Liz and Nellie

by Shonna Slayton

  Soon after we left, night descended. I went on deck where everything was buried in darkness. Softly and steadily the boat swam on, the only sound – and the most refreshing and restful sound in the world – was the lapping of the water.

  They can talk of the companionship of men, the splendor of the sun, the softness of moonlight, the beauty of music, but give me a willow chair on a quiet deck, and the world with its worries and noise and prejudices is lost in distance. Let me rest rocked gently by the rolling sea, in a nest of velvety darkness, my only light the soft twinkling of the myriads of stars in the quiet sky above; my music, the round of the kissing waters, cooling the brain and easing the pulse; my companionship, dreaming my own dreams. Give me that, and I have happiness in its perfection.

  But away with dreams. This is a work-a-day world, and I am racing Time around it. At least, that is what I tell myself and others who ask. Nothing has ever come easy for me. I’ve always worked hard. Harder than the others. And to find out that my own editor does not care enough to make every effort on my behalf. Ah, but I spoiled my own rest. Where are the dreams?

  Before daybreak we anchored at Canton. The Chinese went ashore the moment we landed, but the other passengers remained for breakfast. While we were eating, the guide whom the captain had secured for us came on board and quietly supervised the luncheon we were to take with us.

  “A Merry Christmas!” was the first thing he said to us. “My name is Ah Cum, and I will show you Canton.”

  We all exchanged surprised looks as the date had even slipped our minds. Without the snow and the holly and the carolers, it did not seem right that it was Christmas. I know we all appreciated the polite thoughtfulness of our Chinese guide as it was a holiday he did not personally celebrate.

  He had on his feet beaded black shoes with white soles. His navy-blue trousers, or tights, more properly speaking, were tied around the ankle and fitted very tight over most of the leg. Over this he wore a blue, stiffly starched shirt-shaped garment, which reached his heels, while over this he wore a short padded and quilted silk jacket, somewhat similar to a smoking jacket.

  Ah Cum had chairs ready for us. His chair was a neat arrangement in black, black silk hangings, tassels, fringe and black wood-poles finished with brass knobs. Once in it, he closed it, and was hidden from the gaze of the public.

  Our plain willow chairs had ordinary covers, which, to my mind, rather interfered with sightseeing. We had three coolies to each chair. Those with us were barefooted, with tousled pigtail and navy-blue shirts and trousers, much the worse for wear both in cleanliness and quality.

  Ah Cum's coolies wore white linen garments, gaily trimmed with broad bands of red cloth, looking very much like a circus clown's costume.

  Ah Cum led the way, our coolies following. We were carried along dark and dirty narrow ways, in and about fish stands, whence odors drifted, until we crossed a bridge which spanned a dark and sluggish stream.

  This little island, guarded at every entrance, is Shameen, or Sandy Face, the land set aside for the habitation of Europeans. An unchangeable law prohibits Celestials from crossing into this sacred precinct, because of the hatred they cherish for Europeans.

  Shameen is green and picturesque, with handsome houses of Oriental design, and grand shade trees, and wide, velvety green roads, broken only by a single path, made by the bare feet of the chair-carriers.

  Here, for the first time since leaving New York, I saw the stars and stripes. It was floating over the gateway to the American Consulate. It is a strange fact that the further one goes from home, the more loyal one becomes. I felt I was a long ways off from my own dear land; it was Christmas day, and I had seen many different flags since last I gazed upon our own.

  The moment I saw it floating there in the soft, lazy breeze, I took off my cap and said: “That is the most beautiful flag in the world, and I am ready to whip anyone who says it isn't.”

  Consul Seymour received our little party with a cheery welcome. “How much time do you have? What can I show you?”

  The man who has taken leadership of our little group answered. “We have a guide waiting outside for us. We only stopped a moment to pay our respects.”

