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5 Jan 58 Peter Shanghai Mother 1, Hyde Park Place ______________________________________________________________________________________________
Shanghai
Jan 5. 1858
My dear Mother
I think I was most remiss in my letter of yesterday, so as it is pouring with rain & I can do nothing else, I take up my pen again today.
I did not tell you anything about China, for having only just arrived I have nothing to tell. But one little incident, startling as it is, I must not omit.
Just fancy arriving in the mouth of a river & finding seven trunkless heads in seven open wicker cages suspended on poles directly facing you. The chief punishments are cutting off their heads & tails (pigtails, I mean) of course. It is doubtful with a Chinaman which is the greatest. There were 30 of these gentlemen decapitated one fine morning for stealing & the heads were distributed about so that every one might have a look at them – & a charming sight it is.
Only Chinamen, like the oysters, are so accustomed to it that they think nothing of it. The tail is cut off first & after that the head. The culprit does not lay his head on the block but takes his seat comfortably – at least of that there may be some doubt – on a chair or stool, for I don’t think they muster chairs here & some one walks behind him & has it off before he is aware of it.
Their mode of burying the dead too is objectionable to say nothing of its being strange. If a man is poor, he just lays the body out anywhere, so that the country is covered with them in just rough coffins – on the ground, not underground. It is a great joke with some of them to place them near a Britisher’s residence & then he’s sure to pay for having them buried, as we do organ grinders to go away in London.
By the bye, I have just been reading a book on England where a German thinks barrel organs a great attraction & a most agreeable kind of music. The English have no taste for music.
When a Chinaman goes into mourning, he puts a white end to his pigtail instead of the usual black one. They don’t like going into mourning because it shows how much real hair there is in the tail, in which is concealed with the black crepe end, for however much hair a man may have, his pigtail is always the same length.
Then too, a pigtail has its use. They tie it round their hats on a windy day. A great hit – and a great saving in ribband [sic] – might not [I] think be taken into consideration with the fair sex at home. They find a difficulty more in keeping on their bonnets. You see huge pins that seem to meet in the cranium. Here is at once a remedy. See what you can do towards the unfortunates.
You seem to have had a pleasant tour in the mountains. It is astonishing, altho’ in China all the time, how near we must have been – for I too have been inspecting W(h)ales – only that I carried the point further & caught sharks.
I had a long letter for Mary, please to tell her, recounting all my adventures, but as I fear she cannot be in existence, at least not in this world, altho’ perhaps in the seventh Heaven, I have torn them all up to save postage which I fear will be large on this packet.
My Father says Helen ‘is really an interesting child’ as tho’ there would be any doubt on the subject & you say she is looking better for the sea air as tho’ she could look better.
P.G.L
Jan 6. 1858
Every one is busy today writing their letters for the mail goes tomorrow – so I must not be troublesome.
I neglected yesterday, when I wrote & told you about the decapitated Chinamen, to give you a small sketch of the figure they cut. For seven heads suspended to poles may be easily pictured – more easily than describing. I cannot pretend to enter into the characteristics & expressions of each countenance, for Chinamen’s heads at any time (particularly after they have been separated from bodies & tails) are uncommonly alike.
The seven gentlemen there who had seated themselves on their stools who had their tails cut off first & then bared their necks to the fatal stroke of the cutlass; who one moment were living mortals & the next bleeding corpses were exhibited thus;
I leave out the wicker cages or you would not see the picture to advantage.
Chinamen have a great affection for rats. They form quite a tit-bit. Of course there is no accounting for tastes, but when you hear of me eating bird’s nests as a great luxury you will not be surprised at anything – for this is really a fact & to be understood literally – a real bird’s nest, such as we have at home is the greatest luxury you can put before a Chinaman, made into soup. The poorer classes eat sea-weed – an equally astonishing fact. Pigs would not eat it in England, but pig tails do in China & think it a great treat.
The Chinese are not the puny miserable race we imagine them. They are fine, stout, well built men & individually nearly a match for an Englishman, but they are the greatest set of villains & rogues imaginable & those sort of people are generally cowards.
They are very lazy & indolent & therefore poor. Thousands of them prefer living in miserable looking boats on the water, begging & picking up what they can, to earning an honest livelihood & every ship in harbour is surrounded with dozens of those boats, all scrambling for chips of wood, refuse of vegetables or anything that may be thrown overboard. They literally live in these boats & do not set foot on shore for weeks – unless to sell some of their hardly earned rubbish.
We have in England rag & bone men & women, but they are old worn out bodies, not strong healthy families who make a life of it like these.
