Chapter V: Some Queer Chinese Customs

Looking down from the great Tartar Wall of Peking we saw Chinese ways quite different from our own. The great flat, tree-topped capital with only artificial Mei-shan, or Coal Hill, rising above it, does not look at all like an American city. The highest structures are the empty defense towers over the city gates. The only buildings reminding one of our own large cities are those built by foreigners—hotels, mission schools, and American hospitals. The city stretches so far that schoolbooks used to call Peking the largest city in the world. Now we know that it has hardly a million inhabitants, and we realize that a very extensive city with mostly one-story houses inside compounds (walled enclosures) may have fewer people than a city smaller in area but with buildings of many stories.

There are few sewers in Peking, and in most parts of it there is no running water. Just outside our compound wall was a big well with a windlass and some ancient buckets. All day long, men with loudly squeaking wheelbarrows wheeled water in tall wooden tubs from this and the many other public wells all about town, and sold it at the poorer houses. The street sprinklers of Peking consist of two buckets of water on the end of a pole, and a long-handled wooden dipper. A soldier or a coolie moves slowly along the principal streets throwing water with this dipper. As it is often bitterly cold in Peking (though a clear, dry cold that is rather enjoyable) ice forms quickly, and sometimes even the man with the dipper has hard work standing up. In midwinter I used to ride about the city on a little red horse that I had brought from far western China, and in some of the streets made icy by the dripping of water-wheelbarrows or by the street-sprinkler, my mount acted as if he were on skates.

The part of Peking known as the “Forbidden City.” It is not forbidden
any more, because there are no more emperors to live there and keep
ordinary people out. One can look down upon its wonderful palaces,
as here, from Mei-shan (“Coal Hill”).
]

In China prisoners are given useful work to do, as they are in
America. This man, in a prison yard, is spinning yarn. The
characters on his jacket give his number, which is 820.
]

Inside the corners of the city wall are dumping grounds. But dozens of rag-pickers, mostly women and children, come to claw among the rubbish, and they leave very little. Here the camels bringing freight from the north and west sleep by night. Because the foreigners they see are never ragged, as so many Orientals are, most Chinese think that all foreigners are rich. We could hardly pass through the smaller streets, or peer over the parapet of the Tartar Wall on which the common people are not allowed, without hearing dozens of boys and girls shouting “E mao ch’ien!” As nearly as we can translate so different a language as the Chinese, this means “One dime money!” But any of these ragged urchins would be glad even of a big copper, and they would remain friendly and smiling even if we gave them nothing. One of the most remarkable things about the Chinese is that they can be cheerful even when it seems as if they must be miserable. The real beggars of Peking are professionals, who do nothing else. They have a union, and many of them have much better clothes than those they wear when wandering up and down the streets. Begging is not looked upon as disgraceful by some Chinese. In fact, they have a very gentle word for a beggar; they call him a _yao-fan-ti_—that is, a “want-rice-man.”

Skating, Eating and Sleeping

Women making silk thread by the crude process still used in most of
China. The thread is being unwound from a large reel onto smaller
ones.
]

For a few days we were able to skate on the broad moat outside the Tartar Wall. But soon dust ruined the surface of the ice, and the only fun that remained was to be pushed along in sleds by coolies. Then men began to cut the ice and pack it away in hollows in the ground along the moats, covering it with earth and reed mats. There are no ice-houses in Peking, and the average Chinese prefers tea to any kind of cold drink, even in summer. It is a real summer too, even in Peking, so hot that about the first of June great reed-mat awnings and false roofs are put up over most of the stores and the courtyards of all but the poorest people. A big company rents these _peng_ and sets them up, but will not sell them. In the fall the company sends men to take them away again.

Peking has thousands of public eating places. They range all the way from the little stalls for coolies which we often passed in “Square Handkerchief Alley” and other narrow streets on our way to the central part of town, to great restaurants where rich Chinese come for their feasts and banquets. Although Chinese food is different from our own, most foreigners become fond of it, or at least of some of it. Such things as old pickled eggs, sharks’ fins, bird’s-nest soup, and silkworms may taste better to the Chinese than they do to us; but there are also pork, and duck, and pheasants and partridges, vegetables and fruits, and many other things quite like the food we eat. But the cooking is different, and everything must be cut up into small pieces before it is put on the table, for there are no knives and forks. The Chinese eat with two chopsticks, made of bamboo or bone, or perhaps ivory, and both held in one hand. After some practice we had no great difficulty in picking up our food with chopsticks, but we never became accustomed to eating out of the same bowls as other diners, and we did not quite like having a kind Chinese host pick out a tidbit for us with his own chopsticks.

A Chinese kindly showing us the proper way to hold chopsticks. As a
matter of fact, if he had known that I was taking his picture he
would probably have run away. Some Chinese think that anyone by
harming the picture of a person can harm the person himself.
]

The Chinese do not kiss and they seldom put their arms around one another. Nor do they shake hands as we do. When two men meet, each one clasps his own hands together and shakes them, at the same time bowing and smiling. Women do the same. Perhaps the Chinese and Japanese are right when they say that kissing, or even hand-shaking, is not very sanitary.

