Chapter V: Part IV: 'Bottomless perdition.'--Milton (2)

Of course there are many things in their way of cookery, and in their tastes for such articles as sharks' fins, fish maws, _beche-de-mer_, etc., which are revolting to an educated stomach; but in their way the Chinese are quite as dainty as the most fastidious of other lands, and in fine vegetables, fish, and fruits they enjoy as much variety and evince as discriminating a taste as any people in the world. Their fish are sold in the markets alive, and taken from the tanks as selected by the purchaser. Their way of drinking tea will be found, after familiarity, superior to ours, for when milk is not used the finer aroma of the leaf is obtained. Indeed, they are very particular in regard to the quality and decoction of their tea, totally refusing the poisonous green teas that are consumed in such quantities in England, and especially in America.

They know, too, how to draw it, and just at the right moment the boiling water is poured upon the leaf, and, without allowing it to simmer by the fire, as we do, long enough to get the flavor of the stalks and stems, they drink it off as soon as the boiling water has fairly acted upon the delicate leaves. English tea-drinkers, who like to mix a green and a black tea, and allow it to steam for a quarter of an hour to make it strong, complain that Chinese tea is mere dishwater, just as the man accustomed to get boozy on brandy, made 'fiery' with sulphuric acid, has no taste for the light French wines. A Chinaman colors his green tea with Prussian blue for his foreign customers, who like a bright, pretty color; but he is too wise to drink it. This process of coloring we have seen, publicly, in the tea factories of Shanghai; and the disgust with which the manufacturer denied that he ever drank his own wares, was too strong to be assumed. 'No good,' was his only reply.

Despite the filth and many disagreeable things to be encountered in a walk or ride through a city like Shanghai, it is one of the most interesting places imaginable in which to spend an hour or two on a summer morning.

In the heat of the day, at mid-summer, it is dangerous in China, and especially to a new comer, to be exposed even to the reflected rays of the sun, and many a poor fellow has lost his life by neglect or contempt of the cautions of his more experienced friends not to be in the sunshine between the hours of 10 A. M. and 4 P. M. More than ordinary precaution is necessary in times of cholera, owing to the peculiar electrical condition of the atmosphere, in which any exertion or exposure is often fatal to one recently arrived on the coast. All excursions to the city are therefore, of necessity, made in the morning or late in the afternoon. The gates are opened at daybreak, and the early visitor is almost certain to be unpleasantly reminded of the prevalence of cholera by the number of dead bodies lying in the streets. They are those of coolies, or poor persons, who have died during the night, and having no friends, the public authorities must take them wherever they chance to die, and provide for their burial. In August, 1863, at a time when the cholera was not particularly virulent, the deaths were supposed to be five hundred a day, principally among the poor, who, from insufficient food, miserable lodging in the streets and porticoes of temples, and constant exposure in the day to the direct rays of the sun, to say nothing of the filth and foul air of the city, were peculiarly exposed to the ravages of disease. Another sign of the presence of cholera, and an odd one, was the number of persons passing with necks disfigured by perpendicular parallel bars, as if branded by hot irons. This curious remedy is applied for any pain in the stomach, however slight, even for sea sickness, and the marks are made with strong pincers. By the Chinese it is thought very efficacious, although on what theory it is difficult to understand.

Entering the city from the north gate, after crossing the ditch that separates the walls from, the French Concession, we find ourselves in close and extremely narrow streets, with shops opening upon them, neither glass nor any partition separating them from passers by. The same arrangement is quite common in our own streets for fruit-sellers' shops, toy stores, and newspaper and periodical stands. But instead of one or two attendants at a stand, in China we find a dozen, in summer time naked from the waist upward, emaciated by opium smoking, and having a sickly look painful to see. Most of the shops have a carved railing and a counter facing the street, the ends of which are ornamented by grotesque shapes of dogs and gilded idols. A figure of a pug-nosed dog with bandy legs is very common. At the first glance it would be supposed that this was one of those nondescripts the Chinese are so fond of devising, but a closer examination shows that the figure is an admirably life-like copy of an odd dog, common to Pekin, pug-nosed and bandy-legged, and no doubt his form will be recognized in many of the grotesque, awkward-looking figures of which ivory carvings abound in all countries where Chinese curiosities are to be found.

Standing on the counter is generally a roll of joss-sticks wound spirally around a wire frame, and always burning to the tutelary idol of the shop, for the sake of good luck. It is the duty of one of the boys to see that this coil of joss-stick is always lighted--a very convenient arrangement for tobacco smokers strolling through the streets. Another custom which they have, and which is also supposed to bring success to the shopkeeper, is to encourage the swallows to build under the eaves and among the bamboo rafters. Three or four of these nests of swallows, with broods of twittering young ones, may often be observed in a single shop, neat stretchers of cotton cloth or bamboo being built under the nests, to prevent any possible damage to the goods. The birds seem quite at home amid all the hubbub; and the kind care which protects them amid a semi-barbarous people is one of those traits of a common humanity--of kindness to the helpless--which marks the common origin of the most civilized and most barbarous of the human race. The streets of Shanghai are not divided among the trades, as in Canton, but shops of all kinds occur in every crooked lane and alley-way. Principal among them are the cookshops, some of which are evidently restaurants on a large scale, for they are filled, from morning till night, with half-naked coolies, eating indescribable dishes, of which rice is the great staple, and sipping tea. They all sit at little tables, built for two, or at round tables, seating half a dozen. In the country and in the suburbs these last are drawn out into the open air at sunset, and are occupied by parties taking their tea in a social manner. The roads around Shanghai are fall of such parties on a warm summer's eve.

