by Tam King-fai
the wish that the bride’s family could perhaps begin to bind her feet.
After my wife came to our house, she related that when the old
nanny had come to observe her, she had already hidden away and the
nanny saw another girl who was put in her place. The message delivered
by the sedan carrier nonetheless gave rise to a small tempest. My father-
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bound, but you wouldn’t listen to me. See what people are saying about
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_PI\PMaKIVLWIJW]Qº1VPMMVLPW_M^MZ[PMKWUXZWUQ[MLIVL
my wife’s feet were bound until she married into our house.
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Zhu Ziqing
143
Random Notes on Sea Travel (1926)
The last time I returned south from Beijing, I took the Tongzhou boat
from Tianjin, which had been robbed a year earlier. That incident seems
so far away now, but what might still discourage people from taking the
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Do you know what that’s like? Since Chinese passengers taking ordinary
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Ua NZQMVL[ ISQVO PM JWI _QP UM KITTML PQ[ PM ¹QUXMZQITQ[U JWIº
Imperialism boat! But were we indeed oppressed on board? Oh, yes, for
sure!
For the moment, let me talk about the attendants.
If there is any group of people whom I detest, it must be attendants
from Ningbo. Boats and hotels are their turf. Their solidarity results
from combining the cohesiveness of clan society with that of bandits.
.WZPQ[ZMI[WVTQSMWPMZ¹6QVOJWOIVO[ºPMaIZMVW\WJMLQ[UQ[[ML
lightly. Their basic duties are to take care of passengers, but the reality
is quite the opposite: What passengers actually receive from them
amounts to humiliation, threats, and trickery. In the past, Chinese
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_I[ L]M W PM LQNÅK]TQM[ WN OM\QVO NZWU XTIKM W XTIKM 6W_ILIa[
with all the convenient means of transportation available to us,
even experienced travelers still complain. Why is this? The reason, I
submit, is that, compared to mere inconveniences of transportation,
boat attendants and porters on the dock are even more difficult to
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connected to a certain extent with the general order and morality in
society, and the parties we speak of should not be expected to bear all
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KPIZIKMZºIT[WXTIa[IVQUXWZIVXIZ
Since I have taken boat trips quite often, I have endured no small
measure of humiliation. Let me for the time being talk just about the
boat attendants. If you go to reserve a seat at a time when there are not
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144
A Garden of One’s Own
too many other passengers, the attendants may merely greet you with a
frosty look, but if there are a lot of passengers, then you really are out
of luck. They may turn their backs and simply ignore you, or they may
pack you off with words sharper than knives. For example, they might
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that it won’t concern them at all even if you are hopping about with
impatience.
Perhaps travelers are all a bit out of sorts, and impatience often
shows on their faces. This the attendants counter with lethargy, and
they are only too happy to have some fun with you. They respond to
everything with indifference and apathy, and the more impatient you
become, the happier they are. They don’t bear you any particular
grudge: They simply want to toy with you and have a little fun, in much
the same way as genteel ladies play with their dogs. That’s why you have
to keep this in mind: When you go to book a boat ticket, don’t be in a
hurry to call out to them. While you may want to speak to them as soon
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by muttering things that are ostensibly not intended for you, such as
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PMQZ^WQKMWILLZM[[aW]IVL[Ia¹AM[ WUQVO?PI¼[]X'º
Also remember this: The more slowly you speak and the lower your
voice is, the better. Don’t be too cordial, but don’t be too uncordial,
either. If you behave like this, you’ll have put your foot in the door and
shown that you are well seasoned. They won’t necessarily welcome you,
but neither will they play tricks on you. They will simply speak to you
tersely and coldly, but you have to realize that you will already have
been granted a favorable reception, and should actually feel somewhat
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Once you have booked your ticket, you should get on board as
late as possible, though of course you do not want to miss the boat
altogether. It is best to arrive two or even just one hour before the
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¹QLQW[º *M[QLM[ aW] PI^M W ]VLMZ[IVL PI PM I\MVLIV[ VMML W
go on shore to take care of their personal affairs. If you arrive too
early, you will be in their way, and although they could ask their fellow
attendants to serve you, it would still be an imposition upon them. To
the attendants, it is never worth going to any trouble for a passenger,
and for their part, passengers should know that it is really not advisable
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Zhu Ziqing
145
to create any trouble for the attendants. Thus, passengers who do not
take their time getting on the boat will again have to suffer the treatment
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and you may think that there isn’t anything wrong with arriving at
ten o’clock the night before. But that is not necessarily so, because the
attendants have to play mah-jongg at night. Your presence will only
disturb their merrymaking, and they will surely feel put upon. There is
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Once the boat has taken off, you may think that the attendants are
/> free, and that it won’t hurt to call on them for help. If you really think
that, then you should get ready to learn another lesson. During the day,
the attendants need to chat and take care of their personal business, and
at night, they have to smoke opium and play mah-jongg. Where are they
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basin of water for cleaning up in the morning, fetch your meals during
the day, hand you a towel after you eat, lay out your bedding when
you board the boat, and fold it up when you go ashore. That already
is plenty of work and quite enough to ask of them, and any further
requests would surely be beyond the call of duty. You will need to go out
of your cabin, gently call out for their attention, and gently talk to them,
and then they may do as you ask and do nothing to harm you.