  “Ah. Excellent. In that event, let me give you a quick tour of the consulate.” He led us around the building, paying particular attention to the embroideries and carved ivories which decorated the place. He was a personable man who spoke to each of us in turn to find out what we were doing in his part of the world.

  “I was an editor before I came to China with my wife and only daughter to be consul,” said Mr. Seymour when he found out I was a reporter.

  After leaving, we all agreed that Mr. Seymour was a most pleasant man, and a general favorite who reflected credit upon the American Consulate.

  What a different picture Canton presented to Shameen. It is said there are millions of people in Canton. The streets, many of which are roughly paved with stone, seemed little over a yard in width. The shops, with their brightly colored and handsomely carved signs, were all open, as if the whole end facing the street had been blown out. As we were carried along the roads, we could see not only the usually rich and enticing wares, but the sellers and buyers.

  It was here where I learned what a very clever fellow was that guide, Ah Cum.

  As I was not involved in purchasing souvenirs, he delighted in offering me private commentary.

  “I went to school at an American mission in Canton,” he said. “But,” he assured me, with great earnestness, “English was all I learned. I was not interested in the Christian religion.”

  Ah Cum had put his learning to good account. Besides being paid as guide, he collected a percentage from merchants for all the goods bought by tourists. Of course the tourists paid higher prices than they would otherwise, and Ah Cum saw they visited no shops where he is not paid his little fee.

  In the rear of every shop is an altar, bright in color and often expensive in adornment. Near the entrance of every shop is a bookkeeper's desk. The bookkeepers all wore tortoise-shell rimmed glasses of an enormous size, which lent them a look of tremendous wisdom. I was inclined to think the glasses were a mark of office, for I never saw a man employed in clerical work without them.

  As we were carried along, the men in the stores would rush out to look at me. They did not take any interest in the men with me, but gazed at me as if I was something new. They showed no sign of animosity, but the few women I met looked as curiously at me, and less kindly. I was told that Chinese women usually spat in the faces of female tourists when the opportunity offered. However, I had no trouble.

  The thing that seemed to interest the people most about me were my gloves. Sometimes they would make bold enough to touch them, and they would always gaze upon them with looks of wonder.

  The streets are so narrow that I thought at first I was being carried through the aisles of some great market. It is impossible to see the sky, owing to the signs and other decorations, and the compactness of the buildings. When Ah Cum told me that I was not in a market-house, but in the streets of the city of Canton, my astonishment knew no limit.

  Sometimes our little train would meet another train of chairs, and then we would stop for a moment, and there would be great yelling and fussing until we had safely passed, the way being too narrow for both trains to move at once in safety.

  Coolie number two of my chair was a source of great discomfort to me all the day. He had a strap spanning the poles by which he upheld his share of the chair. This band, or strap, crossed his shoulders, touching the neck just where the prominent bone is. The skin was worn white and hard-looking from the rubbing of the band; but still it worried me, and I watched all the day expecting to see it blister.

  He was not an easy traveler, this coolie, there being as much difference in the gait of carriers as there is in the gait of horses. Many times he shifted the strap, much to my misery, and then he would turn and, by motions, convey to me that I was sitting more to one side than to the
other.

  As a result, I made such an effort to sit straight and not to move that when we alighted at the shops I would be cramped almost into a paralytic state. As the day progressed, so did a sick headache, all from thinking too much about the comfort of the carriers.

  I WAS VERY anxious to see the execution ground, so we were carried there. We went in through a gate where a stand erected for gambling was surrounded by a crowd of filthy people. Some few idle ones left it to saunter lazily after us.

  The place is very unlike what one would naturally suppose it to be. At first sight it looked like a crooked back alley in a country town. There were several rows of half dried pottery. A woman, who was molding in a shed at one side, stopped her work to gossip about us with another female who had been arranging the pottery in rows.

  The place is probably seventy-five feet long by twenty-five wide at the front, and narrowing down at the other end.

  “Why is the ground over there so very red?” I asked Ah Cum.

