missionary compound—prayer—reputed dangers of the way—the german girl—midwife—the bible as a guide—“my yoke is easy, my burden is light”—a harem—helping the sick and afflicted—a case of hysteria—drastic remedies—ensuring a livelihood—“strike, strike”—barbaric war-song—the chinese soldier—the martyrdom of the roman catholic priest.
and with my entrance into that missionary compound i entered a world as strange to me as the eastern world i had come across two continents to see.
the compound is right in the heart of the town, and was originally a chinese inn, built, in spite of the rigour of the climate, chinese fashion, so that to go from one room to the other it was necessary to go out of doors. the walls looking on to the street were blank, except in the room i occupied, where was a small window, so high up i could not see out of it. how it must be to pass from one room to the other when the bitter winter of northern china holds the mountains in its grip, i do not know.
i walked in out of the unknown and there came forward to meet me that sad-looking woman with the soft brown eyes and bright red lips. take me in, yes, indeed she would take me in. i was dusty, i was torn, and i think i was more weary than i 253have ever been in my life, and she made me welcome, made me lie down in a long chair, and had tea brought in. a tall buxom german girl entered, and then to my surprise, and not a little to my discomfort, my hostess bowed her head, and thanked god openly that i had come through the dangers of the way, and been brought safely to their compound! for a moment it took my breath away, and so self-conscious was i, that i did not know which way to look. my father was a pillar of the church of england, chancellor of the diocese in which we lived, and i had been brought up straitly in the fold, among a people who, possibly, felt deeply on occasion, but who never, never would have dreamt of applying religion personally and openly to each other. frankly i felt very uncomfortable after i had been prayed over, and it seemed a sort of bathos to go on calmly drinking tea and eating bread and jam. the german girl had just arrived, and they heard that the day after she had left peking, the german consul had sent round to the mission station, where she had been staying, to cancel her passport, and to say that on no account must she go to jehol as the country was too disturbed. however she and her escort, one of the missionaries, had come through quite safely, and the tartar general in charge here had said she might stay so long as she did not go outside the boundaries of the town. but naturally, they were much surprised to see me, a woman and alone.
i looked round the room, the general sitting-room, a bare stone-floored room, with a mat or two upon it, a little cane furniture, a photograph or two, and some texts upon the walls, a harmonium, a 254couple of tables, and a book-case containing some very old-fashioned books, mostly of a religious tendency, and some stories by a.l.o.e. there was a time when i thought a.l.o.e's stories wonderful, and so i read one or two of them while i was here, and wondered what it was that had charmed me when i was eleven.
the only other woman in that compound, beside my hostess, was the german girl who had come out to help.
“i gave myself to the lord for china,” she said, and she spoke simply and quietly, as if she were saying the most natural thing in the world, as if there could be no doubt of the value of the gift—truly it was her all, she could not give more. and the chinese did need her, i think—that is only my opinion—but not exactly in the way she counted most important. she had taken the precaution to become a midwife, and indeed she must be a godsend, for chinese practices are crude and cruel in the extreme. it is the child that counts, the mother, even in her hour of travail, must literally make no moan. a woman once told me how she went to see her amah, who was expecting a baby, and she was asked to wait. she waited about an hour, for she was anxious about the woman, and the room was very still, there was no sound till the silence was broken by the first cry of the new-born infant. the child had been born behind the screen while she waited, and an hour later, to her horror, the white-faced young mother was up and preparing to cook the family evening meal. the woman would not have cried out for the world. no chinese woman would. if poor human flesh is weak, and a 255sigh of pain escape her, her mother-in-law will cover her mouth with her hand, but mostly the woman will gag herself with her long black hair, she will not disgrace herself by a cry as long as her senses are with her. it is all very well to say the chinese do not suffer as white women suffer. they are not like the sturdy negro women who have lived a primitive, open-air life, walk like queens, and have exercised every muscle. they are the crippled products of an effete civilisation, who spend long hours on the k'ang, and go as little as possible from their own compound. to those women that german girl will be a blessing untold. i think of their bodies while she labours for their souls. anyway she is surely sent by god.
