The first striking object of Canton city is the double tower of the big Catholic Church. Take off your hat to this because it means a great deal, and stands as the visible standard of a battle that has yet to be fought. Never have the missionaries of the Mother of the Churches wrestled so mightily with any land as with China, and never has nation so scientifically tortured the missionary as has China. Perhaps when the books are audited somewhere else, each race, the White and the Yellow, will be found to have been right according to their lights.
I had taken one fair look at the city from the steamer, and threw up my cards. "I can't describe this place, and besides, I hate Chinamen."
"Bosh! It is only Benares, magnified about eight times. Come along."
It was Benares, without any wide streets or chauks, and yet darker than Benares, in that the little skyline was entirely blocked by tier on tier of hanging signs,—red, gold, black, and white. The shops stood on granite plinths, pukka brick above, and tile–roofed. Their fronts were carved wood, gilt, and coloured savagely. John knows how to dress a shop, though he may sell nothing more lovely than smashed fowl and chitterlings. Every other shop was a restaurant, and the space between them crammed with humanity. Do you know those horrible sponges full of worms that grow in warm seas? You break off a piece of it and the worms break too. Canton was that sponge. "Hi, low yah. To hoh wang!" yelled the chair–bearers to the crowd, but I was afraid that if the poles chipped the corner of a house the very bricks would begin to bleed. Hong–Kong showed me how the Chinaman could work. Canton explained why he set no value on life. The article was cheaper than in India. I hated the Chinaman before; I hated him doubly as I choked for breath in his seething streets where nothing short of the pestilence could clear a way. There was of course no incivility from the people, but the mere mob was terrifying. There are three or four places in the world where it is best for an Englishman to agree with his adversary swiftly, whatever the latter's nationality may be. Canton heads the list. Never argue with anybody in Canton. Let the guide do it for you. Then the stinks rose up and overwhelmed us. In this respect Canton was Benares twenty times magnified. The Hindu is a sanitating saint compared to the Chinaman. He is a rigid Malthusian in the same regard.
"Very bad stink, this place. You come right along," said Ah Cum, who had learned his English from Americans. He was very kind. He showed me feather–jewellery shops where men sat pinching from the gorgeous wings of jays, tiny squares of blue and lilac feathers, and pasting them into gold settings, so that the whole looked like Jeypore enamel of the rarest. But we went into a shop. Ah Cum drew us inside the big door and bolted it, while the crowd blocked up the windows and shutter–bars. I thought more of the crowd than the jewellery. The city was so dark and the people were so very many and so unhuman.
The March of the Mongol is a pretty thing to write about in magazines. Hear it once in the gloom of an ancient curio shop, where nameless devils of the Chinese creed make mouths at you from back–shelves, where brazen dragons, revelations of uncleanliness, all catch your feet as you stumble across the floor—hear the tramp of the feet on the granite blocks of the road and the breaking wave of human speech, that is not human! "Watch the yellow faces that glare at you between the bars, and you will be afraid, as I was afraid.
"It's beautiful work," said the Professor, bending over a Cantonese petticoat—a wonder of pale green, blue, and Silver. "Now I understand why the civilised European of Irish extraction kills the Chinaman in America. It is justifiable to kill him. It would be quite right to wipe the city of Canton off the face of the earth, and to exterminate all the people who ran away from the shelling. The Chinaman ought not to count."
I had gone off on my own train of thought, and it was a black and bitter one.
"Why on earth can't you look at the lions and enjoy yourself, and leave politics to the men who pretend to understand 'em?" said the Professor.
"It's no question of politics," I replied. "This people ought to be killed off because they are unlike any people I ever met before. Look at their faces. They despise us. You can see it, and they aren't a bit afraid of us either."
Then Ah Cum took us by ways that were dark to the temple of the Five Hundred Genii, which was one of the sights of the rabbit–warren. This was a Buddhist temple with the usual accessories of altars and altar lights and colossal figures of doorkeepers at the gates. Round the inner court runs a corridor lined on both sides with figures about half life–size, representing most of the races of Asia. Several of the Jesuit Fathers are said to be in that gallery,—you can find it all in the guide–books,—and there is one image of a jolly–looking soul in a hat and full beard, but, like the others, naked to the waist. "That European gentleman," said Ah Cum. "That Marco Polo." "Make the most of him," I said. "The time is coming when there will be no European gentlemen—nothing but yellow people with black hearts—black hearts, Ah Cum—and a devil–born capacity for doing more work than they ought."
"Come and see a clock," said he. "Old clock. It runs by water. Come on right along." He took us to another temple and showed us an old water–clock of four gurrahs: just the same sort of thing as they have in out–of–the–way parts of India for the use of the watchmen. The Professor vows that the machine, which is supposed to give the time to the city, is regulated by the bells of the steamers in the river, Canton water being too thick to run through anything smaller than a half–inch pipe. From the pagoda of this temple we could see that the roofs of all the houses below were covered with filled water–jars. There is no sort of fire organisation in the city. When lighted it burns till it stops.
Ah Cum led us to the Potter's Field, where the executions take place. The Chinese slay by the hundred, and far be it from me to say that such generosity of bloodshed is cruel. They could afford to execute in Canton alone at the rate of ten thousand a year without disturbing the steady flow of population. An executioner who happened to be wandering about—perhaps in search of employment—offered us a sword under guarantee that it had cut off many heads. "Keep it," I said. "Keep it, and let the good work go on. My friend, you cannot execute too freely in this land. You are blessed, I apprehend, with a purely literary bureaucracy recruited—correct me if I am wrong—from all social strata, more especially those in which the idea of cold–blooded cruelty has, as it were, become embedded. Now, when to inherited devildom is superadded a purely literary education of grim and formal tendencies, the result, my evil–looking friend,—the result, I repeat,—is a state of affairs which is faintly indicated in the Little Pilgrim's account of the Hell of Selfishness. You, I presume, have not yet read the works of the Little Pilgrim."
"He looks as if he was going to cut at you with that sword," said the Professor. "Come away and see the Temple of Horrors."
That was a sort of Chinese Madame Tussaud's—life–like models of men being brayed in mortars, sliced, fried, toasted, stuffed, and variously bedevilled—that made me sick and unhappy. But the Chinese are merciful even in their tortures. When a man is ground in a mill, he is, according to the models, popped in head first. This is hard on the crowd who are waiting to see the fun, but it saves trouble to the executioners. A half–ground man has to be carefully watched, or else he wriggles out of his place. To crown all, we went to the prison, which was a pest–house in a back street. The Professor shuddered. "It's all right," I said. "The people who sent the prisoners here don't care. The men themselves look hideously miserable, but I suppose they don't care, and goodness knows I don't care. They are only Chinamen. If they treat each other like dogs, why should we regard 'em as human beings? Let 'em rot. I want to get back to the steamer. I want to get under the guns of Hong–Kong. Phew!"