Volume 2 — From All The Year Round. UP AND DOWN CANTON.

Canton is a genuine Chinese city, and one of the most extraordinary places in the world. There are four American steamers which ply between Hong-Kong and Canton. They are fast commodious vessels, in fact floating hotels, such as ply on the large American rivers. The voyage occupies about eight or nine hours. Of these, five or six are on the open sea, sheltered mostly under the lee of precipitous bluffs and lofty rocky islets; and the rest, from the "Bocca Tigris," up the Canton river. The fog in the winter season lies so dense over the flats and extensive swamps bordering the river that steamers have to proceed with great caution, going "dead slow," and sounding the steam-whistle, while the little fishing-junks, which are sure to be scattered by dozens in the way, eagerly beat their gongs, to make known their whereabout. As the steamer ascends the river, a noble stream, some five or six miles broad near the mouth, she gets gradually clear of the fog. The wide marshy flats, and the bold rocks on the left bank, crowned with odd-looking Chinese stone batteries, come into view, to be succeeded by paddy-fields, sugar-cane cultivation, orchards, gardens, roads, and villages, that become, on both banks, more and more numerous, until they blend with the vast suburbs of Canton. Charming little pagodas, and fanciful buildings, painted and carved, the residences of mandarins, peep from the shades of groves, and every village is surmounted by two or more lofty square towers, the nature of which puzzles a stranger, until he is told they are pawnbrokers shops. These shops are so fashioned for the greater security of the articles pledged, because the broker is made heavily responsible for their safe-keeping. The security is meant to be not only against thieves, but also against fire. Half-way to Canton, on the right, or west bank, is a little English settlement at the town of Whampo. It consists of some ship-chandlers' stores, warehouses, and a dock for repairing vessels which discharge their cargoes here, being unable to proceed higher up the stream. Whampo is, in fact, the seaport of Canton, and was a flourishing place as such till Hong-Kong diverted the trade. From Whampo upward, the river becomes more and more crowded with junks and Chinese boats. Some of the junks, men-of-war, differ from the rest only in being larger, and in having several unwieldy guns on their decks, mounted on uncouth carriages: in many instances with their muzzles not pointed through portholes, but grinning over the bulwarks at an angle of forty-five degrees, like huge empty bottles.

When the steamer has slowly and cautiously threaded her way among these numerous vessels, and dropped anchor, the rush of "tanka-boats" round her is astonishing. These are broad bluff crafts, something of the size and shape of the sampans, but impelled chiefly by women; one sweeping, the other sculling with a large steering oar. They close round the ship in hundreds, yelling, screaming, struggling, and fighting for the gangways, till every passenger or article of light freight has left. The women are warmly and comfortably dressed in dark-blue linen shirts and wide drawers, with red and yellow bandanas round their heads and faces. They are often young and good-looking, with bright laughing eyes, white {657} teeth, and jolly red cheeks. They are, unlike the "flower-boat" girls, honest and well conducted. Their boats are roofed over, with snug neat cabins nicely painted, and bedizened with flowers, old-fashioned pictures, and looking-glasses. A low cushioned bench runs round three sides, and the passenger sits down pleasantly enough, looking through the entrance, and face to face with the sturdy nymph, who, with a "stamp and go," is rowing him along, while at the stern, behind his back, another lusty Naiad steers him on his way.

The river divides the great city into two parts; that on the left bank, which is by far the larger, being Canton, and the opposite smaller town "Honan." On the Honan side, a few European gentlemen still live and carry on business, as branches of several firms in Hong-Kong; but the principal European quarter is a fine level plain on the Canton side, presenting to the river a revetted wall. A pretty church and some handsome houses, including the British consulate, have been already completed within the land, which is called the "Shámeen." It adjoins the portion formerly allotted for the Hongs, or warehouses and offices of foreign (European) merchants, which were burnt down by the Chinese mob before the last war.

At ten in the morning, one day in the month of February, I started from the Honan side, under the guidance of a Chinese cicerone, who spoke a language somewhat better than the gibberish known by the name of "pigeon" (business) English, to explore the city of Canton. We crossed the river in a tanka-boat, and after threading, jostling, and pushing our way through swarms of small craft in every variety, landed at the custom-house stairs, close to a small office in which presides an English functionary, in the pay of the Chinese government. The strand is crowded with mean dirty hovels, in which, and about the muddy road, and on board innumerable boats, packed closely along the bank, men, women, and children, filthy and ragged, were crowding in swarms. We passed a short way up the strand, by some large shops, crammed with clothing and ship chandlery, and, striking inland, traversed an open space, scattered with the relics of the European Hongs burnt before the last war (a space, by-the-by, which Europeans have altogether deserted, preferring the "Shámeen" land, and which the Chinese government appear unwilling to resume, so that it remains altogether untenanted). We then entered the bazaar, or strictly commercial portions of the town.

