A PASSPORT TO CHINA.docMyWenzhou.doc

A PASSPORT TO CHINABeing the Tale of Her Long and Friendly Sojourning amongst a Strangely Interesting PeopleBY LUCY SOOTHILLWITH A FOREWORD BY HER DAUGHTERLADY HOSIE16 ILLUSTRATIONSHODDER AND STOUGHTON LIMITED LONDONWARWICK SQUARE, E.C.4MCMXXXIFOREWORD BY HER DAUGHTER, LADY HOSIE'My first experience of China was a Riot: my last a Revolution. Was living in China worthwhile? Well worthwhile.' So writes my mother in the final chapter of this book.In the Three Character Classics, which Chinese schoolchildren used to learn by heart, is a famous story of a virtuous boy whose old parents longed to eat fish. The season being winter, he lay upon the ice, melted it with his body's warmth, and caught the fish! Never have I attained such heights of filial piety. Seeing, however, that my father has twice written introductions for books of mine, is it not right that I should now perform a similar office for my mother?Indeed, it is only the payment of a debt that I should write. Was it not my mother who, after I went back to China as a grown-up young lady fresh from school, set pen and paper before me my first entrancing China New Year? Outside our haven of the White House in that Chinese city fire-crackers exploded all down Tilemarket Street." In and out of the room she passed, busy with Chinese friends and with the inter-change of mandarin oranges and red peppers, dyed eggs and smoked ducks, sweet persimmons and paper-white narcissi-or water-fairy flowers." On one of her incursions she found me sighing, confounded by that stumbling-block of the incipient author-the first sentence. "Then begin with the second!" quoth she gaily: advice which seemed inspired, and for which I can never be sufficiently grateful. In truth, she has been our family critic and help all along. A great reader herself, she brought a cultivated taste and a discriminating penetration which, though mingled with natural kindness, demanded difficult achievements of us. Lucidity in literature was her especial requirement and her search for the exact word was unremitting. The result, seasoned. with her spicy sense of humour, will be found in these, her own lively and living pages, with their theme of high endeavour founded on deep spiritual experience.I once wrote in a book thusA lady with white hair, luminous hazel eyes under arching eyebrows, and an expression of taking vivid interest in everything she saw, stood waiting outside Wing On's door.''It was flattering that my mother's friends at once recognized her. In fact, they used to invite me to put her doings into all my books, quoting in particular the time when she sallied out to save the Lo family's silver hoard, carrying a revolver in a small red satin bag worked in blue forget-me-nots!But I have mind-pictures further back than that: of a dark-haired hostess making life, even in an out-of-the-way Chinese Treaty Pod, seem vital and enriching. I see her, walking with the hill-born woman's springing gait over the glens and dales of South China, darting eagerly aside to pluck ferns, azaleas, roses. Or later, in North China, riding in more sedate middle-age on the fattest white horse ever seen roiling a broad back, which she flicked with innocuous whip. He grunted for breath as he responded to her incorrigible spirit of inquiry; scrambling safely with her in the precipitous loess along goat-tracks which alarmed me. I see her again, poring over intricate embroidery patterns for the benefit of her poorer Chinese women friends or lingering to correct a little Chinese girl's first essay, on a slate, the child in her variegated tunic halting between awe and affection at her knee.During the European War, my mother and father led bands of young Chinese interpreters, ten at a time, about London, to behold its marvels. Lately we came upon poems written by them in acknowledgment saying how she had taken them upon "the rainbow buses flashing between the houses, and the moving glow-worms of the underground trains deep under the earth." When settling down in England, she was happy to be surrounded by Chinese objects and colours, the very woof and web of her life. Her natural background seemed blue-and-grey Peking Garrets, and temple tapestries with their swirling dragons, a cabinet from Shansi with painted panels and brass hinges, anti the carved blackwood chairs which she, as a good housekeeper, has often herself polished.No Oriental "Woman without a Name" she! Her name, Lucy, is as pleasing as in English when transliterated into the Chinese language-spoken by her with such purity. Lu-Hsi, it runs: and it means, very aptly, Brightness-upon-the-Way. What could be more suitable for one so starry, so candid, so lovely-whose life has been spent in carrying "the Light"DOROTHEA HOSIE."So they have sent me out another youngster to die," said the Veteran in our Service when he met the pale-faced, black-haired youth of two-and-twenty who stepped eagerly off the tender