THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 1928.
AN IMPRESSION OF HONG KONG.
"Like the Great Shadow of a Chinese Temple Upon the Sky."
FAMOUS WRITER'S VIVID PEN PICTURE.
The following article, written some time ago by the eminent authoress, Miss Stella Benson, is reproduced with acknowledgment to the Editor of "The Athenaeum."
It was morning when the ship slid out from under the eaves of Hong Kong. Hong Kong is like the great shadow of a Chinese tem- ple upon the sky; its summit is
skipper and the mate, and, on oc- casions, the pilot and the firm's agent, love to tell very small vague stories about other sailors. Their minds are a network of names; "Then there was McKay-d'you mind what his bride said when he In the larder? . and Guthrie, who called for carrots. in Shanghai. and what was the tale of Fair-guson and the centipede?..." Scotland's population must be about five hun- dred per cent. merchant sailors, I think. One never really appre- cintes the greatness of Scotland until one goes to sea.
nearly always ruled straight by found her mother high horizontal mist, its slopes have the optimistic concavity of temples, and only lack a titanic dragon and a curled lion or two to make the temple suggestion com- plete. At night, so absurdly is Hong Kong tilted, it loses its out. line, for the lights of the Peak climb so high and the stars climb so low.
THE CHINA MAIL SPECIAL TOURISTS' SUPPLEMENT.
We reached the port of Cheefo late on our sixth night. All next day, while coolles, dyed bright blue with indigo, piled into precarious lighters the oozing sacks of our cargo, the skipper and I explored the sordid and sun-stricken city of Chefoo. I cannot bear to think that Chefoo still exists, a city bak- ed and caked in squalor. On every side there were
inevitable two
sights-cruelty and churches. The men beat the horses, the boys beat the dogs, the babies tortured the little flame-coloured lizards, that ran about the walls. The streets, It seemed to me, were full of dark, earth-blackened, naked bodies con- torted with anger and the power of making anger felt. The churches looked on decorously, feeling no doubt that here was useful copy for endless sermons, I was glad when the "Chang-shing" went out Chefoo into the clean yellow sca.
of
The Yellow Sea is really yellow,. which seems wonderful to me. It was yellower than probability would allow, so yellow and so matt
FEARSOME HONG KONG MONSTERS.
Live Unicorn And Frog Deity.
SOME STRANGE: LOCAL LEGENDS.
Although famed aboard chiefly for its shipping and its com- merce, Hong Kong is also a place of supernatural wonders. Chained to the City Hall itself is a terrible monster which would spend its freedom o' nights devouring policemen and their dogs were it but given the chance, and has, indeed, already made one such ghastly meal. Crawling painfully up the Peak is a deified Frog Rock which once had its face smacked by a’Goddess and is now doing terrible penance for its ains.
Terrible Affair.
only climb down at night to fly back]
Once accur- Visitors will laugh when told that when the cock crows.
ed with the chain, however, 'it can- the unicorn on the Royal coat-of-not move and the guardian lion is! arms outside the top of the City now looked upon as the benevolent Hall (facing the Supreme Court) deity with the solitary duty of pre- can take actual animal shape and venting further ravages.
in surface that a string of camels rove about at night. Well, it does. would have seemed less surprising Years ago before the era of elec- on its horizon than A junk. A pilot, full of wheezy jocosity, cametric and gas-lights in this island on board and inserted the "Chang- of Fragrant Streams, a European shing" Into the Pel-ho river. Two sergeant was patrolling the vicinity Chinese mud-forts, long proved with his dog, when the ferocious. futile by British naval guns in the monster came down and
ate the
While on the subject of superati- tions associated with Hong Kong, it is interesting to recall another fable which was given considerable credence when the plague first be- came evident in the 'nineties and is still talked about to-day.
Our, Frog Delty, Somewhere near the top of the
The "Chang-shing" scorned to touch so sophisticated aport as Shanghai, but one evening at sun- But it was morning when my aet on a sea of glazed crimson she little ship deftly extricated. horself passed the mouth of the Yangtze Boxer rising, still keep up the pre- dog and then the master, after the Peak there is a rock which la claim- river. The perspective of the tonce of guarding that narrow latter had tried to beat it back with from the tangle of shadows and clouds followed that of the river, mouth, but the "Chang-shing" ig- his stick. At least this much is nored them and began feeling her vouched for by a story, among the ships in the harbour. Between the and there was a great feather of
Be it way up a waterway which is like Chinese. That the story is given tawny junks, the low grey battle-wine-coloured cloud rooted,
seemed in the aun itself; the tip a puzzle founded on a timeless re- more credence than a mere legend ships with decks like petrifted of the plume hung low over our petition of the last letter of the in evident from the fact it is not
alphabet. the dark, rusty tramp must. The river withdrew into a forests,
The earth was no less only related to naughty children by low confusion of hills, and into that golden than the sea, the evening their amahs, but that even to-day steamers, the hooded sampans on
was an orgy of old gold. The vll there are many Chinese, common- which the Chinese water coolles confusion the sun sank down alive.