The day was unusually sultry for the time of year; the streets (so to call passages of six or seven feet width), entirely paved with flag-stones, were muddy and greasy from rain that had fallen the day before. The air was stagnant from the confinement of closely packed and overhanging houses, and heated by swarms of people hurrying to and fro, while an insupportable stench from sewers, neglected drains, and putrid fish and flesh, with a horrible odor of stale cabbage water, pervaded the suffocating atmosphere. I became faint at times, fatigued and heated beyond endurance, so that my estimate of the extent of this enormous labyrinth through which I plodded for four hours before I could get a sedan-chair, is one rather, of the feelings than of the judgment I walked—stepping now and then into shops, to examine them more closely—and rode in a sedan-chair up one street and down another, from about half-past ten in the morning until four in the afternoon, and had to leave unvisited about half the bazaar, to get a hasty glimpse of a few temples, gardens, and mandarin-houses before dusk.

The streets are flagged, and about six or seven feet broad. They appear to be innumerable, crossing each other at right angles at every two or three hundred yards. The houses {658} on each side are narrow-fronted, but extending considerably to the rear. There are no windows, for the centre of each front is, open, merely consisting of carved and painted framework, like the proscenium of a theatre, and displaying the contents of the shop on each hand, like side scenes. The back is closed by a large panelling, in which figures of gods, men, animals, and flowers are painted, with a vast deal of gilding and finery. In short, each shop looks like a little theatre. A few houses have upper stories, reached by pretty carved and balustraded stairs. And as every article for which space can be found is hung up for display, both inside the shop and around its front, the spectator, as he enters the bazaar, feels as if he were diving into an ocean of cloths, silks, flags, and flutters.

My guide was a sharp fellow, who thoroughly knew all the sights of Canton. As he had been often employed as cicerone by the ship captains, he immediately put me down as one of that jolly fraternity, frequent intercourse with whom had given a slightly nautical twang to his discourse. We had not gone far before he addressed me, "I say, cappen: you come along o' me and see jewelers' shops. Here's first-rate shop—number one jeweler this chap—cappen want to buy anything? Heave along!" The jewelers' shops were numerous, and I saw many very beautiful specimens of carving and filigree-work. Some of the shops sold articles of European design, others ministered only to the native beauty and fashion of Canton. These contained many articles of considerable beauty and real taste. The most notable were the "bird's feather ornaments," which consist of gold or gilt head combs, brooches, ear-rings, and the like, on which are firmly fixed, with glue, strips of the bright blue feathers of the kingfisher (Halcyon Smyrnensis), cut into small patterns, through which the gold ground appears; the whole effect being exactly like that of enamel work. The kingfisher is not, I think, found in China, but is imported in great numbers from Burmah and India. I asked the price of one skin lying on the counter, and was told half a dollar (two shillings and threepence). The bird was probably procured in India for three-halfpence. Ivory shops are in great number, but the Chinese ivory yields, in my opinion, to that of the Japanese. I went into several porcelain shops, and saw in each ten or a dozen languid-looking youths painting away, slowly and laboriously, at leaves, flowers, insects, and so forth, on plates. Each lad had a small bowl of one color, and when he had painted in all the parts of the design intended to be of that color, he passed the plate on to his neighbor, who added his color, and so on all round the room till the pattern was completely colored. The result is stiff and mechanical. There is no attempt at artistic effect, nothing like the beautiful pictures painted in the factories at Worcester or Dresden. Dyers and weavers are numerous. The silk shops are the finest in the bazaar, but their contents are excessively dear, and are not very good. Indeed, the Canton silks are considered by the Chinese themselves to be, inferior to those made in the northern provinces of the empire. I have seen silk dresses and pieces from Pekin brought into India via Nepaul, of a quality which I was assured by a competent judge could not be procured at Canton. This was five-and-twenty years ago, and it is possible that our present widely different connection with China may have introduced a better article into Shanghae, which is so near Pekin. But the Chinese were very jealous formerly about exporting their finest silks, and those I allude to were brought by the members of a mission, sent every three years with a tribute from Kathmandoo to the Emperor of China, as a friendly return present from the emperor to the Rajah of Nepaul.

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The Chinese shopkeepers are fat comfortable-looking fellows, with pleasant, good-humored faces. They showed me their curiosities very willingly, and none the less courteously exchanged a smiling "chin-chin" with me if I left the shop without purchasing anything.

Tea-shops are numberless. They are piled up with chests such as we see in England, and with open baskets of coarse and inferior tea for the poor. The cheapest kind is made in thin round cakes or large wafers, strung upon slips of bamboo. It partially dissolves in hot water, and is flavored with salt by those who drink it. Of this form of brick tea I have never seen any mention in the books published by travellers.