Yesterday I was called upon to produce a pair of scissors which I did from my pocket book & in a trice an unfortunate Chinaman’s pigtail was half off. Conceive the unfortunate man’s dismay – that which had cost him a life to cultivate, in one moment seemed sacrificed. Of course he would be put down for a criminal. It was not however so bad as I say, tho’ it certainly was too bad.
1 P.M.
I have spent the morning in the Chinese town where I find ‘barbarians’ (as all we civilised beings are called) are permitted to enter.
As it was pouring yesterday the place is fearfully dirty – muddy, & pools of water. They have no streets, but mere sorts of alleys in which half a dozen people could not stand abreast.
The shops on either side are internally neat & clean. Each places horizontally outside his shop a board of glaring red with gilt letters indicating his calling & these in a narrow passage extending for some distance all exactly similar, give one the impression that he is looking at some display multiplied into eternity in one of those endless looking glasses in which our hairdressers so delight.
It has certainly a peculiarly Chinese look & does not, as most things do when you see the reality after the picture, lose its peculiarity of character. Tea shops enough one would think to supply the whole of China abound & molasses & sweets, being in great request, also abound.
The Chinese to a certain extent live upon sweets – barley sugar & all those nice things that we remember in days of yore. We brought a Chinese passenger from Singapore & I don’t think he had anything else to ‘mungy’ the whole time but what we should term ‘Wellington Rock’ & ‘Nelson’s Balls’* & all those delightful things. But altho’ they are fond of sweets they don’t abuse the use of tea as we ‘barbarians’ do by drinking sugar with it – or milk either. They don’t use forks, spoons & knives to eat with, tho’ they find the last of service for cutting throats & such things at times. No! chopsticks are far more handy & far less dangerous to the physiognomy.
Their style of dress above all is highly to be approved of. In summer it is cool – in winter warm, & so it need be for they have no fires. In winter a Chinaman is so padded that you would scarcely recognise in the bulky rotundity of his person the light aerial being you had known in summer. In summer they all look so spruce & clean – in winter it is only the more wealthy can keep up the dashing appearance & take them as a whole, they are a happy, merry, independent set of beings & it is quite a treat to have a peep at them.
Their black side is roguery & cunning which leads to other bad features but the better class of Chinamen think it part of their happy merry temperament to ‘do’ the barbarians & then laugh away into eternity as they all do. They enjoy the joke much more than the profits. Of course in these alleys – streets if you like so to call them – there is no carriage room & as there are no roads in the country either, there are no vehicles at all. In Turkey they have roads, such as they are – more properly called tracks but in China they have none. So that all labour is man-ual – all land transport alone by human beings. In such a state it is impossible of course for China ever to raise itself & they will not hear of innovations.
You can be carried about in a ‘chair’ if you like, which is as its name denotes a sort of chair covered in a sort of square box with windows, carried by means of poles something in the palanquin line, only by two Chinamen instead of four n...s and with two poles at either end instead of one. Altogether a great improvement on the ‘palkie’* & you sit up instead if lying at full length as if you were in your coffin in a particularly coffin-like looking box.
Of course my remarks bear no reference to the European settlement portion of the place.
The Chinese boats are very pretty – they remind me of the Maltese only that instead of coming up to a point at either end, they have two (sort of) horns at one end and at the other a pair of huge eyes. All the Junks too have these eyes – I suppose to see where they are going – and lots of hieroglyphs which I believe are texts (The Junks have texts too).
The boats are called ‘Sand-pans’ – I don’t know how appropriately – and have all the colours of the rainbow, which altho’ the world believes to the contrary, I could never discover to be many.
By the bye before I finish I must ask you to tell my Father I have bought a stock of Chinese tea pots which I think will be a great hit for the constituents, particularly as they only cost one a dollar (about four shillings) for the lot – between forty and fifty. I think I ought to have invested more largely while I was about it because that is cheap bribery.
They are a most rare collection & when after demanding most fabulous prices, ‘John Chinaman’ got down to four dollars. I offered him one which he eventually took after having left the ship two or three times, most threateningly & returned again each time.
Goodbye. I have written so many letters this time to John & Edmund besides what I send to you, that I ought to have exhausted my imagination – not imagination merely, but my store of news, combined with observations & interspersed with a little imagination.
Your affect Son
Peter G Laurie
* Wellington Rock and Nelson’s Balls – Gibraltar Rock, Wellington's Pillars, Bonaparte Ribs and Nelson's Balls were popular names of various sweet confections at the time
* ‘palkie’ – Palanquin