China and the West

Kipling, Rudyard. From sea to sea [ID D314219]. (2)
No 12.
A Further Consideration of Japan. The Inland Sea and Good Cookery. The Mystery of Passports and Consulates and Certain Other Matters.
As in Nagasaki, the town was full of babies, and as in Nagasaki, every one smiled except the Chinamen. I do not like Chinamen. There was something in their faces which I could not understand, though it was familiar enough.
"The Chinaman's a native," I said. "That's the look on a native's face, but the Jap isn't a native, and he isn't a sahib either. What is it?" The Professor considered the surging street for a while.
"The Chinaman's an old man when he's young, just as a native is, but the Jap is a child all his life. Think how grown-up people look among children. That's the look that's puzzling you."
I dare not say that the Professor is right, but to my eyes it seemed he spoke sooth. As the knowledge of good and evil sets its mark upon the face of a grown man of Our people, so something I did not understand had marked the faces of the Chinamen. They had no kinship with the crowd beyond that which a man has to children.
"They are the superior race," said the Professor, ethnologically.
"They can't be. They don't know how to enjoy life," I answered immorally. "And, anyway, their art isn't human."
"What does it matter?" said the Professor. "Here's a shop full of the wrecks of old Japan. Let's go in and look." We went in, but I want somebody to solve the Chinese question for me. It's too large to handle alone….

No 14.
Explains in what Manner I was taken to Venice in the Rain and climbed into a Devil Fort; a Tin-pot Exhibition and a Bath. Of the Maiden and the Boltless Door, the Cultivator and his Fields, and the Manufacture of Ethnological Theories at Railroad Speed. Ends with Kioto.
They know the curve in China, and I have seen French artists, introduce it into books describing a devil-besieged city of Tartary…

No. 15.
Kioto and how I fell in love with the chief belle there after I had conferred with certain China merchants who trafficked in tea. Shows further how, in a great temple, I broke the tenth commandment in fifty-three places and bowed own before Kano and a carpenter. Takes me to Arashima.
A company of China tea-merchants were gathered in the smoking-room after dinner, and by consequence talked their own "shop," which was interesting. Their language is not Our language, for they know nothing of the tea-gardens, of drying and withering and rolling, of the assistant who breaks his collar-bone in the middle of the busiest season, or of the sickness that smites the coolie lines at about the same time. They are happy men who get their tea by the break of a thousand chests from the interior of the country and play with it upon the London markets. None the less they have a very wholesome respect for Indian tea, which they cordially detest. Here is the sort of argument that a Foochow man, himself a very heavy buyer, flung at me across the table.
"You may talk about your Indian teas,—Assam and Kangra, or whatever you call them,—but I tell you that if ever they get a strong hold in England, the doctors will be down on them, Sir. They'll be medically forbidden. See if they aren't. They shatter your nerves to pieces. Unfit for human consumption—that's what they are. Though I don't deny they are selling at Home. They don't keep, though. After three months, the sorts that I've seen in London turn to hay."
"I think you are wrong there," said a Hankow man. "My experience is that the Indian teas keep better than ours by a long way. But"—turning to me—"if we could only get the China Government to take off the duties, we could smash Indian tea and every one connected with it. We could lay down tea in Mincing Lane at threepence a pound. No, we do not adulterate our teas. That's one of your tricks in India. We get it as pure as yours—every chest in the break equal to sample."
"You can trust your native buyers then?" I interrupted.
"Trust 'em? Of course we can," cut in the Foochow merchant. "There are no tea-gardens in China as you understand them. The peasantry cultivate the tea, and the buyers buy from them for cash each season. You can give a Chinaman a hundred thousand dollars and tell him to turn it into tea of your own particular chop—up to sample. Of course the man may be a thorough-paced rogue in many ways, but he knows better than to play the fool with an English house. Back comes your tea—a thousand half-chests, we'll say. You open perhaps five, and the balance go home untried. But they are all equal to sample. That's business, that is. The Chinaman's a born merchant and full of backbone. I like him for business purposes. The Jap's no use. He isn't man enough to handle a hundred thousand dollars. Very possibly he'd run off with it—or try to."
"The Jap has no business savvy. God knows I hate the Chinamen," said a bass voice behind the tobacco smoke, "but you can do business with him. The Jap's a little huckster who can't see beyond his nose."
They called for drinks and told tales, these merchants of China,—tales of money and bales and boxes,—but through all their stories there was an implied leaning upon native help which, even allowing for the peculiarities of China, was rather startling. "The compradore did this: Ho Whang did that: a syndicate of Pekin bankers did the other thing"—and so on. I wondered whether a certain lordly indifference as to details had anything to do with eccentricities in the China tea-breaks and fluctuations of quality, which do occur in spite of all the men said to the contrary. Again, the merchants spoke of China as a place where fortunes are made—a land only waiting to be opened up to pay a hundredfold. They told me of the Home Government helping private trade, in kind and unobtrusive ways, to get a firmer hold on the Public Works Department contracts that are now flying abroad. This was pleasant hearing. But the strangest thing of all was the tone of hope and almost contentment that pervaded their speech. They were well-to-do men making money, and they liked their lives. You know how, when two or three of Us are gathered together in our own barren pauper land, we groan in chorus and are disconsolate. The civilian, the military man, and the merchant, they are all alike. The one overworked and broken by exchange, the second a highly organised beggar, and the third a nobody in particular, always at loggerheads with what he considers an academical Government. I knew in a way that We were a grim and miserable community in India, but I did not know the measure of Our fall till I heard men talking about fortunes, success, money, and the pleasure, good living, and frequent trips to England that money brings. Their friends did not seem to die with unnatural swiftness, and their wealth enabled them to endure the calamity of Exchange with calm. Yes, we of India are a wretched folk…