There are poulterers' shops, with fowls roasted and raw; and there are vegetable sellers' stalls, and fish in baskets, dead and not over-fresh, or alive in large tubs of water. They were all of the carp family, including réhos, mïrgals, and kutlas, so familiarly known in India, also several species of the siluroids, called vulgarly "catfish." The fish brought from the sea are salted and sun-dried, and, with strong aid from immense festoons of sharks' fins, set up a stench that it is not easy to walk through.

After inspecting shops and elbowing and being elbowed in the crowd till afternoon, when I was ready to drop with heat and fatigue, my pilot steered me to a small square, flagged with stone, on which the sun shone fiercely. He called it "Beggars' square," and told me that all the destitute and abandoned sick in the city crawled, if they could, to this spot, because those who died there received burial at the expense of government. While he spoke, my eyes were fixed upon some heaps of dirty tattered clothes on the ground, which presently began to move, and I discovered to my horror three miserable creatures, lean and covered with odious filth, lying in different stages of their last agony on the bare stones, exposed to the burning rays of the sun. They came here to die, and no one heeded them, or gave them a drop of water, or a morsel of food, or even a little shelter from the noontide glare. I had seen shocking things of this sort in India, but nothing so horrible. To insure a climax of disgusts, my guide led me straight to a dog butcher's shop, where several of the nasty fat oily carcases of those animals were hanging for sale. They had not been flayed, but dangled there with their smooth shining skins, which had been scalded and scraped clean of hair, so that at first I took them for sucking-pigs. There were joints of dog, ready roasted, on the counter, and in the back of the shop were several cages in which live dogs were quietly sitting, lolling their tongues out, and appearing very unconcerned. I saw several cats also, in cages, looking very demure; and moreover I saw customers, decorous and substantial-looking householders, inspect and feel the dogs and cats, and buy those which they deemed fittest for the table. The cats did not like being handled, and mewed loudly. "What cappen think o' that?" said my guide. "Cappen s'pose never eat dog?—dog very good, very fat, very soft. Oh, number one dinner is dog!" "And are cats as good?" I asked. "Oh, Chinaman chowchow everything. Chowchow plenty cat. Chinaman nasty beast, I think, cappen, eh?" My cicerone had been so long mixed up with European and American ship captains and missionaries, that he had learnt to suit his ideas to his company, if his ideas had not actually undergone great modification, as is the case in India with those educated natives of the present day known to us as specimens of "Young Bengal."

Before quitting the bazaar, I was ushered into two gambling-shops. These are licensed by the Chinese government, the owners paying a considerable tax. Both were tolerably full of players, and in both the same kind of game was being played—a simple one enough, if I understood it. {660} A player staked a pile of cash or dollars; the croupier staked a similar one; and then another member of the establishment dipped his hand into a bag and drew out a handful of counters; if they were in even fours, the bank won; if they were uneven, the player won, and the croupier's stake was duly handed over to him—rather ruefully, it struck me, by the banker, who sat on the counter raised above the rest. This game appears about as intrinsically entertaining as pulling straws; but I may have overlooked or misunderstood parts of it of a more intellectual nature. In the first house I visited, the players were of the lower class, and the stakes were copper cash. One man, quite a youth, left the room evidently cleaned out; his look revealed it, and I suppose he went away to the opium shop, the usual consolation of a Chinaman under the circumstances. As we entered the second gambling-house, my guide informed me, "This rich house. Number one fellow play here—mandarin chap." And truly I saw in the room goodly piles of dollars heaped up before a better-dressed assembly. The game appeared to be the same, and money changed hands rapidly. I "chin-chinned" to the banker and to the company, and was civilly allowed to look on. The room led through a filigreed doorway to another apartment, where cakes, loaves, tea, and pipes were spread out, and where long-tailed gentlemen were lounging and discussing the news of the day.

Being in want of cash, and having only dollar notes with me, I asked my guide what I should do? He straightway led me to a money-changer's, where I was at once furnished with change for my notes at par. As this was an unusual accommodation, I asked the reason of such generosity, and was informed that the dollars given me were all light, and that the changer would obtain full-weight dollars for the notes by-and-by. I was assured, however, that in all the shops the dollars I had received would be received at the full value; and this I found to be the case. All the time I was in the money-changer's, I saw three or four people telling, examining, and stamping dollars. So defaced and mutilated does the coin become by bearing the "chop" or mark of every banker or dealer into whose possession it passes, that it as nearly as possible returns to that state of bullion which the Chinaman prefers to minted coin. As it was, the only small change I could procure for a dollar was in fragments of silver; in the weighing out of which I was of course at the mercy of the shopman.

