Our previous posts have talked of India in the European eye, and now, this account will present aspects of Chinese life drawn and depicted in a set of four volumes called “China Illustrated”from 1843 that speak of the scenery, the architecture and social habits of “That Ancient Empire”, drawn “From Original and Authentic Sketches by Thomas Allom, Esq.” and supplemented with “Historical and Descriptive Notices by the Rev. G.N. Wright, M.A.” The cover of each of these volumes is a production in itself. (See picture)
Giving a full account of all that is contained in these four volumes is of course a tall order but let me dwell on a few aspects that interest me from my own study of China over nearly four decades. Let us start with the West Lake in Hangzhou on the eastern coast of that country, called Lake See-Hoo in this account from 1843.
The “fascinating scenery of these elysian regions”, the writer gushes - the picture of the lake that we see above is chinoiserie transposed onto the picturesque - an occidental view of a Chinese scene that would find a favored place in an English sitting room. As a pandemic rages around us, this view of the West Lake seems oddly calming, offering a view of a world imagined in happier, safer times, life as it could have been. So let your mind wander in this description of how like the “Latina of Venice, the face of these waters is crowded day and night with pleasure-boats of every grade”. The banks “are decked all round with flowering water-lilies, the purple poppy enriches the lowest margin of the land, beyond which rise in gradual dignity the camphor, the tallow-tree, and the arbor-vitae.” It is a “fairy lake”.
But as the pandemic reminds us, in the midst of life, we are in death. The sad “Vale of Tombs” is in the vicinity of the Lake. The Chinese, described as “rude in custom and habits” are nonetheless “too refined and sentimental in the reverence they pay the dead” and overlooking the lake are monuments, tombs and “fantastic sepulchral honours”, “melancholy resting places of many generations”. Cypresses and weeping willows overlook these tombs and often at night, torches are perceived in the area, borne by visitors to the graves of friends, relations and parents. In the seasons of the spring and autumn, the graves are swept “and garnished with tinsel-paper, slips of silk, flowers and various other ornaments”.
And overlooking it all is the fantastic “Temple of the Thundering Winds”, a “structure of great antiquity”, with foundations dating back to the era of Confucius. It is perched on the hill seen to the right of the picture of Lake “See Hoo” above.
The West Lake has inspired several Chinese poets. Here is what a eleventh century mandarin Su Shi, writing poetry like several of his tribe, had to say:
”The shimmer of light on the water is the play of sunny skies
The blur of colour across the hills is richer still in rain.
If you wish to compare the lake in the West to the Lady of the West,
Lightly powdered or thickly smeared the fancy is just as apt.”
And thence on to the preparation of tea, such an ubiquitous feature of Chinese and Indian life. But before we do that, a question to our reader. Did you know that ‘Potala’ - as in the Potala in Lhasa, Tibet - or ‘Poo-tala’ as our book terms it - is apparently “a corruption of Budhalaya, the habitation of Budah”? There is a chapter devoted to the “Temple of Poo-Ta-La at Zhe Hol in Tartary” (see picture) and the magnificence of this structure. Tartary for the European adventurers and mercenaries of the eighteenth century and before was an amorphous region on the Eurasian landmass, astride the Caucasus and Central Asia. The temple in question is the Putuo Zongcheng Temple in Chengde, Hebei Province, China, modeled on the Potala in Lhasa.
Yes, tea. This infusion, it is observed, is supposed to “have been first employed by the Chinese as a preventive of leprosy”. Be that as it may, “its effects on the human system are those of a very mild narcotic and sedative; and like those of any similar medicine taken in small quantities, exhilarating.” Green tea possesses these elements in greater proportion than black tea it seems. “Still, of all narcotics, tea is the least pernicious, if indeed it be so in any degree.” Around the same time as the writing of this book, the tea-plant was discovered growing wild in Assam, “in the natural jungle which covers a large portion of the country, and beneath the shade of which it grows luxuriantly” . Thereafter the “culture of tea was spiritedly commenced” with the aid of Chinese cultivators with the confidence that it would ultimately be able to “compete with the large black-leafed tea, called in England, bohea, and in China ta-cha or large tea”.
