CONDITIONS IN CHINA

Hokitika Guardian, 20 October 1930, Page 8

CONDITIONS IN CHINA

TORTURE AND MODERN. CLUBS. Most hoys have read o : i Chinese secret societies and the penalty of the “death by one thousand cuts” and they have been thrilled. To adults it will be surprising to learn that the barbarous form of torture is still practised in North China, according to Mr G. H. Fawcett the representative of a British .irm in China, who arrived in Auckalnd recently. “China is a land which, in essence, has changed but little,” he said. “The foreign population is merely a veneer, and leaves the life and the thought of tlie masses totally unchanged. This is perhaps the reason why this toim of torture has outlasted the promptings of Western humanity. This is the death which bandits taken by the soldiery die and it is as gruesome as ever lucid fic tion depicted.” A French officer, a friend ctf his, had told him how he had seen the torture practised. The object seemed to be to keep the victim alive foi 24 hours, and at the same time to make him die gradually. “He is literally carved to pieces. First, perhaps, an eyebrow is taken off, then one ear, then a strip from his back and so on, finally when the man is almost dead, the thousandth cut will be administered, and that cut is fatal. In the process the victim is disembowelled, and when be is dead practically all that is left of him is his frame. He is denuded of flesh. BOTH CRUEL AND KIND. The Chinese are at the same time horribly cruel and amazingly kind. The war between the soldiery and the bandit's is waged absolutely without mercy. If a soldier is captured, ins end is best not spoken of, and that is one of the reasons that 1 say China is still the East, and not the East westernised.” A the bandits made a capture which they thought might be worth holding to . ausom, they would take their prize away back to their, strongholds. But. ,irst, they injected into the eyes and the ears of the one to be ransomed some drug which deprived him both ol hearing an dsight, so that he could not «ee where he was going. Mr Fawcett did not know whether the effects wen permanent. He did not think so. He had tried to get hold of some of '• • drug to analyse it, but had been unsuccessful.

On one occasion he almost got some of the drug, but in a way that he did not like. He had intended going upcountry to visit some interest of his firm and had made arrangements accordingly; but just before he went he was quietly warned not to go further The bandits were said to be preparing to receive him. M,r Fawcett did not go up-country. “At the same time,’ continued Mr Fawcett, “the Chinese are a kindly folk, and they are excellent family people. The whole of their religion is founded on the family. They worship their ancestors, and consequently venerate anything connected with the family. As servants they are faithful, trustworthy and honest to a degree. It is only when the terrible mob wrath is aroused that they remember brutality and torture. Then they do remember it.” BABY GIRLS DISCARDED. He spoke of the queer customs of Die people. His “boy’s” wife gave birth to a baby girl, he said and the infant was scarcely wanted. He had seen the bodies of little girls lying on the river banks discarded by parents. Some of them had been half-eaten by wild dogs. Yet, as another contradiction, the women In the Chinese family were respecteo “especially the mother-in-law,” said Mr Fawcett, seriously. When a baby bd>y is born, his head was shaved and he was dressed in girl’s clothes, to divert the “evil eye” and to propitiate the gods. LAND IN CONFUSION. Terrible confusion reigned in the land. No sooner was one civil war ended than another was commenced. “1 have been there for nine years, and I am utterly at a loss to understand t 1 causes of the conflicts.” He does nor rate highly the outward influence of Bolshevism. He said he had seen a good many Russians in the country but ;*<:y were not the criminal class. There was probably an undercut.ent which was not visible to Europeans however, “The wars are a hopeless tangle,” Mr F cett said. “The ordinary peasant, who would be content merely to till his fields and to labour away his life, gets conscripted for the army, at little or no pay, and then he gets stranded away from his home locality. The easiest thing for him to do is to turn bandit and he does it. Bandits terrorise the outer villages, and commerce in some places is at a standstill.”

Mr Fawcett said he was afraid ancient culture of the Chinese was dying. It was dying in the Europeanised towns. The high class Chinese "ontleman. .steeped in the culture and the philosophy of his race, Mt little to be desired from the point of view of a perfect 'rentlenmn. but <t".eh type rare. The modern Chinese youth tbeijn-ht more of Western education, and then he was npi+'.o,. )• the neople whose life he had embraced, nor his own race, whom he had discarded. Still, in the periods of ouiet. life was pleasant in China. In the larger towns the standard of life was unite oou.nl ‘e that of Iho Western cities, and all the amenities of the West were available. He had lived in Tientsin, and the new country club which had just been

opened there was the most luxurious in the East. It was a curious contrast to the existence of the peasant away back in the country, who still tilled his little plot in the old-fashioned way with the bullock plough, and raised water from the river by means of a beast turning a wooden lift. It was just the West ancl the eternal East.