Chusan
Page 25
And so that Easter Monday of 1845 he rounded in frustration upon the gods in the courtyard of that village temple. The British had twice taken Chusan, had killed and plundered, had burned their pagodas. If Guanyin heard the world’s cries, why had she done nothing to protect the islanders? Danicourt had better things planned for them. From Tinghae he begged for nuns to be sent out to manage his schools and hospitals. In the meantime, native Chinese priests worked to awe the islanders with all the lively ceremonial they could muster, with all the noise, colour and incense that Buddhists enjoyed but which starchy Protestantism did not offer. Slowly, through preaching and exhortation, Danicourt’s converts started to observe the Sabbath, a most alien concept to a culture whose ten-day week encompassed no day of rest. Asking already poor families to down tools for one seventh of the year proved a terrible imposition: some were reduced to such misery that men sold their wives so they might have a handful of rice to eat. ‘Luckily,’ Danicourt thanked God, ‘we were able to buy back almost all of them.’ [31]
The most elderly member of the North Chapel congregation died under British rule, and Danicourt decided that the funeral of 85-year-old Maria Ou should be a sight to convince her neighbours of the true faith. ‘Our biggest difficulty was to bury her with all the ceremonies of the church,’ he informed his superiors. ‘I much regretted having only a couple of dozen Christians, otherwise I would have electrified the whole town.’ Still, Maria’s cortège raised exclamations of wonder as it passed through the city to the foreign cemetery. And when Maria reached her final resting place, Danicourt took down the cross and nailed it to her coffin. It was the first Christian symbol to adorn a Chinese tomb on Chusan. As his clock ticked away the last days and weeks of 1845, Danicourt grew convinced that his mission would soon be flourishing under permanent British rule. ‘It is more or less certain,’ he wrote, ‘that the English will keep Chusan, the healthiest and most secure of the Chinese islands.’ And as December 31st drew closer, he was not the only person on Chusan and farther afield to have come to that conclusion. [32]
19. Apples of Sodom
One of those who felt sure that Britain would keep hold of Chusan was an Englishman named George Smith, a missionary who in the spring of 1844 had opened his instructions for an impending move to China. His backer, the Church Missionary Society, thought it heard half of humanity straining to hear the Church of England’s particular version of the Word. This was to be the first time in history that the Anglican Church itself — rather than the instinctively evangelistic nonconformists — had sponsored a mission to the Celestial Empire. The names Canton, Amoy, Fuzhou, Ningbo and Shanghai hung on the lips of Anglicans, yet precious little was understood of what reality lay behind them. Smith was charged with visiting each of those five ports opened under the Treaty of Nanking to appraise their potential. The Church of England, ever cautious in the face of change, gave Smith no inflexible orders. Beyond the testing requirement that he learn Chinese while in the country, all rested with his ability to read into events the handiwork of the Lord. The Society could only urge him to follow ‘the glorious footsteps of Divine Providence’, reminding him to bear in mind Jesus’ injunction to his disciples to be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves. An anonymous donation of £6,000 from somebody calling himself ‘Less than the least’ had stipulated the funding of a China mission, and great things were expected. [1]
It was June of 1845 before George Smith glimpsed the peaks of Chusan, which by then had been under British rule for four years. At first he sailed on to Shanghai, where he was welcomed into the home of William and Kate Lockhart. Though the island was not strictly within his remit, Smith’s perambulations on the Zhejiang coast would take him to Chusan four times in all. As it did to many of Ningbo’s foreign residents, the island first called to him when Ningbo was visited by a ‘sickly’, as its deadly summertime epidemics were known with black euphemism. Smith, already weak from the climate, fled the heat of mid-August. At Ningbo’s Chusan Wharf, he and a missionary friend and his wife bought their passage on a native junk plying the route to Tinghae. After tacking for hours through the islands in a churlish wind, the party landed beneath Josshouse Hill. ‘There was, however,’ he noticed straight away after weeks in the thoroughly Chinese surroundings of Ningbo, ‘something very unnatural in the appearance of European barracks and sentries — of the red coats and muskets of British soldiers.’ The sepoys’ black faces and the splendid uniforms of the officers stood starkly out from what was still, despite years of British rule, a Chinese town. In the battle-scarred temple upon Josshouse Hill, Smith held services for the troops. Just as Gützlaff had, back in that freezing winter of 1833, he took a passage to the sacred island of Putuoshan, and like him he lectured the Buddhists on their folly. As always they listened politely, smilingly admitted the failings of their religion, and then, when Smith had gone, no doubt drew a sigh at his ignorance and went on with their lives. In Tinghae he lived with an American missionary named Augustus Ward Loomis and his wife Mary Ann. Their house was small, a two-roomed affair with a kitchen that rather resembled a blacksmith’s forge. When Smith last saw British Chusan it was December, the sickly heat of the summer was a memory, and there were barely three weeks to go before the final instalment of the $21,000,000 opium indemnity was due to be handed over. He touched at Tinghae in a Shanghai vessel bound for Fuzhou. Though his longest sojourn on Chusan had been less than one month, far shorter than most, he had seen enough to give a most incisive and empathetic account of the nature of British rule there:
It would have argued no very sanguine temperament, to have hailed the temporary annexation of Chusan to the empire of Britain as a rare and precious opportunity for an exhibition of the arts and civilisation of the West — of the mild but incorruptible majesty of British law — of the sublime morality and benevolence of the Christian character — and of the fostering influence diffused by British government on the commerce, the liberties and the happiness of the governed. [2]
No taxes had been asked of the islanders, whether farmers or businessmen, the pirates who had once terrorised the islands had been mercilessly dealt with by the Royal Navy, and a system of justice blind to a man’s social position had attached considerable numbers of common people to the British. But then Smith punctured the vanity of the colonialist by holding a mirror to the dark side of his presence:
Frequent deeds of violence on the part of the soldiery, numerous scenes of intoxication from the maddening draughts of samshoo, a general disregard of the feelings of the Chinese, and continual outbreaks of a proud overbearing spirit on the vanquished race, required something more of an opposite character, to counteract their natural effect on the native mind, than the mere spectacle of the power, the arts, and the wealth of the new-comers. [3]
This, then, was why the popularity of the British was in general limited to those — boatmen, coolies, servants, shopkeepers, laundrymen, cooks — on whom self-interest and lucre had operated, those for whom a handover would put an end to a good income. It behoved Britain to consider why a rule it considered superior to any other could so easily — so ungratefully — be shrugged off:
The absence of any marked feelings of regret on the part of the inhabitants generally at their return to Chinese rule, and the positive joy at the prospect cherished by large numbers, are facts of interest at the present juncture, and give birth to many reflections on the real nature of their own Government. Although relieved from all taxation, and possessing opportunities of gain without fear of extortion under the British, they prefer their own Mandarins with all their faults. [4]
Such is the story of so many of Britain’s colonial adventures.
During 1845 it became clear that, once a Chinese mandarin was again residing in the magistracy, even peaceful foreign missionaries like Smith would not be allowed to stay. They were given notice to leave, with the incentive of having premises provided free of charge for a period in Ningbo if they departed swiftly. Smith, for one, guessed that things
would not remain so forever. God forbid that it should come to pass, but if war were ever to break out again Chusan would once more be the first target for British troops. And once occupied, Smith assumed, ‘it requires no prophetic wisdom to predict its permanent retention, and its substitution for Hong Kong as a base for British power.’ He would be at least partly right in his assumption. [5]
The people of Tinghae in particular, accustomed by now to the fact of British rule, were on the whole not anticipating a peaceful restoration to the Qing. Like A-Tin the farmer on Trumball Island, they had all heard that Hong Kong was no longer ruled by China, even if they did not know where Hong Kong was.