After the cookshops, the confectioners' attract the traveller's eye. An immense amount of sweetmeats is consumed by the people, and the confectioners' shops are proportionally numerous. They are distinguished by copper caldrons sunk in their counters, which are kept always hot and full of molasses. With a ladle like a milkman's pint measure, they bring up the sweet mass for their customers, and their stalls are always crowded. Not only are these established shops well patronized, but an immense quantity of candy and preserved fruits is sold by the wandering peddlers, who manufacture and dispose of their good things wherever they find customers. Preserved lychee, a fruit that looks like a small prune, and like it is stewed in sirup, is a great favorite; and the coolies in the foreign quarters, while resting under their burdens, are not backward in disposing of a saucer of sweetmeats obtained from the nearest peddler. These sweetmeats, of all kinds, are esteemed very good by Europeans, and no doubt are quite the same as we receive from China put up in big-bellied blue jars; but as sold in the streets, the lack of cleanliness in the entire outfit of the shop, and the necessity of using the dishes and China spoons from which one can see the neighboring coolies gobbling their purchases, holding the dishes up to their very noses, would deter any man of ordinary fastidiousness from attempting an immediate experiment to establish their identity.

After eating, we must rank shaving as the second among Chinese employments. They all wear the cue, even to the infant in arms, whose mother shaves its head at three months old, and ties up the tiny cue with a red ribbon, and from that day to the day of his death the child and man must be periodically shaved; for, of course, no man can shave his own head. Great is the barber in China, and vast his field of operations among four hundred millions of people! They shave their subjects everywhere, even sitting on a stone in an open field, and at all hours of the day their shops are full. It is in the neatness of his 'shave' and the glossiness of his rich black cue that the Chinese dandy is distinguishable. Men who cannot afford to shave every day, allow the hair to grow until the head (always excepting the part which has never known the razor or the shears) resembles that of a fire zouave just after enlistment, or a penitentiary prisoner; while the exquisite has his head shaved with the sharpest razor, giving a bluish cast or frame for his yellow face. Occasionally the size or thickness of the tail appears to be unsatisfactory, and a larger surface is spared from the knife. The refractory hairs growing out in this supplementary patch surround the genuine cue with a halo an inch or two in height. Lots of these apostolical-looking Chinese are to be met with in every street, and, as they rarely wear hats, they have a very comical appearance. This question of hats is another of curious import among this curious people. A Chinese gentleman rarely wears one in the streets, his mode of travel being in a sedan, and his fan or umbrella answering all purposes of protection from the sun. A mandarin, on the contrary, wears in the ball of his cap his badge of office, and the time even when he changes his winter for his summer hat is regulated by the Board of Rites. The poor coolie is troubled by no such formality, and wears a great umbrella-like head covering, that he perches on a little bamboo tower, six inches above his crown, tying down the whole concern by a string that passes behind his ears. When at leisure, he wears his long cue trailing to his feet; when busy, it is snugly coiled around his head and out of sight under his hat. The gentleman and mandarin, on the contrary, never ties up the cue, its flowing grace, like his long finger nails, being a badge of his superior condition in being above manual labor. No wonder, then, that they attach so much importance to the pigtail, and that the man who dresses it daily is so useful a character in the community. His tools are unlike anything a civilized barber uses, and his razor, if its uses were not explained, would hardly be recognized by the name. It is a thick, broad instrument, shaped more like a cook's cleaver than any instrument known to other nations; but it does its work well in the hands of a good operator. After the head is shaved, it is washed with warm water in an old-fashioned brass barber's basin, such, as was in use in England two hundred years ago, and, after having had the few straggling hairs on lip and chin removed, the patient (for truly he deserves the name) goes through the torture of having all stray hairs extracted from the inner coating of the nose and ears, an absurd and barbarous custom that often leads to permanent injury of the latter organs. If he chances to have ophthalmia, the barber considers that his eyes need cleaning, and proceeds to wipe out the inner side of the eyelid with his instrument, of course to their serious injury. In the ophthalmic hospitals of Chinese cities European physicians have found this practice a fruitful cause of many diseases of the eyes, but no remonstrances can induce the people and their barbers to give it up.

The mustache, as well as the pigtail of immoderate length, is a badge of a certain dignity, for no man is allowed to cultivate it until he reaches a certain age, and it is an error to suppose that Asiatics are totally devoid of beard, for the old fellows among them sport grisly beards and mustaches of respectable length, and altogether have quite a venerable look. On the stage the emperor and mandarins are represented as bearded like Turks. Indeed the excessive length of their horse-hair mustaches, reaching to their girdles, shows what esteem the people attach to a long, flowing beard.

