Home Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland

Author:Isaac Taylor Headland [Headland, Isaac Taylor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Ethnic Studies, General, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9781317274407
Google: c0VACwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-12-22T02:51:49+00:00

CHAPTER XVIII

SERVANTS

FEW Americans know how to serve, and few know how to be served. I think I should be inclined to put Australians, so far as I know them, and Canadians in the same class with the Americans. In these countries there is so much room, and so much opportunity for a man to be a man—a woman to be a woman—that no one is inclined to be a servant. I have heard Englishmen boast—and, as my father was an Englishman, I am not inclined to make disparaging remarks about that side of our house—but I have heard Englishmen boast of the fact that they have been servants in certain families for twenty or thirty years. I doubt if you could find one American among her whole ninety millions, who would be inclined to boast, or even admit a fact of that kind. But the Englishman knows how to serve, and he knows how to be served.

But in the matter of service and serving even the Englishman must take a second place. For the Chinaman has specialized service in a way that it has never been done in Great Britain.

We sometimes think we are specialists in the West. We have our eye-specialists—a species of servants, of course, though I simply use them to illustrate what I wish to say here—though they usually combine with the eye, the ear, nose, and throat. They have not got down to a last analysis of specializing as the Chinese doctor has, as witness the following story, the truth of which I am not willing to vouch for, though it is told by the Chinese to illustrate the point in hand.

A man had been shot with an arrow, the head of which was buried in the flesh. He tried to pull it out, but the skin had closed over the head and he could not do so. He went to a physician to get him to remove it. The doctor promptly sawed the shaft off close to the skin, and then demanded his fee. “But,” said the sufferer, “the head of the arrow is still inside.”

“Quite right,” said the doctor. “I am a specialist. I deal only with outside diseases. If you want the head taken out, you will have to go to another specialist who cares for inside ailments.”

If you employ a cook in China, he is your big servant—ta shih fu. He takes a basket in one hand and a bird-cage in the other and goes out on the street to buy your provisions. It may be that he will dispense with the basket when he carries the bird-cage, and bring the provisions home in his sleeve. He will not allow your—or his—grocer to deliver the provisions, because that might tempt you to inquire about the price of onions, shall we say, or beefsteak—a matter about which you are supposed to know nothing, and only the cook and the grocer understand. He is paid for his work as a cook sixteen shillings a

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