Chusan

by Liam D'Arcy-Brown

  Under the very noses of the British, the endless details of Chusanese life went on unseen behind the thin squares of oil-soaked paper that passed for windows. On the last day of the twelfth month, families swept the old year from their homes on a cloud of dust, and when the fifth watch of the night was sounded they rose to set out incense and candles. Men and women donned ritual clothing to worship the gods of heaven and earth. They laid out fruit, wine and dainties for the ancestors. The eldest sons went out to pay respects to their clan, to in-laws and neighbours, and families entertained each other with food and wine. The ancestral portraits were hung and offerings presented to them. Every morning and evening until the fifth of the new moon, incense, tea, fruit and cakes would be set out and respects paid. Come the thirteenth, the portraits would be rehung and the ceremony performed again until, on the eighteenth day, the portraits were tidied away for another year. [25]

  At the year’s first full moon, globes of many lamps were set up in the ancestral temples. Each neighbourhood set out in formation, banging gongs, hitting drums and generally making a clamour and din in the streets. As for the raucous music of Dr Grant’s wintertime wedding processions, it marked the first time the bride herself had left for her new home, the public culmination of a long series of matchmaking, divination and mutual gift-giving behind closed doors. That morning at the fifth watch, after making offerings to the gods, the groom’s family had despatched a colourful sedan chair to the bride’s house. Her doorkeeper, after thrice refusing the money proffered by their envoy, had let it in. Her mother and sisters had wailed for her to stay, and her retinue of brothers had turned back halfway to her new home. Once the doors had closed behind her, she would ascend into the main hall for the formal ceremony of marriage before performing her first ritual tasks as a wife.

  As for Edward Cree’s hastily sketched funeral procession, the subject of so many endpapers in books of travellers’ tales of the time, it had been just the culmination of unseen, solemn rituals. Weeks before, silk floss had been placed over the nostrils of a dying man to determine the exact moment of his death, and then incense and candles had been placed in a niche by the hearth. He had been washed, and his feet bound together. A wedge placed in his mouth had kept it open to receive a last meal of rice for the next world. His hair had been combed, his nails clipped. The next day, the body had been dressed for burial and moved to the hall. There, at the appointed time, it had been laid in a coffin bought years before and stored in anticipation of this sad day. Relatives had donned mourning clothes that declared their affinity, from the roughest sackcloth of white hemp to a simple cap. The lid had been nailed on as the relatives turned to look away and, at the correct moment, wailed as though their hearts would break. A crimson flag bearing the name of the dead and a long, pleated silk bearing the exact moments of his birth and death had been laid out. The prescribed seven times seven days of mourning had been observed with prayers and demonstrations of utter grief. On the morning of the funeral, the family had clung onto the coffin and begged for it not to be taken from the house. They had processed in the correct order through the main gate. Masked dancers had stilled the departing soul and thrust spears into the air to drive away malevolent spirits. The flag had been spread out, the pleated silk placed upon it in the grave, the grave-goods burned. The family had done everything they could for the departed — a carefully weighed expression of grief and a confirmation of cultural identity. Such choreographed rituals must have followed each and every death of an islander at the hands of British soldiers, yet it is doubtful that even one of them had ever been aware.

  As one, the islanders reaffirmed their bonds in the festivals that punctuated the twenty-four qi. At Qingming, the tomb-sweeping festival, each family made graveside offerings of glutinous and black rice, of meats and sweet wine. Soil was added to the grave mound, bamboo was pushed into the earth, and ghost-money hung from above. Willow twigs were pushed into the doors of the tombs, and people wove slender sprigs into their hair. On the birthday of the sun, altars were erected in the island’s temples and the scriptures chanted over for the benefit of souls in purgatory. A fortnight later, with the arrival of Summer Begins, beans and glutinous millet were boiled together. The concoction, with bitter cherries and tender spring bamboo shoots, was offered to the ancestors. When Dragon Boat Festival came, people picked posies of sweet-flag and artemesia to decorate the door lintels for good luck. Some bound sprigs with colourful cord to wear at their waists, or placed them in trunks to perfume their clothes. Sweet-flag and red cinnabar were mixed with wine and drunk to keep evil spirits at bay. Rice dumplings and cakes were offered to the ancestors. At dawn on the first day of the sixth month each family went out to draw water that did not spoil with age; it would be put aside and as the year advanced used to prepare pickles and sauces to last through the winter.

  On the first day of autumn the children ate smartweed, leaven, goosefoot and turnip seeds, all of them bitter-tasting to cleanse the coming harvest. One week later came the night when all the magpies of the earth, those ancient symbols of conjugal bliss, flew up to bridge the Milky Way so that the Cowherd and his bride the Weaving Maid — the stars Altair and Vega — could meet. That morning, the women of Chusan washed their hair in hibiscus-leaf water, and at dusk they set out fruits. When the moon had gone down they tried to thread them onto a needle as a test of their skill. On the last day of the month, a small child from each family offered fruit to the selfless bodhisattva who comforted tortured souls in hell. For the Mid-Autumn Festival, the islanders made offerings to the moon in their courtyards. They prepared moon-cakes, put out wine, and enjoyed the moonlight. On the anniversary of the city being put to the sword when the Manchus defeated the Ming, the whole island would beat drums to drive away demons. Broth and rice were offered to the lost ghosts who still wandered the hills with no descendants to care for them.