there were two men here to make up the complement, one was my missionary's husband, a man who takes the bible for his guide in everything, the bible as it is translated into the english tongue. he does not read primarily for the beauty of the language, for the rhythm, for the poetry, for the eastern glamour that is over all. he reads it, he would tell you himself, for the truth. it is to him the most important thing in the world; he quotes it, he lives by it, it is never out of his thoughts, he might be a covenanter of old puritan days. and the fourth missionary is a man of the world. i don't think he realises it himself, but he is. he had lived there many years, had married a wife and brought up children there, and now had sent them home to be educated, and he himself talked, not of the bible, though i doubt not he is just as keen as the other, but of the people, and their manner of life, and their customs, of the country, and of the strangers he had 256met, the changes he had seen, and, when i questioned him, of the escape of himself and his family from the boxers.
for the souls and bodies of these wretched, miserable, uncomprehending chinese, who very likely, at the bottom of their hearts, pity the strangers because they were not born in the flowery land, these devoted people work—work and pray—day and night. the result is not great.
“they will not hear the truth. their eyes are blind. they worship idols,” they told me of the majority. but they give kindliness, and in all probability, for it is seldom that faithful, honest kindliness fails in its purpose, they make a greater impression than they or i realise.
true they believe firmly in the old hebrew idea of a “jealous god,” but they themselves are more tender than the god they preach. for all of them, it seemed to me, life is hard, unless they have greater joy in the service than i, “a greek” could understand, but for the older woman it must be hardest of all.
“my yoke is easy, my burden is light,” said the master she followed, but the burden of this woman, away up in the mountains of northern china, is by no means light. the community is so small, they do not belong to the china inland mission but call themselves “the brethren,” the nearest white man is two days away hard travelling across the mountains, so that perforce the life is lonely. day in and day out they must live here for seven years among an alien people; a people who come to them for aid and yet despise them. and because they would put no more stumbling-blocks in the way of 257bringing the chinese to listen to the message they bring, these missionaries conform, as much as they can, to chinese custom. very seldom does this woman walk abroad with her husband—it would not be the thing—women and men do not walk together in china. if she goes outside the missionary compound she must be accompanied by another woman, and she puts on some loose coat, because the chinese would be shocked at any suggestion of the outline of a figure. also she looks neither to the right nor the left, and does not appear to notice anything, because a well-behaved woman in china never looks about her. she considers, too, very carefully her goings, she would not walk through the town at the hour when the men are going about their business, the hour that i found the most interesting, and invariably chose, no boy may bring her tea to her bedroom—it would not be right—and she has none of the arrogance of the higher race who think what they do must be right and expect the natives of the land to fall into line. no, she conforms, always conforms to the uncomfortable customs of the chinese, and when any man above the rank of the poorest comes to call upon her husband, she and the girl are hustled out of the way and are as invisible as if he kept a harem. it often occurred to me that the chinese thought he did. even in the church the women are screened off from the men, and if a man adheres to the customs of the country so closely in everything they can see, it is natural to suppose they will give him credit for adhering to them in all things. but they must think, at least, he has selected his womenkind with a view to their welfare, for the older woman has had 258a little medical training, and simple cases of sickness she can deal with, while the german girl, as i have said, is a certified midwife. the other man too, though not a doctor, has some little knowledge of the more simple eye diseases.
and they are grateful, the poor chinese, for the sympathy they get from these kindly missionaries, who openly say they tend their poor bodies because they feel that so only can they get at their souls. they come to the little dispensary in crowds, come twenty miles over the mountains, and they bring there the diseases of a slum people, coughs and colds, pleurisy and pneumonia, internal complaints and the diseases of filth—here in the clean mountains—itch and the like. many have bad eyes, many granulated lids, and there is many a case of hideous goitre. while i was there a man, old and poor, tramped one hundred miles across the mountains; he was blind, with frightfully granulated lids, and he had heard of the skill of the missionaries. there are also well-to-do people here, who sometimes seek aid from them, though as a rule, it is the lower class they come in contact with.
but the ailments of the rich are different, i remember my missionary woman was called in to see a girl about twenty, the daughter of a high-class manchu. the girl had hiccough. it came on regularly about four o'clock every afternoon, and continued, if i remember rightly, three or four hours. she was well and strong, she had everything the heart of a chinese woman could desire, she was never required to do one stroke of work, but she was not married. the manchus have fallen on evil times and find some difficulty in marrying their 259daughters. so this girl, the daughter of well-to-do people, was necessary to no one, not even to herself, and the missionary, finding she spent the greater part of her time lying idly upon the k'ang, diagnosed hysteria, and prescribed a good brisk walk every day. the proud manchu, who was her mother, looked at the woman she had called in to help her, scornfully.