  He kicked the red-colored earth with his white-soled shoe and said indifferently, “It's blood. Eleven men were beheaded here yesterday.”

  “Eleven? Why so many?”

  “It is an ordinary thing for ten to twenty criminals to be killed together.”

  “How many executions take place in a year?” asked another man.

  “Oh, maybe four hundred. But in 1855 over 50,000 rebels were beheaded in this narrow alley. That was a year!”

  While he was talking, I noticed some roughly-fashioned wooden crosses leaned up against the high stone wall and supposed they were used in some manner for religious purposes before and during the executions. I asked Ah Cum about them.

  “When women are condemned to death in China, they are bound to wooden crosses and cut to pieces.”

  A shiver slid down my spinal cord at his answer.

  “Men are beheaded with one stroke unless they are the worst kind of criminals,” he added, “then they are given the death of a woman to make it the more discreditable. They tie them to the crosses and strangle or cut them to pieces. When they are cut to bits, it is done so deftly that they are entirely dismembered and disemboweled before they are dead. Would you like to see some heads?”

  I thought that Ah Cum could tell as large stories as any other guides; and who can equal a guide for highly-colored and exaggerated tales? So I said coldly: “Certainly. Bring on your heads!”

  I tipped a man, as he told me, who, with the clay of the pottery on his hands, went to some barrels which stood near to the wooden crosses, put in his hand and pulled out a head!

  Even I was speechless as I looked up and away until the head was safely tucked back in the barrel. In all my reporting, I’d never seen the like. It was sickening.

  “The barrels are filled with lime, and as the criminals are beheaded their heads are thrown into the barrels. When the barrels become full, they empty them out and get a fresh supply,” explained Ah Cum, warming up to the subject.

  “How resourceful,” I murmured, still dealing with the shock of seeing a head preserved in lime.

  “And if a man of wealth is condemned to death, he can buy a substitute.”

  “Who would be willing to do that?” asked one in our party.

  Ah Cum shrugged, leaving me with the opinion that Chinese are indifferent about death.

  I also had a great curiosity to see the leper village, which was supposed to contain hundreds of Chinese lepers. The village consists of numbers of bamboo huts, and the lepers present a sight appalling in its squalor and filth.

  “Smoke cigarettes,” said Ah Cum. “It will help with the smell.” He set the example by lighting one, and we all followed his lead.

  The lepers were simply ghastly in their misery. There are men, women and children of all ages and conditions. The few filthy rags with which they endeavored to hide their nakedness presented no shape of any garment or any color, so dirty and ragged were they.

  On the ground floors of the bamboo huts were little else than a few old rags, dried grass and things of that kind. Furniture there was none. It is useless to attempt a description of the loathsome appearance of the lepers. Many were featureless, some were blind, some had lost fingers, others a foot, some a leg, but all were equally dirty, disgusting and miserable.

  “Some are able to work. They sell their vegetables in the city market,” said Ah Cum, pointing out a prosperous-looking garden which is near their village.

  I felt glad to know we had brought our luncheon from the ship.

  “Those who can walk go to Canton to beg but must come back to sleep in their village.”

  What was the benefit of a leper village if the lepers are allowed to mingle with the other people?

  As we left the leper city, I was conscious of an inward feeling of emptiness. I had seen such horrible things today. Human suffering on extreme levels. Yet it was Christmas day. What a contrast to the joyful celebrations going on in New York. Instead of celebrating Heaven, I had witnessed Hell.

  I wondered if Mother was cooking a little meal for herself or if she had been invited to the neighbor’s. Or perhaps she got up the gumption to get on the train and visit one of my brothers or sisters.

  As if reading my thoughts, one of the men in the party said, “We’ve missed it. It is about midnight in New York.” We were all quiet with reflection.

  “There is a building nearby I want to show you, and then we will eat,” said Ah Cum.

