[VOL II] CANTON BARGEMEN FIGHTING QUAILS

CANTON BARGEMEN FIGHTING QUAILS

Cover Image: Canton Bargemen fighting Quails / GuangZhou GuangDong China / Drawn by T. Allom Engraved by Augs.Fox – ALAMY Image ID:2X55N16

*People raised quails, with a primary focus on raising male quails for cockfighting, as a leisure activity in ancient China.

“He knows his fault, he feels, he views,
Detesting what he most pursues;
His judgment tells him, all his gains,
For fleeting joys, are lasting pains.”

THE  GAMESTER.

IN every country vice has established a dominion of greater or less extent, which the most polished manners and most moral laws have not been able to subdue. Of this truth, London and Paris, chief cities of the world, present a melancholy evidence. It is even remarkable, that gambling, the most detestable of all demoralizing habits, is claimed, in those great capitals, as a privilege of the aristocracy, while in China it is confined almost entirely to plebeian society. How many fortunes are annually dissipated on the race-course, in the cock-pit, or at the club-house; how many ancient and wealthy families reduced, by such prodigality, to the lot of humble life, accompanied by the pain that fallen fortune generally inflicts! The many suicides that are committed in republican France, have their origin in a propensity for gambling; and the few noble families in monarchical England, whose wealth is disproportionate to their rank, owe their degradation to the same vicious practice. Laws discouraging, but do not denounce this sin; the timidity of legislators has hitherto operated in protecting such a mischievous exercise of liberty.

Gambling amongst the Chinese is analogous to the coarse species of chances and swindling, practised at our country fairs, and on every race-course, with this difference only, that cards are there in more general requisition. The athletic bargemen on the Pearl river, devote every hour, that can be stolen from work, to the recreation of gambling; and, the weary trader, emancipated from temporary slavery, buries all his sorrows in the excitation which this vile propensity awakes. Children partake of this national weakness in some degree, or rather the vicious habits of society create an appetite in the youthful mind. A fruit-vender disposes of his goods by a sort of lottery, or game of hazard; supplied with a box and dice, he presents them to his customer, who stakes the price against the selected fruits. The first throw is the buyer’s privilege, and the winner, of course, takes up both fruit and money. Raffling is also a favourite mode of barter; provisions of every description are disposed of in this way, and so insensibly does vice obtain the mastery, that wives, or children, are sometimes the last stake played for between these habitual gamblers.

Dominoes, dice, and cards constitute the chief instruments of this hateful trade; and chess is also generally known. Their cards are seldom more than three inches in length by one in breadth, and marked with red and black colours as our own. The suspense, and the consumption of time, inseparable from a long-contested game of chess, in which, after all, the victory is a triumph of memory rather than discernment, have occasioned its postponement to most others; but, such are the industry and perseverance of the Chinese, that when they do prefer it, they are admirable players.

“Hunt-the-slipper,” a sport with which the rising generation of Old England are familiar, is probably a mere version of the Chinese “Hand-the-flower.” While the bouquet is in rapid transit from hand to hand, a continued roll is kept up on a drum in an adjoining room; whoever happens to have the bouquet at the moment when the roll ceases, drinks an extra cup of wine, or pays for a cup “all round.” But of all the games in use amongst the humbler classes in China, the Tsoi-moi is the most popular: “Two persons, sitting directly opposite to each other, raise their hands at the same moment, when each calls out the number he guesses to be the sum of the fingers expanded by himself and his adversary. The closed hand or fist is none – the thumb, one – the thumb and forefinger, two – and so on; the chances lying between 0 and 5, as each must know the number held out by himself.” This is the amusement to which Cicero alludes in his Offices, and which his commentator Melanethon thus describes, “Those who play at micare digitis, stretch out, with great quickness, as many fingers of one hand each, as they please, and at the same instant both guess how many are held up by the two together; he who guesses right wins the game. To have a sharp sight is necessary, and great confidence when it is played in the dark.” This very game still prevails amongst the Romans, by whom it is called Mora, and the Transalperians, a low people who dwell on the furthest bank of the Tiber, are amazingly addicted to it.

There are other sports and gambling practices, common to most civilized nations, which are to be added to those already noticed; they include cock-fighting, a favourite amusement of the Mandarins, and which was probably imported from the country of the Malays; quail and cricket fighting, – all equally cruel and unmanly. Training is a profession which gives occupation to numbers, and the interest taken in these unworthy sports is so universal and exciting, that the gamester alone would credit their true history. The birds are furnished with steel spurs, as our game-cocks in the pit, and the contest, therefore, seldom fails to prove fatal to one or both. The victor is put up for sale, or raffle, and the eagerness to become his master is demonstrated by the enormous sums staked, or paid down, for him. The inquiries of the Chinese after other pugnacious animals, have extended into the insect kingdom, where they have discovered a species of gryllus, or locust, or cricket, whose quarrelsome propensities confer upon it an unhappy notoriety. Two of these diminutive victims are placed in a bowl or a sieve, and submitted to the irritation of a straw applied by the owner; driven to madness, they attack each other with indescribable fury, producing the highest degree of mirth to the spectator, and of interest to the gamesters who preside at the table. Would that their civilization had taught them to remember –

– The poor beetle, that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance feels a pang as great
As when a giant dies.

---