“my daughter,” she said drawing herself up to her full height, and the manchus are tall women, “cannot walk in the street. it would not be seemly.”
the missionary looked at her a little troubled.
“at least,” she said, “she can walk in the courtyard and play with her brother's children.”
but the girl looked at her with weary eyes. there was no excitement in playing with her brother's, children, and she could not see the good to be got out of walking aimlessly round the courtyard. poor manchu maid! what had she expected?
“if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldst thou not have done it?”
“i could do no good,” said the missionary sorrowfully, “and they would not listen to my message.”
the chinese have their own remedies for many diseases, and some of them the missionaries told me were good, but many were too drastic, and many were wickedly dangerous. when an eye is red and bloodshot for instance, they will break a piece of crockery and pierce the eye with it, and in all probability the unfortunate loses his sight. no wonder they come miles and miles, however rough the way, to submit themselves to gentler treatment. i have known even women with bound feet toil twenty miles 260to see them about some ailment. of course their feet are not as badly bound as some, for there are many women in china who cannot walk at all. i talked with a man once who told me he had just been called upon to congratulate a man because he had married a wife who could not get across the room by herself. she, naturally, was a lady with slaves to wait upon her. these chinese women of the mountains of the poorer classes—the manchus do not bind their feet—must be able to move about a little, for there is a certain amount of work they must do.
“a hundred thousand medical missionaries,” said this man, “are wanted in china, for the teeming population suffers from its ignorance, it suffers because it is packed so tightly together; the women suffer from the custom that presses so heavily, and it suffers from its own dirt.”
up here at jehol the suffering is apparently as bad as anywhere, and the dispensary is full with all the minor ailments that come within the range of the missionaries' simple skill, and all the cruel diseases that are quite beyond them, that they cannot touch, and they do their best in all pity and love, and yet think that they are doing a greater thing than binding up a man's wounds when they can induce him to come to their prayer-meetings, which go along, side by side, with the dispensary.
i, a heathen and a “greek,” question whether the chinese ever receives christianity. a chinese gentleman, a graduate of cambridge, once told me he did not think he ever did.
“but the chinaman,” said he, he actually used the contemned word, “is a practical man, he receives all faiths. some may be right, and when he thinks 261he is dying, he will send for a priest of every faith he knows of to help him across the dark river. who knows, some of them may chance to be right,” and he laughed. he himself was of the faith so many of us of this modern world have attained to, seeing the good in so many faiths, seeing the beauty and the pity of them and standing aside and crying: “why all this? whither are we bound? what can it matter whether this poor coolie believes in christ, or buddha, or the cold ethics of confucius?” i said this to my missionary woman one day and she looked at me with horror in her eyes.
“there will be a reaping some day,” she said. “where will you be then?”
“surely i cannot be blamed for using the reasoning powers god has given.” but i am sure she thought my reasoning powers came from the devil, and if i hadn't been getting used to it i should have been made uncomfortable by being prayed for as one in outer darkness.
it is the worship of the ancestors that holds the chinese, the man who gives up that, gives up all family ties and becomes practically an outcast. there may be a few genuine christians, but in proportion to the money spent upon their conversion, their number must be very small. i saw the colporteur come into the compound one day, and they told me he was an earnest christian. he might be, but again that doubt arose in my mind. if the receiving of christianity ensures a livelihood, could you expect one of a nation, who will be made a eunuch for the same reason, to reject it.
the missionaries had a hard time when first they came here. the place is inhabited by manchus, 262full of the pride of race, and they do not want the outsider. they use them, as they have effected a settlement, but they do not approve of their being there.
as i and my saintly missionary walked down the street, she carefully avoiding a glance either to the right or the left, a little half-naked child at his mother's side looked at her and cried aloud:
“ta, ta,” and he said it vehemently again and again.
she stopped, spoke to the mother, and evidently remonstrated, and the woman laughed and passed along on her high manchu shoes without correcting the child.
she looked troubled. “what did he say?” i asked.
