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China Only Yesterday

1850â"1950: A Century of Change

OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA

William Hickey was a very young man when he stopped off in China in 1769, coming home after his first voyage to India, but even then he was a good observer. The amiable chatterbox he became in his old age gave a vivid picture in his memoirs of the peculiar life he shared in Canton with his compatriots for those few weeks. To be sure, it wasn't the true China that he saw. The "factory" district, i.e., the place of foreign factors, or traders, was a fringe of flat land squeezed in between the city wall and the river, and this site, with the row of long narrow buildings that nearly filled it, was the only mainland ground on which the Red Hairs were permitted to set foot. Now and then they went to some island for a picnic; the sailors from their ships, in fact, had to take shore leave on certain islands. But the city of Canton, and the ordinary land of China, must not be entered. The country's rulers did not wish their people to be perverted by foreign devils. They trusted only a few merchants and a severely restricted number of domestic servants to have dealings with the dwellers in the factories. On one occasion the high-spirited Hickey broke the rules and went through a gate in the wall into the city. Children threw stones at him, and he was glad to get back to the East India Company territory where he lodged and had his meals with Company officers, ships' captains, and supercargoes, as the business managers of imports and exports were called. The East India Company held the monopoly of foreign trade in China. Hickey made no mention of what must have been a strange sight to his inexperienced eyes — the great walls of the City of Rams, the teeming narrow streets, the gaily painted boards or silk banners that advertised a shop's wares, and the pigtailed, shaven-pated men, clacking about the cobbled streets in clogs or moving softly in slippers.

He seems to have enjoyed his sojourn in the factory. He said that the Company people were hospitable and that he had luxurious spacious quarters. He saw their warehouses, and the studios where they kept workmen busy preparing the articles that were to be shipped back to Europe. The British and other Europeans bought tea from the Chinese, and silk, china, nankeen (a kind of cotton cloth), and sago. In return they sold woolen cloth and metal, pepper and other spices from the isles of the Indies, and light cotton cloth and opium — though the East India Company never dealt in this commodity — from India, making up the difference with silver bullion and coins, usually Spanish dollars. They seem to have been blasé about the Chinese rarities they shipped home and sold so profitably, judging from one of William Hickey's anecdotes. He had made friends with a thirteen-year-old boy who was serving an apprenticeship in the factory.

"Bob Pott passed most of his time in our rooms, generally coming before I was up of a morning. He breakfasted with us, and if he took it into his head that McClintock was too long at a meal, or drank too much tea, he without the least ceremony overset the table. The first time he practiced this, I was very angry at such a quantity of handsome china being thus mischievously demolished, and expressed my displeasure thereat, which only excited the mirth of young pickle. 'Why, zounds!' said he, 'you surely forget where you are. I never suffer the servants to have the trouble of removing a tea equipage, always throwing the whole apparatus out of window or down stairs. They easily procure another batch from the steward's warehouse.'"

Hickey met and talked with only a very few Chinese — business acquaintances of his hosts — and decided that he liked none of the race. He took for gospel all he was told by the other foreigners, and naturally embraced their prejudices. He marveled at Chinese superstition, retailing several extraordinary anecdotes to illustrate their stupidity and ineptness. Though he was ill-informed and unfair in his judgment he was not high-handed in his attitude: like his friends he seems to have thought of these strange natives as unpleasant but not exactly inferior. The foreigners didn't look down on the Chinese. After all, they were scarcely in a position to do so. The boot was on the other foot; Chinese did look down on Westerners, as they did on all non-Chinese except the Manchus who were their overlords — and no doubt some high scholar-officials dared to do even that, in their heart of hearts. In their estimation the Western traders were barbarians of low degree; they were traders, the lowest class of Chinese civilization, where mankind was divided into four main groups — scholars, then in descending quality farmers, workmen, and, last of all, merchants. That the Emperor and government made much profit from the taxes paid on barbarian trade had no softening effect whatever on their opinion of the barbarians. Of course the Chinese merchants who did the actual bartering were in favor of the traders, as far as they dared to show their feelings, but this was merely a question of like understanding like, and they were not the lawmakers.

