Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook/Chapter 16
CHAPTER XVI.
PORTENTS.
The prevalent belief in China respecting the connection between physical phenomena and political events has been productive of at any rate one good result. It has induced the Chinese to keep rigid and, in a measure, accurate records of all events of a striking nature in both astronomy and meteorology, and these cannot but be of value to historians and scientific men alike. If a comet is said to have appeared on a certain day in a certain portion of the heavens, a simple astronomical calculation will at once guide the student of Chinese history to the discovery of some important date which may give the required clue to many a disputed point in the science of chronology. Similarly the record of geological upheavals, overflowings of the Yellow River or the Yangtzŭ, and such-like disturbances, places a valuable key in the hands of those who study the land of China from a physical or scientific standpoint. It may be left to curious and speculative minds to range through the dim corridors of Chinese history and try to find the corresponding political event of which the physical occurrence was supposed to be the portent. Such a compilation would be more interesting, perhaps, than useful; in any case, the task does not come within our province. Let us content ourselves with recapitulating some of the more important natural events that have occurred in China during the past two thousand years. Many of these appear at first sight to partake of the apocryphal; but there is no doubt that much that appeared miraculous, and therefore portentous, in the days of Chou, Tsin, and Han was explicable enough, had there only been the requisite amount of natural philosophy at hand to bear upon it. For instance, we read of "red rain" having fallen in the neighbourhoods of Nanking and K'ai-fêng Fu in the years 300 and 1336 A.D., when the Western Tsin and Yuen dynasties held sway. The water which fell is said to have stained cloth with the colour of blood; and even in our own day, some seven or eight years ago, the same phenomenon was reported as having occurred in certain districts of Kiang-si. The explanation of this is probably as simple as that of the red snow mentioned by Aristotle, and observed in recent times in the polar and alpine regions. Black rain—as black as ink—fell, according to native chroniclers, during the reign of Hung Wu, the first Emperor of the Mings; and the river Yang-tzŭ is credited with having suddenly assumed a crimson hue on more than one occasion. These phenomena, it must be confessed, are not so easy of explanation. It is possible that they may have grown out of some metaphorical expression too deep to be understanded of the people; though there is no reason why critics who believe in a similar metamorphosis anciently recorded of the river Nile should hesitate to accept a story which attributes the same marvel to the Yang-tzŭ. The principal scourges to which China seems to have been subject, about which there can be no doubt, are famines, droughts, inundations, and the ravages of insects. These are said to have been of constant and almost regular recurrence. Earthquakes, though apparently not doing any great mischief, except in one instance when the marble pillars of the Emperor's palace were thrown down in the reign of Hsiao Wu Ti, of the Eastern Tsin dynasty, appear to have occurred more frequently than is generally supposed to have been the case in China. Far greater are the ravages that have been caused by storms. These have constantly destroyed the crops of entire districts in a few hours, and are described as violent in the extreme, having been frequently accompanied with thunderbolts and showers of destructive hail. Indeed, it seems wonderful that the unfortunate people ever reaped any harvests at all, when we read the list of forces arrayed against them. If there were no inundations, sweeping away the produce of their fields, to say nothing of the houses in which they lived and occasionally the men themselves, there was pretty sure to be a drought; or if not a drought, a swarm of grasshoppers or of locusts would devastate the plains, selecting, as, with a sort of infernal instinct, such creatures do, the richest and most fertile districts as their prey. The sufferings of the people in such fatal years are said to have reduced them frequently to cannibalism. They preyed upon each other; they fed themselves on corpses. On three occasions an array of rats invaded the country. In one instance these insatiable vermin, travelling from one place to another, attempted a passage of the Wei river, and were fortunately drowned, their carcasses choking up the banks of the stream for several days after their destruction. On the other occasion, however, they were more successful. Myriads of the creatures appeared in the neighbourhood of Nanking from the Hu-kuang provinces. They are said to have crossed the brooks and rivers in their course during the night by making themselves into a moving bridge, each animal seizing the tail of the one in front of him with his teeth, and so swimming across; and on arrival at the other side they threw themselves upon the crops and devoured them. Another time they effected the passage of the Yellow River. Among the minor plagues of China, in times past, are recorded thick yellow fogs, described in terms that would do full justice to the November fogs in London; excess of snow in winter; cold, biting winds in the summer months; violent gales, sometimes so charged with dust as to render it impossible to distinguish a man two paces off; hailstones as large as a man's fist; groanings and rumblings underground, and under the waters of the Yellow River; and an occasional landslip. In the year 5 of Chêng Tê of the Ming dynasty we read of a rain of earth, which was no doubt a dust-storm of preternatural violence, and on various other occasions of the appearance on the ground of dew as sweet as sugar to the taste. Only two years ago we heard of "summer-snow" having fallen near Soochow, and the terror of the people in consequence. It is not often that we hear of pestilence, although in the reign of the last Ming Emperors one occurred of such severity that it is said there were not enough survivors to bury the dead, and that a few years earlier the roads were blocked up with corpses; all of which is no doubt greatly exaggerated. Still, it would be difficult to point out which of the Ten Plagues of Egypt has not visited the Chinese, according to their own account, in one form or another, and each such visitation is regarded by them as a separate and distinct indication of the displeasure of Heaven.