Chapter IX: The Heathen Chinee

His Persecution—His Usefulness—His Intellectual Ability.

THE Chinese in Australia have a grievance. We have opened up China against the wishes of their rulers, and when they take a leaf out of our book, and commence opening up the world, we turn round and refuse them admission. It is so in America, and it is so in Australia. At every election meeting in Victoria when I was there, the candidate had to declare that he was ready to vote for the exclusion of the Chinese. This is how democracy uses its power. The Chinaman is civil, and obliging, and hard-working; besides, he is sober; but the Australians won’t have him at any price, and raise the cry of Australia for the Australians, which means that no poor English emigrant may go there to take lower wages than his mates rather than starve at home. As each colony is isolated, this will mean in time that the work of each colony is to be done only by its own workmen. Already in Queensland I see that a complaint has been made because some workmen from Sydney have been brought in to work. Australia wants opening up. It has only a sparse population on its borders, and in many parts the workman, who is master of the situation, will not work himself, nor allow any one else to do so. The general public suffer, but that is their look-out. Prices are kept up by Protection, and the protected further protect themselves by keeping out the labourer anxious to earn an honest living. As the Chinese are weak and friendless, it is against them chiefly that this policy is enforced. I heard one day of a sturdy workman who had applied for relief. When asked what he had been doing of late, he replied that he had been picking grapes. Questioned why he had given the occupation up, he answered that he was working with Chinese, and the boss expected him to work as hard as they did.

Australia wants to compete with the cheap wine-sellers of Bordeaux; but she is sadly handicapped in this and other ways. The farmer finds his corn-fields eaten up by the parroquets, because he can hire no cheap labour to scare away the birds. In the big towns it is the Chinaman who supplies the people with cheap fish and vegetables. I own to a liking for the ‘heathen Chinee.’ ‘Ah,’ said a well-known London Democrat to me after I had returned home, ‘I see what you want. You want to reduce the British workman to the level of the heathen Chinee.’ ‘No,’ was my reply. ‘I want to bring the British workman up to the level of the heathen Chinee. He is economical, industrious, sober, and always civil, and one cannot say that in all cases of the British workman.’ And in the northern district they are sadly wanted. While in Adelaide, I read a letter in _The South Australian Register_, in which the writer emphatically declares that if any development of the northern territory is to take place, it must be by the Chinese, or not at all. The writer remarks: ‘If the Chinese are excluded or kept out here, all development will cease, and the northern territory will just resolve itself into a great Government camp, where some will be employed to watch the telegraph wires, while others are scraping the rust off the wheels of the railway carriages.’ And then he goes on to speak of the bogus telegrams and Munchausen reports that caused the Chinese scare. This northern territory, be it remembered, which has been tacked on to South Australia and governed from Adelaide, embraces an immense extent of country, and contains an area of about 323,620 square miles. Its principal harbour is Port Darwin, which is one of the finest in Australia, almost equalling that of Sydney. It is rich in mineral resources, and gold and rubies. The climate is tropical, and the soil in many parts is very rich. Already it contains many great cattle stations. The writer I have referred to says: ‘I have had a nearly three years’ residence here, trying to develop a large run for a Victorian owner. This enables me to speak with complete knowledge of the climate, and the kind of labour suitable for the country; for out-of-door work the European may be dismissed at once.’ Clearly, in such a case, the Chinaman is the right man in the right place. But ‘No,’ say the Queenslanders; ‘if you allow the Chinese there, they will cross the border and come to us.’ Again, says an intelligent Adelaide editor to me: ‘It cannot be; the Chinese are many, we are few—they will take possession of all Australia.’ Surely it would not be a difficult thing to limit the extent of Chinese immigration. A Chinaman cannot disguise his nationality. Dress him in Christian clothes—his _tout ensemble_, his oval face, his brown skin, his high cheek-bones, his little twinkling eyes, will betray him, to say nothing of his pigtail and his pigeon English. By all means, in the interests of civilization, I would say, let him come. It would be better for Australia and the world that it should be opened up, than allowed to remain a waste.

In Adelaide I have seen a splendid specimen of what a Chinaman may become when he is naturalized and turned into a British subject. His name is Mr. Way Lee, and a more agreeable man I have not seen for a long time. His shop was full of China ware and Chinese tea. He had on a black coat, a white waistcoat, a light pair of trousers, and his pigtail was rolled into a neat plait at the back of his head. In his drawing-room he had a piano, and a portrait of her Majesty in a very rich gold frame. His only peculiarity of costume was as regards his small feet, which were encased in Chinese slippers. He offered me a glass of wine much as an ordinary Christian would have done; I refused it, but, however, accepted a Manilla cheroot, and we got into a pleasant talk. He told me that he was thirty-seven; I should have guessed that he was not more than twenty-five. He had two extraordinary, highly-coloured religious Chinese pictures, which made me believe that he was a follower of Confucius. However, I was deceived. ‘I go,’ said he, with a bland smile, ‘to the Baptist, the Congregational, the Wesleyan Churches—any vere my friends take me.’