China, Chinese thought, the Chinese code of behavior, were conservative to a degree that the West could scarcely comprehend, let alone appreciate. The officials who advised the Emperor realized that their tight system would be pushed off balance if they permitted Western ideas to infiltrate. These tiresome, noisy, ill-bred Europeans with their drunken sailors were not only offensive, but representative of the danger of the unknown. For years they had tried to get in, but the Chinese and Manchus still kept them mewed up in one bit of land outside Canton's walls, over two thousand miles from Peking. And however badly they were treated they never went away altogether, which — though the Chinese and Manchus would never have admitted it — was a good thing, since a total disappearance of Westerners would have embarrassed the administration financially, and been the ruin of a great number of officials who collected "squeeze" from the trade. Fortunately those peculiar Westerners had such an overpowering lust for trade that they seemed capable of swallowing any amount of discouragement.

Of the Western nations who tried their hands at Far East trade, Britain was the acknowledged leader. By means of the East India Company it had held that position since 1715, the Company extending protective wings over the independent "country trade"— plying between India, the East Indies, and China — as well. Certainly the British were kingpins when Hickey was there. They held the biggest share of factory space, but there was little bad blood between nationalities on that account, for they were banded together by necessity and their many common grievances. The restraint under which they lived was notorious. According to the Eight Regulations imposed by the Chinese Viceroy (the Governor General of Kwangtung) and his colleagues, no foreign devil could stay in Canton the year round, or any time except the season, from September to March, when tea and raw silk were brought down to the coast for sale. For the rest of the year the merchants must withdraw to Macao, which the Portuguese occupied not quite independently of Chinese supervision. In many ways, it must be admitted, the withdrawal was a good thing for the foreign devil's state of mind, for in the Canton factory he was practically in prison. He could not stray outside the factory limits, though on three days of the year, if properly chaperoned and in a party, he might visit one of the islands nearby. But even there he must not fraternize with the natives. Foreign devils could not keep arms, nor must their warships enter the Pearl River. Wives and families must not ever visit the factories. No women at all were permitted. While Hickey was there, all loading of foreign ships was suspended for a time because one of the captains was caught in the act of smuggling ashore "a smart little Madras girl" disguised as a boy. A Company man, on the subject of the best-known rule, observed to Hickey that the fact that no Europeans were ever allowed to pass the gates of the city was a circumstance "little to be regretted, because in fact there was nothing in Canton worth seeing." This sounds like sour grapes, but he was voicing an honest opinion held by most people in the Company.

Though it is not strictly true, as the Chinese claim, that China always absorbs her conquerors, it is probably as accurate a statement as the other good old cliché, that history repeats itself. Both these slogans, like most of their kind, need qualifying. There is enough similarity between some of Cathay's cycles to give the aid and comfort of such thoughts to Chinese when they are in the process of being conquered, and are unhappy about it. The truth lies rather in a concept of China and her conquerors, like two noble metals lying close to each other, being miscible, silver soaking into gold for a slight depth at the surface, and vice versa. Since the dark, misty period when there was — perhaps — a state in China called the Hsia Kingdom, down to the Ch'ing Dynasty, there were periods when the Flowery Kingdom was subjected to such experience, when a strange race came in and took over the power. Five of these periods were lengthy. The T'o-pa, who were a Turkish people, moved from the north in the fourth century A.D., and imposed barbarian rule until the middle of the sixth century, as the T'o-pa Wei Dynasty. In 907 the Tartar Ch'i-tan came — again from the north — and stayed (the Liao Dynasty) more than two hundred years, holding firmly to a large portion of the country, until they became civilized and weakened. When they were overrun by another lot of barbarians called the Ju-chen, forerunners of the Manchus, the Ch'i-tan could not defend themselves and went under. The Ju-chen (Chin Dynasty) also took eagerly to Chinese ways and adapted themselves to civilization, but for some reason they were not so debilitated as their predecessors, and put up a stout fight against Genghiz Khan when he led his Mongols against them. However, Genghiz had his way ultimately, and the Yuan Dynasty that he founded persisted until well into the fourteenth century. Doubtless the Chinese told themselves, all that time, that China always absorbs her conquerors, but in 1368 the rule of the Mongol was at last thrown off. The Ming Dynasty was Chinese, and it ruled — with considerable glory — until invaders showed up in the seventeenth century: the Tartars, called Manchus, who took over in 1644. They held on with tenacity. They were still in power when the Red Hair barbarians from the West, of whom some had already found foothold in Macao and Formosa, began arriving in force from the sea, clamoring for permission to trade in China without hindrance. By 1770 the Manchus, inevitably, were much Sinicized, and had taken on certain Chinese ideas, particularly that one of holding all barbarians well away for as long as possible. This Ch'ing Dynasty was no longer strong, but on the face of it the structure still looked sound enough; certainly the Emperor and his courtiers, both Manchu and Chinese, felt capable of living in the traditional way, aloof from strangers. For their class, time was standing still. They were not aware, or at least did not care, that the world was shrinking. They must have known of British incursions in India: though they disdained to show any concern of what barbarians might be doing to each other out there, the knowledge must have strengthened Imperial determination — if strengthening were needed — never to run the risk of similar invasions at home.

