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Updated: June 2, 2025
Rumours of Cantonese revenge began in the winter of 1856, when news came that all the foreigners in Ningpo would be massacred on a certain night. Some one thereupon invited the whole community to dine together; but Robert Hart refused, thinking that men who sat drinking hot whiskey punch through a long evening would be in no condition to face a disturbance if it came.
As most of the other pupils belonged to Cantonese families, and spoke a Chinese dialect very different from that of Kiukiang, she did not learn very much at school; but her stay in America, at the age when it is so easy for children to acquire languages, helped her very much in learning English.
Many varieties of feature were among them, a diversity of type unlooked for by the traveller in China who had become habituated to the uniformity of type of the Chinese face. There were faces plainly European, others as unmistakably Hindoo, Indigenes of Yunnan province, Thibetans, Cantonese pedlars, and Szechuen coolies.
There was scarcely any doubt that the Chinese authorities did not possess the power to compel obedience on the part of the Cantonese to an order to admit Europeans into their city, and on the question being referred to Taoukwang he made an oracular reply which was interpreted as favoring the popular will.
The silence of Canton at night was sinister, for none could prophesy what form of mob might suddenly boil out. No Cantonese was in those days permitted to cross to the Sha-mien after sunset without a license. To simplify matters, he carried a coloured paper lantern upon which his license number was painted in Arabic numerals.
The Chinese on either side had begun exchanging insults; the still, hot air of the tropic dawn was vibrant with the Cantonese monosyllables tossed back and forth like tennis-balls over the low sand rampart. The thing was degenerating into a farce the "Bertha's" Chinamen would not fight.
Out of the corner of my eye I noted a look of half-sheepish relief flit over O'Keefe's face, and then he was beside me. Da Costa shouted an order from the wheel, the Cantonese ran up and took it from his hands and the little Portuguese pattered down toward us. My hand on the door, ready to throw it open, I stopped.
It is thus, too, that we can readily explain the assistance afforded to the enemy by numerous Cantonese, and the presence of many as servants on board the vessels of our fleet; they did not help us or accompany us from any lack of patriotism, of which virtue Chinese annals have many striking examples to show, but because they were entirely out of sympathy with their rulers, and would have been glad to see them overthrown, coupled of course with the tempting pay and good treatment offered by the barbarian.
The following morning, we departed on a more serious sight-seeing expedition, to include all manner of typical Cantonese places, but before I had been out an hour I decided that the description of one temple only would not adequately convey a true impression, for everywhere we went things seemed unreal and grotesque, but interesting.
Making all possible allowance for the intensity of Cantonese local loyalty and the fact that they might be celebrating a Cantonese affair rather than a principle, the scene was sufficiently impressive to revise one's preconceived ideas and to make one try to find out what it is that gives the southern movement its vitality. A demonstration may be popular and still be superficial in significance.
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