We ran into a fog that night, Inges were of yellow mud, the mud sense and business sagacity despite, with their cats and flowers and and the "Chang-shing" rent her houses were eyeless, their crumbl who placed implicit faith in it.
and babies live between soul and mine with cries of warning doors gaped; there was no
Should arguments-backed up by this and that my little ship picked ing to an apparently empty world. colour but yellow in their streets.
explanations of what the coat-of- But the fog was like the curtain There were graves everywhere, Hong Kong itself was
Women
her way,
dim, but across the harbour the clouds were crystallised into balls and loops of silver that blew about among the gaunt hills of South Chinu.
When Hong Kong, slipped over the grey-glazed rim of the sea the little ship-she had Д Chinese name, shall we call her the "Chang- shing"-seemed all alone like a guest in a strange land; a great company of remote islands stood about her and, without welcome, watched her pass, I had never been so much alone on the sea before. The ways of the globe-trotter have been too much my ways; too often on ships there have been men and women hetween me and the sea. I have listened to the voices of travelling salesmen on the subject of modern drama rather than to the I have passing words of the sea. criminally assoclated ships with cheap emotions and cheap scent.
The "Chang-shing" carried only Ske Indigo and, by courtesy, mc. was only smart in comparison with some of the junks. And perhaps in order to show herself to advan- tage, for the first two days of her voyage north
she rolled snorting of a proudly up the rough ruts plunging avenue of junks. Chinese fishing junks are like skeletons in crinolines. Their tattered matting anils are stiffened like fans with bamboos; wreathed about their figures are red paper prayers, struggling to catch the attention of heedless gods. Often these junks were tilted forward, stern high and bow awash, as though the vessel contemplated diving. They swung at anchor, jealously guarding their little clainis in the sun, each claim ataked out by a hedge of flagged China, hamboos floating upright. with hills dull red or dunes bleak- ly white, ran by us to the west; there was never a sign of life on the coast, and at night never a light. We passed a lighthouse on the third day; white and sophia-1 ticated, it sprang up in a primitive and dreambound world. Could it be that men and not gods lived in such isolation? How the aca must count to them.
talks little of the immediate sca;
FILTER KOS
TOURISTS' MAP OF HONG KONG.
PUBLIC
UNION
GARDEN
CHURCH
PARADE
[GROUND
CRICKET
GROUND
HOUSE H
GROUND.
BANKS
NAVAL
YARD
VICTORIA
RECREATION
CLUD
H
between two acts, for when at noon
уда
U
ITALIAN CONVENT
STPAULE COLLECS
MOTORIA SADE
KOOKS
P
PLAKE
SENTRAL
POLLO STATION
R
B
D
CE
ed to personify the frog deity, whose evil ambition it is to get to the top when the island is devastat ed. Actually there are only a few who can say definitely where this big rock is, but it is supposed to resemble a giant frog. Some think that the Hog's Back bears the re semblance while others point to the mass which can be approached from that part of Condult Road near the Victoria Battery filter beds. An- other cluster of almost upright
COLLECE
R
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BIRD LIFE.
Hong Kong's Fast Vanishing Fauna.
Tel. C. 22,
Islands at which I was present, wagtails, woodpeckers, sunbirds, and even the wonderful hornbili (Buceros bicornis) were all in- discriminately shot,
In the adjoining country of China no "close season" for birds is observed, nor judging by the
coun
Every person who has-travelled disturbed condition of the in the British Isles or on the con-try, is likely to be observed, for tinent of Europe and then visited generations to come. At the pre- China and Japan notices the great sent rate of extermination China difference in quantity in the bird will be as bare of birds as the fauna. Japan is even worse than Sahara desert before any stable China; it is practically destitute of and effective wild birds' protec birds.