On first landing in China, the impression given by so many long-tailed and petticoated men is like the memory of a dream wherein one has seen animals walking like men; and, although custom makes the sight familiar, a Chinaman always appears an odd creature, especially when he passes the end of his pigtail under his left shoulder and gently caresses it or twists the final braid. A comical sight, to be seen almost every day in Hong-Kong, is a sepoy policeman leading some Chinese culprit to the lockup: the sepoy, tall and erect, with fierce mustaches, lean as a tiger, and with a warlike air, leading along the meek Chinaman by the end of his pigtail, John Chinaman following at about two paces behind, just at the end of his natural tether.

We have already alluded to the grotesque appearance of an infant a few months old, with close-shaved head, and pigtail two inches long, tied up with a gay ribbon. When the youngster is four years old, and his pigtail has reached the dignity of seven inches, it is duly braided, and constitutes his only dress. Then, being armed with a basket, he is sent out in this primitive and absurd costume to pick chips.

After the barbers, in order of importance among the Chinese shopkeepers, come the coffin makers, and they are very important men indeed, in a country where the worship of ancestors is carried to a degree unknown elsewhere in the world. Their coffins are of all sizes and degrees of finish, but of one invariable shape. Some of those seen in Shanghai cost as much as one thousand taels, equal to $1,500 in American gold. They are extremely massive, more like miniature junks than the shape we are accustomed to associate with the idea of a coffin, the head being higher than the foot, and the lines of the sides swelling gently with very little taper. The boards of the sides and headpiece are at least three inches thick, elaborately carved, and gilded in Chinese characters. The colors are various, black and red predominating. As the body is kept in this massive shell for several months after decease, and in the house of the nearest relative, the good sense of making the walls of extra thickness and strength is very apparent. Even after it is laid in the tomb, in many parts of the country, the style of sepulture allows the coffin to be seen, and it is even exposed to the weather in some cases. Customs differ greatly, however, in different parts of the country. In the flat region about Shanghai, the tombs are found mostly around the little streams flowing into the Yang-tze, or the ocean. The coffins are placed in the open fields, a few shovelfuls of earth are thrown around them, and they are left undisturbed, for the high weeds and the accumulations of centuries to form mounds around them. A few regularly constructed tombs are to be found, but they are rare. In the hill country bordering the China sea, in the province of Foh-Kien, and elsewhere on the coast, when the nature of the land will allow, extensive tombs are hollowed out in the sides of the hills, and the coffins are deposited out of sight. Here a whole family reposes, it may be, in one of these majestic tombs (for, seen from a distance, they have a picturesque and imposing appearance). The popular shape is that of a horseshoe or half moon, the circle being toward the summit of the hill. This portion of the tomb is raised like a crown, and facing it is an altar, with Chinese characters engraven on its pillars, where the offerings of the relatives or worshippers are placed. Before this is a place like a court, railed off and flanked, it may be, by smaller altars on either side, facing other entrances, where the less venerated members of the family are interred. In front of the whole are two high posts, the meaning or use of which, if they have any at all, we are not acquainted with.

On these altars are burnt the paper offerings sent to their departed friends, the manufacture and sale of which occupy a numerous and important class of shops in the great cities. These offerings are generally of gilt and silver paper, in the form of clothes, horses, houses, and other conveniences of which their friends showed their appreciation on earth, and which, by a subtile process of reasoning, they imagine that they can transmit to them in this cheap and ingenious manner--simply by burning these paper effigies at the altars by the tombs! One of the most ingenious and economical of these contrivances, whereby, with a subtlety of argument worthy of the great trafficker in indulgences, Tetzel, who so raised Martin Luther's ire, they manage cheaply to transmit funds to heaven, is the paper dollar, strings of which are sold in the shops, looking exceedingly like goodly bunches of the silvery onion. It is worthy of a people who are so niggardly in all their transactions, who have a copper currency that would sink any man with a fortune invested in it, and who cheat all that come in contact with them, that they should cheat their departed friends with these remittances, a bundle of which are to be obtained for a few cash, and on reaching the other world are understood to pass for a little fortune. In the ordinary affairs of life it is their habit to put three prices on everything they have to sell, and in their dealings with heaven they put their own valuations, amounting to an advance of several thousand per cent., on all their offerings. Could anything be more thoroughly in character?

There is, however, a certain degree of respect paid to the memory of departed friends, and an attachment to the soil where lie the bones of their ancestors, that, in as far as it is harmless, is entitled to our respectful consideration. It gives a domestic, settled character to the people, that is worthy of all praise, and should raise them in our estimation, from whatever cause it may spring. It is well known that they show the highest respect to the aged, and that those who emigrate to foreign lands show the greatest anxiety that after death their remains should be sent back to their own country. Ships from San Francisco are often largely freighted with the coffins of deceased Chinamen; and it is worthy of note that few or none of these belong to men born in Shanghai, the Chinese seen in other lands coming almost exclusively from Canton, Ningpo, and Amoy. The northern and middle population of China is not by nature so restless a class as that of the south, and has borne this character since Europeans have been at all acquainted with the Chinese.

