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Page 22
"On this particular occasion I was on the river Peiho, in one of the
clumsy Chinese river-boats. If the wind were favourable, we sailed; if
we went with the stream--well and good. If neither stream nor wind were
in our favour, the boat was towed."
"Like a barge--with a horse--Cousin Peregrine?"
"Like a barge, Maggie, but not with a horse. One or two of the Chinamen
put the rope round them and pulled us along. It was not a quick way of
travelling, as you may believe, and when the Peiho was slow and winding,
I got out and walked by the paths among the fields."
"Paths and fields--like ours?"
"Yes. Very like some bits of the agricultural parts of England. But no
pretty meadows. Every scrap of land seemed to be cultivated for crops.
You know the population of China is enormous, and the Chinese are very
economical in using their land to produce food, and as they are not
great meat-eaters--as we are--their fields are mostly ploughed and sown,
so I walked along among rice-fields and cotton-fields, and with little
villages here and there, where the cottages are built of mud or stone
with tile roofs."
"Did you see any of the villagers?"
"Most certainly I did. You must know that the inhospitable way in which
the Chinese and Japanese have for many long years received strangers has
come from misunderstandings, and ignorance, and suspicion, and perhaps
from some other reasons; but the Chinese and Japanese villagers who see
strangers for the first time, and have lived quiet country lives out of
the way of politics, are often very hospitable and friendly. I am bound,
however, to except the women; not because they wished us ill, but they
are afraid of strangers, and they kept well out of our way."
"Do the village Chinese women have those funny smashed-up feet, Cousin
Peregrine?"
"In the north of China they have. In the south only ladies deform
themselves in this fashion; and the Tartar women always leave their own
beautiful little feet uninjured. Well, the men came out of their
cottages and fields, and pressed eagerly but good-naturedly round me."
"Do the village men wear pigtails?"
"Every Chinaman wears a pigtail. A Chinaman without a pigtail would be
as great a rarity as a Manx cat, or rather, I ought to say, he would be
like the tailless fox in the fable; only you would never catch a
Chinaman trying to persuade his friends that it was creditable to have
no tail! For I must tell you that pigtails are sometimes cut off--as a
degradation--when a man has committed some crime. But as soon as he can,
he gets the barber to put him on a false pigtail, as a closely-cropped
convict might wear a wig. They roll them up when they are at work if
they are in the way, but if a servant came into your room with his tail
tucked up you would be very angry with him, It would be like a
housemaid coming in with her sleeves and skirt tucked up for
house-cleaning--_most_ disrespectful!"
"Were these the men you showed something to that _they_ thought
wonderful?"
"Yes, Fred. And now I'll tell you what it was. You must know that I
could speak no Chinese, and my new friends could speak no English, so
they chattered like magpies to each other, and laughed like children or
Chinamen--for the Chinese are very fond of a joke. When they laughed I
laughed, and we bowed and shook hands, and they turned me round and felt
me all over, and _felt my hands_."
"What about your hands, Cousin?"
"I had on dog-skin gloves, yellow ones. Now when all the male population
of the hamlet had stroked these very carefully, I perceived that they
had never seen gloves before, and that they believed themselves to be
testing the feel of a barbarian's skin."
"Barbarian?"
"Certainly, Bessie. They give us the same polite name that we feel
ourselves more justified in applying to them. Well, when they had
laughed, and I had laughed, and we had shaken hands afresh, laughing
heartily as we did so, and I began to feel it was time to go on and
catch up my boat, which was floating sluggishly down the winding stream
of the Peiho, I resolved on one final effect, like the last scene of a
dramatic performance. Making vigorous signs and noises, to intimate that
something was coming, and they must look out sharp, and feeling very
much like a conjurer who has requested his audience to keep their eyes
on him and 'see how it's done'--I slyly unbuttoned my gloves, and then
with much parade began to draw one off by the finger-tips.
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