CHAPTER II:
 

CITIES OF TONKIN

CHAMBERMAIDS are boys of fifteen in Haiphong, and they sleep on the tiled floor of the loggia without bedding. They never, never fail the traveller however much you "put the thought on them" of oversleeping. Ours brought hot coffee and toast at five A. M. Pousse-pousses took us and our ten pieces of hand luggage and we were off in the soft warm quiet of early winter morn.

On that ride we learned that the people of Tonkin are amphibia. Also that their ruling passion is rice cultivation and their little boys' domestic pet is an evil eyed water-buffalo.

The whole country is a plaid of rice fields separated with low mud walls and flooded calf-deep with red mud-water. Sometimes the water is thigh-deep. ~But ploughing and harrowing are done under water with admirable nonchalance, Rebuilding the mud walls and paths between the fields is another aqueous diversion of these amphibious people whose feet are ever submerged. When rain falls they dress themselves in a thatch of grass or palm and look like large birds of slovenly plumage.

It remains for the pretty Tonkinoise to run along the roads and paths between the fields with prodigious loads on her shoulder-pole, loads of lush green things going to Haiphong market. She comes in single file or in battalions, her bright sashes fluttering, her face smiling under the prodigious hat. You are beginning to love her and to hope she will marry something better than the thatch-plumaged men of the rice fields, and live in some better place than the wet bamboo village of the watery plain.

Thinking thus, time passes and the train stops and all passengers leave it. Outside a waste of water like molten copper. The train is the only solid. Hanoi or Mount Ararat? An infant coolie, fat and knowledgeable, seizes bags and boxes and jumps off with them. Wild cries and voices everywhere all mixed up with indignant protests from trussed pigs.

A row of sampans with snouts biting the railway's ballast. Not a soul spoke French, the train being filled with hundreds of indigines. Everyone was piling into the sampans which appeared to be champing the bit in haste to be off. Should we commit ourselves, or should we stick to the ship--an appropriate simile, as we were in the middle of a sea. The voyage, with the ruined city of Angkor as the first objective.

A lake like a mirror edged all about with big tropic trees, having in the middle a small but lovely island temple. That is the centre of Hanoi, and in all the space about it Hanoi spreads wide avenues shaded with prodigious trees which lead to big colonial mansions with gardens. The house of the tropics gives an idea of wealth and luxury, it is so much bigger than one is used to see. The home of the Governor General and of the Resident Superieure are palaces. The Theater Municipals is huge and elegant. The Museum and the offices of the Services Bconomiques, the Palais de Justice and a dozen others might belong to Lyons or any rich town in France, so big they are and imposing with Gallic architecture.

As for banks, they luxuriate in large private houses hid in gardens, and as for cashing there a "traveller's check" it is a matter of an hour, and one quits the combat with the consciousness of a defaulter.

Lovers of oriental art and of the Guimet Museum in Paris run quickly to the Ecole Françaises d'Extreme Orient. If one can read Chinese, Kawi, Sanskrit, its marvellous library holds all one could possibly want for light reading. Otherwise one bows politely after a brief inspection of the backs of impossible books, and flees the learned atmosphere of research.

The Ecole has a small museum which is open all the days you are not there. It is a disappointment, and not worth breaking museum laws to see, especially if the guide speaks only Tonkinese. We thought to find Angkor here in marvellous objets d'art. But no.

The Petit Lac draws like a magnet. The Rue Paul Bert which leads there from the hotel is full of European shops, but the Lake draws one on. There on its edge is a group of Tonkinoises all banked in with flowers which they are selling in huge armfuls for twenty cents or for fifty. Their big flat hats shade their triste faces, their sashes flutter colour, and in the most ingratiating way they offer huge blue waterlilies, sprays of tuberose, and unnameable tropic flowers. Under the green trees, with the silver background of the lake, they make unforgettable pictures in the mind.

The lake has its legend--of a fisherman patriot who drew up in his net a sword with which a mysterious voice told him to defend his people against the invading Chinese. After he had performed this little feat the lake drew from his side the divine sword which leaped into the waters in the form of a green dragon.

A little native merchant who lives on the lake edge longs to have the "Returned Sword" attach itself to him that he may throw off the French yoke and liberate his people. He regards his country as a parallel to America before the Revolution. So it is in every dominated country, the natives foster hope and revolt. Perhaps they have right on their side. The masters bring railways, bridges, and string potent wires, it is true, but this is done for themselves, not the indigene. The little merchant took fright at what he had told me, and never would speak again. The leaders of revolt meet death. Pham Boi Chan, the Annamite patriot now dead, is worshipped as is Sun Yat Sen in South China.

A Governor General of Indo-China once saw too clearly the oppression of the natives, loved the people and tried to serve them. But France made him suppress his real thought and express others. And so it came about that the natives turned about and hated him for desertion, the French for treachery, and a long vacation for the General seemed obvious.

Jean Marquet: writes triste romances of all this in his vivid "From Rice-fields to Mountains," and that other one similar, "From Village to Town." A halfday's sauntering with a pousse-pousse will show the temples and the villages--and what is a village? Contrasting with French houses it is a handful of bamboo and thatch. You scarcely know it exists so hidden and insignificant it is. It is known by the feather)r plumes of the clump of bamboo that conceals it. Its houses are but bamboo matting. Yet most of Indo-China's nineteen millions nest in huts equally fragile and obscure. Here live the idle male butterflies who dress in brocaded black gauze over white, topped with a topi. Even the rich Annamites slip into the bamboo home, to affect poverty lest they be heavily taxed.

