CHINA AND THE CHILDREN

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 72, Issue 8, 10 January 1929, Page 11

CHINA AND THE CHILDREN

A NATIONAL CHARACTERISTIC The Chinese are at once an engaging and a disconcerting people to live among. Their courtesey and merriment appeal at once; everyone must admire the mticulous and unvarying excellence of their craftsmanship -and their rountine 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 treatment 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 iwth an ox or ass, hauling heavy loads with shoulders galled to the bone; they treat the dumb creatures 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 ‘n 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 sur- , prise we found the great golden-roofed 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, violence; the walls were plastered with the : mst 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 antiforeign demonstration, and the orators were inciting the crowd to drive out the il foreign devils” —but I and my three small foreign devils strolled ignorantly about in the 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 Chinese character, and of the unreality

example of the inconsequence of the of much of the alleged anti-foreign feeling.

It is this inconsequence which is so disconcerting and makes life in China so peculiarly uncertain- ’ith these laughter-loving, highly nervous, rather childishly hysterical people it is impossibly to toll 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 sangfroid. But it is on his own efforts that the foreigner must really rely for his comfort and safety—official protection. outside the Concessions, hardly

I was returning one day by car with another woman from the Summer Palaeo. some miles from Poking; at a narrow bridge with a. panelled marble parapet we were hold up by a group of soldiers, who climbed on to the running boards and annoucned their inten-i tion of driving back with us to the city. The chauffeur, chattering with fright, offered no resistance. In the convention: 1 drawl T asked the soldiers what they wanted; they repeated, roughly enough, that they were going to come with us. Still drawling. T 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—lho 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 hildren can the Chinese 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 o: e day in the mountains 20 miles from Poking with a little girl of 12 as my only companion: wo 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 courtyard and painted shrines by a pig, a smal l hoy, and a man carrying a baby. When we went on our way the small hoy followed; even to following us up the mountain of our choice and down again, paddling along in his ragged blue clothes and string-soled I shoes, chattering all the way. On 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 “cho-t’icn” (pourboirc—it is literally “wine money”). I had in my purse only two maos—small silver coins worth r.bout threepence —one of which I gave him. And then, sudden as a squall on a Scottish loch, up one of those ugly gusts of temper which arc so bewildering and so dangerous to the stranger- As wo 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 us; moreover, as I had only one more mao I could not possibly meet both claims. I had a ‘bright idea. Conspicuous in the group I were the aged man, the man with the | baby, and—slumbering beneath the I tree —the pig. “What?” I said(“Does every man in this village want Icomsha ’’ (a tip). “AVhat about the ‘baby?” I pointed. “He took us to the itempie, too. Does the pig also,” I (pointed again, “waiit a cho-t’ien? Hr |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 nomc. i A strange people! No wonder that 'the Chanceries of Europe find them 1 difficult 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 arc obsessed. —St. Martin’s Review.