at Shanghai in the autumn of 1882."We must find this young man an anchor: or he will be all over China!" is what he ejaculated a year and a half later. And a more urgent petition than the Veteran ever sent on his own behalf went home to England, in which he recommended that the youth be allowed forthwith to marry, despite the fact that this would considerably antedate his period of probation. Wisely-or unwisely -the request was granted. In consequence, the youth-hereinafter called Sing Su, by Chinese mode of speech-entreated me to go out and act, not as an anchor of the soul, but apparently as a deadweight, a holdfast to the City-of-the-South. This city of China remains to the present day a Tom Thumb port in size from the Maritime Customs point of view. Its foreign, or Western, inhabitants are few, and its foreign trade has been slow in growth as to volume and value. But a hundred thousand Chinese dwell within its grey old walls and in its narrow streets.Of course Sing Su did not put his startling invitation as baldly as that. Yet on receiving it, I knew instantly, and from internal evidence, that, whether I liked or not, I should have to go and do what I could to put a drag on the chariot wheels of so adventurous and exploring a spirit. In this particular I succeeded to perfection, as our long twenty-five years' residence in the City-of-the-South testified. Probably the cunningly devised letters that followed, hard after each other, confirmed my decision. They were enough to lure a duck oft the water. Anent these same epistles, on my arrival in Ningpo a man there Jocosely inquired if I had brought them with me."Some," I answered."Then read one aloud to him every day - to remind him of what he has promised you," was the advice.An occasion arose when I deemed it politic to do this, and produced one. But he whose "Sing," or surname, was "Su" in Chinese, and whose career in life had been deflected from the study of law, was not easily trapped."Loving? Yes, always, but I never promised to be useful," came the quick retort which was what I wanted him to be at the moment.As for me, it was easier to decide on going to China than to go. Difficulties arose, tile worst of which came after my boxes big and unwieldy as dromedaries-were packed, my berth taken, and myself ii' the very act of bidding farewell to my fiancés people. At that moment, with dramatic impact a cable arrived at the door which set me aquiver."European houses all burnt in the City-of-the-South no lives lost." Thus ran the laconic statement.These evil tidings did indeed give pause; but in the and certain sympathetic spirits decided that it would be too discouraging for any young man to lose both wife and house at one fell blow. In later years the beneficiary of my devotion would tease me over this generosity on my part. "She was so anxious to go that not even a riot could stop her," he would assert.The short interval before sailing was filled with a frantic effort to rid myself of my abysmal ignorance of the land whither I was going. Truth to tell, I had never altogether lost the childish impression that the Celestial Empire, which vied with Tibet in mystery, was surrounded by a monstrously high perpendicular wall, over which every one who would enter must first perform the well-nigh impossible feat of climbing There was no other entrance.In the October of 1884 I set sail, knowing not a soul on board, and trusting - if ever I did in my life - in Divine Providence. The Bay of Biscay lived up to its reputation, and behaved abominably. For days I lay in my berth, too ill to move with the flagellations I received. Indeed I should have stayed there for ever had riot a kind German fraulein, returning to her work in India under the Church Zenana Missionary Society) come to my rescue. The battered passengers were collecting again on deck; a rumour went round that a young lady lay very ill in one of the cabins; so she went to see what she could do."Won't you come up on deck? It is better now," she said. "I cannot dress," I forlornly replied."Do try, I will help you. Have you a long cloak?" "Yes, fur-lined," I said."With that you need not dress even, and I will help you up.'Thus encouraged, together we struggled to the top of the companion-way: just in time to be thrown violently down by a Wave in a heap on the deck Considerate fellow-sufferers rescued us, placed me in a long chair and fed me with Liebig-ate panacea of those days. But I have detested and shunned the Bay ever since.In 1884 the hospitality of Shanghai was as generous as it was wide. I was received by people of whom I had never heard, who gave us a delightful wedding breakfast, to which we were free to invite whom we desired. An ideally handsome "father" not only gave me away, but also adopted me for all time. He made a happy breakfast speech, and afterward entertained us for a week in his comfortable house, although his wife was then at home in England. Our wedding hostess did