The three kinds of shops to which allusion has been made, those of the cooks, the barbers, and the undertakers, comprise more than one half of all in Shanghai; but besides these are almost as many varieties of trades as we are accustomed to in other more civilized countries. Bankers sit behind their counters, keeping watch over tons of copper cash, neatly threaded in strings of one thousand each, and pay checks and make loans with the same regularity as in cities boasting their superior civilization. Nor are the resources of these native bankers to be despised. On proper security native and foreign merchants have been known to obtain loans of several hundred thousand dollars from one banker. Many of their daily operations are for very considerable amounts, and are adjusted in credits or in silver. Although they are cursed with as abominable a currency as any nation in the world, they do not appear to experience any great difficulty in settlements, every merchant having his balance, and weighing off the proper amount of silver, larger payments being made in sycee. This want of a currency arises from their utter lack of confidence in the coinage of their own country. No currency that the Imperial Government might issue, not like the copper cash, or tsien, incapable of adulteration, would be above suspicion; and while the shameless system of mandarin plunder and fraud continues, it is hopeless to expect a proper currency in China, unless the foreigners interfere or obtain the control in this part of the national affairs which they already have over the customs and the army. A uniform currency, superior to the wretched, worthless cash, is the crying need of China. The Mexican, or chop dollar, becomes sadly depreciated after long circulation, by the clippings and innumerable marks put upon it, so that it will not pass outside of China, nor does it long remain out of the pot of the sycee melter. The American half dollar and quarter and the English shilling are daily becoming more popular for the smaller transactions of the shops, and the notes of the local banks possess considerable circulation in their respective cities; but what is needed more than anything else is an abundance of small silver coinage for the daily ordinary transactions. The Mexican mint is quite inadequate to supply so vast and insatiable a country as China, which should have a currency of its own. No doubt much larger quantities of silver will continue to reach China directly from California, within the next few years, in the shape of bars. The great impetus which the late wild speculations in silver shares is likely to give to the development of the Washoe mines, is almost certain within a very few years to so largely increase the yield of California silver as to rival in amount the immense produce of her gold mines. Careful surveys and the actual yield of mines, such as the Gould & Curry, and Hale & Norcross on the Comstock lead, prove that the ore is there in large quantities, and the stimulus has now been applied which will rapidly bring it to light. With the increasing facilities between San Francisco and Hong-Kong the bulk of this must go to China direct, instead of the roundabout course by which it has reached the East through London. But these are questions that hardly attract attention at present in Shanghai, or among the Shanghai bankers, whose shops we were talking of as met with here and there in the open street.

Next to one of these respectable, long-tailed gentlemen we found a first-class apothecary, whose shop and mode of business were widely different from those of one of the guild at home. The ceilings were swarming with swallows, whose chattering rivalled that of the folks below, conspicuous among whom was a fat, greasy old chap, in the dignity of a gray mustache and a monstrous pair of colored spectacles, the glasses of which were an inch and a half in diameter, rimmed with horn, and tied by a string to his ears. He was gravely busy in compounding a prescription on a piece of paper large enough to cover the side of a chest of tea, and closely written over with Chinese characters. We lounged by his side as he put up packet after packet of dried roots and simples, tasting many of them with his consent. Calamus and liquorice were among them, and camphor, too. Each packet was of the size of a pound paper of Stuart's candy (any child can tell you what size that has), and when the entire prescription was filled, the unfortunate sick man became possessed of no less than twenty-three of these packages, enough to keep famine from his door for a week at least, to judge from their bulk. They filled a goodly basket. It was not one man alone who carried away such a heap of medicines; but before each applicant, as the prescriptions spread on the counter were ticked off, rose a pile of similar packages, which bid fair to become as high as that which had excited our curiosity. All these drugs were put up neatly in the light-yellow paper we are accustomed to see round our packs of fire-crackers, and as neatly sealed with a little gum arabic. Indeed, it is shrewdly suspected by Father Hue, from this prodigious liberality of drugs, that the physicians feel bound to give a man all he pays for, in the hope that out of a multitude of remedies some may chance to suit his case. The foreign residents of Shanghai aver that the doctors take contracts to cure their patients in a certain time, and if unsuccessful at the stipulated day, their patients relieve their minds by a little elegant abuse of their physician, and take the contract to the next in their neighborhood.

It is not uncommon to see their dentists wandering through the streets with rows of old fangs suspended from their necks like necklaces, trophies of their skill; and every dead wall in the city has its vermilion posters, advertising some great quack medicine, so that it is quite evident that the science of medicine has reached that pitch of refinement where a host of quacks can ply their arts with as much success as among the western barbarians.

Heaven save us, though, from a Chinese doctor! Mechanical surgery is his forte; for a stomach ache he will pinch your neck; for a broken rib he will nearly crack the bones of your arm, and if you faint under this he will hang you up by your heels to restore the circulation.

