FullReads

“Did you see any of the villagers?”

“Most certainly I did. You must know that the inhospitable way in which the Chinese and Japanese have for many long years received strangers has come from misunderstandings, and ignorance, and suspicion, and perhaps from some other reasons; but the Chinese and Japanese villagers who see strangers for the first time, and have lived quiet country lives out of the way of politics, are often very hospitable and friendly. I am bound, however, to except the women; not because they wished us ill, but they are afraid of strangers, and they kept well out of our way.”

“Do the village Chinese women have those funny smashed-up feet, Cousin Peregrine?”

“In the north of China they have. In the south only ladies deform themselves in this fashion; and the Tartar women always leave their own beautiful little feet uninjured. Well, the men came out of their cottages and fields, and pressed eagerly but good-naturedly round me.”

“Do the village men wear pigtails?”

“Every Chinaman wears a pigtail. A Chinaman without a pigtail would be as great a rarity as a Manx cat, or rather, I ought to say, he would be like the tailless fox in the fable; only you would never catch a Chinaman trying to persuade his friends that it was creditable to have no tail! For I must tell you that pigtails are sometimes cut off–as a degradation–when a man has committed some crime. But as soon as he can, he gets the barber to put him on a false pigtail, as a closely-cropped convict might wear a wig. They roll them up when they are at work if they are in the way, but if a servant came into your room with his tail tucked up you would be very angry with him, It would be like a housemaid coming in with her sleeves and skirt tucked up for house-cleaning–most disrespectful!”

“Were these the men you showed something to that they thought wonderful?”

“Yes, Fred. And now I’ll tell you what it was. You must know that I could speak no Chinese, and my new friends could speak no English, so they chattered like magpies to each other, and laughed like children or Chinamen–for the Chinese are very fond of a joke. When they laughed I laughed, and we bowed and shook hands, and they turned me round and felt me all over, and felt my hands.”

“What about your hands, Cousin?”

“I had on dog-skin gloves, yellow ones. Now when all the male population of the hamlet had stroked these very carefully, I perceived that they had never seen gloves before, and that they believed themselves to be testing the feel of a barbarian’s skin.”

“Barbarian?”

“Certainly, Bessie. They give us the same polite name that we feel ourselves more justified in applying to them. Well, when they had laughed, and I had laughed, and we had shaken hands afresh, laughing heartily as we did so, and I began to feel it was time to go on and catch up my boat, which was floating sluggishly down the winding stream of the Peiho, I resolved on one final effect, like the last scene of a dramatic performance. Making vigorous signs and noises, to intimate that something was coming, and they must look out sharp, and feeling very much like a conjurer who has requested his audience to keep their eyes on him and ‘see how it’s done’–I slyly unbuttoned my gloves, and then with much parade began to draw one off by the finger-tips.

“‘Eyah! Eyah!’ cried the Chinamen on all the notes of the gamut, as they fell back over each other. They thought I was skinning my hands. I ‘smiled superior,’ as I took the gloves off, and made an effect almost as great by putting them on again.”

“Oh, Cousin Peregrine, weren’t they astonished?”

“They were, Maggie, And unless they are more familiar with Europeans now, the mystery is probably to this day as unsolved to them as the trick of the ball of thread and the twelve needles still is to me. By this time, however, my boat was