The Illusion of Murder (31 page)

They say that the view from the peak at night is unsurpassed, that one seems to be suspended between two heavens because thousands of boats and sampans carry a light after dark, which along with the lights on the roads and in the houses, creates the impression of a sky more filled with stars than the one above.

“This is heaven,” I tell Frederick. I mean it and am pleased that I have kept my tongue on a leash.

“Quite. Now if you are game for an overnight boat ride, we will descend to Dante’s Inferno—that prison in Canton you want to see.”

*   *   *

“U
NLIKE THE COLONY
, C
ANTON IS A REAL
Simon-pure Chinese city,” Captain Grogan tells us after we board the coastal ship
Powan
.

The captain, who has lived for years in China, is a very bashful man, and a most kindly, pleasant one.

Soon after the
Powan
casts off from Hong Kong, night descends and I slip away alone and go on deck where everything is buried in darkness.

Softly and steadily the boat glides along, the only sound—and the most refreshing and restful sound in the world—is the lapping of the water. To sit on a quiet deck, to have a star-lit sky the only light above or about, to hear the water kissing the prow of the ship, is, to me, paradise.

They can talk of the companionship of men, the splendor of the sun, the softness of moonlight, the beauty of music, but give me a willow chair on a quiet deck, where the world with its worries and noise and prejudices are lost in the distance, and the glare of the sun and the cold light of the moon are blotted out by the dense blackness of night and I am in heaven.

My reverie is interrupted by my own good sense of reality. It seems there is always a snake to spoil paradise and news that I am in a race not of my making has tainted some of my pleasant feelings about the race. No matter haw dark things had gotten since the marketplace at Port Said, the race has always been nothing but pure pleasure. Now I have to worry not only about beating a fictitious character but a fellow reporter, all the while wrestling with the intrigues and machinations about the key that seem to be all around me.

Frederick has not given me the slightest clue as to what schemes he may be involved in. Had I not recognized the cur of a sailor with Frederick, I would have imagined the meeting with him and Lady Warton as a romantic one.

Not wishing to work my brain or keep my tongue quiet any longer, I send a message to Frederick that I have retired, and go to my cabin.

Before daybreak we anchor at Canton.

47

While we are having breakfast, the guide whom the captain has secured for us comes aboard and quietly supervises the luncheon we are to take with us.

The first thing he says to us is “A Merry Christmas!” and as it has even slipped our minds, we appreciate the polite thoughtfulness of the Chinese guide, Ah Cum.
*

Ah Cum tells us that he has been educated in an American mission located in Canton, but he assures me, with great earnestness, that English is all he learned. He would have none of the Christian religion.

The captain says that besides being paid as a guide, Ah Cum collects a percentage from merchants for all the goods bought by tourists. Of course, the tourists pay higher prices than they would otherwise, and Ah Cum sees they visit no shops where he is not paid his fee.

“A very clever fellow,” Frederick grumbles.

Ah Cum is dressed rather colorfully, with beaded black shoes with white soles on his feet, and navy-blue trousers, or tights—more properly speaking—tied around his ankles and fitted very tightly over most of his legs.

Over this he wears a blue, stiffly starched shirt-shaped garment, which reaches his heels, and atop that he has a short padded and quilted silk jacket, somewhat similar to a smoking jacket.

His long, coal-black queue, finished with a tassel of black silk, comes all the way down his backside to touch his heels. On the spot where the hair braid begins rests a round black turban.

Ah Cum has sedan chairs ready for us as we step off the gangplank. His own chair is a neat arrangement in black: black silk hangings, tassels, and fringe, and black wood-poles finished with brass knobs. Once in it, he closes it, and is hidden from the gaze of the public.

Our plain willow chairs have ordinary covers, which, to my mind, rather interfere with sightseeing, and we have them tied back.

We have three carriers to each chair, which is not very equalitarian since Frederick’s carriers are burdened twice as much as mine are. The carriers are barefoot, with tousled pigtails and navy-blue shirts and trousers, much the worse for wear both in cleanliness and quality than Ah Cum’s dandyish garb.

Ah Cum’s own carriers wear spotless white linen garments, gaily trimmed with broad bands of red cloth, looking very much like a circus clown’s costume.

Ah Cum’s chair leads the way, our chairs following, as we push down the crowded streets and are carried along dark and narrow ways, in and about fish stands, whence odors drift, until we cross a bridge that spans a dark and sluggish stream.

What a picture Canton makes. They say there are millions of people in Canton, yet the streets, many of which are roughly paved with stone, seem little over a yard in width.

The shops, with their gaily colored and handsomely carved signs, are all open, as if the whole side facing the street had been blown out. In the rear of every shop is an altar, gay in color and often expensive in adornment.

I am warned not to be surprised if the Chinese should stone me while I am in Canton. The anger and bitterness over the Opium Wars that forced them to sell the foul substance to their own people, and other injustices from the Western nations, runs deep.

Captain Grogan says that Chinese women have spat in the faces of female tourists when the opportunity offered. However, I have no trouble. Instead, as we are carried along men in the stores rush out to look at me, not taking interest in Frederick, but gazing at me as if I am something new. They show no sign of animosity. The few women I meet stare curiously at me, and less kindly.

The people do not appear happy; they look as if life has given them nothing but hard work and little gain, and wear expressions not unlike those of coal miners in my own home state of Pennsylvania.

Surprisingly, the thing that seems to interest the people most about me are my gloves. They always gaze upon them with looks of wonder and sometimes are bold enough to touch them.

