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5 Feb 58 Peter Hong Kong Mother ______________________________________________________________________________________________

Hong Kong

5 Feb. 1858

My dear Mother

Here I am at last in the very place that I had so much wished to visit, and a charming place it is – for a short time. That is to say if you have nothing to occupy you.

You do not know how heartily tired of wandering I am. I wish I was settled somewhere. There is no chance here. The Canton Establishments are broken up, so that there are many here now. They talk of the Tynemouth taking ‘coolies’ or labourers to either Havana or Australia. If so, I may as well say goodbye at once, for the probability is you will never see me again. These men are entrapped & got on board & before the ship has been a few days at sea, they generally cut everybody’s throats in order to get back.

We are going to get a lot of guns (Cannon) & arms, but what is the use of them with no one to man them against 600 strong bodied Chinamen. We have nothing but a black crew & they of course would soon turn against us too. If you never should hear from me again (?) you will at least be able to guess what has become of me. But it does not do to anticipate.

Hong Kong is a fine place. It reminds me strongly of Malta. The yellowish-white houses, the sandy dusty ground, the mounting of steps in the streets & the beautiful perfume there is in the air. It is built on the side of a hill & with the exception of the main street which runs parallel with the water, all others are ascended by steps.

All the principal buildings are built at particular elevations according to their rank, it would seem. So Government House is right high up above everything. The Cathedral is just below it & lower still is the prison where a Chinaman was hanged the other day & created quite a sensation – for executions in Hong Kong are not so common as elsewhere in China. As he was hanged up on top of the hill at noon, no one could well help seeing him, wherever they might be.

I am stopping at present at Jardine Matheson’s who are very kind but give me no hope. But their place is at such a distance from H.K. that I am obliged to have a boat which costs 5/- a day. My foot is still so bad that I am not able to walk. So I am going to try & get away, only I don’t know how to manage it. It looks as if I wasn’t comfortable.

They have one large house of business & one large private house on a hill just above, not two minutes walk. I live in the lower house but always breakfast & dine up above with them. They are regular princes in no mistake – everything is most costly & no expense is spared in anything. Hosts of servants, hosts of horses, hosts of dogs – scotch terriers especially & hosts of everything.

The place is all regularly fortified, mounting about 20 guns. Half a dozen sentries at night with loaded muskets & bayonets and lots of keepers walking about by day. The two Mr Jardines, the heads of the house, are particularly gentlemanly quiet men. Sir John Bowring’s son is also a partner. They keep open house & have always friends staying there. A Doctor & a parson, two very nice fellows, seem almost to live there. China is the place for Princes. India is nothing to it.

In Hong Kong you very seldom see the small feet. In fact the place is more European altogether. The streets are wide & lighted up at night. The shops are larger and different to Shanghai. The latter is China. There is only a sort of half & half affair. The women here are particularly ugly & much darker complexioned than up in the North & they have nasty coarse hair & pomaded to a fearful extent & arranged on a sort of scaffolding at the back of their heads which makes it fearfully conspicuous & makes me shudder to look at it.

Hong Kong is a very nice place but it is not a good place to form an impression of the Chinese. For I understand them beautifully now. I begin to find something eminently aristocratic in their pigtails, something exquisitely beautiful in their small feet. I begin to admire their tapering fingers & huge nails & I almost begin to wish that all people’s eyes would assume the strange shape that theirs do.

Above all, I admire their English – the Canton-English as I find it is called – so charmingly harmonious & unintelligible as it is. Pigeon is universally adopted for business. ‘What pigeon wantchee catchee’, meaning ‘what do you want’ or literally, ‘what business do you want to get’. They have not letters like we have, at least the arrangement altogether is different. Everything has a sharp musical pronunciation so that they positively cannot pronounce many of our words & are obliged to adopt others in their place.

P.G.L.

Feby. 8.

Our Captain has just started off for Canton * with three days’ provisions &c. & I, unfortunate individual, am detained because my foot is so bad that I cannot walk. It is a great nuisance because if I had gone with him, I should have come in for all the good things gratis & have had the advantage of his company & revolver.

The orders are that no one is to be without a revolver. If I go up on some future occasion, which I hope I shall be able to do, I shall have to supply all these things myself.

Canton is 90 miles from here & the only way [to get there] is to get an order to go up in any of the Gunboats. But after all there is little to see for the place is not much knocked about & there are a good many Chinese still there. Business we believe is to be resumed soon & perhaps after all, it will be better to see the real Canton than the present half deserted shut-up-shop city.

The races here come off on the 18th and I believe Jardines are to win. It will be a fearful day if they do not, for Jardines are sort of Princes in their way out here. They do not mix with others. If they get up any thing – well & good. If others do, their name is never added to the list, and of course they are very much disliked by many, altho’ perhaps the multitude respect & almost worship them.