  The Winter solstice was a time for clans to gather, to prepare sacrificial meats and wines and play music. Each sacrificed to their clan founder and to the tablets in the ancestral temple. Throughout the last month of the year, the duomin could be seen going from house to house driving out evil spirits. They had red whiskers and swords, and on their heads they wore kerchiefs with the demon-eating deity Zhongkui on them. As the old year faded away, families cleaned the house, and come nightfall they set out dainties and fruits to bribe Zaojun the hearth god. On New Year’s Eve, meat and wine-must were set out for the spirits. The peach-wood charms on the door lintel were changed, fresh spring couplets were written out, the portraits of the door-guardians renewed. Firecrackers were let off, and pills of herbal medicine burned to ward off pestilence. Old and young sat down to await the dawn of a new year. And in that coming year, never a moment would pass without some ritual, some observance, being required for the smooth working of this tiny corner of the Chinese world.

  The populace struck observers as poor, yet it could not be denied that instances of utter destitution were rarer than back home. Marriage was undertaken at an earlier age than in England and was almost universal amongst men above twenty. Daughters were taught skills such as sewing, while the sons of families who could afford $3 a year were sent to school aged six. There they learned to read the Confucian classics and to write with a legible hand. For the gentry, and for families who could spare a labouring son in the hope of future riches, there were studying and public examinations in one of Tinghae’s colleges — the same foundations whose books had been looted for souvenirs in 1840. Each year, several dozen of Chusan’s young men would pass the first of the civil service examinations and be granted the title xiucai — ‘man of talent’. A number of the elders who remained on the island under British rule had also passed the next level of examinations in Hangzhou to become much-admired provincial graduates, entitled to call themselves juren — ‘recommended men’. Imbued with Confucian learning and an unshakably China-centred worldview, as long as these immoveable pillars remained on Chusan the island could never fully accept the leg
itimacy of foreign rule. So much had been hinted at by their Manifesto. [26]

  17. A sportsman’s paradise

  For the Chusanese, too, prolonged peace allowed for a more rounded impression of the British than had the war. One shameful aspect of that character, it was admitted, was the drunkenness of soldiers and sailors bent on spending their liberty days as quarrelsome as possible. The sudden arrival of an army of men physically so different from themselves — they had pale skin, cropped hair with no pigtail, and habitually wore peaked caps — must have been as shocking as if a horde of Masai warriors had descended upon the Isle of Sheppey. Though the ruling Manchus were a soldierly race, Confucianism’s instinctive wariness of military prowess ran deep and the capacity of the British for war was frightening and alien. While at an abstract level the occupation was a game of cultural one-upmanship which the foreigners would never win so long as an emperor sat upon the Dragon Throne (for what to the West were self-evident truths on individual liberty and on man’s place in Creation were in Confucian ears just so much untutored babbling), the war would leave the unmistakeable impression in pockets of Western influence along the coast that these were a people whose world did not revolve around the Son of Heaven. It would be no coincidence that just seven momentous decades later the last Son of Heaven would be dethroned. [1]

  The islanders had plenty of time to observe the private lives of a cross-section of British society. The impartial administration of justice by a British civil magistrate, the patient hearing of complaints, and (eventually at least) fair payment for supplies had all, it was believed, left a positive impression upon the man on the street. Living cheek-by-jowl with more than a thousand officers and men, not to mention their wives and children, along with the many foreign merchants and missionaries who passed through Tinghae, the islanders could not fail to observe the details of their lives and draw conclusions as to their worth. Chinese cooks were hired, and factotums, of whom British standards of efficiency and hygiene were expected. Each evening, officers dressed for dinner and sat down in a wallpapered dining room to a meal eaten with a knife and fork from porcelain plates. They drank wine from crystal glasses by the light from silver candelabras, sipped mulled port, or coffee and tea with milk, and took ice with their water, a practice unthinkable to the Chinese. They hung oil paintings of their monarch, and landscapes in a style quite unknown to local artists. They changed into nightclothes to sleep rather than wear the same garments day in, day out, and they washed their skin with soap. And they had a symbol, a cross that looked like the Chinese character for ‘ten’, that appeared on the buildings where they prayed and sang to their ancestor Jesus. Men would soon arrive to tell the islanders more about Him. [2]