Some interesting insights about the Chinese character are provided, whether true or false. It concerns the subject of food. This is what our book says: “In China, the voracity of the people obtrudes itself continually; every object of industry or occupation seems to have such a tendency to the appeasing of appetite”. Talking of the rich among the Chinese, it says that they are “decided epicures” while the middle and lower classes are “decided sensualists”. They are “the most omnivorous people in the world, there is not an animal or plant that can be procured by art and industry, and eaten without risk of life, that is not pressed into the service by these gastronomers: the flesh of wild horses is highly prized, the larvae of the sphinx-moth, bears’ paws, and the feet of other animals brought from Tartary, Cambodia and Siam, are deemed delicious; and edible birds’-nests are esteemed at the banquets of the mandarins, for which they are occasionally made into a soup.” Salesman in the meat market, enter it “having baskets suspended at the extremities of a carrying-pole, in which are contained dogs, cats, rats, or birds either tame or wild, generally alive - sea-slugs, and grubs found in the sugar-cane”. The tradition has carried on into modern China, it would seem. The controversial ‘wet markets’ come to mind.
Now let us consider the houses of the Chinese, this one a house of a Chinese merchant, near the city of Canton or Guangzhou. A Chinese villa (see picture) is described as an assemblage of buildings, instead of one great mansion, that displays a “fruitful imagination and an exhaustless fancy”. The Chinese roof is that part of the building upon which the architect “expends his best abilities”. It is adorned with scroll-work and gilded dragons. The other feature of this dwelling is an artificial lake on the grounds, its banks adorned with rock-work and pleasure-grounds, as if “fitted for wood-nymphs”, altogether conveying a sense of freedom and “unbounded playfulness so conspicuous in all their edicts or any cost or extent”.
The Chinese, we know, are obsessed with ceremony. The more you rise in social echelons, the level of ceremony increases with it. The Chinese have swagger. So let us take a look at “A Mandarin paying a Visit of Ceremony” from our book. The “distance between the man in authority, and the subject whose duty is to obey, is so jealously observed in this ancient and populous kingdom, no opportunity is left unimproved of extending the gulf of separation.” The mandarin travels ceremoniously in a palanquin or sedan chair, and before it a “crowd of servants advance”, beating gongs, and others “extolling in loud tones the virtues of their master, and calling upon the worthless rabble to make way”, terrifying the “ignorant and enslaved spectators who are peremptorily desired to stand and stare”. No public ceremony of joy or sorrow in China, our author says, is complete without the introduction of the bamboo, the “national cane” which is used by the “fellows in the pay of the great man” who “attend his progress” and who are armed with bamboo canes to “belabor any unhappy obstructions who endeavor to obtain a peep at the petty mandarin”. The vanities of officialdom in full display!
We are all familiar with the Great Wall of China, but one of the wonders of old China was the Porcelain Pagoda or Tower in the city of Nanking, now Nanjing, described by the early European travelers as the “best constructed and noblest building of all the East”. A Buddhist place of worship, it was also called the “Temple of Gratitude”, and was built in the fifteenth century, in the reign of the Yongle emperor of the Ming dynasty, and is considered by the Chinese as “only second in importance and miraculous character to the Great Wall”. It is described as a “delicate and gorgeous temple” cased on the exterior and interior with porcelain of various colors and shades, that had withstood the “violence of time” until struck by lightning in the the early 1800’s. It was thereafter repaired but then attacked by a “party of English seamen” with pickaxes and hammers who tried to deface its walls and “remove the curiosities”. Unfortunately, the pagoda was destroyed during the Taiping Rebellion in 1856, after this account of the temple appeared in our book. It has been rebuilt but its present reincarnation is entirely bereft of the splendor of the original. The Porcelain Pagoda was a legend in its time. We all remember the Hans Christian Andersen story “The Garden of Paradise” where the East Wind flew home from China to tell his mother , TheWind: “I came back from China, where I danced for a while around the Tower of Porcelain and rang all the bells.” The reference to the bells are the seventy-two bells that were suspended from the highest cupola of the pagoda and also those hung from the angles of every story, a total of one hundred and fifty-two in all.
Let us now turn to the subject of women, and their place in society. “A species of middle state, between rudeness and civilization, is the portion of a Chinese lady of quality” subject “to a species of concealment in a close sedan”. And it was not just the high-bred lady that was subject to a strict incognito, but even the less wealthy kept “covered wheelbarrows for their captive wives - not to prevent the winds of heaven from visiting them too roughly, but to deprive them of the homage of earthly eyes”. Yet, despite this “jealous care”, females in the humbler ranks were treated with little respect: “one class (of Chinese women) are the flowers of the garden, the other of the forest; one are fed, and lodged, and cherished, with all the care and cost and jealousy that belong to the conservatory - the other left to waste their sweetness in the desert air”.