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attendants, and when you need help, call out their names in a casual
way. The result will be outstanding. But you have to be at ease with the
whole thing when you call out their names, as if you were very familiar
with them—don’t show even a trace of timidity. The reason that calling
their names is particularly effective is that those who are called will feel
that you want to be on good terms with them (which means that you
will not be stingy with gratuities.) In addition, the other attendants may
think that you are familiar with the people you call and will thus feel a
certain degree of respect for you. This is why, when you call out again,
others will also come to help you. But even then, you should only call for
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aW] IZM INMZ ITT I UMZM ¹QLQWº ZaQVO W XI[[ PQU[MTN WNN I[ IV QV[QLMZ
and their manner will change immediately.
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their bunk beds, as if they were chanting poetry, well, they may assume
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146
A Garden of One’s Own
the airs of someone in charge, but in the eyes of the attendants, there is
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oblivious to how you are treated or are really angry at them, chances are
that you will not call them again.
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I[SML IJW] M^MZaPQVOº2 for which he is still admired today. But when
you get on a boat, best not to ask anything at all. Attendants are by
nature lazy and inclined to avoid anything that might cause them
trouble. If you ask them anything, they will either say they don’t know,
or they may deliberately give you a wrong answer just to have some
fun with you. Fortunately for them, they are not supposed to bear any
responsibility to the passengers besides taking care of the luggage.
Perhaps the most common questions that passengers ask concern the
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always change, in any case, so you won’t know what to believe. And
since you don’t know what to believe, naturally you will not ask again.
This is precisely what they want, some peace and quiet.
When the attendants are on board the boat, they always hang around
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passengers may manage to squeeze their way in, but if the tables are all
taken up by passengers, leaving no place for the attendants to sit, they
will be offended. At night, they will discourteously turn off the lights, and
you will have to grope your way out in the dark. In this way, the dining
room becomes their private property. When they sit around a table, a few
of them may have something to say, but the others don’t say a thing and
may simply sit there silently or play mah-jongg. Even I would feel bored
just looking at them, but that is how they pass their time. They have on
their faces a look of weariness, cynicism, and indifference, as if at one
time they had taken great pains to practice it to perfection. It is a most
terrible look, a look that keeps people a thousand miles away.
2
See Lunyu¹*IaQºJWWS111
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Zhu Ziqing
147
At night, the electric lights somehow cover over the torpidity of
their expression; this is when they are just beginning to feel alive. They
lay down their opium paraphernalia for a smoke, or open the table for
a game of mah-jongg. After they smoke their opium, laughter gradually
comes to them, and their mah-jongg games usually last through the
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and their arguments. The passengers, especially the indisposed, get no
sleep, but what is that to them? It is each passenger’s duty to listen to
them. Some of the attendants neither smoke opium nor play mah-jongg,
but instead take out their cigarette cards and meticulously look through
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pastime.
I said earlier that the attendants’ solidarity resembles that of clan
society and bandit groups, but sometimes there is also antagonism
among them. Internal hostilities, however, rarely break out in the open
on the boat. What you see instead is a milder manifestation of their
disagreements. As The Book of Documents PI[ Q ¹
[MVL W] OWWL VM_[ WZ OQ^M ZQ[M W KWVÆQK[º ?PI KWUM[ W] WN PM
attendants’ mouths, therefore, seems to deserve attention. All attendants
are invariably sharp-tongued, partly by training and partly due to the
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PIVQV_WZL[º3 This is why, even among friends, they can get so angry
at each other on account of one or two irrelevant remarks, intended or
otherwise, that they drop their usual imperturbable expression and take
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never actually seem to get physical and come to blows with one another.
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arguments, they never depart from the ways of the gentleman. Some say
that this is what makes a southerner a southerner, and I believe there is
some truth in it.
When it comes to passengers, however, the attendants not only don’t
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playful attitude, seldom allowing themselves to lose their tempers on
account of passengers. If you, on the other hand, lose your temper
on account of them, then it becomes all the easier for them to toy with you. In their dealings with passengers, they also have the advantage of
3
That is, they would prefer to suffer an actual loss than to lose an argument.
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148
A Garden of One’s Own
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though there are always so many of them around, the attendants are
not worried that any will fail to submit to them. This is why they do
not need to get angry. Even on the slight chance that one of them loses
out at the hands of a passenger, there are plenty of others who share
the same indignity. Since the shame does not fall on one person alone,
why get angry? If the truth be known, the passengers are not even
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however, are of immediate concern to themselves. Each attendant has
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support. That is why they must make a fuss over even the most trivial
arguments.
If an attendant smiles at you, it means that in a few minutes, he will
come to collect a tip. Although there is no set amount one should give,
there is an unwritten formula, and if you give in accordance with it, you
may not receive a word of thanks, but at least no verbal abuse will come
your way. If you deviate from the formula too far and give too little,
PW_M^MZPMa_QTTZQLQK]TMaW]ÅZ[IVLPMVK]Z[MaW]IVLQVPMMVL
you will end up giving them more. Though one may think there is really
no reason for the passengers to pay more after being insulted in this way,
in reality the passengers who have been cursed are so intimidated that
they always end up giving a higher amount. Even then, one will have to
listen to a lot of grumbling before the whole matter can come to an end.
On one occasion, a student who was on the same boat as I gave only
forty jiao 4 when the expected gratuity was one yuan. The attendant fought tooth and claw, but to no avail. Tossing the money onto the bunk bed,
PM[IQL¹