‘A very general impression had prevailed among them that [Chusan] was to be permanently retained by us,’ Governor Sir John Davis would recall. ‘They could not understand how, having the power to secure so valuable a possession, we had not also the intention to keep it.’ Some played it safe: parents withdrew children enrolled in the mission schools, fearing reprisals if the rumours of a handover did turn out to be true, and merchants prepared to shut up shop and hide out in Shanghai or Ningbo until the first wave of official displeasure and extortions had blown over. Whispers reached American residents’ ears of some anticipated act of perfidy, some excuse to be engineered by the British as a way of keeping hold of the island. Down in Hong Kong, Governor Davis was sensitive to the delicate situation unfolding in Zhejiang. In late 1844 he wrote to the Foreign Secretary Lord Aberdeen, warning him that many Chusanese could not believe that their island would be handed back. Gützlaff, by now Chinese secretary in Hong Kong, had sensed much the same: ‘The natives cannot persuade themselves that they are to revert to their old masters, and so lively are their hopes that they are still building in the expectation of seeing more English on their shores.’ [6]
Better-informed of Whitehall’s policy concerns than the Chinese, the mood amongst the field force and the small merchant community tended toward a disappointment that the island had not been secured at Nanking rather than a belief that the treaty would be dishonoured. Yet from the outset the British had done little to dispel the general impression that Chusan might become a permanent addition to their Empire. Almost as soon as the cannon-fire had died away in July of 1840, attention had been turned to assessing its potential, with a Lieutenant John Ouchterlony of the Madras Engineers being asked to carry out a detailed survey that was published the following spring as A Statistical Sketch of the Island of Chusan.
Though English sailors had known about Tinghae’s harbour since the seventeenth century, Ouchterlony now drew attention to Sinkong Passage on the west coast. Several hundred yards wide and six miles in length, it was sheltered by high islands and could provide eight fathoms of anchorage. The tides in this ‘young Bosphorus’ were moderate, more predictable than Tinghae’s baffling races (almost every British warship which anchored there would run aground during the occupation, some of them time and again). and docks and slipways could easily be built on land reclaimed from the sea. Nearer as it was than Tinghae to the trading ports of the mainland, Ouchterlony thought it on the whole a more favourable site to found a city. Chusan in general he found to be perfect for growing Western staples. There was pasturage enough for sheep and cattle to feed a garrison. Horses might easily be raised on legumes, mangle-wurzels and clover. Every article of luxury or necessity for the table was readily procurable, the climate was temperate yet winter was cold enough to kill off the tropical diseases common further south. For now, Chusan’s only roads were the wheelbarrow tracks between her fields, but these could easily be widened and metalled. The water in her canals was bad, but with a little effort fresh streams could be channelled from the hills to the town. Even the scenery was lovely. In all, Ouchterlony produced a glowing summary: there was no more agreeable spot for European troops amongst Britain’s possessions in the East. Chusan, he assumed, was destined to become as important as any colony that of recent years had been added to the Crown. Ouchterlony, just as Gützlaff had when he urged James Matheson to press the government for Chusan’s retention, saw a second Singapore in the offing. [7]
Karl Gützlaff himself (who in some ways looked upon Chusan as his personal fiefdom to the greater glory of God) thought it worthwhile to spell out in a long letter to the Foreign Office the island’s many advantages. Its Chinese population was industrious and, though ten times that of Hong Kong, would require just a fifth of the policing. Its green tea and silk industries, though crude, could be nurtured. As for fishing, the island was home to an extensive and lucrative trade that could be turned to Britain’s advantage and extended out to Japan and Korea. For European troops its climate was congenial; familiar fruits and vegetables would thrive in its soil, and even grapevines could be planted on its mountain slopes. Tidal docks could be excavated on Tea Island in Tinghae harbour, and excellent shipbuilding woods procured from Korea. ‘We would look upon Chusan as another Malta,’ he was sure, from which the British could protect their commercial interests across the East China Sea as far north as Manchuria. ‘If we willingly abandon this spot,’ Gützlaff had counselled his friend and confidante James Matheson as early as October of 1840, ‘we deserve to suffer for our folly.’ [8]
