I grudge the hours that I am
obliged to spend in sleep; a week has gone like half a day, each hour
heightening my impressions of the fascination and interest of Canton,
and of the singular force and importance of the Chinese.
Canton is
intoxicating from its picturesqueness, color, novelty and movement.
to-day I have been carried eighteen miles through and round it,
reveling the whole time in its enchantments, and drinking for the first
time of that water of which it may truly be said that who so drinks
"shall thirst again" - true Orientalism. As we sat at mid-day at the
five-storied pagoda, which from a corner of the outer wall overlooks
the Tartar city, and ever since, through this crowded week, I have
wished that the sun would stand still in the cloudless sky, and let me
dream of gorgeous sunlight, light without heat, of narrow lanes rich in
color, of the glints of sunlight on embroideries and cloth of gold,
resplendent even in the darkness, of hurrying and colored crowds in the
shadow, with the blue sky in narrow strips high above, of gorgeous
marriage processions, and the "voice of the bridegroom and the voice of
the bride," of glittering trains of mandarins, of funeral processions,
with the wail of hired mourners clad in sackcloth and ashes, of the
Tartar city with its pagodas, of the hills of graves, great cities of
the dead outside the walls, fiery-red under the tropic blue, of the
"potter's field" with its pools of blood and sacks of heads, and
crosses for crucifixion, now, as on Calvary, symbolical of shame alone,
of the wonderful river life, and all the busy, crowded, costumed hurry
of the streets, where blue banners hanging here and there show that in
those houses death has stilled some busy brains forevermore. And I
should like to tell you of the Buddhist and Confucian temples; of the
monastery garden, which is the original of the famous "Willow Pattern;"
of the great Free Dispensary which is to rival that of the Medical
Mission; of the asylums for lepers, foundlings, the blind, aged men and
aged women, dating from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries,
originally well conceived and noble institutions, but reduced into
inefficiency and degradation by the greed and corruption of generations
of officials; of the "Beggars' Square" and beggars' customs; of the
trades, and of the shops with their splendors; of the Examination Hall
with its streets numbering eleven thousand six hundred and
seventy-three cells for the candidates for the literary honors which
are the only road to office and distinction in China, but Canton
deserves a volume, and Archdeacon Gray has written one!
I. L. B.
LETTER IV
"Faithful unto Death" - "Foreign Devils" - Junks and Boats - Chinese
Luxury - Canton Afloat - An Al Fresco Lunch-Light and Color - A Mundane
Disappointment - Street Sights and Sounds - Street Costume - Food and
Restaurants - A Marriage Procession - Temples and Worship - Crippled Feet
REV.
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