Inside Canton. Melchior Yvan

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      When we were installed, we went to visit the apartments prepared for the reception of M. de Lagrené. They consisted of seven rooms on the same floor. The bed-rooms and saloons were separated by lattice-work, formed of ivory and ebony, incrustated on hard wood in an indescribably fantastic manner. The bed-rooms were concealed from curiosity by silk hangings, fastened to the carved walls.

      ​Our inspection was not in vain. The rooms intended for the women, which according to Chinese ideas constitute the sanctuary of the house or the inner apartment, were ornamented with an infinite number of drawings. They were long strips of paper, on which pastoral scenes were represented. These paintings gave us a singular impression of the way the Eclogue is understood in the Celestial Empire. Watteau's little cupids and adorable shepherdesses would have blushed up to the whites of their eyes on seeing them. In our ideas, Pan's pictures would only have done to illustrate Theocritus, Apulius, or Tongus. Callery could not make the mandarin's servants understand that they ought to remove these landscapes; he was obliged to have recourse to the master himself. Pan, on hearing his explanations, did not conceal his astonishment. Those good Chinese are great heathens! However, all the Bouchers and Watteaus disappeared.

      This charming palace, as transparent as a glass house, situated on the Tchou-kiang, that enchanted river, is certainly the most delightful dwelling M. de Lagrené can have occupied during his travels. The furniture of all the rooms presented a mixture of European luxury and Chinese elegance: there were magnificent looking-glasses, English and French clocks, with native toys and ornaments in ivory. Of the nations of the East, the Chinese alone have ​seats like ours,—the Malays and Indians sit on the ground on mats and cushions. But the chairs and divans in the Celestial Empire, particularly in the southern provinces, do not at all resemble the elastic furniture which ornaments our drawing-rooms. Those carved chairs, beautifully polished, remind one of seats in church or college benches; and never, either in pleasure-boats or in the most sumptuous saloons, do you see stuffed furniture. The arm chairs are very massive and excessively heavy; they are seldom displaced, and the divans are generally fixed to the wall.

      A few days after our arrival, M. de Lagrené came to live at the hotel intended for him; and with the refined urbanity of which he has given so many proofs during his voyage, he placed two of the rooms of his large suite at the disposal of the rear-admiral commanding the French maritime forces in China.

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CHAPTER III.

       Table of Contents

      THE TARTAR TOWN — THE CHINESE TOWN — THE FOREIGN FACTORIES — THE ANGLO-SAXON IN CHINA — A CHINESE MONEY TESTER — OLD AND NEW CHINA STREETS.

      Before traversing the streets of Canton, visiting its shops, conversing with its inhabitants, venturing into this labyrinth of houses, and mixing with this crowd of people, I should like to give the reader an idea of the appearance and position of this celebrated city. This topographical description will be in some measure the clue which I shall put into the hands of those who follow me into the labyrinth.

      Canton is situated on the left shore of the Tchou-kiang. It occupies a space which cannot be gone round in less than six hours, stepping out quickly. The city is divided into three distinct parts, joined in a way together; its shape is a square, stretching from west to east; it is bounded on the south and west by the river, or, to speak more truly, by the floating town; on the east, by waste and marshy plains; and on the north, by sloping hills, which by degrees rejoin the mountains of the snowy clouds which are seen in the distance.

      The three parts which form the capital of Kuang-ton are the suburbs and walled city, which is divided ​into the old or Tartar city, and the new or Chinese city. The suburbs, which, like the boulevards in Paris, are the best, handsomest, richest, and most commercial part of Canton, occupy on the south and west the ground between the Tchou-kiang and the walls of the two fortified cities, and on the east, where they lose their importance, some low and muddy land, on which are scattered a few huts. A wall which runs parallel with the river cuts in two the quadrilateral figure in which the official city is enclosed. The Tartar town, which is three times as large as the part called the Chinese town, lies to the north. Later, we shall see that this separation is owing to the minute precautions of a jealous policy.

      These twin cities communicate together, and with the immense suburbs, by sixteen gates made in the walls. These sixteen openings are strictly guarded. It is in this double enclosure that the civil and military authorities reside, and entrance is formally denied to barbarians. When you look down from an elevated point on to the inhabited river and immense city, you are struck by the magnificence of the panorama. After having wandered over fertile plains, and after having fatigued itself by following the windings of Tchou-kiang, the moving dwellings of which are confused with the elegant buildings in the suburbs, the eye rests on the curved roofs of the two official cities. From the midst of this mass of houses, ​the polygonal towers of two pagodas rise like natural obelisks carved by the hand of time.

      Now that the reader has, I hope, an approximate idea of the form and position of the capital of the two Kuangs—that is, of the three populations established on dry land—we will go through its innumerable streets. At the same time, I must inform my travelling companion that we shall not really leave the suburbs: we shall remain upon the legitimate soil. We will not overstep the limits which the distrustful jealousy of the Chinese has placed as a prison during the day, to European vanity. It is intentionally that I use the expression of "prison during the day;" for, during the night, our conceited countrymen first of all are shut up in a ghetto, like the Jews of the middle ages, and could not leave it without danger. They are incessantly menaced by the populace of the suburbs. These inhabitants of dry land have nothing in common with the polite and kind hosts of the floating-houses on the Tchou-kiang; they are a mob of rogues from Fo-kien and Kuang-ton, filled with hatred and envy. Nothing guarantees a stranger from the attacks of these wretches: the caprice of the moment, the wind which blows, a bad humour, are the only motives of their actions.

      These idiots, who like you to visit their fortifications and temples, who, without any evil intention, ​give up to you their means of defence; and who expose the objects of their veneration to European scepticism, would bravely cut off your head, if you crossed the threshold of one of their houses—they would stone you if you entered into their walled cities. These horrible creatures, who grovel in the miserable hovels which cover a fetid plain to the east of the suburbs, will not allow strangers to approach the rich dwellings of the Imperial functionaries; these dirty and ragged beggars, who have never, except by a look, passed the lattice-work of the flower-boats, would feel hurt if barbarians elbowed their opulent countrymen on them.

      Honour to whom honour is due! Before penetrating into those streets which are exclusively Chinese, we will visit the European ghetto and its cosmopolitan population. The factories are built on the south-east point of the suburb nearest to the shores of Tchou-kiang, and they form several streets which are at right angles with the river. Each factory consists of a suite of houses uniformly built, the whole of which resembles a vast building isolated on all sides, and nearly resembling the barracks in which Fourier's phalansteriens wished to shut up mankind. Formerly, there were thirteen similar edifices, which was the reason that the name of Thirteen Factories Street was given to a Chinese street which runs to the north of the European ​residences. These monumental constructions, beginning with the Hong-i-ho, or Creek Factory, and ending with the Hong-te-hing, or Danish Factory, extended from east to west. Now, the primitive line still remains, but the interior arrangements have undergone important modifications. It was on the following occasion:—On a day of public diversion, the inhabitants of the suburbs of Canton rushed to the hongs I-ho, Tsih-i, and Paou-ho, the English and Dutch factories, and set them on fire. These edifices have not been raised from their СКАЧАТЬ