The party reached Shanghai without accident, and on their arrival at that port the boys had a welcome surprise in the shape of letters from home. Their first letters from Japan had been received, and read and reread by family and friends. To judge by the words of praise that they elicited, the efforts of the youths at descriptive composition were eminently successful. Frank\'s mother said that if they did as well all through their journey as they had done in the beginning, they would be qualified to write a book about Japan and China; and a similar opinion of their powers was drawn from Fred\'s mother, who took great pride in her son. Mary and Effie composed a joint letter to Frank, to tell how much pleasure he had given them. They were somewhat anxious about the purchases, but were entirely sure everything would be correct in the end. Fred began to be a trifle jealous of Frank when he saw how much the latter enjoyed the communication from the girl who came to the railway station to see them off. He vowed to himself that before he started on another journey he would make the acquaintance of another Effie, so that he would have some one to exchange letters with.
The letters were read and reread, and their perusal and the preparation of answers consumed all the time of the stay in Shanghai. The delay, however, was only for a couple of days, as the weekly steamer for Hong-kong departed at the end of that time, and our friends were among her passengers. Another of the ship\'s company was our old friend "the Mystery," who told Doctor Bronson that he had been travelling in the interior of Japan, and had only recently arrived from there. He was going to Canton, and possibly farther, but could not speak with certainty until he had arranged some business at Hong-kong.
The steamer on which our friends were travelling was under the French flag, and belonged to the line popularly known as "the French Mail." The service between Europe and China is performed alternately by two companies, one of them English and the other French; and by[Pg 389] means of these two companies there is a weekly ship each way. The French steamers are preferred by a great many travellers, as they are generally larger than the English ones, and are admirably arranged for comfort. They make the voyage from Shanghai to Marseilles in about forty days, calling at the principal ports on the way, and going through the Suez Canal. The English steamers follow very nearly the same route as the French ones, as long as they are in Eastern waters; but when they reach the Mediterranean Sea, they have two lines, one going to Venice and the other to Southampton. The official names of the two companies are "The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company" (English), and "La Compagnie des Messageries Maritimes" (French).
There were not many passengers, perhaps a dozen in all, and they were mostly merchants and other residents of Shanghai on their way to Europe or to some of the southerly ports of Asia. Two of the passengers were accompanied by their Chinese servants, and the boys were greatly amused to hear the efforts of the latter to speak English. They had already heard the same kind of thing during their movements in China, but had not paid much attention to it in consequence of their occupation with other matters. Now, however, they had some leisure for investigation, and Fred suggested that they had better take a glance at the Chinese language.
A few glances were all they wanted, as Frank was not long in ascertaining that it would require years of study to acquaint himself with enough of the language to be able to converse in it. Fred learned, about the same time, that there was a written language and a spoken one, and the two were so unlike that a man can read and write Chinese without being able to speak it, and can speak without being able to read and write. They found that very few foreigners who came to China to stay for years ever troubled themselves to learn the language, but were contented with "pidgin English." Then the question very naturally arose, "What is pidgin English?"
SPECIMEN OF CHINESE WRITING. SPECIMEN OF CHINESE WRITING.
In a small book entitled "John, or Our Chinese Relations," Frank found something relating to pidgin English, which he copied into his note-book for future reference. When he had done with the volume, it was borrowed by Fred for the same purpose, and the boys gave a vote of thanks to the author for saving them the trouble to hunt up the information by asking questions of their friends. What they selected was as follows:
[Pg 390]
"In attempting to pronounce the word \'business,\' the Chinese were formerly unable to get nearer to the real sound than \'pidgin\' or \'pigeon;\' hence the adoption of that word, which means nothing more nor less than \'business.\' Pidgin English is therefore business English, and is the language of commerce at the open ports of China, or wherever else the native and foreigner come in contact. A pidgin French has made its appearance in Saigon and at other places, and is steadily increasing as French commerce has increased. On the frontier line between Russia and China there is an important trading-point—Kiachta—where the commerce of the two empires was exclusively conducted for a century and a half. A pidgin Russian exists there, and is the medium of commercial transactions between the Russian and Chinese merchants.
"Long ago the Portuguese at Macao had a corresponding jargon for their intercourse with the Chinese: and it may be safely stated that wherever the Chinese have established permanent relations with any country, a language of trade has immediately sprung into existence, and is developed as time rolls on and its necessities multiply.