When Ah Cum tells me that we are in the streets of the city of Canton, my astonishment knows no limit. The streets are so narrow that I think I am being carried through the aisles of some great marketplace. It is impossible to see the sky, owing to the signs and other decorations, and the compactness of the buildings; the open shops are like stands in a market except that they are not even cut off from the passing crowd by a counter.

Sometimes, our little train of sedan chairs would meet another train of chairs, and then we stop for a moment, and there is great yelling and fussing until we have safely passed, the way being too narrow for both trains to move at once in safety.

As we are approaching the prison I want to see, Ah Cum tells us that it is the place where political executions are conducted. There is much dissent against the tyrannical rule of the Dowager Empress, and a great deal of that dissent ends up in spilled blood on the execution grounds.

“Why do you want to see a prison?” Ah Cum asks me during a rest stop.

“The high drama of life and death is meat and potatoes for a crime reporter,” Frederick answers.

I hope it is my reporter’s instincts and not a perverse desire to see the macabre.

48

We go in through a gate where a stand erected for gambling is surrounded by a crowd. A few idle people leave it to saunter lazily after us. The place is very unlike what one would naturally suppose it to be. At first sight, it looks like a crooked back alley in a country town.

As we pass a shed with half-dried pottery, a woman stops her work at the potter’s wheel to gossip about us with another female who had been arranging the wares in rows.

“The execution grounds,” Ah Cum says, indicating with a sweep of his hand an area about seventy-five feet long by twenty-five feet wide at the front, narrowing at the other end.

The ground in one spot is very red, and when I ask Ah Cum about it, he says indifferently, as he kicks the red-colored earth with his white-soled shoe, “Eleven men were beheaded here yesterday.”

Frederick wanders off, back to the pottery, telling me, “I’ve seen enough blood of men and animals for several lifetimes.”

Ah Cum adds that it is an ordinary thing for ten to twenty criminals to be executed at one time. The average number per annum is something like four hundred. Ah Cum also tells me that in one year, 1855, over fifty thousand rebels were beheaded in this narrow alley.

I shudder at the thought of that many souls being violently sent off to heaven or hell because of political differences.

While he is talking I notice some roughly fashioned wooden crosses leaned up against the high stone wall. Supposing that they are used in some manner for religious purposes before and during the executions, I ask Ah Cum about them.

A shiver waggles down my spinal cord when he answers, “When women are condemned to death in China, they are bound to wooden crosses and cut to pieces.”

“Good Lord!”

“Men are beheaded with one stroke unless they are the worst kind of criminals,” the guide adds. “The worse are given the death of a woman to make it the more discreditable. They tie them to the crosses and strangle or cut them to pieces. When they are cut to bits, it is done so deftly that they are entirely dismembered and disemboweled before they are dead. Would you like to see some heads?”

The Chinese guide could no doubt tell stories as large as those of any other guide—who can equal a guide for highly colored and exaggerated tales?—so I say coldly, “Certainly; bring on your heads!”

As Ah Cum instructs me, I tip a man with a silver coin. With the clay of the pottery still on his hands he goes to a barrel, which stands near the wooden crosses, puts in his hand, and pulls out a head!

“The barrels are filled with lime,” Ah Cum says, “and as the criminals are beheaded their heads are thrown into them. When the barrels become full they are emptied out and reused. Prisoners dying in jail are always beheaded before burial.”

He tells me that if a man of wealth is condemned to death in China he can, with little effort, buy a substitute. Chinese are very indifferent about death; it seems to have no terror for them.

I follow Ah Cum to the jail and am surprised to see all the doors open. The doors are rather narrow; when I go inside, I see that all the prisoners have thick, heavy boards fastened about their necks, so it is no longer a surprise that the doors are unbarred. There is no need of locking them.

We go next to the law court, a large, square, stone-paved building. In a small room off one side we are presented to some judges who are lounging about smoking opium. In still another room we meet others playing fan-tan. At the entrance there is a large gambling establishment!

“Now you must see the tools of persuasion.” Ah Cum chortles.

Two judges lead us into a room to see the instruments of punishment: Split bamboo to whip with, thumb screws, pulleys on which people are hanged by their thumbs, and other such pleasant things.

Two men are brought in who have been caught stealing. The thieves are chained with their knees meeting their chins, and in that distressing position are carried in baskets suspended on a pole between two carriers.

The judges explain to me through Ah Cum that because these offenders had been caught in the very act of taking what belonged not to them, their hands will be spread upon flat stones and, with smaller stones, every bone will be broken.

Afterward, they will be sent to the hospital to be “cured.”

I elect not to see the punishment.

I thought I had heard of the most bizarre and painful punishment man could conceive after an American who had lived many years near Canton told me there is a small bridge spanning a stream in the city where it is customary to hang criminals in a fine wire hammock, first removing all their clothing.

A number of sharp knives are laid at the end of the bridge, and every one crossing while the man is there is compelled to take a knife and give a slash to the wire-imprisoned wretch.

However, Ah Cum tells me that the bamboo punishment is the worst—and not as uncommon in China as one would naturally suppose from its extreme brutality.

This most gruesome and horrifying torture is exceedingly cunning in its ability to deliver not just slow, excruciating, literally unimaginable pain, but an unbearable anticipation of the suffering to come.

Offenders subjected to it are pinioned naked in a standing position with their legs astride, fastened to stakes in the earth.
This is done directly above a bamboo sprout.

To realize this punishment in all its dreadfulness it is necessary to give a little explanation of the bamboo. A bamboo sprout looks not unlike the delicious asparagus, but is of a hardness and strength not equaled by iron. When it starts to come up, nothing can stop its progress. It is so hard that it will go through anything on its way up; let that be asphalt or any other substance, the bamboo goes through it as readily as though the obstruction didn’t exist.