The properly chosen Chinese servant who enters the household of a foreigner, is a being to whom, as suggested above, his master often becomes deeply attached, and whom he parts with, often after many years of service, to his everlasting regret.  Such a servant has many virtues.  He is noiseless over his work, which he performs efficiently.  He can stay up late, and yet rise early.  He lives on the establishment, but in an out-building.  He provides his own food.  He rarely wants to absent himself, and even then will always provide a reliable locum tenens.  He studies his master’s ways, and learns to anticipate his slightest wishes.  In return for these and other services he expects to get his wages punctually paid, and to be allowed to charge, without any notice being taken of the same, a commission on all purchases.  This is the Chinese system, and even a servant absolutely honest in any other way cannot emancipate himself from its grip.  But if treated fairly, he will not abuse his chance.  One curious feature of the system is that if one master is in a relatively higher position than another, the former will be charged by his servants slightly more than the latter by his servants for precisely the same article.  Many attempts have been made by foreigners to break through this “old custom,” especially by offering higher wages; but signal failure has always been the result, and those masters have invariably succeeded best who have fallen in with the existing institution, and have tried to make the best of it.

There is one more, and in many ways the most important, side of a Chinese servant’s character.  He will recognize frankly, and without a pang, the superior position and the rights of his master; but at the same time, if worth keeping, he will exact from his master the proper respect due from man to man.  It is wholly beside the mark to say that he will not put up for a moment with the cuffs and kicks so freely administered to his Indian colleague.  A respectable Chinese servant will often refuse to remain with a master who uses abusive or violent language, or shows signs of uncontrollable temper.  A lucrative place is as nothing compared with the “loss of face” which he would suffer in the eyes of his friends; in other words, with his loss of dignity as a man.  If a servant will put up with a blow, the best course is to dismiss him at once, as worthless and unreliable, if not actually dangerous.  Confucius said:  “If you mistrust a man, do not employ him; if you employ a man, do not mistrust him;” and this will still be found to be an excellent working rule in dealings with Chinese servants.

CHAPTER IV—­A.D. 220-1200