According to the diagrams published in the books on medicine, the knowledge of anatomy possessed by the faculty in China is very slight, and entirely erroneous; and in all their cures it is very probable that nature, unassisted except by rest and fasting for a season, does the work. They certainly are able to give her very little help.

It is noticeable, however, as a proof of the high esteem in which the people hold the science, that the shops of the chemists and apothecaries are kept by a superior class of people, more intelligent in appearance than their neighbors, and holding a higher rank.

Of the lower trades there are innumerable shops, the variety of which is almost bewildering. Every art and manufacture has its minute subdivisions, and one meets, at every step, signs of the superior civilization of the people in their admirable division of labor. Silk looms are working in the open streets, shoemakers and tailors are each plying their art in their narrow shops. In one they manufacture little paper offerings for the gods, in another the gods themselves, in the next their worshippers are supplied with joss-sticks or gayly colored candles of tallow, mounted on slim sticks, that they may be stuck in the sand before the divinity. Here you will find a printer hard at work taking impressions on their delicate paper; next a bookbinder, who sews the leaves with withes of paper, while in the next shop you can procure the almanac for the year, months before it is required. In August, 1863, they were selling copies of the almanac for 1864. Probably this work has the largest circulation of any in the world, hanging, as it does, in every house. The only exception may be the Bible, which, it is to be hoped, will yet be as widely circulated in China as it is among the other nations of the world.

Numbers of the people are engaged in the delicate carving we so much admire in the ivory toys scattered throughout Europe and America, and a vast number of people in preparing the hanging screens with curious devices, quaint pictures, and sentences from Confucius, which are found in almost every house of the better class. They have a great fondness for the proverbs and wise sayings which, are thus kept always before their children, like the very good rules and aphorisms we see on the walls of our Sunday schools.

A good example of the minute subdivision of the Chinese trades is seen in the shops devoted exclusively to the sale of camel's-hair pencils, and others for that of the little squares of red paper, covered with hieroglyphics, which we receive on a pack of fire-crackers, and which constitute its 'chop.'

Jewellers' shops contain very little interesting to a foreigner--most of the rings and brooches are trashy articles of jade-stone, a greenish stone which resembles agate or cornelian in opaqueness. The armlets are of silver, and of the same substance are the large thin circles worn by the women of Foh-Kien in the ear and resting on the shoulder. Pins for the fantastic pyramid they erect with their rich black hair are rather pretty, but are generally ornamented with false pearls. For pearls the Chinese have a passion, but it requires a judge of the article to purchase any from them, nine tenths of those in the shops being fictitious. Seed pearls are also used by them as medicines. In the back streets it is not uncommon to find places where they make them, and others where artists are engaged in cutting and polishing on the lathe the few precious stones they possess. Rock crystal is one of their favorites, and from it they cut beautiful vases and goblets that are sometimes as clear as glass. In this, however, they are surpassed by the Japanese, whoso crystal globes cannot be distinguished from the most perfect glass. They also cut vases and carve odd figures in an arsenical stone, of reddish color, with a grain like granite, which is little known in other countries.

In Shanghai the shops for the sale of china and porcelain-ware do not present as fine an assortment as those of Canton, where vases costing fabulous sums are to be seen, but they are rich with the peculiar pottery of Soo-Chow. Just at present the display of this ware is not as fine as usual, owing to the occupation of that city by the Tae-Pings, but enough remains on hand to show its beauty and general usefulness. Chinese porcelain ware is as well known in every civilized country of the world as in China itself, and has ceased to be a curiosity unless when intelligently viewed in its historical character, for all these quaint scenes scattered over the magnificent vases we receive illustrate some event in Chinese history, or some custom which obtains among the people.

When evening approaches and the shops are lit up with lanterns, the numerous and brilliant lantern warehouses attract the attention: some of the goods they display (and at nightfall they light every lantern in the shop) are extremely beautiful and costly; all kinds are to be obtained, from the fine hall-lamp of painted glass to the sixpenny lantern to be carried in the hand. At night these gay lights give much animation to the busy streets. Having gone across Shanghai from the south gate to the French Concession one dark night, after the city gates were closed, a good opportunity of seeing the interior of a Chinese city after nightfall (which few foreigners care to avail themselves of) presented itself. The people were slowly closing their shops for the night. Here and there a shopkeeper was counting his cash, and calculating at his counter with the help of the abacus; many of them were sitting at the doors of their houses, smoking in the evening air; the barbers were still at work preparing their customers for the night. Like Washington Irving, these may have considered a good clean shave the best soporific. Here and there a citizen of the better class was to be seen picking his way by the light of a lantern, held by a boy, and twice we met sedan chairs containing women, preceded by a lantern bearer. The passage of two sedans in these narrow streets is a difficult and unpleasant process, the bearers generally managing to grind your shins against a wall. At night it is still more difficult to avoid contact, and the coolies are incessantly shouting, in a sing-song voice, to prepare the way. As it was, in the narrower streets we passed between files of dusky figures and black, inquisitive eyes, ranged on either side to barely allow passage. The cook-shops were deserted, and the attendants busy in putting out the fires; only the places where lanterns or candles were sold seemed to be doing an active trade, although it had scarcely struck nine. At ten o'clock no doubt all were asleep, for hosts of beggars and poor wretches were snoring by the roadsides. The most picturesque groups passed in this evening stroll were those on the bridges, where, by the light of tallow candles, men and boys were gambling and fighting crickets. Although probably there was not another European or American within the walls of the city, the passage was as safe as if made at noonday, guarded by a file of soldiers.