“strike, strike! or some people might say 'kill, kill!' i said to the woman: 'what bad manners is this?'”
and the woman had only laughed! after all her kindness and tenderness, all her consideration and care; i should have thought the very children would have worshipped the ground she walked upon.
they are holding their own, they say. in the compound are a couple of chinese women, the wives of their teachers or servants, and they have had to unbind their feet, a process almost as painful as the binding. one old woman could not unbind hers, they told me, because so long had they been bound the feet split when she attempted to walk upon them unbound, but so true a christian is she, she puts her tiny feet inside big shoes. but to balance her, their amah, a manchu, is still a heathen. after the years, the years they had been striving there, they could not find one who has embraced their faith to wait upon them.
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in truth it was a hard faith, morning, noon, and night, they prayed, morning, noon, and night, it seemed to me from the little meeting-house went up the sound of hymns and prayers, not even in christian england, england that has held the faith for over a thousand years would so many services have been attended, could they expect it of the chinese?
in the evening, when the night fell, we sat in the compound and talked, i, who was cold and reasonable, and they who were enthusiasts, for to them had come the call, that mysterious crying for the unknown that comes to all peoples and all classes, and is called by such different names.
“i have given myself to the lord for china.” and outside the house the watchman beat his gong, not to frighten off thieves, as i at first thought, but to keep away the devils who help the “stealer man,” for he cannot alone carry out his nefarious designs, the wonks, the scavenger dogs made the night hideous by their howling, and the soldiers, of whom the town was full, sang their new war-song—wild and barbaric.
“i do not like it,” said she of the sad eyes and red lips, “i do not like it. it does not sound true.”
and i, who had not got to live there, did not like it either, but it was because it did sound to me true—it sounded fierce and merciless. what might not men, who sang like that, do?
“the chinese soldier is a baby,” said a chinese 264to me, but that is when he is among his own particular people at home.
“chinese soldiers,” said another man, a foreigner, “are always robbers and banditti.”
and there is truth in that last statement, possibly there is truth in both, for children, unguided and unbridled, with the strength and passions of men, are dangerous to let loose upon a community.
we are beginning to look upon china as a land at peace. we talk about her “bloodless revolution,” yet even as i write these words i see, sitting opposite to me, my friend who was one of the rescue-party, the gallant nine, who rode post-haste to hsi an fu to rescue the missionaries cut off by the tide of the revolution, and i know the peace of china is not as the peace of a western land.
hsi an fu is situated in shensi, roughly, about a fortnight's journey from the nearest railway, with walls that rival those of peking, and like peking, with a manchu city walled off inside those walls. there on the 22nd october, 1911, the revolutionaries, the apostles of progress, shut fast the gates of the inner city and butchered the manchus within the walls. from house to house they went, and slew them all, old women on the brink of the grave and the tiny infant smiling in its mother's arms. not one was spared. no cries for mercy were listened to. “kill, kill!” was the cry that bright autumn sunday; men, women, and children were slain, the streets ran with their blood, the reek of slaughter went up to heaven, and the manchus were exterminated.
the movement was not anti-foreign, but the plight of the missionaries well illustrates the danger every 265foreigner faces in china. the bulk of the people are peaceful. nowhere in the world, i suppose, is a more peaceful person to be found than the average chinese peasant. he asks only to be let alone, but, unfortunately, he is not let alone. his rulers “squeeze” and oppress him, bands of robbers take toll of his pittance, and when an unpaid soldiery is let loose upon him, his plight is pitiable. it is certainly understandable, if not pardonable, that he in his turn, takes to pillage, and pillage leads to murder. he is only a puppet in the hands of others. one man alone may be kindly enough but the man who is one of a mob, is swayed by the passions of that mob, or the passions of its leader. so it was at hsi an fu. party feeling ran high. there were really three parties, the manchus, the revolutionaries, and the secret society, the elder brother society, who are always anti-foreign and who, here in hsi an fu, for whatever purpose they might originally have banded themselves together, were virtually a band of robbers, mainly intent on filling their own pockets. the revolutionaries declared that the foreigners should be protected, but—and again the menace of china to the white man is felt—in the rush and tumult of the battle, many of their followers did not realise this. this was the time to wreak private vengeance, and it was fiercely taken advantage of. when thousands of helpless people, closer akin to the slayers than the foreigners, were being given pitilessly to the sword, who was likely to take much account of a handful of missionaries.
