CHINA AND THE CHILDREN

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 81, 29 December 1928, Page 21

CHINA AND THE CHILDREN

A NATIONAL' CHARACTERISTIC

The Chinese are at once an engaging and a disconcerting people to live among. Their courtesy and merriment appeal at once; everyone must admire the meticulous and unvarying excellence of their craftsmanship and their routine work; North Europeans instinctively like them for their tremendous physical strength, their passion for horse-racing and betting, their love of children and their relatively decent treatinent*of animals. In the streets of. Peking I saw plenty of laden donkeys with sore withers, it is true, but just as many coolies, yoked with an ox or ass, hauling heavy loads with shoulders galled to the bone; they treat the dumb creation much as they treat themselves. There is none of the heartrending starvation of animals that one sees in India, nor the sickening and deliberate cruelties of Southern Europe—perhaps this is because the principal draught animal in Peking is still man. Their love of children is astonishing, and is not confined to their own offspring, whom they bring up in perfect obedience and with exquisite gentleness. (During my whole stay in China I only three times saw a child crying in the street.) They simply cannot resist children in any shape or form. One day when I was newly arrived in Peking I took my three children to see the Forbidden City. To our surprise we found the great goldenroofed courts thronged with people; processions of soldiers, processions of Boy Scouts, and Girl Guides, were streaming through the crowds; men on hustings harangued the bystanders with great violate; the w’alls were plastered with the most grisly posters of Chinese bayoneting the foreigner, pounding the foreigner, shooting the foreigner. We learned next day that memorial celebrations for Sun Yat Sen had been taking place, combined with an anriforeign demonstration, and the orators were inciting the crowd to drive out the “foreign devils”—but I and my three small foreign devils strolled ignorantly about iu trie middle of all this for hours, and the only inconvenience we suffered was from the excess of admiration and interest which the children aroused. Audiences on catching sight of them left the speakers who were urging our destruction to come and stare and smile in a close ring; they fingered the children’s clothes, and gave gentle strokes and pats to their heads and hands. It was an excellent example of the inconsequence of the Chinese character, and of the flat unreality of much of the alleged anti-foreign feeling. It is this inconsequence which is so disconcerting and makes life in China so peculiarly uncertain. With these laughter-loving, highly nervous, rather childishly hysterical people it is impossible to tell beforehand which way the cat is going, so to speak, to jump. Sometimes firmness will save you in an emergency, more often a joke; the greatest safeguard is to know the language and understand what is going on; rule one is always to preserve your sang-froid. But it is on his own efforts that the foreigner must really rely for his comfort and safety—official protection, outside the Concessions, hardly exists. I* was returning one day by car with another woman from the Summer Palace, some miles from Peking; at a narrow bridge With a panelled

marble parapet we were held up by a group of soldiers, who climbed on to the running-boards and announced their intention of driving back with us to the city. The chauffeur, chat ing with fright, offered no resistance. In the conventional drawl I asked the soldiers what they wanted; they repeated, roughly enough, that they were going to come with us. Still drawling, I told them that I hen pu ai (extremely did not like) their company—moreover that if they rode with. us they would have to come with me to the British Legation and there explain why they had ridden in my car against my wishes. This threat I had of course no manner of power to enforce, but it answered —the soldiers withdrew grumbling to discuss it all with a policeman who had stood by, smoking, a silent and passive spectator of the contretemps. But generally it is the joke which does it. No more than they can resist the appeal of children can the Chiuese resist a joke—it is one of their most engaging characteristics. I have seen people extricated from many a tight place by the feeblest of jests. I was walking one day in the mountains twenty miles from-Peking with a little girl of twelve as my only companion; we reached a village where a beautiful arched gateway crowns a paved pass over the hills. A venerable peasant insisted on our pausing to visit the extremely uninteresting temple, and we were accompanied on our rounds of the flagged courtyards and paint 1 shrines by a pig, a small hoy, and a man carrying a baby. When we went on our way the small boy followed us. up the mountain of our choice and down again, padding along in his ragged blue clothes and string-soled shoes, chattering all the way. Ou our return some hours later we found a group of peasants gathered under the apricot tree which served for the village pub: to them the small boy ran, spoke, and running back to us asked for a “cliot’ien” (pourboire—it is literally “winemoney”). I had in my purse only two maos—small silver coins worth about threepence—one of which I gave him. And then, sudden as a squall on a Scottish loch, blew up one of those ugly gusts of temper which are so bewildering and so dangerous to the stranger. As we neared the tree angry people stepped up to us on both sides, some scolding us for not giving the boy a larger cho-t’ien, others complaining that we had not tipped the old man who had shown us round the temple. It, became rather disagreeable—we were many miles from home, and the crowd actually, began to hustle tis; moreover, as I had only one more mao I could not possibly meet both claims. I had a bright idea. Conspicuous in the group were the aged man, the man with the baby and—slumbering beneath the tree —the pig. “What?” I said—“ Does every man in this village want comsha?” (a tip). “What about the baby?” I pointed. “He took us to the temple too. Does the pig also,” I pointed again, “want a cho-t’ien? He was there!” This witticism produced general delight and completely restored good temper; the old man was given the remaining mao, and a group of well-wishers even escorted us half a mile on our way to show us a shorter path home. A strange people! No, wonder that the Chanceries of Europe find them defeating to deal with. Firmness and fun, the bun in one hand and the bludgeon in the other —that is the secular Chinese way, and no other will work in the Middle Kingdom. The one ruinous method to employ is consistency—and by that we Europeans are obsessed.—“St. Martin’s Review.”