A visit to Shanghai would be incomplete if the traveller failed to inspect the numerous and very curious temples, and to contrast them with the church edifices erected in the heart of the city by the Protestant missionaries. There is one without the walls, in the French Concession, where all the instruments of torture, the devilish devices of heathen cruelty, are to be seen, a horrid spectacle. The largest of the temples, however, is within the walls, approached through a wide court, with a fountain (not in use) in the centre. This court is crowded with fortune tellers, conjurors, and gamblers of every kind. Some of these gentry play a game very much like thimble-rigging, in which copper cash, appears under different inverted teacups. Every man who approaches the idol draws from among the fortune tellers a stick or a piece of paper, from the figure on which he is supposed to tell whether his prayer will succeed, or the work he contemplates prove lucky. Entering the shrine, it is difficult to see for a few moments, so gloomy is the place and so grimy every object with the smoke of joss offerings from time immemorial. A kind of altar faces the worshippers, with a box of sand, in which are stuck the burning joss-sticks. Before this is a cushion, on which they prostrate themselves, telling their beads, as they recite their prayers inaudibly, and bowing to the earth at intervals of a few minutes. Behind the altar are the idols. These hideous figures are twice the size of life, and of frightful shape and features, the principal god being in a tent-like shrine, which permits only a glimpse of his grim features in the background. On his right hand is the figure of a man with the beak of an eagle, and on his left a very grotesque divinity, with a third eye, like that of the Cyclops, in the centre of his forehead. These two figures, again, are supported by gigantic guardians, one on either side, who have nothing absolutely monstrous about them, being distinguished by their saturnine expression. That to the right hand bears a striking likeness to Daniel Webster's stern and well-known features. The deep-set eye and compressed lip were those of the great expounder.

A heavy cloud from the burning candles and paper offerings filled the air, and the smell of candle snuff mingled with that of incense. A high railing separated the worshippers from the idols, but the priests were quite indifferent and not at all exclusive; so, passing around and without removing our hats, we made a close inspection of the respected carvings. A nearer view did not increase their attractions, so, passing up a flight of stairs, we entered a room where the bonzes were busy praying for rain and apparently going through a species of litany with open books in their hands. Our entrance stopped proceedings for a minute or two, but they soon resumed, quite indifferently, singing and drawling as though it were tedious, tiresome work.

They were all good-looking men, in the prime of life, dressed in scarlet and embroidered robes of much richness. Unlike the rest of the people, they neither shaved nor wore the cue. We found them drawn in a line before the altar, from which they were separated by a screen: an open porch at their back let in light and air. Each priest had before him a little table with a fancy gilt screen upon it, and as they slowly proceeded with their drawl, at convenient intervals, each made a slight bow behind his screen, his head touching it. As they did this with the regularity of drilled soldiers, and to the pounding of a tom-tom, they evidently were chanting in chorus, although the ear would have failed to distinguish it. The tom-toms and wooden drums were beaten at the pleasure of the parties in charge: nothing like time was apparent to any but a Chinese ear.

The idol was a little gilt figure, about six inches high, with the body of a beast and the head of a man. His peculiarity was the possession of a supplementary eye, which, as his natural pair squinted horribly, no doubt was very useful. His position was on a little table surrounded by tall candles; whether they were borrowed from the Roman Catholics or the Catholics borrowed the custom from them is a question for the student of church history. Before the idol was placed another table with ten elegant bowls, scarcely larger than our teacups, filled with the choicest fruits and grains that the market afforded. Each article was perfect of its kind. Rice, tea, the nelumbium, and agaric, a species of fungus, were among them. Just then the country being in great want of rain, the priests were trying the coaxing process, and tempting the god with the best chow-chow to be had; but the next day they got out of patience, and were to be met parading him through the dusty streets, exposed to a fierce sun, for the purpose of giving him to understand that the heat was quite as disagreeable as they had represented it.

Their arguments for this proceeding are extremely logical: they say that Joss, in his cool temple, laughs at them, and is disposed to think that they are humbugging him; therefore, if they give him two or three hours of good skin-roasting in the sun, he will be much more likely to come to terms, to avoid a repetition of the process. As they do this every day until rain comes, it is of course seen in a short time, if they are patient, that it never fails in the end.

Indeed, it is quite common to meet in all the large cities processions of priests, followed by the rabble, who are giving 'Joss an airing.' The eminently practical object of these mummeries argues very little genuine respect for the deity, an inference that has often been drawn by missionaries from other points in their treatment of their idols.