The games the Chinese play. One of them, prevalent until this time, is “playing at shuttlecock with the feet.” This is a sport pursued by the Chinese, as our book says, with a great degree of enthusiasm. Five or frequently, six persons “form themselves into a circle” to play this game; the shuttlecock is “struck with the soles of the feet” and “whether shoes be permitted, or hands occasionally allowed, to aid the feet in preventing the shuttlecock from coming to the ground, the least successful players fall out of the ring in turn, until the number is gradually reduced to one; this one is, of course, declared to be the winner of the stakes..” This pastime of the Chinese is still pursued with the same enthusiasm today, as in 1843 when this account was published.
No account of China can be complete without the inclusion of Peking, or Beijing as it is now known, the ‘northern’ court as opposed to Nanking or Nanjing, the southern court. In the early decades of the nineteenth century, the city had an area of about fourteen square miles, exclusive of its extensive suburbs, and was divided into two totally distinct sections, the northern, a perfect square, founded by the Manchus and including the imperial palace, and the southern, in the form of a parallelogram, occupied solely by the Chinese (that is, not the ruling elite, the Manchus). Each of these sections was enclosed by their respective walls. The population of Peking at the time was believed to “not exceed two millions”. Two principal streets, a hundred feet in width, and four miles in length, connected the northern and southern gates while two of corresponding breadth extend from east to west. One of these, the Chang’an Boulevard is the central avenue in Beijing with its landmark, the Tiananmen Square, and the Tiananmen Gate or the Gate of Heavenly Peace . In the 1840’s, this “street of perpetual repose” was regarded by the foreigner as having been named “by antiphrasis” because “there never is repose there” with the whole central causeway, a “dense moving mass, composed of operatives in every department of life - tinkers, cobblers, blacksmiths, barbers”. There appeared to have been a ceaseless din arising from the cries of various vendors, and the “wrangling of purchasers”, occasionally “exceeded by a strong twang not unlike the jarring tones of a cracked jew’s harp; this successful attraction of notice is merely the barber’s signal for custom, which he makes with this tweezers”! The causeway was not paved, with the dust in summer intolerable, and the mud in winter “oppressive” but what was characteristic “affording grave accusation against the civic authorities” was the “want of drainage, or sewers of any kind” and which was “disgraceful to Chinese national character”. The resultant odor could not be masked, as our authors say, by “employment of perfumes, scented woods, pastilles, odoriferous tapers, and aromatics of many sorts, as correctives” to afford “palliative of such defective institutions”.
The Chinese are a superstitious people - even today. So it seems natural that our book devotes some attention to this trait. Here is what it says: “The destinies of the empire are said to be under the tutelage of four supernatural animals - the stag, tortoise, phoenix, and dragon”. The first of these animals presides over literature, and is visible at “the birth of sages”; the second, the tortoise is associated with virtue, peace and morality; the third, the phoenix “controlled divination” (the Chinese believe the rare appearance of this mythical bird is an omen for harmony especially when a new emperor ascends the throne). But it is the fourth, the dragon - that “extraordinary monster” -the “national ensign” of imperial China, painted on standards, and appearing on edicts and documents and insignia - which is the creature that exerts “a decided mastery over heavenly bodies” and occasionally swallows the sun and the moon, “leaving the empire in total darkness”. And so, to appease his wrath, “to divert his attention from these serious pursuits”, the Dragon Boat Festival is held, on the fifth day of the fifth moon, which generally falls in June. The boat used is “of trifling width, but long enough to accommodate from forty to sixty paddles, with a figure-head representing the Chinese imperial emblem” (the dragon) cutting through the water with great rapidity to the shouts of spectators, sounds of wind-instruments, the rolling of drums, all of which “lend increased vigour to the boatmen”! The Dragon, it is said, is both loved and feared, and the subject of a great deal of awe, not to be trifled with.
This has been a rapid scan of the four volumes of our book, there is of course much more within these pages to attract the reader and afford an interesting glimpse of the life of a vast country and her people. But almost two centuries have passed since this account was written and visualized with these fascinating sketches. China has re-defined herself since. To quote L.P. Hartley: “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” Very differently, indeed. Yet, the genealogy does not go away, the culture and the people endure .
In my next post, I will return to India. Until then, be safe and well. May the heavens watch over us.