Dent & Co. are their great rivals but they do not keep aloof like Jardines who, in order that they may not be contaminated by ordinary mortals, have built their house three miles away from Hong Kong (town) and are consequently obliged to fortify & guard it as I have before mentioned.

There was a man hanged here the other day for murdering a boy & carrying off the contents of a jeweller’s shop. Mr Gray, the clergyman who was living at Jardine’s attended him every day to try & convert him but couldn’t manage it. He wasn’t right for two or three days after the execution but kept exclaiming in a particularly pompous tone (which was evidently at first affected, but now has grown natural to him) & laying great stress on the last word ‘He died as he lived, a Heathen’. But Mr Gray is a very good – a truly good – man & there is something very simple & agreeable about him.

The Chinese religion is mostly Buddhism & Buddha is their God. Josh I find is only Canton English derived from Dios (God) a Portuguese word; Macao up the river being a Portuguese settlement. So savvee, a French word, has also in the same manner found its way into use & has a far more wide interpretation than even the Gauls gave it.

I have not seen anything of Yeh.* He is not visible. They have got him on board a man of war in the river apart from every one & every thing and something like Napoleon at Plymouth when boats were allowed to row round the ship at a certain distance & at a certain hour. You cannot under such circumstances get a good sight of him. But the Tartar General who was caught was in a fearful state of excitement because they wouldn’t detain him prisoner. They told him he wasn’t worth his keep & turned him loose again. So he’s sure to lose his head whether the Emperor or the Rebels get hold of him – poor fellow.

The Chinese are very fond of crackers & all those cunning devices & you can’t walk in the street without having lots going off at your heels, which is a nuisance. But these crackers seem almost part of the domestic arrangements for in every direction & at all hours in the day they are going off, for the amusement of the young ones I believe. In other words, to ‘teach the young idea how to shoot’. I wish they would confine them to that little domestic & most commendable arrangement.

Hong Kong differs a little from Shanghai in one respect. It differs very much in all others. In Shanghai, everybody knows everybody. In Hong Kong nobody seems to know any body. I cannot find any one that knows Edmund. They knew there was such a person here, but they never knew him – even his own profession.

As to the ‘very much’, Shanghai is one mass of enormous houses, without a small one or even a shop in the place. The English part or rather the ‘settlement’ is nothing but one mass of large detached buildings, whereas Hong Kong is a regular town & English & Chinese house & shops, gin palaces & every other highly civilised arrangement flourishing & mixed up together; Government House, Cathedral, Prison, large houses, small houses – even tailors & shoemakers (Chinamen) all playing their part. But in Shanghai there are only three large stores where you can procure anything.

The origin of Chinamen saying so many piece so & so – for instance ‘six piece Chinamen’ instead of six Chinamen is because they have no plural number in Chinese & always use that expression in their own language.

Chinese like Hindostanee is a remarkably simple language, using no monosyllables such as ‘of’ & ‘to’ & ‘by’ & all that sort of thing, but is yet remarkably difficult to learn. So much so that no one here ever learns it however long they may stay, except perhaps by absolute study.

I hear they use very flowery language & talk in proverbs & quotations. Of the two latter, they are very fond & have them hung & painted about their shops & houses. And on their junks too.

I have left Mr Jardine’s now & am on board the Tynemouth again. Here I am able to rest my foot & wear a slipper, for my boot has made it as bad as ever.

Feb 13.

I met some one the other day – an Officer of one of Mr Lindsay’s ships in the Crimea – who says he brought Edmund down from Calcutta to Penang in the Armenian. Wonders will never cease. I thought I was to find Teddy at Madras. There they told me he was at Hong Kong. I arrived at Hong Kong & they say he is at Penang & some one else says next day that he brought him down from Calcutta.

The last letters I received were dated Nov 3. We have the 26th December mails in, but not one from you. They would not go on to Shanghai even if so directed, but would stop here, so that as I am sure you must have written, there is something very irregular about these Post Offices here. However I shall at least be here some time longer if I do not stop altogether as it is possible though not probable I may. So that I am in hopes of getting a letter. It will be useless on receipt of this to write until you know my movements, but you will hear probably by the next mail from me something definite.

Tell them Good bye – Remember me to all. A kiss to Helen & love to everyone else &

Believe me ever

Your affect. Son

Peter G Laurie

You will see at the back of the advertisement I enclose to my Father that we have the mails up to the 26th Dec. from England and all the letters addressed to this ship at Shanghai have been delivered here

* Canton – Canton had been bombarded and occupied by British and French forces from the 28 December 1857, in order to enforce the 1842 Treaty of Nanking that was resisted by Yeh Ming-ch’en.

* Yeh – Yeh Ming-ch’en, Canton’s commissioner who, following the Arrow incident and arrival of combined British and French forces, was captured on 31^st December 1857 and deported to Calcutta, where he died after a hunger strike, in 1859