Travels in China by Sir John Barrow (top e book reader .txt) 📕

the forehead, was a crystal button. The whole face and neck were washed with a preparation of white lead and the cheeks highly rouged; and two vermillion spots, like wafers, were particularly conspicuous, one on the centre of the under lip and the other on the chin. Their feet were universally squeezed down to an unnatural size. Few females were seen among the immense crowds that the novelty of the sight had brought together, but great numbers had assembled in the houses and particularly on board the pleasure or passage yachts, with the intention of satisfying their curiosity. The superior style of dress and the appearance of the women in public at this place, so different from the general custom of the country, could only be explained to us by the writings of the Christian missionaries, who observe that the concubines of mandarins and men of property are chiefly procured from the cities of Yang-tchoo and of Sou-tchoo, where they are educated in the pleasing arts of singing, music and dancing and every other accomplishment suitable to women of superior rank, in order to render them the more agreeable and fascinating. That such women are generally purchased by persons engaged in the trade, in different parts of the country, and trained in these cities, where they are disposed of to the highest bidder, "this being the principal branch of trade that is carried on in those two cities." How do these holy men reconcile so infamous a traffic among a people whom they have adorned with every virtue? a people whom they have rendered remarkable among nations for their filial piety! Is there on earth a crime more revolting against civilized nature, or more detestable to civilized society, than that of a parent selling his own child and consigning her, expressly and voluntarily, into a state of prostitution? Those unfortunate wretches who, in Europe, have by any accident reduced themselves to that degraded and deplorable condition of becoming subservient to the pleasures of a man, whom they probably detest, are generally the objects of pity, however their conduct may be disapproved; but a parent, who should be the cause of reducing them to such a state, would be execrated; but the assertion is as absurd as ridiculous, and the writer must have been very credulous to suppose, that the principal trade of one of the largest cities in the world, whose population cannot be less than a million of souls, should consist in buying and selling ladies of pleasure. Buying females in the legal way is certainly the greatest branch of trade throughout China, as every woman there is bought and sold. These reverend gentlemen likewise inform us, with great indifference, that if a man be desirous of having a male child and his wife should happen to be barren, he will purchase one of these concubines for the sole purpose of getting an heir; and, when this is accomplished, he either provides her with a husband, or turns her adrift. Such are the moral virtues of the Chinese, compared with whom all other nations have been accounted barbarous[57].

To the west of Sau-tchoo-foo is a range of mountains higher than any we had yet seen, well covered with wood; and an extensive lake stretches along their base, famed in China for its picturesque beauties and for its fish. We would gladly have made a party of pleasure to this delightful spot, but innumerable objections, as usual, were started by our conductors, on the score of delay that such an excursion would occasion.

The two great products of this part of the country are rice and silk; the former of which, at this time, they were busily employed in reaping. Plantations of the mulberry tree were extended on both sides of the canal and into the country beyond the reach of sight. They appeared to be of two distinct species; the one, the common mulberry, morus nigra, and the other having much smaller leaves, smooth and heart-shaped, and bearing a white berry about the size of the field strawberry. The latter had more the habit of a shrub, but the branches of neither were suffered to run into strong wood, being frequently pruned in order that the trunk might annually throw out young scions, whose leaves were considered to be more tender than such as grew from old branches. Another reason was also assigned for this operation. A tree, when left to itself, throws out the greatest part of its leaves at once, in the spring of the year, but if the thick wood be cut out from time to time, new leaves will continue to push below the parts so cut off during the whole season; and, accordingly, the Chinese are particularly attentive to prune afresh in the autumn, in order to obtain a supply of young leaves in the after spring. The thermometer at this place, on the 9th of November at sun-rise, stood at 64°, and at noon in the shade at 70° degrees.

It was in this part of the canal where the bridge of ninety-one arches, mentioned in the sixth chapter, was thrown across the arm of a lake that joined the canal. I lament exceedingly that we passed this extraordinary fabric in the night. It happened to catch the attention of a Swiss servant who, as the yacht glided along, began to count the arches, but finding them increase in number much beyond his expectation and, at the same time, in dimensions, he ran into the cabin calling out with great eagerness, "For God's sake, gentlemen, come upon deck, for here is a bridge such as I never saw before; it has no end." Mr. Maxwell and I hastened upon deck and, by the faint light, could sufficiently distinguish the arches of a bridge running parallel with the eastern bank of the canal, across the arm of a vast lake, with which the navigation thus communicated. From the highest point, or what appeared to us to be the central arch, I counted forty-five to the end; here they were very small, but the central arch I guessed to be about thirty feet high and forty wide; and the whole length of the bridge I calculated to be about half a mile. The construction of such a bridge, in such a situation, could obviously have been employed for no other purpose than that of opening a free communication with the lake; and, at the same time, of avoiding the labour and expence of accumulating materials sufficient for making a solid embankment.

After sailing a great part of the day through a forest of mulberry trees, planted with much regularity, we arrived on the 10th at the city of Hang-tchoo-foo, the capital of the province of Tche-kiang. Here that branch of the grand canal which communicates with the Yang-tse-kiang terminates in a large commodious bason, at this time crowded with shipping. From this bason a number of smaller canals, passing through arches turned in the walls and intersecting the city in every direction, are finally united in a lake beyond the western wall called the See-hoo. The natural and artificial beauties of this lake far exceeded any thing we had hitherto had an opportunity of seeing in China. The mountains surrounding it were lofty and broken into a variety of forms that were highly picturesque; and the vallies were richly cloathed with trees of different kinds, among which three species were remarkably striking, not only by their intrinsic beauty, but also by the contrast they formed with themselves and the rest of the trees of the forest. These were the Laurus Camphora or camphor tree, the Croton sebiferum or tallow tree, and the Thuia Orientalis or arbor vitæ. The bright shining green foliage of the first, mingled with the purple leaves of the second, and overtopped by the tall and stately tree of life, of the deepest green, produced a pleasing effect to the eye; and the landscape was rendered still more interesting to the mind, by the very singular and diversified appearance of several repositories of the dead, upon the sloping sides of the inferior hills. Here, as well as elsewhere, the sombre and upright cypress was destined to be the melancholy companion of the tombs. Higher still among the woods, avenues had been opened to admit of rows of small blue houses, supported on white colonnades which, on examination, were also found to be mansions of the dead. Naked coffins of extraordinary thickness were every where lying upon the surface of the ground.

The lake that extended from the walls of the city to the feet of the mountains, and threw its numerous arms into the wooded vallies, was the seat of pleasure, as well as of profit, to the inhabitants of Hang-tchoo-foo. These amusements, however, of floating upon barges in the lake are principally confined to one sex. Few women, except those of loose character, join in the parties of men. How miserable or, at best, how little interest can be raised in that state of society where no social intercourse of the sexes exists; where sentiment, nice feeling and the sport and play of the softer passions are totally unknown, and where reason and philosophy are at so low an ebb! In more enlightened countries, when age may have weakened the ardour of joining in the sprightly female circle, or inclination lead to more serious conversations, numberless resources are still left to exercise the faculties of the mind, and society may always be had for such as can relish