Sidelights on Chinese Life
9781465649508
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The Chinaman’s mind is a profound and inexplicable puzzle that many have vainly endeavoured to solve. He is a mystery not simply to the foreigner, who has been trained to more open methods of thought, but also to his own countrymen, who are frequently heard to express their astonishment at some exhibition of character, that has never occurred to them during the whole of their oblique life. A Chinese cook who was living in an English family, and who found life so intolerable through some petty devices and schemes of his fellow-servants that he was compelled to resign his situation, was so taken aback at the ingenuity and skill of the manœuvres that had been employed to oust him from his employment that, with flashing eyes and a face flushed with excitement, he said, “I know the Englishman well, I can accurately gauge his mind, and I can tell exactly how he will usually act; but my own countrymen are a mystery to me that I do not profess to be able to comprehend.” This of course was an exaggeration, as there must have been a great deal in his own people that he must have been quite familiar with. He merely meant that there were depths in the Celestial mind that even he had never yet fathomed. Any one who has ever studied the Chinese character must have come to the conclusion that the instincts and aims of the people of the Chinese Empire are distinctly the reverse of those that exist in the minds of the men of the West. An Englishman, for example, prides himself upon being straightforward and of saying exactly what he believes. A Chinaman would never dream of taking that position, simply because it is one that he does not understand, and consequently he could never carry out. A straight line is something that his mind recoils from, and when he desires to effect some purpose that he has before him, he prefers an oblique and winding path by which in a more roundabout manner he hopes to attain his end. It may be laid down as a general and axiomatic truth, that it is impossible from hearing what a Chinaman says to be quite certain of what he actually means. The reason for this no doubt arises from the fact that a speaker hardly ever in the first instance touches upon the subject that he has in his mind, but he will dwell upon two or three others that he believes have an intimate relation with it, and he concludes that this subtle line of thought ought to lead the hearer to infer what he has all the time been driving at. One of my servants, for example, had a grievance against another also in my employ. He did not dare to complain of him to me, for he belonged to a powerful clan bordering on his own in the interior, and if anything unpleasant had happened to this particular member through any accusation that might be laid against him, they would have wreaked their vengeance not only upon the man who had troubled him, but also upon the members of the weaker clan who were connected with him. The direct method that would have been pursued by a foreigner without any regard to consequence, because he has no dread of hostile clans, and because he has the law to protect him in case of need, evidently cannot be adopted by the aggrieved person here, and so he naturally adopts the method that he believes will secure him a redress of his wrongs without any danger to himself or his clan. He accordingly appears one morning with that blank expressionless visage with which a Chinaman can conceal his thoughts, and asks permission to return to his home in the country. He had just got news, he says, that a brother of his has suddenly become very ill and is not expected to live, and urgent entreaties have been sent him to come home as speedily as he can.
