Page 52 of Scandalous Heiress
“You won’t at all, sir.Monday will be fine.”
The young assistant appeared with a wooden tray filled with two kinds of cheese and bread.He left to return with a bottle of whisky and the two glasses that MacIntyre had ordered.
“While you are here, sir, I wonder if you’d visit with me.There’s much I am in the dark about.If you’d take the time to inform me about the Chinese riots of last winter.I dinna understand why they do it.So often too.”MacIntyre poured two healthy draughts of spirits for them both.He handed one to Victor and sat down.
“I owe you a good education in Chinese settlement life, MacIntyre.You deserve it and need it for us to continue to grow.”He lifted his glass in a silent toast to his manager and drank.“Why don’t I try a bit each time we meet?”
“I’d like that.”He sat back and waited.
“The riots.Hmmm.Why do they do it?It disrupts life in the settlement when many peasants who are starving have no other choice but to clammer at the gates to get in.That disruption we had last March was a bad one and cost us the month’s profit.”The province surrounding the Shanghai foreign settlement was agrarian and the peasants lived on rice and whatever meager vegetables they could grow in their small plots.
“Most Chinese live a life of extreme poverty.They may own an acre, maybe less, of land, inherited from previous generations of their family, but the plot is usually so small that growing enough food for a family is difficult.They do have large families.Being prolific is a sign of a good life, and an honorable one.But too many mouths to feed strains the land.The soil may be rich.But if the family lives near a body of water where the imperial government has not built a suitable dam or dyke, they could lose all in the next flood…or the next draught.Many starve.Those who live in the province near Shanghai hear tales of how life inside the settlement is different.And it is very different.
“We have paved roads, water plants and municipal sewers.We must build more.We have built solid homes and factories that do not blow away in a wind or rain storm.Not even their big winds, theirtai feng,can bring our structures down.We have in the city other improvements those in the villages do not.Many they have not conceived of.Trams, for instance.Last December, I bought a share in one of the City Council’s new businesses that will build them.You saw the receipt.The same company talks of regulating rickshaws.Schools in the city are not lacking.For decades, the Chinese compradors have run their own schools for their children to learn English and French, but the City Council will soon build schools for all Chinese living in the settlement.We’ll teach languages and mathematics.Geography, too.A worker who can read and write, speak our language and calculate correctly is one we want.The city is in many ways more convenient and modern than London or Paris.Why?Because we start from the ground up.That makes living in Shanghai settlement a dream for many Chinese.Then when they face flood or famine or drought, they naturally want food and shelter.And they stand at the gates, demanding to get in.”
Victor remembered the faces of the children, pock-marked, emaciated and sullen.“We have work.But not for everyone.”
“How do you decide who to take and who to turn away?”
“The ones that look healthier.The ones that seem pleasant.The beggars, the ones too diseased to stand a day’s work, we must reject.”
“And what about women and children?”
“We take a few women to train as cooks or maids.Some are taken by other Chinese who live in the quarter and employed in their homes.Some who are young and comely are taken by mandarins as prostitutes.”
“Isn’t that agin’ the law, sir?”
“Sadly, no.The Council wants to regulate that, but many in the town refuse.”
“Why?”
“Many foreigners buy the services of Chinese women.They are without their wives or have not married.A few keep them in a separate compound of their home.The Chinese mandarins all over the empire do the same.”
His manager was wide-eyed.“Do they not have a rule again’ such treatment of women, sir?”
Victor shook his head.“Confucian gentlemen revere many things, MacIntyre.Order, harmony, knowledge of Confucian texts and those ethics by which they should run an efficient government.As for the fairer sex, women who are wives and mothers, especially those who bear male children are honored.But the men can take more than one wife at a time and do it to ensure they have a male child to inherit.Women from lower peasant classes do not merit their attention or their protection.”
“So I’m confused, sir.If few can come inside the city, why do the riots of peasants outside the gates create problems for shipping and for us?”
“Like they did last March?”
MacIntyre nodded.
“For us, where we want the tea they grow, the silks they weave and the porcelain they fire and paint, supply is vital.If they do not work, if they block the roads, if they block the ports with their junks, then commerce is disrupted and we cannot fulfill our orders.If they pillage and burn whatever they wish, often much of that is our product.”
MacIntyre frowned.“And now if we add flowers, roots, bulbs to that list of goods, aren’t we making matters worse for us?Getting those from the countryside, will be a bigger problem, won’t it?”
“Exactly.Until we can propagate the roots and nurture bulbs on a massive scale inside the settlement, we must rely on supply from the hinterland.”Victor took another drink of his scotch.“But trade in teas, fabric and porcelain raises many different issues from flowers.”
“Aye.One perishable, the other not.”
Victor remembered the fire in his neighbor’s factory, set last year by a coolie who thought the Englishman who owned the building had dishonored the Buddha.“The bigger problem is failure to understand the other’s culture.So much of who we are and what we are is so odd to Chinese that they can easily blame us for ills we have no part of.”
“What do you mean?”
“For example, an English friend of mine moved a Buddhist shrine that workers had put up inside his factory.After that one of his coolies burned it down.”
“That’s terrible.”
