is almost as common as beef in Berlin; dogs are not disdained in some parts of France, and only the other day I read of a banquet in Paris where they served stuffed angleworms and pronounced them good.”
“I imagine it will be a good while, however, before we get to the point where rats and mice are served in our restaurants,” said Tom, with a grimace.
“Yes,” rejoined the captain, “we’ll probably draw the line there and never step over it. But you’ll have a chance pretty soon to sample Chinese cooking, and if you ask no questions and eat what is set before you, you will probably find it surprisingly good. ‘What the eye doesn’t see the heart doesn’t grieve over,’ you know. And when you come to the desserts, you will find that there are no finer sweetmeats in the world than those served at Chinese tables.”
“Another thing that seems queer to us Western people,” said the doctor, “is their idea of the seat of intellect. We regard it as the head. They place it in the stomach. If the Chinaman gets off what he thinks to be a witty thing, he pats his stomach in approval.”
“I suppose when his head is cut off, he still goes on thinking,” grinned Tom.
“That wouldn’t phase a Chinaman for a minute,” answered the doctor. “He’d retort by asking you if you’d go on thinking if they cut you in half.”
“Then, if you wanted to praise a Chinese author, I suppose, instead of alluding to his ‘bulging brow,’ it would be good form to refer to his ‘bulging stomach,’” laughed Ralph.
“Gee,” put in Tom, “if that were so, I’ve seen some fat people in the side shows at the circus that would have it all over Socrates.”
“There’s one thing,” went on the doctor, “where they set us an example that we well might follow, and that is in the tolerance they have for the religious views of other people. There isn’t any such thing as persecution or ostracism in China on the score of religious belief. There are three or four religions and all are viewed with approval and kindly toleration. A man, for instance, will meet several strangers in the course of business or of travel, and they will fall into conversation. It is etiquette to ask the religious belief of your new acquaintances, so our Chinaman asks the first of them: ‘Of what religion are you?’ ‘I practice the maxims of Confucius,’ is the response. ‘Very good, and you?’ turning to the second. ‘I am a follower of Lao-tze.’ The third answers that he is a Buddhist, and the first speaker winds up the conversation on this point by shaking hands – with himself – and genially remarking: ‘Ah, well, we are all brothers after all.’”
“They certainly have the edge on us there,” remarked Bert. “I wish we had a little of that spirit in our own country. We could stand a lot more of it than we have.”
“Outside of the question of religion, however,” went on the doctor, “we might think that they carry politeness too far to suit our mode of thinking. If you should meet a friend and ask after the health of his family, you would be expected to say something like this: ‘And how is your brilliant and distinguished son, the light of your eyes and future hope of your house, getting on?’ To this your friend would probably reply: ‘That low blackguard and detestable dog that for my sorrow is called my son is in good health, but does not deserve that your glorious highness should deign to ask about him.’”
“You will notice,” said the captain when the laugh had subsided, “that the doctor uses the son as an illustration. The poor daughter wouldn’t even be inquired about. She is regarded as her father’s secret sorrow, inflicted upon him by a malignant decree of fate. In a commercial sense, the boy is an asset; the girl is a liability. You hear it said sometimes, with more or less conviction, that the world we live in is a ‘man’s world.’ However that may be modified or denied elsewhere, it is the absolute truth as regards China. If the scale of a nation’s civilization is measured by the way it treats its women, – and I believe this to be true, – then the Celestial Kingdom ranks among the very lowest. From the time she comes, unwelcomed, into the world, until, unmourned, she leaves it, her life is not worth living. She is the slave of the household, and, in the field, she pulls the plough while the man holds the handles. In marriage, she is disposed of without the slightest reference to her own wishes, but wholly at the whim of her parents, and often sees the bridegroom’s face for the first time when he comes to take her to his own house. There she is as much a slave as before. Her husband can divorce her for the most flimsy reasons and she has no redress. No, it isn’t ‘peaches and cream’ to be a woman in China.”
“It doesn’t seem exactly a paradise of suffragettes,” murmured Ralph.
“No,” interjected Tom, “the Government here doesn’t have to concern itself about ‘hunger strikes’ or ‘forcible feeding.’”
“To atone to some extent for this hateful feature of family life,” said the doctor, “they have another that is altogether admirable, and that is the respect shown to parents. In no country of the world is filial reverence so fully displayed as here. A disobedient son is almost unthinkable, and a murderer would scarcely be regarded with more disapproval. From birth to old age, the son looks upon his father with humility and reverence, and worships him as a god after he is dead. There is nothing of the flippancy with which we are too familiar in our own country. With us the ‘child is father of the man,’ or, if he isn’t, he wants to be. Here the man always remains the father of the child.”
