Feng Shuey literally translated means wind-water, and is a general term denoting the superstitious feeling with regard to the topographical surroundings of cities or houses, the good fortune or luck of a district being in proportion to its propitious relations to mountains, rivers, etc.

HING FAI was angry and annoyed. Many things had happened to produce this condition of mind. To explain. Hing Fai lived in the province of Fo Kien or the “Consummation of Happiness,” and was a merchant of considerable respectability, his business being in hogs’ bristles and plaited rice straw.

Intelligent reader, you perhaps think that neither of these articles interest you, but you are wrong, they do; the insignificant tooth-brush which you use on your honourable molars is made of finest hogs’ bristles from China, and perchance the hat you wear during your summer holiday saw its birth as rice in the province of Fo Kien.

All the hot morning that persistent beggar Wang had moaned and groaned in the dusty road opposite the business-house of Hing Fai. For a long time Wang had been an annoyance to all decent merchants and wealthy persons, and to-day he had hit on an admirable plan for gathering “cash.” Early he had stationed himself opposite the office of Hing Fai, and had brought with him a large stone. The stone he had placed in the dusty road, and with great persistence continued to beat his inadequately shaved head on it. It was now well after noon. Wang’s groans had disturbed Hing Fai for the last four hours, and the stone and Wang’s head were both liberally spattered with blood. Wang continued to groan and beat his head on the stone, and there was every reason to suppose that if he continued this unpleasant occupation he would eventually fracture his skull and die in front of the honourable door of Hing Fai’s business-house.

A junk laden with bristles belonging to Hing Fai had sunk in the river this morning, and recently a go-down belonging to him had been burnt down with its contents of several tons of straw braid. These two misfortunes meant the loss of hundreds of taels, and now added to all these misfortunes were the groans and blood sprinklings of the despicable Wang. Hing Fai was justly angered. He threw his rabbit-hair pen across the room, closed his paper ledgers in anger, and strode to the door and out into the dusty road, where he bestowed three kicks and five cash on the despicable Wang, after which he was carried in his chair by three sweating coolies to his residence on the outside of the town.

The bestowal of the cash and the departure of Hing Fai had the effect of causing the despised Wang to cease his melancholy self-torture. He abandoned his stone, wiped the clotted blood from his head, and with the five cash proceeded to a cheap eating-house to regale himself on rice. Wang’s profession of beggar made him conversant with many of the affairs of his townsmen, so he was acquainted with the recent losses sustained by Hing Fai. Having eaten his fill of rice, he washed his head free of blood in the neighbouring stream and betook himself to the pleasant abode of Hing Fai, where he accosted the gate-keeper in suitable terms: “Most honourable keeper of the gate, this degraded and unspeakably insignificant person has matters of importance to reveal to the most exalted and charitable Hing Fai.”

The gate-keeper replied that the air of the immediate neighbourhood was already sufficiently tainted, but that the presence of the disgusting Wang rendered it almost unbearable. Wang replied that he was well aware that the unspeakable odours that emanated from his degraded self must necessarily be unpleasant to such an exalted and gently born person as the gate-keeper, but that should admission be refused him he would bring ten thousand more worse smelling beggars to the gate, and that they would remain there and clamour for admission for one hundred years. After a protracted conversation carried on in similar polite terms the truculent gate-keeper admitted the impecunious Wang to Hing Fai’s compound. Wang advanced towards the house, walking at the side of the path, and carefully avoiding any desecration of the honourable brick-laid pathway by his own low-born feet.

Arriving at the door of the house he did not presume to call one of the house-servants, but knelt on the pathway of narrow bricks and rhythmically beat his head on them, from time to time uttering almost inaudible groans. Two or three of Hing Fai’s servants idly observed these actions, and as the blood began to stream from the wretched Wang’s head one of the servants ventured to inform Hing Fai that there was a miserable person without who evidently begged an audience. Hing Fai had dined, he was now smoking a cigar and sipping sweet champagne, and felt more at peace with the world, so he signified his willingness to have speech with the beggar, for he argued that the man’s persistence in attracting attention might mean that he had something of importance to communicate. Wang’s obeisances having been deemed sufficiently servile, the honourable Hing Fai commanded him to speak, at the same time hinting that should the beggar’s communication be considered so unimportant as to not warrant his thrusting his objectionable presence on the honourable Hing Fai, one hundred blows on the bare feet would seem but a mild reproof. Wang humbly kneeling with his forehead on the floor spoke as follows:—

“It has come to the knowledge of this altogether insignificant person that recently certain severe pecuniary losses have happened to the honourable Hing Fai.” Any annoyance that Hing Fai may have felt at this speech he carefully concealed, and the beggar continued: “Has it never occurred to the far-seeing Hing Fai what may be the cause of this growing ill-luck? Is there in Fo Kien a more charming and beautiful residence than that the life-restoring air of which this entirely despicable person at present dares to breathe? Let the honourable Hing Fai look round, and his heaven-sent intellect will at once see wherein lies the secret of his misfortunes.”