Chinese babies have no cribs or cradles; instead they learn to sleep tied in a cloth on the mother’s back, or on the back of a servant or a young brother or sister. No doubt it is because they are brought up in this way that the Chinese can sleep anywhere at any time, undisturbed by anything. When a Chinese baby is old enough to walk it is given gay cloth shoes with a cat’s face on the toe of each. Small children’s caps usually have the face of a demon on the front, because some Chinese still think this will scare off evil spirits that might harm the child. But many of the old customs no longer have a particular meaning.

Wedding and Funeral Processions

Often we met strange processions in the streets of Peking. We knew that it was a wedding procession if somewhere in the middle there was a closed sedan chair, covered with bright red silk. Most Chinese marriages are still arranged between the families by matchmakers, and the new husband and wife probably have never seen each other. The girl, at least, may not want to be married at all. Sometimes people on the street can hear her crying, inside her chair, though no one is able to see her. When she is delivered at her husband’s house she becomes not only a wife but also a kind of servant of her new mother-in-law. Some Chinese men have several wives, but the first one always has the best position. Of course the Christianized Chinese follow Western practice in having but one wife, and before marrying, many of them court a young lady of their own choice.

If the principal part of a procession is a longer, heavier burden than a sedan chair, the onlooker knows that a funeral is passing. The heavy wooden coffin, carried by a dozen or more men, is usually covered with brightly colored silks, and generally there is a live rooster on top of it. The rooster seems to represent the soul of the dead person, and is sacrificed at the grave. These processions are often very long, and whether a wedding or a funeral is being held there is a great variety of the noises which the Chinese consider music.

The principal part of a Chinese funeral passing through the streets of
Peking. Bright colors are used in the covering for the coffin, in
the hearse, and in the garments of the pallbearers, so that the
procession is not very sad looking to an American eye.
]

Dozens and sometimes hundreds of ragged men and boys, dressed in rather dirty garments of strange designs and gay colors, march in a funeral procession. They carry queer looking pieces of furniture and other strange things. Some bear paper horses and automobiles, paper wives and servants, bundles of silver or gold-colored paper to represent money. All these are burned at the grave, because the Chinese think the dead need such things in the next world. Centuries ago live horses and live servants were killed at the grave, so that they could serve their masters in the Chinese heaven.

In a Chinese Theater

This automobile, which I saw in the _hutung_ (narrow street) leading
to our home in Peking, was made entirely of paper and cardboard,
including chauffeur and footman. It was to be carried in the funeral
procession of a rich man and burned at his grave so that, as his
relatives believed, he might use it in the next world.
]

Now and then we went to a Chinese theater, not only in Peking but in the smaller cities and villages. Some of the theaters in the capital are built much like ours, though the plays on the stage are quite different. Many foreigners go to see Mei Lan-fang, China’s greatest actor. He is a slender, ladylike youth, and always plays girls’ parts, as did his father and his grandfather. In China acting is considered a very low profession, but Mei Lan-fang now earns as much as our greatest actors. I spent an afternoon at his home in the Chinese City of Peking, finding it filled with very artistic things, and my actor host proved himself a cultured gentleman.

Mei Lan-fang, China’s greatest actor. He plays only women’s parts.
Here he is representing a girl who led troops to war after her
father was killed.
]

In the old-fashioned theaters of Peking things are much as they are in the crude actors’ booths set up at the edges of villages or as they are in American circus tents. The audience sits on rough wooden benches, and the back of each bench has a shelf for those sitting behind. Men and boys place cups of tea and little dishes of peanuts and squash-seeds and other food before each spectator. There is always a great hubbub in the audience, for everyone one talks, and even shouts whenever he likes. To add to the confusion, hot towels are constantly being thrown back and forth over the heads of the people. One man or several men stand at a tub of hot water and wring out the towels, then throw them in bundles to other men, who distribute them to the audience and gather them up again. In Chinese restaurants also the guests use hot towels before and after eating.

A view inside a Chinese theater, showing a play in progress on the
high stage. For the moment, the “outside-country-man” who was taking
the picture interested the audience more than the drama did. That
would not bother Chinese actors, but imagine what some of our
American “stars” would do if they were to be interrupted in such a
way!
]

On a Chinese stage there is no curtain and almost no scenery. Or rather, the curtain, such as it is, is at the back of the stage. The actors go behind it to change their costumes, but they can always be seen by part of the audience. Much of the acting is pantomime; that is, motions without words. There is also a kind of dancing, and often the actors shriek in terrible, unnatural voices. A man with a lot of flags sticking out from his shoulders is supposed to be a general. A man who carries a kind of whip is supposed to be on horseback, and there are other symbols that mean something to the Chinese but nothing to foreign spectators. Foreigners find the Chinese theater property man very amusing. He wears black or coolie blue, and is supposed to be invisible to the audience. So he wanders about freely among the actors, throwing down a cushion for one of them to kneel on, piling a chair on a table to represent a mountain, and so on. If an actor is “killed,” the property man helps him to his feet and he walks off the stage. If the moon is supposed to be shining, this “invisible” coolie holds up a crescent or a circle of paper on the end of a stick.

Some of the audience wander about among the actors and stand or sit on the stage. Bands of ragged boys may crowd so close as to be under the actors’ feet. Musicians with strange instruments sit on one side of the stage, and come and go whenever they like. The deafening noises they call music are positively painful to foreign ears. At intervals a servant of one of the actors, dressed in his everyday clothes (even if the drama represents a time centuries ago), brings his master a cup of tea. The actor holds a corner of his costume across his face and drinks, and the audience pretends not to see him do anything that is not part of the play.