After two hundred years of Manchu rule the Emperor's Chinese were apparently loyal to him, and satisfied with the way things were. Certainly those of high rank had reason to be. Within limits they had power — only a few of the highest posts were reserved strictly for Manchus — and they flourished. Nevertheless there were misgivings in the land, as there had been since the conquest. A ChineseEmperor was the Son of Heaven and ruled by Heavenly Mandate. When, or if, it became apparent that the Mandate had expired, the Emperor had to be replaced, by what the Western world would call rebellion. But what of a Manchu Emperor? Had he ever really held the Mandate, barbarian as he was by ancestry? There were Chinese who felt that he could not, and so should not be on the throne. Some of them believed firmly in a prophecy that was going the rounds, that he would be removed two hundred years after his dynasty mounted the throne: that time was approaching.

All the while the British, far away in a mysterious country of which Peking knew nothing and cared less, went on developing plans in which China figured largely. The West had taken kindly to tea-drinking, even when a high tax made it a costly pleasure. The more tea that was brought out of Canton, the more other people smuggled it into England, until in self-defense the legitimate importers persuaded the government to lower the tax and put the smugglers out of business. The smuggling did stop as a result of this action, and though for a while it went hard with the revenuers when they lost a large part of the tax income, consumption of tea promptly increased. In Canton thousands of chests were bought and loaded and sent back to England, and thousands of taels of silver (a tael is a Chinese ounce, then worth six shillings eightpence) went to pay the exporters of China — and the Chinese customs officials — and the dozens of hangerson, each of whom had a cut — and, ultimately, the Emperor in Peking, who, with his officers, got the residue. There was so much tea buying that the Western merchants found themselves in need of silver and coins with which to pay. The situation lent fresh vigor to their chronic complaints of restraint of trade. If only they could get into the country and stimulate public desire for the things they could supply from Britain! Nobody in Canton needed British wool, but up north it could be bitterly cold; the inhabitants of Chihli and Shensi and Shantung would love woolen cloth, once they'd tried it out, and there were other products as well that the Western merchants were sure they could sell, if only they could get a chance. They could not believe that the Emperor really understood what they were after. They thought he was insulated by his courtiers, deceived as to the true nature of foreign hopes and desires. After all, China had not always been sealed off from the great world. The pertinacity of the British was due in part to their hope, too, that history might repeat itself.

The door had been slammed in their faces, over and over again, whenever they prized it open. But in the past, through side doors, other traders had got into the country, by way of the overland Silk Routes; what had been done once could be done again, surely? And there had been many missionaries. It was a foreign faith, Buddhism, that took such a firm hold of the Chinese that it survived in its adopted home long after its roots died off in India. Nestorian Christianity, modern Christianity, Islam, Judaism — they had all got in. There were Jesuits at Court until the Society was disbanded. The first British Embassy that reached Peking, in 1793, found its footsteps impeded the whole way by European Catholic missionaries. If those white men could get in, why not the merchants?

The traders never realized the full extent of Chinese contempt for them as traders. Intellectuals like the Jesuits did: they understood the mentality of their hosts, yet even Jesuit understanding was not proof, ultimately, against banishment. The traders persisted in assuming that all mankind cared, just as they themselves did, for profit pure and simple: they overrated the simplicity of the problem, and when the Embassy failed, in spite of all Macartney's polish and intelligence, to get what they wanted, they were still unwilling to give up. Indeed, they could not give up. The investors at home kept pushing them, demanding that they expand: they were between a strong force and a blank wall. Something had to give. In the end, it was the wall that gave, pushed down by the Opium War.

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Excerpted from China Only Yesterday by Emily Hahn. Copyright © 1963 Emily Hahn Boxer. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
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