there was outside the city in the south suburb a small school for the teaching of the swedish missionaries' children, and the head of that school had, 266some little time before, had a camera stolen. he reported it to the police, and being dissatisfied with the lax way the man at the head of the district took the matter up, went to his superior officer. now in these disturbed times, the man who had “lost face” saw his way to vengeance, and, being in sympathy with the revolutionaries, and knowing the exact hour of the outbreak, he ordered the villagers round the south suburb, every family, to send at least one man to help exterminate the foreigners. “it was an order,” and the villagers responded. the school was the first place attacked, for not only did this man seek vengeance, but the humble possessions of the missionaries seemed to the poorer chinese to be wealth well worth looting. therefore that sunday at midnight a mob attacked the school premises. the missionaries, mr and mrs beckman and mr watne, the tutor, were helpless before the crowd, and hid in a tool-house, but they were discovered and ran out, making for a high wall that surrounded the compound. mr watne got astride of this and handed over mr beckman's eldest daughter, a tall girl of twelve, but, before he could get the other children, the crowd rushed them, and he was tumbled over the wall, making his escape with the girl to another village some way off while the mob swept over the rest, scattering them far and wide. mr beckman, a particularly tall, stalwart man, considerably over six feet high, had his youngest child, a baby, in his arms, and the people gave way before him, closing in on the unfortunates who were following. it is impossible for an outsider to tell the tale of that massacre, for massacre it was, the people falling upon and doing to death the unfortunate woman and the children who were clustering round her. the darkness was filled with the fierce shouts of the murderers, and every now and again they were broken in upon by the terrified wail of a child butchered with none to help.
“ta, ta,” cried the people, and they struck mercilessly, with spades and reaping hooks and knives, the weak and helpless, and dodged out of the way of the great, strong man who could fight a little for his life and the lives of those dear to him.
the woman and the children were slain and at last he was hunted, with the little girl still in his arms, into a deep pond of water outside the suburb. the mite was only three years old, and the distracted father, wild with anxiety for his wife and other children, had to soothe the little one and exhort her to be quiet and not to cry, for the pursuers were lighting fires round the pond to find them. they lighted three, and the fires probably defeated their own end, for the fugitive managed to keep out of the glare, and the leaping flames deepened the darkness around. the baby sheltered in her father's arms, and in spite of the cold, never even whimpered, and the water was so deep the mob dared not venture in. only a man of extraordinary height could have so saved himself. hour after hour of the bitter cold autumn night passed and the mob dispersed a little. the lust for killing was not so great in the keen hours of the early morning. then the first silver streaks, heralding the rising of the moon, appeared in the eastern sky and the distracted man made his way softly to a bank at one side, and reaching up, again only a tall man could have done it, laid his little girl there. but the child who had been so good in the icy water while she was against his breast began to fret when the keen morning air blew through her sodden clothes and she could not feel her father's arms round her, and he had to take her back and soothe her. but at last he persuaded her to lie still till he got softly out of the water, and crept round to her. he was not followed, the pursuit was slackening more and more, and, keeping in the shadows, he made his way to the missionaries in the western suburb. he thought that all but he and his little girl had perished, and sad to say they did not know of the two who were sheltering in a village some miles away in the country. here, nearly twelve hours later, the pursuers sought them out and stoned them to death.
meanwhile rumours of what was happening in the southern suburb reached the missionaries in the eastern suburb, and they, taking counsel with their native helpers, divided themselves into three parties, and set out to take refuge in some more distant villages where the people were reputed christians. they had gone but a little way, when the carts of two of the parties were overtaken by a mob, who handled them somewhat roughly, took all their humble possessions, and drove them back.
“kill, kill!” cried the pointing people, as the little helpless company, escorted by the shouting, threatening mob passed, and even those who did not directly threaten, seemed to have no hope.