When on a walking tour¦tion Acts are in force. in Japan extending over twelve What is there then which can days and covering varying types of be done? Our duy is plain, country the present writer once Hong Kong and the whole New wrote down a list of all the differ: Territory ought to be made an ent species of birds met with. They absolute preserve in which no bird amounted to sixteen different of any kind, game bird or other species and not too many In should be shot, trapped, decoyed, dividuals even of-those! Shortly or snared. At present Hong Kong afterwards when at home in and the various Treaty Ports along Ireland a similar test was made: the China coast are simply dynamic more than thirty species were seen centres of destruction owing to the a single afternoon without possibilities of getting cartridges moving more than 100 yards from and the precision of the modern the house.
shot gun. If the whole. New Terri-
on
To persons who have any real tory were made an absolute pre- Interest in nature birds and wild serve it would be only too small flowers form the great joys of for the 'salvation of the surround- the countryside, Their absence ing district,
or their disappearance is an un- If an absolute restriction were speakable and irreparable loss. put on the destruction of all birds The countryside in China and there would be people of course. Japan is in this respect a blank to raise the autery about the compared with the British Isles. damage birds do, and the danger The question naturally arises, from birds which are only verrain. what has caused this great dia- This is alwaya exaggerated. Any appearance of bird life? And if person who has opened and BO, can anything be done to pre-examined the crops and stomachs vent their extermination? It is of birds knows how hard it is to extremely difficult to say with cer- bring chapter and verse for, such tainty that any given species of an accusation. The magple, the birds is on the decrease. No one kite, the sparrow and a few others: really makes a sufficiently careful are local offenders occasionally. count of all the species each year They might be left to their natural Ito be able to give an absolutely enemies.
definite answer.
the But about Hong Kong and good done especially in the New Territory | cannot. there seems
to to be good evidenca owing that most species are on the de- subtle crease. If the bird lover reviews notice
On
be
other hand the
by most birds
exaggerated, but,
its Involved and,
nature it escapes the
of all except close
...
his experiences of the last sixteen observers. Take a local in or twenty years he must realise stance. Everybody must have the growing scarcity of many noticed that about 60 por cent, of species. Ten or fifteen years ago the lichee crop is every year infùr- he knew of more . places where the beautiful Kingsfisher develops in the fruit near the stalk. ed or made useless by a grub which
(Halcyon Smyrnensis) used to breed regularly: or places where This is the larva of a fly, probably. cones of mud varying in height and arms denote-be attempted, sup- boulders which are situated above the tailor bird (autovia sutovia) a Drosophila. Perhaps the best. next day we shook ourselves clear perfection of symmetry according porters of the fable will only pour. Marble Hall, are also thought to be was a regular and constant visitor local onemy of the fly is the white- and breeder; or the haunts of the eye Zosteropa simples. But the "You an him can have a' the of it we were in northern seas, and to the importance of the occupant. out a torrent. of sarcasm concern the "Frog Rock."
"Why," Irrespective of the position, the Oriole; or flats where the White Chinese trap so many of these sea for me," said the Skipper, who the great square-salled grey junks The cities of the living and the ing new-fangled ideas, is from Dundee, and like most that travelled across our sight were cities of the dead were not divid- they will say, "just go and look at story goes that it moved rapidly Egret was abundant. These birds birds that they are becoming more scarce. The bird breeds freely saflors, believes that he wants to of a new and more austere shape. ed. It is a proud and honourable the "horse" and you will see a real upwards for some years till it got may be acen still but they seem to
down.
const He says
and thing to be dead in China, and the iron chain round its neck secured perilously near the top when the be becoming decidedly less abun-here but every nest la robbed, and settle
rather The
flercer
Virgin" or "Kwoon dant.
Chinese are constantly asking if We-hai-wel, that choice between one mud house and to the wall. The lion opposite to "Heavenly prettily that he wants to see of the more scarred.
