Page:Illustrations of China and Its People vol. II.pdf/59



PROFESSIONAL beggars are numerous in all parts of China, but it is in the larger cities that they more particularly abound, and their skill in dodges and deception would have furnished advantageous hints to the mendicants who used to infest our English thoroughfares. In China the beggar pursues his calling unmolested, and even has received for himself a recognition and quasi-protection at the hands of the civic authorities. The fact is, that the charitable institutions— of which there are many all over the country, and which are conducted in some cases with a fair degree of honesty— are yet totally unable to cope with the misery and destitution that prevails in populous localities. No poor-law system is known, and the only plan adopted to palliate the evil is to tolerate begging in public, and to place the lazzaroni under the local jurisdiction of a responsible chief. In Foochow the city is divided into wards, and within the limits of each ward a head man is appointed, who can count his descent from a line of illustrious beggars, and in him rests the right, which would seem to be, to keep the members of his order under his own management and control. During my visit to Foochow I was introduced to one of these beggar kings, and he it is. with three of his subjects, who are presented to the reader in No. 53. I found this man to be an inveterate opium smoker, and consequently in bad circumstances, in spite of the handsome revenue which he was known to receive.

I afterwards visited the house of another head man, and there I was much struck with many evidences of comfort, and even luxury, with which he was surrounded. The eldest son of the chief received me at the entrance, and conducted me into a guests' chamber; and while I was sitting there, two ladies dressed in silks, and with a certain degree of refinement in their air, passed the door of the apartment in order to get a glimpse of its inmate. My host informed me that these ladies were his mother, and his father's second wife or concubine; but the chief himself was unfortunately not at home. This king of beggars has it in his power to make an agreement with the shopkeepers of any street which runs through his district; and when a compact of this kind has been concluded, he will protect them from the pestering visits of his gang of beggars. Any shopkeeper who fails to come to terms is liable to have his establishment haunted by the most offensive class of mendicants. It was related to me that a silkmercer had failed to contribute his beggars' rate. One of the fraternity accordingly paid a visit to his shop, having his body smeared over with mud. and bearing in his hand a bowl slung with cords, and filled to the brim with foul water. Thus armed, he commenced to swing the bowl round his head without spilling a drop of its contents, but had anyone attempted to arrest his hand, the water would have been distributed in a filthy shower over the silks piled upon the counter and shelves. The shopkeeper paid his rate.

The worst class of beggars are the outlaws, who recognize no chief, and who live in holes and hovels about the burial grounds. I made the acquaintance of some of this class, and I have given a picture of them in No. 54. I found them dwelling, with many others, in a Chinese city of the dead, where the coffins containing bodies are deposited temporarily in mortuary houses or tombs till the geomanas has been paid to find a suitable place of interment. Many of these coffins are, however, never moved again, and then they rot in their places where they were stowed. In the first of these charnel-houses which I came to, I fell in with a living tenant, an old man so worn and ghastly that I fancied he had forced himself free from the mouldy, dank coffin that lay in the darkest comer of the sepulchre. He was seated at the doorway moaning, and striving to fan into flame some withered branches which he had gathered to make a lire. Further on I found the subjects presented in my photograph. These occupied another tomb, and had established a begging firm under the control of a lusty chief, who had just concluded a hearty meal, and who is seen standing in front of the entrance enjoying a pipe. His ragged partners were each discussing a reeking mixture of broken scraps which they had collected during the day. They had now laid aside their daily counterfeits of disease and deformity, and were laughing merrily, forgetful of the cares and coffins that surrounded them. The jester of the party was a man who made a good thing of it by acting the religious devotee, performing penance by driving an axe into his head; when I saw this impostor he was seated astride the highest coffin, cracking his jokes over the skull of its occupant.

Another of the party drove a flourishing trade with a loathsome skin disease. All of them, in truth, were dead to such of the finer feelings as usually have their home in a Chinaman's heart.