Not a bigot, at any rate, is Mr. Way Lee. In Adelaide he has won golden opinions. He has traded there for years; is straightforward in all his doings; has deservedly gained the reputation of being an exemplary citizen—strict in his regard for municipal rights and regulations, and vigilant in his endeavours to enforce the maintenance of law and order. And his own Government have conferred upon him the dignity of a Mandarin. He is renowned for his charity. Well, he has succeeded in business, and has an establishment in Sydney which, naturally, he desires to visit, but by crossing the border into New South Wales he renders himself liable to a heavy fine of £100. He has written to Sir Henry Parkes on the subject, but the Free Trade Premier tells him he cannot help him. Why, asks the paper which has taken, and rightly taken, up his case, should Mr. Way Lee, who has established as strong a claim upon the goodwill of his fellows, and the protection of the State as any of his trade competitors, be placed at a serious disadvantage in carrying on his business, because he happens to have been born in the Flowery Land? Why should he be held up to the ridicule and scorn of his fellow colonists because he hails from China? The time will come when Australia will be heartily ashamed of conduct which savours more of the narrow and intolerant spirit of the dark ages than of the enlightenment and liberality of modern times. There are not many such decent Chinese in Australia. Whose fault is that? Certainly the Caucasian has set the heathen Chinee a very sorry example. ‘Government have inspectors,’ said Way Lee to me; ‘Government can put them down if they gamble and be wicked.’ Surely the Caucasian can take care of himself; at any rate, he has the credit of being able to do so. The little almond-eyed heathen cheats him when he is drunk; then let him keep sober. I have been in an opium den; I have been in a gin-palace. The opium den is a heaven compared with the latter. In Australia every drunken larrikin thinks it good fun to push down or ill-treat a Chinee. Such brutality makes one’s blood boil. Nor can it be well with a people where such ruffianism exists in its midst. Australia is big, and so big that the Australians themselves are little acquainted with it. Surely there is room enough for the Chinaman, and he can open up such parts of it as are unhealthy for the European. Mr. Way Lee, in every respect, is as good an Australian as any I have met with; his manners are unexceptionable; he goes into society. Such as he do not level down, but are levelled up, and Australia might do with China a large and profitable trade. I question whether the leaders in the anti-Chinese crusade are really in earnest; they join in it as a means to an end; by means of it they trust to get place and power. All I could do was to assure Mr. Lee that we in England were not responsible for such treatment as he had received; that we had little else to do than to supply the colonies with governors and a fleet. ‘Yes, I know,’ he said; but he felt the hardship, nevertheless.

Intellectually the heathen Chinee is coming to the front. In describing the results of recent examinations at the University of Melbourne, a newspaper writer says: ‘Dr. Bevan’s eldest son (Willett) carried off no less than nine prizes at the Church of England Grammar School, including the Dux and Speaker’s Prize, another son of the doctor’s also doing well. It is not without satirical suggestion, however, that Cheong (who was second Dux) beat Bevan in English spelling and New Testament Greek. It is curious, to say the least of it, that a Chinese should excel an English boy in _English_ spelling, and that the son of a convert from heathenism should surpass the son of a Christian pastor in an examination upon the textbook of the Christian faith.’

As to the usefulness of the Chinee in Australia I am glad to supplement my remarks with an extract from a letter of a gentleman in the _London and China Express_.

The writer, Mr. Sampson, an intelligent resident of many years in China, says: ‘During a recent visit to Victoria, during which I made it my particular business to inquire into matters connected with the Chinese, I found that the objection to Chinese immigration is by no means universal in that colony. The principal objectors are the labour-aristocracy and the politicians who seek to gain their votes; on the other side are the employers of labour generally—farmers, fruit-growers, masters of steamers, women burdened with domestic cares, and sometimes even diggers and unskilled labourers, who are not bound to accept the doctrines dictated by a labour union. “We don’t want the Chinese to go,” said a labouring man to me, at a wayside inn, some ten miles from Sandhurst; he was an Irishman, and was celebrating the news of the defeat of the _Times_ in the matter of the forged letters. “We don’t want the Chinese to go; we want them to stop here, and grow cabbages for us.” This pithily-expressed view of the question I found very prevalent. A lady fellow-passenger in a steamer said to me, with a sigh, “Ah, if women had votes there would be no restrictions on the immigration of Chinese.” She valued them as faithful and dutiful domestic servants, and as polite, obliging, and honest hawkers of vegetables and other small household requirements. I visited a large orchard in which every grape had been sucked dry by birds, and the parrots were making sad havoc amongst the apples, pears, and peaches. I remarked to the owner that in China a couple of men could be employed to keep away the birds at ten shillings a month. “Ah!” was the reply. “Here I should have to pay eight shillings a day, and then I should have to stay on the grounds myself to see that they did their work.” The following characteristic story was told me: An Australian, being about to leave the colony for a year or two, instructed a broker to let for that period a piece of land which he owned. The broker secured a tenant, and the owner agreed to the terms without inquiring who the tenant was. When the time arrived for him to sign the legal documents he found that the proposed tenant was a Chinaman. ‘He wished to repudiate the bargain, but matters had advanced too far for him to do so. On his return from England he found that the Chinese tenant had improved the ground so much that he said, “If ever I have to go away again I will let a Chinaman have the use of my land for nothing rather than accept rent from a white man.” These anecdotes are, of course, only isolated cases, but they serve to illustrate opinions, and to show forth facts of importance.’