Hing Fai was now really angry. Fixing a stern gaze on the loathsome Wang, he commanded him to speak more plainly, or—and Hing waved his arm suggestively.

Then Wang rose to his feet, pointed through the open door across the beautiful garden, and said—

“The foreign devil builds a high temple.”

Hing Fai remained for some minutes deep in thought and oblivious of the beggar; then he ordered his servants to take the man away and feed him. Wang’s appearance as he left the presence still bore the mark of abject humility, but inwardly he exulted: he had sown the seeds of distrust, which he hoped would eventually lead to the sacking of the Mission Station and a fair share of loot to himself. Hing Fai sank into a deep reverie after the departure of the beggar. He thought of the foreign devils and of the religion they preached, of which he had taken the trouble to make some inquiries. He knew that the foreign devils had a house near his compound, and that the meanest and worst characters occasionally attended their worship; but that these people could possibly menace his prosperity came to him as an astounding idea, and one scarcely to be credited.

Hing Fai and the Rev. Arthur Jones were both good men in their way—both honest, and both hardworking; but one was a Christian Welsh missionary and the other a Chinese Buddhist merchant. The Rev. Jones was small, near-sighted, and very hardworking, and his wife resembled him in these three particulars. For some two years they had conducted their mission and school near the house of Hing Fai, and once the foreign devils had become a familiar sight the heads of the wealthier Chinese concerned themselves little with the doings of the missionaries.

The Rev. Jones was now about to accomplish one of his pet ambitions, namely, to build a real church. So far, divine worship had been conducted in the school-house attached to the mission, but the pastor’s honest work had at last been recognised by the authorities at home, and a small corrugated iron chapel had been sent him in sections. This chapel was now in course of construction, and the devilish mind of Wang, the beggar, had seized on its building as a chance to better himself; and by him the first seeds of distrust had been sown in the mind of Hing Fai. All day Hing Fai remained deep in thought, and even the blandishments of the beautiful Mah Su, his wife, did little to rouse him from his state of mental depression.

The next day, Hing Fai, when going to his business house in the town, observed the grey iron building of the foreign devil. As the horrid Wang had implied, the structure was growing to an inordinate height. It began to rear a sharp-pointed tower above the house of Hing Fai—that is to say, far higher than the roof of Hing Fai’s residence, and so lofty that its pointed spire intervened between Hing Fai’s residence and the hills at the back of the town.

Hing Fai certainly thought his good fortune was likely to be seriously affected by this building; but being a just man, he was not anxious to hastily jump at a conclusion and lay the blame of his recent losses on the Mission Station. However, that veiled hint of the beggar’s still stuck in his mind, and on reaching his office he found that one of his most trusted clerks had absconded with some nine hundred taels. The amount of money lost was not excessive, but still it had an effect on Hing Fai, considering his losses of the previous day. Business was carried on as usual for some days, and Hing Fai was still undecided as to whether the foreign joss-house was working him evil or not. Still the corrugated iron edifice grew under the Rev. Jones’ direction, and the despicable Wang had for days lain hidden from view, advancing no further theories. By everyone in the town it was understood that the missionaries had come for their own good. No one was such a fool as to think that these people worked for nothing; but as workers they were entitled to whatever they earned—that was only justice. Now it occurred to Hing Fai that possibly the foreigners were seeking to get influence on their side; but how could it possibly benefit them to injure his trade? Hing Fai possessed the ordinary amount of contempt for foreigners that all Chinese have, but he decided to visit the Rev. Jones and in a Chinese roundabout way try to find out if he really intended to do injury to his business. It would never occur to a Chinaman to say, “Why do you build so high a house? Do you intend by so doing to overwhelm my house, and so cause my downfall?” No, a Chinaman would act differently.

Thus he called at the house of the Rev. Jones and the proper salutations were gone through. Hing Fai kindly made inquiries as to the Rev. Jones’ reverend father, his grandfather, their health, their ages, the age of the Rev. Jones, his health, his business, and the prospects of the rice crops. The Rev. Jones had a good knowledge of the vernacular, but he was completely mystified as to the reason for this visit. Hing Fai then talked of towns, of dwellings and houses, and after much circumlocution touched on the new building of the mission.