Their worship of them, such as it is, is almost universal. Every house has its shrine and altar, and even in the porches of foreign residents in the quarters occupied by the Chinese servants, one sometimes (although not often) sees a little figure in a niche, with a tiny joss-stick before it. Every junk and sampan has its tutelary idol. A little shrine of bamboo of the size of a common birdcage is built for it, sometimes fixed and sometimes movable. The interior of this was gilded once, but the gilt is worn and tarnished by smoke and water. It has doors that open when the joss-sticks are to be burnt before the toy figure that presides on a miniature throne. A sampan whose owners are too poor to supply themselves with decent clothing, will be sure to have its tawdry baby-house and doll idol, and it frequently has in addition a roll of paper, four feet by one, like a window curtain, with, a gay picture of Joss, in a scarlet dress, in the act of dancing, and generally in a very absurd posture for such a respectable character.

Every evening at sunset there is a prodigious hubbub from the junks on the Woosung, made with tom-toms, drums, and other unmelodious instruments, which are vigorously beaten for ten or fifteen minutes, to bring good luck, and propitiate the devils, or frighten them away for the night. From the shore, the rapid motions of a dozen arms on the high poop of each junk, tossed aloft in the dusk, and the discordant, harsh sounds that come from so many vessels at once, arrest the attention of the stranger, and once seen and heard, are never forgotten.

The pagodas, so often mentioned in accounts of the Chinese empire, appear to be more numerous in the mountainous districts, where they add greatly to the picturesque charm of the scenery, and are believed to be connected with the religious ceremonies of the people. In the flat country around Shanghai they are not to be met with; at least it was not our fortune to see any during our brief stay. The only structure like a tower, if we except the turrets on the city walls and watch towers erected within the past few years, when the Tae-Pings have threatened the city, is a tall, white monument, rising to the height of twenty feet, and without inscription or distinguishing mark of any kind. It looks like a fine, white tomb, higher and more ambitious than usual, and truly it is a 'whited sepulchre'! Baby Tower, it is called by the foreign residents, for it is filled with the bones of infants--not such as have died a natural death, as Bayard Taylor asserts, but which have been thrust into this horrid monument of heathen cruelty when but a few hours old. Humanity shudders at the thought! These dazzling white baby towers, with their mockery of purity, their object known to all men, and openly inviting, as it were, the most unnatural and heartless of murders, are among the most hideous spectacles to be met with in a heathen land. True, a river or a pond will be pointed out to you in other parts of China, or in India, where babies are daily drowned like puppies or kittens; but they do not affect the mind with such a horror as these palpable structures, erected with the best skill of their architects for this express purpose. The water closes over the murdered infant, and no trace of the crime remains; but here is a tower--a high tower--with deep foundations, filled with the bones of murdered babes that have been accumulating for generations.

No wonder that Christian mothers, resident in the East, cannot speak of them or see them without a shudder, and never willingly pass them in their drives. Who knows but they might hear, if they approached the tower, the wail of some poor infant just thrown in, or meet its father returning from his cruel errand!

At Shanghai the Baby Tower stands on the southwest side of the city, without the walls, but at Foo-Chow, where the crime of infanticide is still more prevalent, they use no baby towers, but have provided ponds for this express purpose. It is the saddest part of this great national crime of the Chinese, that it is sanctioned by the mandarins, and viewed as a disagreeable necessity, not as a crime.

It has been the fashion of late years to deny the existence of this abomination; the doubters, wise in their own conceit, insisting that the crime is too great for human nature.

Human nature, unfortunately, has proved but a frail barrier to crime of this character in all parts of the world, and the facts of Chinese infanticide are indisputable. The witnesses are too numerous, the crime is too public, and the evidences of it too notorious to deny its existence. The children destroyed are girls; the most common methods of destroying them are: 1st, by drowning in a tub of water; 2d, by throwing into some running stream; 3d, by burying alive. The last-named mode is adopted under the hope and with the superstitious belief that the next birth will be a boy. The excuse is that it is too expensive to educate a girl, but if some friend will take the child to bring up as a wife for a little boy, the parents will sell or give away the infant rather than destroy it. The regular price is two thousand copper cash, or $2, for every year of their lives; for sometimes a girl will be saved for a year or two, and then sold for a wife or slave. Many instances have come to the notice of missionaries where large families of girls have been destroyed. There is one woman now employed as a nurse in a missionary's family at Fuh-Chow, who says that her mother had eight girls and three boys, and that she was the only girl permitted by her father to live. We never heard of an instance of a boy's being destroyed at birth. There is a village about fifteen miles from Fuh-Chow, which is swarming with boys, but where girls are very scarce. The people account for it themselves by alleging the common practice of killing the girls at birth, a practice which is indulged in by the rich as well as by the poor.[2]

But to enter into all the particularities of Chinese life which attract the attention at Shanghai as in other cities, would be to compile an account of China and her customs.