  But amongst the most conspicuous aspects of British cultural life were demonstrations of sporting skill, which was held in rather lower esteem than the displays of moral rectitude that Confucianism cherished. Since the majority of troops in the European regiments were Irish farmhands, an annual festival of sports was instituted for Saint Patrick’s Day. Stewards were appointed from amongst the officers, and a subscription entered into to provide a prize fund of £50. The day’s events got underway at noon on Royal Marine Square with the Officers’ Pony Sweepstakes. Next came foot races over 100, 150 and 200 yards, a sack race, and wrestling contests. When the shot-putting, the pig races and the climbing of the greasy pole had all been contested, the jumping events could start. At the Sinkong barracks meanwhile, the Royal Irish organised a Saint Patrick’s Day celebration of their own. A marquee was pitched, and the regimental colours and a Union Jack raised alongside a Chinese flag that had been garnered from somewhere or other. Word spread, and farmers from the nearby village gathered to spectate. They watched with interest as competitors stripped to the waist for the sprints, the bullock racing, the sack jumping, weight-heaving and wrestling. The oddest moment came when one villager took part in the traditional Cumberland gurning contest: putting his head through a horse collar, he pulled the ugliest face Edward Cree had ever seen and won himself first prize. [3]

  Come the warmer weather, recreational pastimes were organised for the men — quoits, football and sea bathing. The late Yuqian’s broad rampart became a popular place for officers to take an evening promenade with their wives. Just as at Shanghai, the curving waterfront became known by the Anglo-Indian name of ‘the Bund’. And when the cold came around again the fires in the mess rooms were lit and wall hangings put up to keep the chill air out. The field force even amused itself with theatrical productions: for eighteen rupees a month a large temple in the city was hired, its bodhisattvas and arhats shifted to the back of the main hall to be hidden behind a painted backdrop. Where they had stood a stage was erected, equipped with footlights and a trapdoor. Machinery was installed to raise a curtain, scenery was built, a band raised and rehearsed, playbills printed and tickets sold, and the grandly named Theatre Royal Chusan opened its doors for performances of such delights as J.R. Planché’s The Two Figaros and John Maddison Morton’s The Sentinel. [4]

  But this remained an army of occupation, and when in 1844 the Westmorelands were relieved by the 98th Regiment of Foot the island’s new governor, Lieutenant-Colonel Colin Campbell, instituted regular battle drills lest Chusan’s tranquility blunt their fighting efficiency. To the bemusement of the islanders, their valleys became a training ground for skirmishes and set-pieces. Attackers would storm villages and bamboo groves while defenders repulsed them, would charge through the mountain passes of the interior, practise crossing canals under fire or escalade the city walls. The mandarins in Ningbo and Hangzhou duly reported the exercises to the throne but admitted themselves baffled as to the reason. They were equally baffled by the British officers’ love of hunting, thinking it strange that men whose status afforded them the luxury of being carried in sedan chairs and growing fat chose instead to wade through muddy fields to shoot their own food. The cultivation of martial virtues in men of rank under no threat of war was undesirable, positively uncouth, but it went a long way to explaining why all the generals who had tried to defend Chusan now lay cold in their tombs. [5]

  As the lack of provisions had become acute the previous year, Edward Cree had proved himself a particular lover of hunting. He became now little short of a one-man environmental disaster, landing every few days to shoot game. Swaddled in the warmest clothes he could find, he would set out into the snow-dusted hills with rifle, pistol and fowling-piece to bag partridges, pheasants and plovers, widgeons, woodcock and curlews, ducks, doves and snipe. Winter’s cold brought great flocks of migrants for his stewpot. While the crew of the Rattlesnake organised snowball fights on deck, Commander James Brodie landed with Cree and together they made their way to Swan Lake, a shallow body of water and mudflats near Sinkong. There they shot a wild swan and some ducks. Passing on through some pretty countryside, they bought pork chops and sweet potatoes at a pork butcher’s shop and attracted a crowd of young and old who watched them with amused curiosity as they fumbled with chopsticks. After a few such hunting expeditions to Swan Lake they considered themselves firm friends with the butcher and his wife. The same could not be said of those unfortunate Chinese who wished to keep a wary distance: Cree was quite prepared to fire his gun as a first resort to encourage boatmen to ferry him across canals or to argue his point with anybody who dared remonstrate. When an islander made off with a great swan which fell to his gun on the far shore, Cree fired after him in full view of a hostile crowd who egged the man on. Swan would have been a rare luxury for his family. [6]

  Men like William Tyrone Power, a travel-writer and later Britain’s agent-general for New Zealand, similarly found Chusan ‘a sportsman’s paradise’. On jaunts to the islands he could bag swan, goose, duck, widgeon, teal, rail, bittern, hare — and so the slaughter went on. Only in India, a posting with which many of the officers and gentlemen of Chusan were familiar, was labour so cheap as to provide such opportunities for refined sporting excursions:

  A covered boat, abou
t seventy feet long, was fitted up with draperies and hangings, and divided into a sleeping apartment and sitting room, the latter furnished with armchairs, tables, stove, and all the appurtenances of a bachelor’s snuggery. A second boat was fitted up to accommodate the servants, and as a kitchen, following astern, except at mealtimes, when it was ranged alongside, and a small hatchway being opened, the hot dishes were handed out of the kitchen into the dining room. The meal done, the hatch was closed, the boat dropped astern leaving the sportsmen to enjoy their cigars as exclusively as if in a London coffee-room, the only attendant remaining being a bearded, turbaned Bengalee, who stood like a statue at the end of the room, and who moved noiselessly about the performance of his duties to replenish the fires or supply the sahib’s wants. [7]