“Yes,” said Bert, “I remember in Bill Nye’s story of his early life he says that at the age of four ‘he took his parents by the hand and led them out to Colorado.’”
“And that’s no joke,” put in the captain. “All the foreigners that visit our country are struck by the independent attitude of children to their parents.”
“Another thing we have to place to the credit of this remarkable people,” he went on, “is their love for education. The scholar is held in universal esteem. The road to learning is also the road to the highest honors of the State. Every position is filled by competitive examinations, and the one who has the highest mark gets the place. Of course their idea of education is far removed from ours. There is no attempt to develop the power of original thinking, but simply to become familiar with the teaching and wisdom of the past. Still, with all its defects, it stands for the highest that the nation knows, and they crown with laurels the men who rise to the front rank. Of course they wouldn’t compare for a moment with the great scholars of the Western world. Still, you know, ‘in a nation of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,’ and their scholars stand out head and shoulders above the general level, and are reverenced accordingly.”
“I suppose that system of theirs explains why the civil service in our own country is slightingly referred to as the ‘Chinese’ civil service by disgruntled politicians,” said Ralph.
“Yes,” said the captain, “and speaking of politicians, our Chinese friends could give us cards and spades and beat us out at that game. They’re the smoothest and slickest set of grafters in the world. Why, the way they work it here would make our ward politicians turn green with envy. We’re only pikers compared with these fellows. Graft is universal all through China. It taints every phase of the national life. Justice is bought and sold like any commodity and with scarcely a trace of shame or concealment. The only concern the mandarin has with the case brought before him is as to which side will make him the richest present. It is a case of the longest purse and little else. Then after a man has been sent to prison, the jailer must be paid to make his punishment as light as possible. If he is condemned to death, the executioner must be paid to do his work as painlessly and quickly as he can. At every turn and corner the grafter stands with his palm held out, and unless you grease it well you might as well abandon your cause at the start. You’re certainly foredoomed to failure.”
“Well,” said Bert, “we’re badly enough off at home in the matter of graft, but at least we have some ‘chance for our white alley’ when we go into a court of justice.”
“Yes,” assented the doctor, “of course a long purse doesn’t hurt there, as everywhere else. But, in the main, our judges are beyond the coarse temptation of money bribes. We’ve advanced a good deal from the time of Sir Francis Bacon, that ‘brightest, wisest, meanest of mankind,’ who not only accepted presents from suitors in cases brought before him, but had the nerve to write a pamphlet justifying the practice and claiming that it didn’t affect his judgment.”
“What do you think of the present revolution in China, doctor?” asked Dick. “Will it bring the people more into sympathy with our way of looking at things?”
He shook his head skeptically.
“No,” he answered, “to be frank I don’t. Between us and the Chinese there is a great gulf fixed, and I don’t believe it will ever be bridged. The Caucasian and Mongolian races are wholly out of sympathy. We look at everything from opposite sides of the shield. We can no more mix than oil and water.
“The white races made a mistake,” he went on and the boys detected in his voice a strain of sombre foreboding, “when they drew China out of its shell and forced it to come in contact with the modern world. It was a hermit nation and wanted to remain so. All it asked was to be let alone. It was a sleeping giant. Why did we wake him up unless we wanted to tempt fate and court destruction?
“Not only that, but the giant had forgotten how to fight. We’re teaching him how just as fast as we can, and even sending European officers to train and lead his armies. The giant’s club was rotten and wormeaten. In its place, we’re giving him Gatling guns and rifled artillery, the finest in the world. We have forgotten that Mongol armies have already overrun the world and that they may do it again. We’re like the fisherman in the ‘Arabian Nights’ who found a bottle on the shore and learned that it held a powerful genii. As long as he kept the bottle corked he was safe. But he was foolish enough to take out the cork, and the genii, escaping, became as big as a mountain, and couldn’t be squeezed back into the bottle. We’ve pulled the cork that held the Chinese genii and we’ll never get him back again. Think of four hundred million people, a third of the population of the world, conscious of their strength, equipped with modern arms, trained in the latest tactics, able to live on practically nothing, moving over Europe like a swarm of devastating locusts! When some Chinese Napoleon – and he may be already born – finds such an army at his back – God help Europe!”
He spoke with feeling, and a silence fell upon them as they looked over the great city, and thought of the thousands of miles and countless millions of inhabitants that lay beyond. Did they hear in imagination the gathering of shadowy hosts, the tread of marching armies, and the distant thunder of artillery? Or did they dimly sense with that mysterious clairvoyance sometimes vouchsafed to men that in a few days they themselves would be at death grip with that invisible “yellow peril” and barely win out with their lives?
Dick shivered, though the night was warm.
“Come along, fellows,” he said, as the captain and doctor walked away. “Let’s go to bed.”
