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THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
a fine fat boy!-and never higher than twenty- two. But it is not only in Chins that a youth- ful appearance has hampered me in my walk through life.
16
any meeting between Black Flag forces and the Japanese as yet. In our yesterday's issue we reproduced accounts from the Japan papers of the fighting that took place at the
"I remember that on one occasion, some years beginning of last month between the Japa- ago, I obliged a medical friend by taking his nese advancing from the north and the in-practice while he went away for a few days to surgents, and it is stated that of the latter a be married. It was in a semi-barbarian village large proportion were regular Chinese tro named Portee, in a forgotten remnant of Scot- a circumstance which, in the opinion of the land called the Isle of Skye. The time was The first case I was called to was that Japanese correspondents, accounts for the winter. promptitude with which they took to their of a bashful matron, the baker's wife, who had lately given birth to her tenth child. I entered heels. By the regular Chinese troops we
the room cheerfully. She looked me over understand the remains of the Chinese army, critically, and then-greatly disconcerted me by independent of LIU's mand, to be meant, remarking that, She was rey thankfu' to At Hsin-pu the
had a hundred the Lord, that it was a' by afore I cam', as she and fifty killed, the casualties on the had nae wush to be meddled wi' by a laddie o' Japanese side three killed and six' nineteen.' Yet I was two years older than the
hills to the southward doctor who had attended her." wounded.
Dr. Morrison seems to have thoroughly were easily cleared, and it was expected enjoyed his journey. He had no unpleasant that the insurgents would not rally again contretemps on the way, and get on excellently until they reached Changhwa or Tainan-fu.with the Chinese, for whom he appears to have According to our Anping correspondent's conceived quite a tender rogard, while from the letter of the 29th August, Black Flags friendly treatment he everywhere received it were being hurried to the front and the would seem that he must have created a favour- "Ever Victorious" LIU was contemplating able impression on them. Probably his play. a move northwards. By that time, however, fulness amused them, and you can do almost a Chinaman if you can Changhwa had fallen and the probabilities anything with
amuse him. Dr. Morrison had no know seem to be rather against any of the Black ledge of the Chinese language and took no in Flags having arrived in time to take part terpreter with him, so that his means of com- in the defence. The resistance offered may munication were limited to a few simple words have been desperate, but does not seem to for every day use that had been taught him by have been directed with any intelligence, friends and a phrase book that he carried with "What few words of Chinese I knew," for while the Chinese lost six hundred him. killed the Japanese loss was only nine. he says, "were rarely intelligible; but, as Mrs. General Baynes, when staying at Boulogne, Whether the main body of the Black Flags found Hindostani to be of great help in speak will be able to do any better than their ing French, so did I discover that English was companions in arms remains to be seen, but of great assistance to me in conversing in whatever gallantry they may display there Chinese. Remonstrance was thus made much can be no doubt as to the ultimate result. | more effective. Whenever I was in a difficulty, The foreigners at Anping not unnaturally or the crowd too obtrusive, I had only to a few grave sentences in English, regard the situation with some trepidation. say
and I was master of the situation." This So far the Black Flags have given little cause
practical application of the axiom that for complaint, but when they are defeated in language is given to conceal thought seems to the field and fall back on Anping in dis-
have answered admirably Dr. Morrison, after order there will be an end of discipline leaving the boat which took him up the Yang- and the lives and property of foreigners will tsze from Ichang, effected his land journey by be in serious danger unless adequate pro- making contracts with the coolie hongs to de- tection is afforded by gunboats. But perhaps liver him within a specified time at specified the catastrophe may not happen. LIU is a points, and in negotiating the contracts he gen fighting man, but in view of the hopeless-erally had the assistance of friendly missionaries, whom he found at stations dotted along his ness of his position he may possibly be route. Of the missionaries personally he seems prepared to make an honourable surrender, to have formed, for the most part, a very high which the Japanese would no doubt be will opinion, but of the value of their work and its ing to accept.
results his estimate is correspondingly low. Ho gives some attention to the opium question, and his testimony is the same as that of all other travellers, namely, that there is no visible evi- dence of injury done to the people by the con- sumption of the drug. As to the sincerity of China's alleged desire to suppress the practice of opium smoking. Dr. Morrison says edicts are occasionally issued, but they are drawn up by Chinese philanthropists over a quiet pipe of opium, signed by opium-smoking officials, whose revenues are derived from the poppy, and posted near fields of poppy by the opium-smoking magistrates who own them. countries words represent facts, but that is never the case in China.
REVIEW.