No 17.
Of the Nature of the Tokaido and Japanese Railway Construction. One Traveller explains the Life of the Sahib-Log, and Another the Origin of Dice. Of the Babies in the Bath Tub and the Man in D.
You can never be certain whether the little beggar means what he says. Give me a Chinaman to deal with. Other men have told you that, have they? You'll find that opinion at most of the treaty ports…

No 18.
Concerning a Hot-water Tap, and Some General Conversation.
A Chinaman, on an average, is out and away a bigger rogue than a Jap; but he has sense enough to see that honesty is the best policy, and to act by that light. A Jap will be dishonest just to save himself trouble. He's like a child that way."…

No 21.
Shows the Similarity between the Babu and the Japanese. Contains the Earnest Outcry of an Unbeliever. The Explanation of Mr. Smith of California and Elsewhere. Takes me on Board Ship after Due Warning to those who follow.
"I shall write that a man can do himself well from Calcutta to Yokohama, stopping at Rangoon, Moulmein, Penang, Singapur, Hong-Kong, Canton, and taking a month in Japan, for about sixty pounds—rather less than more. But if he begins to buy curios, that man is lost…

No 24.
Shows how through Folly I assisted at a Murder and was Afraid. The Rule of the Democracy and the Despotism of the Alien.
It was a bad business throughout, and the only consolation is that it was all my fault. A man took me round the Chinese quarter of San Francisco, which is a ward of the city of Canton set down in the most eligible business-quarter of the place. The Chinaman with his usual skill has possessed himself of good brick fire-proof buildings and, following instinct, has packed each tenement with hundreds of souls, all living in filth and squalor not to be appreciated save by you in India. That cursory investigation ought to have sufficed; but I wanted to know how deep in the earth the Pig-tail had taken root. Therefore I explored the Chinese quarter a second time and alone, which was foolishness. No one in the filthy streets (but for the blessed sea breezes San Francisco would enjoy cholera every season) interfered with my movements, though many asked for cumshaw. I struck a house about four stories high full of celestial abominations, and began to burrow down; having heard that these tenements were constructed on the lines of icebergs—two-thirds below sight level. Downstairs I crawled past Chinamen in bunks, opium-smokers, brothels, and gambling hells, till I had reached the second cellar—was in fact, in the labyrinths of a warren. Great is the wisdom of the Chinaman. In time of trouble that house could be razed to the ground by the mob, and yet hide all its inhabitants in brick-walled and wooden-beamed subterranean galleries, strengthened with iron-framed doors and gates. On the second underground floor a man asked for cumshaw and took me downstairs to yet another cellar, where the air was as thick as butter, and the lamps burned little holes in it not more than an inch square. In this place a poker club had assembled and was in full swing. The Chinaman loves "pokel," and plays it with great skill, swearing like a cat when he loses…
The Chinaman was gripping the table with both hands and staring in front of him at an empty chair. The Mexican had gone, and a little whirl of smoke was floating near the roof. Still gripping the table, the Chinaman said: "Ah!" in the tone that a man would use when, looking up from his work suddenly, he sees a well-known friend in the doorway. Then he coughed and fell over to his own right, and I saw that he had been shot in the stomach…
I became aware that, save for two men leaning over the stricken one, the room was empty; and all the tides of intense fear, hitherto held back by intenser curiosity, swept over my soul. I ardently desired the outside air. It was possible that the Chinamen would mistake me for the Mexican,—everything horrible seemed possible just then,—and it was more than possible that the stairways would be closed while they were hunting for the murderer…
Fear compounded of past knowledge of the Oriental—only other white man—available witness—three stories underground—and the cough of the Chinaman now some forty feet under my clattering boot-heels…
Wherefore I would impress it upon you who follow after, do not knock about the Chinese quarters at night and alone. You may stumble across a picturesque piece of human nature that will unsteady your nerves for half a day…

No 25.
Tells how I dropped into Politics and the Tenderer Sentiments. Contains a Moral Treatise on American Maidens and an Ethnological One on the Negro. Ends with a Banquet and a Type-writer.
It is enough to travel with a policeman in a tram-car and while he arranges his coat-tails as he sits down, to catch sight of a loaded revolver. It is enough to know that fifty per cent of the men in the public saloons carry pistols about them. The Chinaman waylays his adversary and methodically chops him to pieces with his hatchet…
He, and he alone, in this insane city will wait at table (the Chinaman doesn't count). He is untrained, inept, but he will fill the place and draw the pay…

No 27.
Shows how I caught Salmon in the Clackamas.
Only Chinamen were employed on the work, and they looked like blood-besmeared yellow devils, as they crossed the rifts of sunlight that lay upon the floor. When our consignment arrived, the rough wooden boxes broke of themselves as they were dumped down under a jet of water, and the salmon burst out in a stream of quicksilver. A Chinaman jerked up a twenty-pounder, beheaded and de-tailed it with two swift strokes of a knife, flicked out its internal arrangements with a third, and cast it into a bloody-dyed tank. The headless fish leaped from under his hands as though they were facing a rapid. Other Chinamen pulled them from the vat and thrust them under a thing like a chaff-cutter, which, descending, hewed them into unseemly red gobbets fit for the can. More Chinamen with yellow, crooked fingers, jammed the stuff into the cans, which slid down some marvellous machine forthwith, soldering their own tops as they passed. Each can was hastily tested for flaws, and then sunk, with a hundred companions, into a vat of boiling water, there to be half cooked for a few minutes…
Our steamer only stayed twenty minutes at that place, but I counted two hundred and forty finished cans, made from the catch of the previous night, ere I left the slippery, blood-stained, scale-spangled, oily floors, and the offal-smeared Chinamen…