The points of real importance to be considered in connection with Shanghai, which is fast becoming the commercial centre of Chinese exports, are the extent to which foreigners have an influence on the people in modifying their habits, increasing their knowledge, and dispelling their prejudices. The growth of European influence and the complete opening of the Chinese empire, in which immense advances have been made in the last three years, will, in time, it is to be hoped, lead to the diffusion of the Christian religion, a work attended with such gigantic difficulties, at the present day, that one cannot sufficiently admire the courage, patience, and faith which actuate missionaries to this empire. No representations of these difficulties which reach the Christian world have done justice to them, for it is necessary to observe the heartlessness, self-conceit, and prodigious prejudices of the Chinese to appreciate the noble zeal of the missionaries. The course of trade and much more correct notions of the power and objects of the Western nations, and the firmness with which they use the former to secure the latter, are unquestionably breaking up with rudeness the ridiculous ideas of the Chinese concerning their own importance and superior wisdom. If once they can be made learners in good earnest, the battle is half won, for none doubt their intelligence. European influence, alone, has effected great changes in five years, and European and Chinese combined may, in the five years to come, work out still greater reforms.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Sir Frederick Bruce, in a recent report to the Foreign Office, says:

'The growth of Shanghai is wonderful; its population is estimated at 1,500,000, and it bids fair to become soon the most important city of the East. The Chinese flock to it on account of the security it enjoys; and the silk manufacture, which was destroyed by the Taiping occupation of Soochow and Hangchow, is taking root at Shanghai.'--Pekin, 30th April, 1863.

[2] Civilized nations profess to look with abhorrence on the Chinese crime of infanticide, and to believe that the statements of travellers and missionaries are incredible; but a careful examination of the mortuary tables of London, Paris, New York, Dublin, Moscow, and other cities, will show that infanticide is far more common than supposed. It is a crime easily hidden and hard to trace. Take the foundling hospitals as a guide to some approximate estimate of the amount of infanticide in France. We find that she has upwards of 360 hospitals; that in Paris alone, in five years, from 1819 to 1823, 25,277 children were received, of whom eleven thirteenths died, and that the annual number of enfans trouvés ranges from 3,800 to 4,500. These children, but for the hospital, would have been murdered. Who can tell how many are thrown into the sewers of Paris? A recent writer states the number at 10,000, but we deem this an exaggeration. It is significant that the percentage of births and deaths in all France is less far the births and greater for the deaths than in England. These tables we annex.

It is still more significant that the returns of foundling hospitals, from widely different countries, show that these institutions, however charitable and humane their object, are to be viewed as conveniences for murdering an infant without the actual violence at which humanity revolts. The proportion of abandoned children who live is so exceedingly small, that abandonment of a child to a foundling hospital is scarcely less than murder. If the child live, it may be viewed, almost, as a direct act of Providence.

Of 62,000 children brought into the Paris foundling hospitals, 52,500 died.

In Dublin, 19,420 children were received in ten years, of whom 17,440 died.

In Moscow, 37,000 children were received in twenty years, of whom 35,000 died.

COMPARATIVE VIEW OF MOVEMENT OF POPULATION OF -------------------------------------++------------------------ ENGLAND. || FRANCE. -----------+------------+------------++------------+----------- | 1860. | 1861. || 1860. | 1861. -----------+------------+------------++------------+----------- Population | 19,902,918 | 20,119,496 || 35,597,461 | 36,752,565 Marriages | 170,156 | 163,706 || 290,657 | 283,642 Births | 684,018 | 693,406 || 953,315 | 987,830 Deaths | 422,721 | 435,114 || 782,764 | 848,174 -----------+------------+------------++------------+----------- | Percentage. || Percentage. -----------+------------+------------++------------+----------- Marriages | .855 | .814 || .794 | .772 Births | 3.437 | 3.461 || 2.605 | 2.688 Deaths | 2.124 | 2.163 || 2.139 | 2.308 -----------+------------+------------++------------+-----------

ON HEARING A 'TRIO.

'All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,'
Thrilled through the wildering harmonies
That from the music came.

All soothing sounds of nature blent,
In wonderful accord,
With pleadings, wild and passionate,
From human hearts outpoured.

The wailings of the world's sad heart,
Oppressed with social wrongs,
In mournful monotones were mixed
With sounds of angel songs.

The falling of a nation's tears
O'er Freedom's prostrate form,
Dew droppings sweet from starry spheres,
Swift-rushing wings of storm.

The voices of Time's children three--
Past, Present, Future, blent
In that wild 'trio's' harmony,
Thrilled each fine instrument.

And, at the sound, my soul awoke,
And saw the dawning clear
Of Freedom's coming day illume
Earth's clouded atmosphere!

THE IDEAL MAN FOR UNIVERSAL IMITATION; OR, THE SINLESS PERFECTION OF JESUS.

(A POSITIVE REPLY TO STRAUSS AND RENAN.)

The first impression which we receive from the life of Jesus, is that of perfect innocency and sinlessness in the midst of a sinful world. He, and He alone, carried the spotless purity of childhood untarnished through his youth and manhood. Hence the lamb and the dove are his appropriate symbols.