her beet to encourage me by asserting tier conviction that my dart hair and rosy cheeks were certain to commend themselves to the Chinese who, apparently, had little use for blue eyes or fair hair,Thus lapped in kindness, it was only when Sing Su and I married just two short week-stood solitary on the deck of the little coasting- steamer; waving farewell to our apprehensive Ningpo friends, that I realized to what a life I had comminuted myself. So far, all had gone well; but as the ship loosed from her moorings, a sudden mist blinded my eyes, shutting out shore and friends. I felt that I, too, had cut adrift, and was leaving all my known world behind. I was launching forth, not only on the uncharted sea of matrimony, but for a destination which might easily prove as inhospitable and perilous tome as it had already shown itself to Sing Su.Our vessel, the Yung-Ning, or Eternal Peace, was the Smallest cockleshell driven by steam I ever saw, This may readily be believed when I append that she had been the mail boat from London to the Cape fifty years before t An upper deck had been added, which in stormy weather threatened to turn her turtle. On board were three European officers and a Chinese crew. The captain's was the only comfortable cabin."The lady shall have it," said he to Sing Su.He and Sing Su spent the time discussing the recent Riot while we threaded our way through the numerous small islands down the coast. These looked lovely but the water, thick and turbid with the silt of the Yellow Seal needed to be redeemed, and was so, by the fleets of small fishing-boats. Their white sails flashed like silver as they flew along in the breeze and sunshine.Hereabouts, I now learned, pirates were still possible. But in former years they had infested this part of the China coast until, indeed, British and Chinese cruisers, the latter captained at that time by foreigners, drove them out of action. Later an small of mine told me how, twenty years earlier, her own father was a passenger in a junk which was seized by pirates in these waters. With the rest of the passengers, he was thrown overboard. When he clung to the sides of the boat to save his life, they loosened his hold by stashing off his fingers with their knives. He fell back and was drowned. To Amah this seemed to be just another of life's trials, to be accepted with resignation.It was the French war with China which caused the Riot that had taken place in the City-of-the-South two months before I reached there. The people had been in a restless fever of excitement for some time, fearing an attack from the French, who had attacked Foochow directly to the south. The city had been officially placarded with instructions ordering each householder to have ready, outside his door, a heap of big stones. Carpenters worked hard, both day and night, fashioning huge wooden cases, which were towed some distance down the bank of the river. When the watching fishermen gave the signal that the enemy was at the mouth of the river, these stones were to be carried by each householder and emptied into the cases, which were then to be sunk in mid-stream. Thus an impassable barrier would block the entrance to our river, the Ao-or Bowl River-from whose month our city is distant twenty miles,But though the stones were collected, and the cases built, neither were put to their intended use. For years the huge tubs rotted on the banks; but in the Riot in which Sing Su suffered, some of the stones served as handy missiles, to the danger of the handful of Europeans in the city.One Saturday night, twenty or thirty Chinese Christians met together for the usual service in a room on the premises adjoining Sing Su's house. Before the opening hymn was finished, a sudden attack was made on the front of his house. A mob had collected there, and finding the door unyielding, turned its attention to the back premises, and with greater. Soon those identical stones came hurtling through the doors and windows, and in a short time the back wooden gate. fell under combined effort, allowing the crowd to pour pell-mell into the yard. Meanwhile Sing Su had gone round to the front, but, seeing a dangerous blaze in his servants' quarters, ran back there, where he found a crowd of men gathered, many of whom were naked because of the hot weather. They carried sticks and were throwing stones, and were watching with approval the wooden floor merrily ablaze with the forthger's own limp-oil.Calling to some of his friends to put out the fire, Sing Su approached the mob, which, when it saw him, incontinently fled. He followed, and began to expostulate. The only answer was a stone, which missed him but cut open the head of a Chinese Christian near him. Sing Su sent messenger after messenger hot-foot to the magistrate, asking help and protection. He made no mention of Treaty Rights, nor of Extra-territoriality he merely made the appeal of a peaceable citizen when attacked. But no help was forth