[Illustration: SACRED ROCKS, INTERIOR OF CHINA.]
[Illustration: LI HUNG CHANG'S VISITING-CARD.]
After all, however, we should remember that Chinamen who travel in our own country think that our customs are as strange as theirs appear to us. A prominent official of the Flowery Kingdom, who made the tour of Europe several years ago, took notes of what he saw, and published them on his return. Among them are the following: "Women, when going to the drawing-room of Queen Victoria regard a bare skin as a mark of respect." "When people meet and wish to show affection, they put their lips and chins together and make a smacking sound." This is not so difficult to understand, when we recollect that, like most Orientals, the Chinese do not kiss, and that even a mother does not kiss her own baby, although she will press it to her cheek. Again, he thus describes our dancing parties: "A European skipping match is a strange sight. To this a number of men and women come in couples, and enter a spacious hall; there, at the sound of music, they grasp each other by both arms, and leap and prance backward and forward, and round and round, till they are forced to stop for want of breath. All this," he adds, "is most extraordinary;" and when we Occidentals think of it, perhaps it is. A Chinese youth, after eating for the first time a European dinner, wrote of his experience: "Dishes of half-raw meat were served, from which pieces were cut with sword-like instruments and placed before the guests. Finally came a green and white substance, the smell of which was overpowering. This, I was informed, was a compound of sour milk, baked in the sun, under whose influence it remains until it becomes filled with insects; yet the greener and livelier it is, the greater the relish with which it is eaten! This is called _Che-sze_."
[Illustration: WATERING-PLACE FOR ANIMALS.]
[Illustration: PLACE OF EXECUTION, CANTON.]
The object of most gruesome interest to me in Canton was its place of execution. On entering this, I looked about me with astonishment; for almost all the space between the rough brick walls was filled with coarse, cheap articles of pottery. Ah Cum explained, however, that when a batch of heads are to be cut off, the jars are all removed, much as a hotel dining-room is cleared for dancing. The condemned prisoners are always brought in baskets to this place, and are compelled to kneel down with their hands tied behind their backs. Their queues are then thrown forward, and they are beheaded at a single stroke. Traces of blood were visible on the ground, and from a mass of rubbish close at hand a grinning Chinaman pulled out several skulls which he had hidden there, and claimed a fee for exhibiting them. I was presented to the executioner, and asked him how many men he had himself decapitated, but he could not tell. He kept no count, he said--some days six, some days ten, in all probably more than a thousand. As he was resolutely opposed to having his picture taken, we placed his two-edged sword against the wall, and photographed that. When I was told that, once a week, twenty or thirty men are brought into this filthy court to die like cattle in a slaughter-house, I stood aghast, but when I subsequently learned that this is the only execution-place in a great province with a population of twenty millions, the number did not seem so appallingly excessive. This is, however, merely the average in ordinary times. After certain insurrections, such as the Taiping rebellion, this hideous square has seemed almost a reservoir of human blood. The venerable missionary, Dr. Williams, states that he saw here one morning at least two hundred headless trunks, and stacks of human heads piled six feet high. Careful estimates place the number executed here during fourteen months, at eighty-one thousand,--or more than thirteen hundred every week!