There are many causes for this you know of any nests of the young sea for the rest of his life is a British home from home, broke the another is
a very small
choice, it was borrowed from the set at Yum" smacked its head with the "wee for seeiver edge." And he outline of the cliffs, and we could Movement in the land was chiefly the base of the fountain outside result that it fell back a good die- gradual disappearance of these birds. No species could stand such a drain on its reproductive powers see the bulls of the herd at rest, provided by the salt-mills; like the other side of the City Hall tance. For its audacity in daring and other birds. The Island and the New Territory are. being his stories, which hold me spell- the dark formidable outlines of the merry-go-rounds at a home fair, (since replaced by another one) to climb up to her preserves this steadily opened up: new road and In addition to its host of natural
been constructed, enemies. bound over a lingering mango or China Squadron, and a mother-ship they span and span, lacking only and with the aid of protective gods, kindly-disposed goddess is presum-paths have
Another very useful local. bird is lichee for hours after the meal of submarines with her frolicsome the music and the colour and the was given the spiritual power with ed to watch over the islands des- motor-boat, steam Taunch and motor
And at Wel-haf-wei, merriment: Sometimes mudcaked which to exercise a restraining in tinies from a favourable position at car have made many places easy of the Wa Mel. But again, thla la a proper is over, deal with remote ad- young. ventures-tigers in the South though we did not put into har- babies ran down on to a mud beach fluence over the recalcitrant horse." the Peak she cast a charm over access which, fifteen years ago, favourite cage bird of the Chinese, China hills, quarrels and hot bour, a large number of passengers to throw themselves down in the Images That Take Human Shape. the Frog so that his ascending were the reward of keen and good and many are decayed and ingeni People who have been in the inabilities wore reduced to not more pedestrians only. Many of these ously trapped by them. Their nights in Indian ports, inside alighted. They were courtesy: pas- golden wave caused by the "Chang- anecdotes of the North Sea in sengers, like me, a great company shing" passing. In that wave the terior of China for long will know than the length of a grain of rice s birds are nervous and shy the scarcity is largely to blame for the the pursuit of gold of the most incorrigible landlub moored fishing boats stirred uneast the purport of two awe-inspiring year. So Hong Kongites can feel additional traffic and habitation abundance of pestiferous insects of In Australia by one Weather- bers, most unsuitably dressed for a ly; they were like dragon-files images outside the doors of big relieved. Measured on that basis drives them further afield,
But there is far worse than this, the grass hopper and other families. Even if the New Territory, and r-r-beaten Brown, the occasional sea-fourney. Finchers, jays, little asleep, thair pets were stretched on houses. These are the doorkeeper it will be a matter of centuries be-- illeft relief of Port Arthur tentative flautists, nameless to me, quivering bamboos at the tops of deities and it is commonly believed fore Froggy can get anywhere near The whole territory and the uradjoining Islands were made an ab
rounding districs are being shot during the Russo-Japanese war, smooth gray-created dandles with hinged maste.
that, especially in the case of those the danger xone again. politics and the dog-ward tendency scarlet throats, pigeons, a couple
Once, as the fringes of the smoke which face East, the early morn Efforts have been made to trace over to an ever increasing extent. solute close preserve there would al- The regular game birds are pur-ways be a certain drain on many of poor England, the first voyage sparrow-hawks-lion and lamb alike that overhangs Tientsin began to ings up-rays have, "In course of the origin of this yarn but those sued in season by sportsmen with species by persons who skilfully of an apprentice; round the world they had been sitting for the last shut out the sun, there was music time, converted the images into a who have faith in it can only say dogs, etc. This, of course, is only evaded the clutches of the law In a sailing-ship thirty years ago twenty-four hours in agitated rows beside us, and I looked down into a tual gods which take human form that they were told by somebody within fixed dates, (except for Yellow Dragon"
Bometimes, the talk comes upon our deck and rigging. They fishing boat on its way home from at night. Armed with a deadly else. Others with a reasonable snipe). But there can be no doubt closer and turns on typhoons or trusted me to an unexpected ex-sea. In the bow ast the musician, weapon, they are claimed to have turn of mind can only attribute it about the effect this is having on pirates. These things are so com- tent, though not to the point of singing softly and vagrantly to harmed, those who would dare ap to the dislike of the foreigner dur these game birds. mon, they rarely find a new ear for eating the crumbs which I spread long-necked guitar: in the stern his prosch with ulterior motives in the ing the early days of the Colony's There is even worse than this, their reception in the China trade out before them. Some of the partner had unbraided his waist- dead of night.
occupation when some patriot de it in a pitiable thing to have to Every island talks of one typhoon Chinese sallurs betrayed their trust long blue-black hair and combed It Apparently, the same Idea existe vised the story to scare Chinese say but nevertheless it is true;; all until the next stops the talk; every and caught one or two. The sea-slowly, with luxurious fingers. A with regard to the City Hall and from settling here permanently. sportemen don't always play the If paychology could turn us all game. Some shoot practically any into chin-thrusting, chest-thumping. river-mouth echoes, with the doings gulls laughed loud, raucous, nau- tawny little boy in a single blue com. It is given its malevolent It is said that when the plague was thing that comes the way. Paddy personalitics, we should be no bet of pirates. One of the most power tical laughter at this innocent in garment propelled the unhurried powers because it is shons on by at its worst about thirty years ago birds, pigeons, etc. are shot and ter off and the world would be an ful trade unions in China--that vasion. But the passengers, knew boat in time to the song. And then both the sun and the noon. At there were many who wondered if given to the Chinese servants who uncomfortable place, Dr. H. R Tand of perfect trade unions-Is the what they were about. They the city and the end of the little any rate, it is supposed to have bo- the Frog Rock had not climbed to eat them eagerly. At one shoot Thouless at Glasgow Practical
Ing expedition
illippine | Paychology Club,
war-time,
UNCOMFORTABLE.