An Australian in China. Being the Narrative of a quiet Journey across China to British Burma. By G. E. MORRISON, M.B., C.M. Edin., F.R.G.S. London: Horace Cox. 1895. ONE of the most entertaining books of travel it has been our fortune to read for a long time past. Dr. Morrison is endowed with a large fund of humour and infects the reader with his own high spirits. He made his journey across China for no special object, commercial, poli- tical, or philanthropic, but out of pure love of adventure and travel. The frontispiece repre- sents him in the centre of his attendant coolies, a finely made man of youthful appearance. A propos of this he tells us :---
In China longevity is the highest of the five grades of felicity. Triumphal arches are erected all over the kingdom in honour of those who have attained the patriarchal age which among us seems only to be assured to those who partake in sufficient quantity of certain fruit- salta and pills. Age when not known is guessed by the length of the beard, which is never al
owed to grow till the thirty-second year. Now it happens that I am clean-shaven, and, as it is a well-known fact that the face of the European is an enigma to the Oriental, just as the face of the Chinaman is an inscrutable mystery to most of
us, I have often been amused by the varying estimates of my age advanced by curious by standers. It has been estimated as low as twelve-look at the foreigner,' they said, there's
י
In-some
The entire journey from Shanghai to Bhamo cost less than £20 sterling, including the cost of Chinese outfit, and Dr. Morrison estimates that had he travelled economically the journey need not have cost him more than £14. As already remarked, he formed a favourable opinion of the Chinese and he says, I cannot speak more highly of the pleasure of my journey than to declare that I felt greater regret when it was finished than I ever felt on leav- ing any other country. Of the women he says:-"I have seen girls in China who would be considered beautiful in any capital in Europe. The attractiveness of the Japanese lady has been the theme of many writers, but, speaking as an impartial observer who has been both in Japan and China, I have never been able to come to any other decision than that in every feature the Chinese woman is superior to her Japanese sister. She is head and shoulders above the Japanese; she is more intellectual, or
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[September 4, 1895.
rather, she is more capable of intellectual development; she is incomparably more chaste and modest. She is prettier, sweeter, and more trustworthy than the mis-shapen, cackling little dot with black teeth that we are asked to admire as Japanese beauty.' Cackling little dots with black teeth, by the way, are not often seen in Japan now. But with all his friendly feeling towards the Chinese our author holds that there is no room for them in Australia. His views on this point are expressed as follows
"We cannot compete with Chinese; we can- not intermix or marry with them; they are aliens in language, thought, and customs; they are working animals of low grade but great vitality. The Chinese is temperate, frugal, hard-working, and law evading, if not law- abiding--we all acknowledge that. He can out work an Englishman, and starve him out of the country-no one can deny that. To compete successfully with a Chinaman, the artisan or labourer of our own flesh and blood would require to be degraded into a mere mechanical beast of labour, unable to support wife or family, toiling seven days in the week, with no amusements, enjoyments, or comforts of any kind, no interest in the country, contributing no share towards the expense of government, living on food that he would now reject with loathing, crowded with his fellows ten or fifteen in a room that he would not now live in alone, except with re- pugnance. Admitted freely into Australia, the Chinese would starve out the Englishman, in accordance with the law of currency--that of two currencies in a country the always supplant the better."
baser will
!
The following extracts from the chapter headed Gold, Banks, and Telegraphs in Yunnan " are interesting and of practical value, in view of the reported intention of the Chinese to develop the mineral resources of Yunnan :-
"Yunnan city is the great gold emporium of China for most of the gold found in China comes from the province of which it is the capital. When a rich Chinaman returns from Yunnan to another province, or is summoned on a visit to the Emperor at Peking, he carries his money in gold, not silver. Gold leaf sont from Yunnan gilds the gods of Thibet and the temples and pagodas of Indo-China. No cara- van returns to Burma from Western China. whose spare silver has not been changed into gold leaf. In the Arracan Temple in Manda- lay, as in the Shway-dagon Pagoda in Rangoon, you see the gold leaf that. Yunnan produces, and in the future will produce in infinitely greater quantities.
"Gold comes chiefly from the mines of Talang, eighteen days journey by land S.W. from Yun- nan city, on the confines of the district which produces the famous Puerh tea. The yield must be a rich one despite the ineffective ap- pliances that are employed in its extraction. Gold has always been abundant in this province; at the time of Marco Polo's visit it was so abundant that its value in relation to silver was only as one to six.
When gold is worth in Shanghai 35 times its. weight in silver, it may be bought in Yunnan city or Talifn for from 25 to 27.5 times its weight in silver, and in quantities up to hun- To remit silver by telegraphic dreds of ounces. transfer from Shanghai or Hongkong to Yunnan city costs six per cent., and either of the two leading banks in the city will negotiate the transfer from their agents at the seaports of any amount up to 10,000 ounces of silver in a single transaction. The gold can always be readily sold in Shanghai or Hongkong, and the only risk is in the carriage of the gold from the island city to the seaport. So far as I could learn, no gold thus sent has gone astray. It is carried overland by the fastest trade route
that through Mungtze to Laokai and thence by boat down stream to Hanoi in Tonkin, from which port it is sent by registered post to Saigon and Hongkong. Here then is a venture open to all, with excitement sufficient for the most blasé speculator, Ample profits are made by the dealer. For instance, a large quantity of gold was purchased in Yunnan city on the 21st January, 1894, at 23:2, its value
the Shanghai on in
date being 309; but on the date that the gold arrived in Shanghai its value had risen to 35, at which price it was sold. At the time of my visit gold was 25.5 to 27 in Yunnan, and 35 in Shanghai,
same