A chair having been with great difficulty procured for me, and another for my guide, we were about emerging from the bazaar when I had the honor of meeting a mandarin and suite. My bearers had just time to squeeze into the entrance of a side-alley, when the cavalcade was down upon us. Funny-looking soldiers with spears and muskets indiscriminately, musicians and drummers or tom-tom beaters, and an amazing figure in red and gold apparel of a loose flapping cut, with a sword in his hand, mounted upon an inexcusable pony—a Chinese Rosinante. In the centre of this cortege the mandarin was borne along, a placid fat dignitary, in a richly embroidered purple velvet and golden dress, seated in a gaudy sedan.

It was a great relief to emerge from the crowded bazaar, pass through the gateway in the massive city wall, and proceed through comparatively airy lanes to one or two Chinese gentlemen's houses and gardens, which my guide most unceremoniously entered, marshalling me in without a word of introduction or apology, and making me feel rather ashamed of myself. These dwellings, as well as the joss-houses or temples, have been so often described, that I will not inflict them again on the reader. Not the slightest objection was raised by the priests to my exploring every part of the temples, the vergers showing the altars, the various images, the cloisters {661} and refectories, with great alacrity, and extending their hands afterward for a fee. The only undescribed fact connected with these worthies which I was informed of is, that they sell their finger-nails to any foreigner desirous of purchasing such curiosities. These nails are suffered to grow uncut, and attain a length of three or four inches, looking remarkably unlike finger-nails, and forming curiosities much coveted, said my guide, by foreign gentlemen and "cappens." Among other religious edifices I visited a Mohammedan temple, a singular jumble of Islamism and Buddhism. Extracts from the Koran wore an odd appearance emblazoned on Chinese architecture. There were no priests visible here; only children and begging old women.

Want of time prevented my visiting the camp or barracks of the Chinese soldiers, on the heights outside the eastern suburbs of the town. A large garden, attached to a temple on the Honan side, was the only other object I had time that day to inspect. The garden was principally stocked with orange-trees, also loquats and lychees, hundreds of which were on sale for the benefit of the good fathers, who are supported by the produce of the garden and the contributions of the piously disposed. On each side of the centre walk, beyond a little dirty pond, was a shed, with shelves, on which were ranged pots containing the ashes of the priests ("priests' bones," my guide irreverently called them); their bodies, after decease, undergoing incremation in an adjoining pit. Names, ages, and dates of decease are duly preserved, cut into slabs of stone on the concave face of a semicircular screen of masonry in the garden. Before leaving the garden I was not a little surprised by the appearance of a veritable magpie, identical, as it seemed to me, with our British bird, that I had not seen for many years.

After guiding me safely to my quarters—for so labyrinthine is every part of Canton and Honan that it would be hopeless to attempt to find one's way alone—my pilot left me and departed to his own home, which was, he told me, on the Canton side. The language he spoke is, as may be gathered from the specimens here given, not the ordinary "pigeon English" of Chinese servants; a style of gibberish which it is lamentable to think has become the ordinary channel of communication with all Chinamen. These sharp and intelligent people would soon learn to speak and understand better English than such sentences has "You go top-side and catchee one piecee book"—"You tell those two piecee cooly go chow-chow, and come back chop-chop." (Go up-stairs and fetch a book—Tell those two coolies to go to their dinner, and return quickly.) The good effects of the tuition afforded by schoolmasters and missionaries in China are much marred by the jargon used conventionally, with irrational adherence to defect, in all ordinary transactions of business, by masters and mistresses in intercourse with their servants, and by commercial men with their native assistants.

About seven hours' run, in one of the American steamers before mentioned, carries the passenger from Canton to Macao. The mouth of the river is cleared in four hours, and the rest of the voyage is over an open sea, which, with a fresh southerly breeze, is rather rough for a flat-bottomed steamer: the islands to eastward, though numerous, being too remote to check the swell of the Chinese ocean. After running for about an hour along the bold rocky peninsula at the point of which Macao is built, the steamer rounds in, and, entering a partially land-locked harbor between the town and some rocky islets to its south, anchors in smooth water. The town has a quaint picturesque look. Its old-fashioned houses extend to the water's edge. They are all of stone or brick, covering the face of the bold coast: the heights of which are crowned by castles, forts, batteries, and convents, and from whose ancient walls the last rays of a setting sun were fading as we entered the harbor. The {662} inhabitants are entirely Portuguese, Chinese, and a breed between the two. The jealousy of the Portuguese government effectually excludes foreigners from settling; a miserable policy, by which trade is almost extinct, the revenue being derived chiefly from licensing of gambling-houses. In front of the house of the governor I saw a guard of soldiers. They wore able-bodied, smart-looking young fellows in neat blue uniforms, detailed from a regiment in the fort. These soldiers, and a few half-castes, looking like our office keranies in India, together with some strangely dressed females, in appearance half aya, half sister of charity, were all that I saw of the Portuguese community. The non-military Portuguese looked jaded and lazy, almost every man with a cheroot in his mouth. The town, indeed, struck me as a very "Castle of Indolence."