“they go to their deaths,” they said, looking at them curiously as men look upon other men about to die.
the missionaries themselves had small hope of their lives. when they reached the first mission-269house they were roughly thrust into a room and there guarded, and they only wondered why death did not come swiftly and cut short the agony of waiting.
the third party that set out from that suburb consisted of the rev. donald smith, his wife, and some schoolgirls they were escorting back to their homes, as he considered, in these troublous times, they would be safer with their own people than in the mission school. they went due east, and had not gone three miles when they were set upon. the girls fled in all directions, but the attackers only molested the foreigner and his wife. he endeavoured to defend her, but they beat him so severely that both his arms were broken, and they were both left for dead by the wayside. here they were found by some friendly, kindly villagers—the average chinaman is kindly—who, when the roughs were gone, came to their rescue, and took them back to the eastern suburb, where the other missionaries had spent a terrible two hours, momentarily expecting the mob to rush in and kill them.
but the chinese are a cautious people, curious in their respect for precedent. what was to be done with these foreigners. sometimes the foreigners had been slain, but then again, quite as often, they had been guarded and kept safely. there was no getting into the city. the gates were fast locked and were kept shut for days, but someone—very probably a well-wisher to the missionaries—went to the wall and shouted up to know what was the order about foreigners? were they to kill them or were they to protect them? back came the response, the order was, the foreigners were to be protected, and when word of this was brought back to the mission station, they were not only released, but the property of which they had been robbed was returned to them. for those who had looted kept it intact till they saw which way the wind blew.
and by the time the city gates were opened and order was restored, it was understood, by the proclamation of the new republic, that all foreigners were to be protected.
but the case of the missionaries in hsi an fu graphically illustrates the dangers every foreigner, missionary, or the missionary's b?ate noire, the ubiquitous cigarette-selling british american tobacco man, runs in china, where the civilisation, the long-established civilisation is that of nineveh or babylon, or ancient egypt. not that the foreigner runs any greater risk than the native of the country, sometimes he runs less, because, even into the far interior, a glimmering of the vengeance the christian nations take for their martyred brothers has penetrated; but life in china is, as it was in nineveh or babylon, not nearly as sacred as it is in the west. the life of a poor man, one of the luckless proletariat, is of small account to anyone. a disbanded and unpaid soldiery are for ever a menace, and the difference between the disciplined soldier and the unlicensed bandit is very, very small. one week a regiment of soldiers clamouring for their pay, the next a band of robbers hiding in the hills, their methods ruthless, for their hand is against every man's and every man's hand is against them. they live by the sword, as they perish by the sword, and when the tide of lawlessness reaches a certain height, white man and yellow alike suffer, but we take count only of the sufferings of our own people. 271sitting in the missionary compound up at jehol in the evening, i thought of these things and looked into the eyes that looked into mine, the kind, brown eyes, and i wondered did she remember, did she think of them, too. i looked again, and i knew she remembered, that ever with her was the thought how cut off they were from the rest of the world, and i read there, though she never murmured, fear. for jehol has its traditions of sacrifice and martyrdom too. only six miles away at a village on the lanho, in the year of the boxer trouble, they had slowly buried the catholic priest alive. all the long hot summer's day they had kept him tied to a post, slowly, to prolong his agony, heaping up the earth around him. the day was hot, and he begged for water as the long, weary, hopeless hours dragged themselves away. and some of them had loved him.
“you might,” said a man looking on, “give him a drink, even if you do kill him.”
and they turned on him even as men might have done in the days of the inquisition:
“if you say any more, we will bury you beside him.”
and so he died a cruel death, a martyr, for there was none to help, and when the western nations exacted retribution, they made the people put up a cross, the symbol of his faith, over the grave. and then, because they had been forced to do it, every villager who passed that monument to show his contempt for the foreigner and all his works cast a stone, till now shape and inscription have both gone, and the passer-by cannot tell what is that rough rock, jagged and unshapely.
yet here among these selfsame people, four and a half days' hard journey from peking, far beyond all hope of help from the foreign soldiery, dwell these christian missionaries. “to the greeks, foolishness.” but could they better demonstrate the strength of their faith?