One difference between life in China and life in this country may be illustrated to a certain extent in the following way.  Supposing a traveller, passing through an English village, to be hit on the head by a stone.  Unless he can point out his assailant, the matter is at an end.  In China, all the injured party has to do is to point out the village—­or, if a town, the ward—­in which he was assaulted.  Then the headman of such town or ward is summoned before the authorities and fined, proportionately to the offence, for allowing rowdy behaviour in his district.  The headman takes good care that he does not pay the fine himself.  In the same way, parents are held responsible for the acts of their children, and householders for those of their servants.

CHAPTER III—­RELIGION AND SUPERSTITION

The Chinese are emphatically not a religious people, though they are very superstitious.  Belief in a God has come down from the remotest ages, but the old simple creed has been so overlaid by Buddhism as not to be discernible at the present day.  Buddhism is now the dominant religion of China.  It is closely bound up with the lives of the people, and is a never-failing refuge in sickness or worldly trouble.  It is no longer the subtle doctrine which was originally presented to the people of India, but something much more clearly defined and appreciable by the plainest intellect.  Buddha is the saviour of the people through righteousness alone, and Buddhist saints are popularly supposed to possess intercessory powers.  Yet reverence is always wanting; and crowds will laugh and talk, and buy and sell sweetmeats, in a Buddhist temple, before the very eyes of the most sacred images.  So long as divine intervention is not required, an ordinary Chinaman is content to neglect his divinities; but no sooner does sickness or financial trouble come upon the family, than he will hurry off to propitiate the gods.

He accomplishes this through the aid of the priests, who receive his offerings of money, and light candles or incense at the shrine of the deity to be invoked.  Buddhist priests are not popular with the Chinese, who make fun of their shaven heads, and doubt the sincerity of their convictions as well as the purity of their lives.  “No meat nor wine may enter here” is a legend inscribed at the gate of most Buddhist temples, the ordinary diet as served in the refectory being strictly vegetarian.  A tipsy priest, however, is not an altogether unheard-of combination, and has provided more than one eminent artist with a subject of an interesting picture.

Yet the ordeal through which a novice must pass before being admitted to holy orders is a severe tax upon nerve and endurance.  In the process of a long ritual, at least three, or even so many as nine, pastilles are placed upon the bald scalp of the head.  These are then lighted, and allowed to burn down into the skin until permanent scars have been formed, the unfortunate novice being supported on both sides by priests who encourage him all the time to bear what must be excruciating pain.  The fully qualified priest receives a diploma, on the strength of which he may demand a day and a night’s board and lodging from the priests of any temple all over the empire.