Many other military men agreed with Gützlaff’s glowing portrait: ‘This is a most beautiful island,’ Colonel Wyndham Baker of the Madras Artillery wrote in a letter home soon after Captain Elliot’s negotiations at Canton, ‘and it is very likely after all that it will be kept in preference to Hong Kong, notwithstanding the large outlay which has been made on that barren place.’ ‘Chusan is very much improved,’ wrote Major Armine Mountain of the Cameronian Regiment, ‘and if we retain the island permanently, I think it will become a very pretty place, and by no means unhealthy.’ Lieutenant Shadwell of the 98th, badly beaten three years earlier during the failed Wellesley kidnapping and so with more reason than most to disdain Chusan, thought Pottinger’s preference for Hong Kong at the Nanking talks had been ‘a fatal error’. Pottinger had since let it be known that he had disregarded Chusan because it would have been difficult to defend against the perpetual jealousies arising between the British and the mandarins on the nearby islands — ‘poppycock,’ in Shadwell’s view. Pottinger, he confided to a friend, did not deserve the name attached to him back home. [9]
Neither did Dr Alexander Grant, who had spent the whole of 1843 investigating Chinese farming methods, see any reason come 1845 to restore Chusan to Chinese rule. His contributions to the India Journal of Medical & Physical Science read at times like an estate agent’s window:
Chusan, from its insular situation, the physical aspects of the country, and its position on the globe, ought to be a healthy locality. For a European settlement it combines many advantages, some of which are its noble harbour, and its proximity to the mainland, and were the system of dry cultivation introduced there is every reason to believe that the island would be more healthy than most of our possessions in Asia. In the hottest months of summer a very moderate temperature might be enjoyed among the hills in the vicinity, some of which are above 1,800’ in height, and the long cold winter of this latitude enables the European constitution to recover completely from the relaxing effects of the preceding heat. Among the beautiful islands in the immediate neighbourhood, residents would have ample scope for locating themselves in situations which combine all the advantages of a country residence and an insular climate within a short distance of the seat of their business. [10]
In fact, by 1845 Chusan had more than simply shaken off its early reputation for sickness — it was the healthiest British possession in the East. ‘There are few islands in the world more picturesque and containing more varied features in a small space than Chusan,’ thought the travel-writer and sportsman William Tyrone Power, who had arrived in May of that year. For months he had been confined to the hellish island of Gulangyu, a mile-long rock in Amoy harbour which like Chusan was to be kept until the opium indemnity had been paid. Gulangyu had made the pestilential Hong Kong loo
k like Lourdes, so fatal was the fever there. One detachment of Madras Native Infantry had been there just a few months yet had lost over half its 240 men, the rest reduced to walking ghosts. Chusan by any comparison was bewitching, Arcadian even: ‘Numerous villages and a comfortable, cheerful-looking peasantry attest the excellence of the soil and the lightness of the foreign yoke,’ Power observed, ‘which, for a time, protects, without coercing them or meddling in their patriarchal mode of government.’ No taxes, he noted, had been levied by the British, ‘who, except in occupying two points on the island, and compelling a certain regard to cleanliness in Tinghae, and order in the bazaars, have not interfered in the slightest degree in the internal arrangements.’ [11]
Nobody had imagined that the sun setting over Chusan would have cast the island in such a beautiful light. Every commentator had an opinion on what should become of it, the plant-hunter Robert Fortune amongst them:
Everyone now seemed to regret that we had not secured Chusan as a part of the British dominions for the protection of our trade in China, instead of the barren and unhealthy island of Hong Kong; and some even went so far as to recommend that means should still be taken by our government to accomplish this desirable end. The time, however, for doing this had gone by, and I believe that every right-thinking person would have seen with regret any power exercised by a great and exalted nation like England to infringe a solemn treaty which had been entered into with a nation so utterly powerless as the Chinese. That we committed a blunder and made a bad bargain is quite certain, but having done so, we must abide by the consequences. Had we retained Chusan, it would not only have been a healthy place for our troops and merchants, but it would also have proved a safeguard to our trade in the north, which must ultimately become of greater importance than that at Canton. [12]