Profiles from China | Page 2

the bow of?his lips his face is like a mask of lacquer, set with?teeth of pearl, fantastic, terrible....?What strange tale lives in the gestures of his mouth??Does a fox-maiden, bewitching, tiny-footed, lure a
scholar to his doom? Is an unfilial son tortured?of devils? Or does a decadent queen sport with?her eunuchs?
I cannot tell.?The faces of the people are wooden; only their eyes
burn dully with a reflected light.?I shall never know.?I am alien ... alien.
Nanking
The Well
The Second Well under Heaven lies at the foot of the
Sacred Mountain.?Perhaps the well is sacred because it is clean; or perhaps
it is clean because it is sacred.?I cannot tell.
At the bottom of the well are coppers and coins with
square holes in them, thrown thither by devout?hands. They gleam enticingly through the shallow?water.?The people crowd about the well, leaning brown covetous
faces above the coping as my copper falls?slantwise to rest.
Perhaps it will bring me luck, who knows??It is a very sacred well.?Or perhaps, when it is quite dark, someone who is
hungry....?Then the luck will be his!
The Village of the Mud Idols
The Abandoned God
In the cold darkness of eternity he sits, this god who
has grown old.?His rounded eyes are open on the whir of time, but
man who made him has forgotten him.
Blue is his graven face, and silver-blue his hands. His
eyebrows and his silken beard are scarlet as the?hope that built him.?The yellow dragon on his rotting robes still rears itself
majestically, but thread by thread time eats its?scales away,?And man who made him has forgotten him.
For incense now he breathes the homely smell of rice
and tea, stored in his anteroom;?For priests the busy spiders hang festoons between his
fingers, and nest them in his yellow nails.?And darkness broods upon him.?The veil that hid the awful face of godhead from the
too impetuous gaze of worshippers serves in decay?to hide from deity the living face of man,?So god no longer sees his maker.
Let us drop the curtain and be gone!?I am old too, here in eternity.
Pa-tze-kiao
The Bridge
The Bridge of the Eight Scholars spans the canal narrowly.?On the gray stone of its arch are carvings in low relief,
and the curve of its span is pleasing to the eye.?No one knows how old is the Bridge of the Eight
Scholars.
In our house-boat we pass under it. The boatman
with the rat-like face twists the long broken-backed?oar, churning the yellow water, and we creep forward?steadily.?On the bridge the village is assembled. Foreign devils
are a rarity.?The gold-brown faces are not unfriendly, merely curious.
They peer in rows over the rail with grunts?of nasal interest.?Tentatively, experimentally, as we pass they spit down
upon us. Not that they wish us ill, but it can be?done, and the temptation is too great.
We retire into the house-boat.?The roof scrapes as we pass under the span of the
Bridge of the Eight Scholars.
Pa-tze-kiao
The Shop
(The articles sold here are to be burned at funerals for?the use of the dead in the spirit world.)
The master of the shop is a pious man, in good odor
with the priests.?He is old and honorable and his white moustache
droops below his chin.?Mencius, I think, looked so.
The shop behind him is a mimic world, a world
of pieties and shams--the valley of remembrance--the?dwelling place of the unquiet dead.?Here on his shelves are ranged the splendor and the
panoply of life, silk in smooth gleaming rolls, silver?in ingots, carving and embroidery and jade, a?scarlet bearer-chair, a pipe for opium....?Whatever life has need of, it is here,?And it is for the dead.
Whatever life has need of, it is here. Yet it is here in
sham, in effigy, in tortured compromise.?The dead have need of silk. Yet silk is dear, and
there are living backs to clothe.?The rolls are paper.... Do not look too close.
The dead I think will understand.?The carvings, too, the bearer-chair, the jade--yes,
they are paper; and the shining ingots, they are?tinsel.?Yet they are made with skill and loving care!?And if the priest knows--surely he must know!--
when they are burned they'll serve the dead as?well as verities.?So living mouths can feed.
The master of the shop is a pious man. He has attained
much honor and his white moustache droops?below his chin.?"Such an one" he says "I burned for my own father.?And such an one my son will burn for me.?For I am old, and half my life already dwells among
the dead."
And, as he speaks, behind him in the shop I feel the
presence of a hovering host, the myriads of the?immortal dead, the rulers of the spirit in this?land....
For in this kingdom of the dead they who are living
cling with fevered hands to the torn fringes of the?mighty past. And if they fail a little, compromise....
The dead I think will understand.
Soochow
My Servant
The feet of my servant thump on the floor. Thump,
they go, and thump--dully, deformedly.?My servant has shown me her feet.?The instep has been broken upward into a bony cushion.
The big toe is pointed as an awl. The small?toes