  Once within a high wall, we came upon a pretty scene. There was a mournful sheet of water undisturbed by a breath of wind. In the background the branches of low, overhanging trees kissed the still water just where stood some long-legged storks, made so familiar to us by pictures on Chinese fans.

  Ah Cum led us to a room which was shut off from the court by a large carved gate. Inside were hard wood chairs and tables. While eating, I heard chanting to the weird, plaintive sound of a tom-tom and a shrill pipe. When I had less appetite and more curiosity, I asked Ah Cum where we were, and he replied, “In the Temple of the Dead.”

  And in the Temple of the Dead I was eating my Christmas luncheon. But that did not interfere with the luncheon. Before we had finished, a number of Chinese crowded around the gate and looked curiously at me.

  “Look, Miss Bly. They want their children to see you.”

  Indeed. They held up several children, well-clad, cleanly children.

  Thinking to be agreeable, I went forward to shake hands with them. When I reached out, they kicked and screamed and, getting down, rushed back in great fright.

  I looked at my party and shrugged. They were all a grin at the spectacle and encouraged me to try again.

  Meanwhile, the children’s companions succeeded in quieting them, and they were persuaded to take my hand. The ice once broken, they became so interested in me, my gloves, my bracelets and my dress, that I soon regretted my friendliness in the outset. Ah Cum set out to rescue me as he announced we were going to see the water clock.

  “You must see it, Miss Bly. It is over five hundred years old.”

  We climbed high and dirty stone steps to the water clock. In little niches in the stone walls were small gods, before them the smoldering joss sticks. The water clock consists of four copper jars, about the size of wooden pails, placed on steps, one above the other. Each one has a spout from which comes a steady drop-drop. In the last and bottom jar is an indicator, very much like a foot rule, which rises with the water, showing the hour. On a blackboard hanging outside, they mark the time for the benefit of the town people.

  “The upper jar is filled once every twenty-four hours,” said Ah Cum.

  “And that is all it takes?” asked one of our party.

  Ah Cum nodded. “It has never run down or been repaired.”

  “Remarkable.”

  On our return to the Powan, I found some beautiful presents from Consul Seymour and the cards of a number of Europeans who had called to see me. Suffering from a sick-headache, I went to my cabin, and shortly we wer
e on our way to Hong Kong, my visit to Canton on Christmas day being of the past.

  34

  In Which Elizabeth Bisland Meets A Benefactor And Samples Betel Nut

  PENANG. – ITS PEAKS shoot sharply up into the blue air two thousand feet, wrapped in a tangle of prodigious verdure to their very tops, enormous palm forests fringing all the shore. The ship anchors some distance from the docks and will remain but a few hours.

  We are ferried to land in crazy sampans, the only alternative from out-rigger canoes – a narrow trough set on a round log and kept upright by a smaller floating log connected with the boat by bent poles. Only a native, a tight-rope walker or a bicyclist would trust himself to these.

  The same crowd of Hindus, Malays, and Chinese. These ports are beginning to all look alike. Little girls appearing twelve or thirteen years old themselves stand about with their own children in their arms. They have been wives for a year or two. Very pretty they are, miniature women fully formed, the babies fat and brown and nearly as large as the mothers.

  A gharry and another pitiful little horse take us towards the gardens and the famous waterfall. The road skirts the town and intersects lagoons, where Malay houses of coconut thatch stand upon piles like ancient lake dwellings. I am told they live over this stagnant water by preference, and apparently suffer no harm.

  Farther on, where the ground rises, are the huge stone bungalows of English officials and rich Chinese merchants, the entrance to the grounds of the latter adorned with ornate doors and guarded by carved monsters, curiously colored.

  We overtake a Chinese funeral winding towards the cemetery, all the mourners clad in white. The coffin, of unpainted wood, is so heavy and so large that twenty pall-bearers are required to carry it. It is a most cheerful cortège. No one seems in the least downcast or dispirited by this bereavement – death is accepted with the same stolid philosophy as are the checkered incidents of life.