"The decline in Portuguese trade with China was accompanied with a corresponding decline in the language, but it left its impress upon the more recent pidgin English, which contains many Portuguese words. Pidgin English is a language by itself, with very little inflection either in noun, pronoun, or verb, and with a few words doing duty for many. The Chinese learn it readily, as they have no grammatical giants to wrestle with in mastering it, and the foreigners are quite ready to meet them on the road and adapt their phraseology to its requirements. The Chinese has only to commit to memory a few hundred words and know their meaning; the foreigner (if he be English-speaking) has less than a hundred foreign words to learn, together with the peculiar construction of phrases. The Chinese have printed vocabularies in which the foreign word and its meaning are set forth in Chinese characters, and thus they have no occasion to trouble themselves with the alphabet of the stranger. These books are specially intended for the use of compradores and servants in foreign employ, and are so small that they can be readily carried in the pocket.
"In pidgin English the pronouns he, she, it, and they are generally expressed by the single pronoun he. All the forms of the first person are included in my, and those of the second person in you. When we come to the verbs, we find that action, intention, existence, and kindred conditions are covered by hab, belongey, and can do. Various forms of possession are expressed by catchee (catch), while can do is particularly applied to ability or power, and is also used to imply affirmation or negation. Thus: \'Can do walkee?\' means \'Are you able to walk?\' If so, the response would be \'Can do,\' while \'No can do\' would imply inability to indulge in pedestrianism. Belongey comes from \'belong,\' and is often shortened to a single syllable, b\'long. It is very much employed, owing to the many shades of meaning of which it is capable. Thus: \'I live in Hong-kong\' would be rendered \'My belongey Hong-kong side,\' and \'You are very large\' would be properly translated \'You belongey too muchee big piecee.\'
"The Chinese find great difficulty in pronouncing r, which they almost invariably convert into l. They have a tendency to add a vowel sound (o or e) to words ending with a consonant. Bearing these points in mind, we readily see how \'drink\' becomes dlinko, and \'brown\' blownee. Final d and t are awkward for them to handle, and th is to their lips an abomination of first-class dimensions. \'Child\' becomes chilo, and \'cold\' is transformed to colo, in pidgin English. \'That,\' and other words beginning with th, generally lose the sound of h, though sometimes they retain h and drop the t before it. \'Side\' is used for position, and the vocabulary contains inside, outside, bottom-side (below), and top-side (above). Chop-chop means \'fast,\' \'quick,\' \'immediately;\' man-man means \'slowly,\' \'slower,\' \'gently,\' in the south of China; while at Han-kow, on the Yang-tse, it means exactly the reverse. At Canton or Swatow, if you say man-man to your boatmen, they will cease rowing or will proceed very lightly; say the same thing to your boatmen at Han-kow or Ichang, and they will pull away with redoubled energy."
[Pg 391]
"As we have learned the principles of this new language," Frank remarked, "we ought to be able to understand some proverbs in it. For instance, here are four that contain whole heaps of good advice, besides showing us how to read pidgin English:
"\'Who man swim best, t\'hat man most gettee dlown;
Who lidee best he most catch tumble down.\'
"\'One piecee blind man healee best, maskee;
One piecee deaf man makee best look-see.\'
"\'One man who never leedee,
Like one dly inkstand be;
You turn he top-side downey,
No ink lun outside he.\'
"\'Suppose one man much had—how bad he be,
One not\'her bad man may be flaid of he.\'"
"Those will do," Fred answered, "and here is Longfellow\'s famous poem \'Excelsior,\' which every schoolboy knows, or ought to know. It was done into pidgin English by somebody who lived in the country and evidently knew what he was about:
"\'TOP-SIDE GALAH!
"\'T\'hat nightee teem he come chop-chop
One young man walkee, no can stop;
Maskee snow, maskee ice;
He cally flag wit\'h chop so nice—
Top-side Galah!
"\'He muchee solly; one piecee eye
Lookee sharp—so fashion—my:
He talkee large, he talkee stlong,
Too muchee culio; allee same gong—
Top-side Galah!
"\'Insidee house he can see light,
And evly loom got fire all light;
He lookee plenty ice more high,
Insidee mout\'h he plenty cly—
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