Coming from a country of larger temples those of Hanoi seem small. But they are full of delicious eccentricities, and full of human feeling. No one is afraid of them. The paved court of one, Des Deux Dames is used as a place for tedding hay, the ground about it being wet; another is stuffed full of marvellous paper toys, a full-sized bed, a horse, a chair, and a hundred small-traps. These are for admiration of priests and worshippers before being burned as offerings to the dead. Another temple stands on a stem in the middle of a pool and is reached by an elevated approach. The temple of Confucius alone carries dignity and imparts peace to the heart of the foreign devil, for here is seclusion and beauty, "and all the air a solemn stillness holds."

But the heart is touched in other places, as for instance at a wayside tree right in the town, where a shrine is placed in the low foliage, a shrine like a little kennel, holding merely a painting of a Worshipped One, but all about it, hung from every twig are bright coloured paper shoes, much gilded, and many bouquets of fresh flowers and of paper ones. They are always there and always new, these offerings that twinkle in the breeze under the big tree. Someone suffers, someone seeks consolation for sad days.

A history book goes with a guide-book in Hanoi. The first street--oh, but with a park-like space and shaded elegance--is named for Gambetta. Another is Sadi Carnot, one is Victor Hugo, one is Felix Faure, but the bitter taunt is the naming of the streets after the men who conquered the race who walk on them. No sense of humour here. Paul Bert is the man one runs up against most frequently, for the street of the best shops is named for him, and he leads one's steps to the Little Lake and the pleading, laughing flower-girls. Evening at Hanoi is full of correct urban dive diversions for the conventional. There are diners intime and dinners formal, and there is always dancing; the big hotel, while de temps en temps, there is a opera troupe at the grand house of boxes and stall And these last are far above the traveling troupe of British Colonies. All the audience dresses in ii extreme elegance--and things come direct from Paris to these Colonists whom France is trying t keep content. It is here that a strange flower display its exotic beauty--the Eurasian lady of Tonkin. Sh occupies a loge, she is surrounded with coquettish: French women of nervous gaiety. She sits calmly like a lotus-flower, her brow serene below her parted hair, her slender figure draped in gauzy things o latest Paris mode, and her atmosphere a sweet aloofness, an intelligent charm. Young women flatter h~ Young men court her--she is elusive, cool, entrancing, and of a beauty. She makes one wonder if the little woman of the people could be like that if: she, too, were sent to Paris, and were dressed and beauty-parloured..

A diversion for the evening that is open to all if~ the sidewalk café~--just as it lives in Paris, occupying nearly all the pedestrian space with its iron table covered with awnings and made gay with an orchestra. From six o'clock to nine the crowd sits there drinking beer or the loved aperitif, meeting the dinner crowd from eight to ten, and the evening crowd until--well, I never stayed until the end. Men come, with their wives, and groups are formed of business men and soldiers, of Government clerks and young women. All have a staying power most amazing. They will sit for two hours over a glass of beck or Amir Picon.

No Annamites are expected. They are the servitors. They are also the wandering audience whose power of staring belongs to the dark ages of man's development. Many of them are from the villages and have never before seen such a sight. The electric lights, the music, the comestibles, the women's dress, are matter to be slowly absorbed.

One class of native pays no heed to the Frenchman's hour of ease. It is still hard-earning.its daily rice. The caf~ lights shine bright across the road, and into the glare comes now and then a load of tiles, a load of the ubiquitous Standard Oil tins, a load of stone, and all this so heavy that the wain which carries it creaks aloud and emits a sound like shifting stone-blocks. And these tons of merchandise are drawn by human horses, weary, half-fed, little women. At the intersection of the Rue Paul Bert where the grade rises a trifle, the vehicle baulks. Ut. most strength is demanded on the level, the emergency can be given nothing more.

The people drinking at the café tables look, perhaps, and turn back to talk to their own women. The sight does not interest.

On the narrow sidewalk space the native artisans put fortune to the test. One comes with lace--the slow-made Venetian point--and is happy that a young woman will even inspect it. How much for the table cover~ Thirty piastres. "I'11 give you four-no, two." For months of work!

And here is a man with a nest of tables, four of them, of such proportion and such carving as would put them in a museum. A supercilious officer in uniform sneers at the work and offers four piastres for the lot--and a piastre is fifty cents American.

Now a Bower-girl insinuates herself into the fringe of the European crowd. She is young, but wan and shabby. Her flowers have not sold under the big tree by the Petit Lac, so she brings them here, for they will not keep until tomorrow. Her arms are all around the sheaf. Fifty cents she asks timidly for the lot, roses, lilies, and all. The tableful turns to its drink and a hatchet-faced girl laughs. The flower vendor persists softly, touchingly, lowering her price. One of the men lowers it still further in his offer. They order another round of Quinquina at fifty cents a glass, and the flower-seller stares, hopeless, inert. At last the girl of the hatchet face is seized with impulsive coquettry."Here!" she calls. The sheaf of flowers is thrust toward her. She draws from it four roses. With what she thinks irresistible charm she throws one rose to each of the men at her table and holds the fourth one in her teeth and laughs. "Va t'en!" is all that she gives to the shrinking girl.

The peanut boys around the café sell peanuts in little cornucopias made from newspaper--a Los Angeles daily and absurd babies follow them smiling. Only the babies smile in Haiphong among the natives.

A board displays an amazing sign to the thirsty:
 
 

Cocktails American,
Le Bailer.
La Caresse.
Zizette.
Le Wint.

 
 
 

Mrs. Narracott ruminated aloud, but softly "I wonder if it would "not. profit the Dominant Race in Asia to right some of the wrongs--just in case the Under Dog should be helped to his feet by the aid of a red flag. You couldn't call it altruism exactly, just "playing safe."
 
 

For Travellers

 

Railway Haiphong to Hanoi, 101 kilometers. Fare Piastres 5.I0, or about two and a half dollars, and about four hours of time.