“Why do you build this tall grey metal building?” said Hing Fai, “and for what purpose?”

“It is for a house of worship—in fact, a small temple,” replied the Rev. Jones.

“And you are building a sharp-pointed tower?”

“Yes; it is a spire,” replied the missionary.

“Do you store valuables there, or is it a place of refuge?” inquired the Chinaman.

“No,” replied the missionary, “we use it for no purpose.”

“But it costs money to build,” interjected Hing Fai.

“Yes, but then it points to heaven and leads men’s minds in that direction.”

Hing Fai was astonished. Here, thought he, he had found a most complete liar. A man who built a watch-tower (for some purpose unknown), spent money on it, and then said it was simply to point to heaven. He could hardly restrain himself, but to all appearances calm, he replied: “Points to heaven! So does a man when he walks, so does a tree, so does every blade of grass, so do the hills, and so does nearly everything on earth except worms and snakes.” Hing Fai then left, more deeply suspicious of the Christians than ever. So these two parted, and each worked in his own way. Now a period of distress fell on the province of Fo Kien; crops failed, continual drought prevented the young rice growing, and then, when the rains did come, and the young rice was some six inches in height, floods came and washed rice and fields and everything away. Hing Fai’s business grew worse and worse; the Rev. Jones’ spire continued to grow; and the hard times drove many a starving coolie to embrace Christianity so as to procure some dole of rice for himself and family. To Hing Fai it seemed that his own gradual ruin was but keeping step with the growing popularity of the mission-house. With the famine came the pestilence, and the district, in addition to being impoverished, was attacked by cholera. The river was now filled with blackened and swollen corpses. The people were too poor to buy coffins, so the dead were wrapped in matting and thrown into the river; sometimes three or four corpses were made up into a bundle, rolled in a mat, and thrown into the stream at one time for the sake of economy. Rich as well as poor were attacked, and the wife of Hing Fai succumbed to the disease. Hing Fai’s sorrow was great: his business losses seemed as nothing beside the loss of his beloved wife; and while in this state of anger against fate came to him the evil Wang.

Hing Fai was willing to accept his fate as such, but Wang, the beggar, for his own ends, wished to arouse Hing Fai’s anger against the missionaries. The beggar approached in the most abjectly humble manner, and having been bidden to speak, began thus: “Of the recent severe loss of the honourable Hing Fai this contemptible person will not speak, but what of the foreign devils who have built a tower to overlook this graceful residence? Know! O honourable Hing Fai, their wicked actions increase. They have begun to compass your ruin, and now they compass the ruin of the whole neighbourhood. Both of them suffer from bad eyes and find spectacles a necessity, and now, behold! they are buying our children, and for what purpose? Why, to take their eyes out and heal their own diseased vision by the application of certain medicines cruelly concocted from the eyes of our own innocents.”

Hing Fai signified that he did not credit the suspicions of Wang, and curtly dismissed him.

The truth was that the Rev. Jones in this season of famine found that the poor starving mothers were willing to sell him their children to save them from starvation. The missionary bought them, intending to bring them up in the Christian faith. Unfortunately most of the children when bought were moribund, and the Rev. Jones soon found that he was continually employed as grave-digger for the purpose of disposing of the pitiful corpses of his tiny converts.

Owing to the famine, Hing Fai’s business went from bad to worse, his pecuniary losses were considerable, and he took to brooding over his misfortunes, so that the evil words of Wang soon took such a hold of his mind that he began to imagine that the Christians had bewitched him by the erection of their spire. Soon his hatred grew and grew, he took stimulants to assuage his troubles and promote sleep, but soon the idea that the missionaries had exerted an evil influence on the whole of his life became paramount in his mind. Suspicion now grew in the minds of all the neighbours of the mission. The Rev. Jones’ compound had become full of graves; he continued to purchase infants, and had found it necessary to bury the baby corpses outside his grounds. The accursed Wang took on himself one night to dig up one of the newly-buried babes. The eyeballs had fallen in in the ordinary course of decomposition, and this the beggar showed to all and pointed out as proof against the foreign devils. It was obvious to all that the missionary and his wife had bad eyes, as they wore spectacles, and here was an explanation of their purchase of babies, to take their healthy eyes to make medicine to cure their own diseased vision. The feeling became acute in the district,—such inhuman monsters must perish. The poor people, being already rendered desperate by hunger, were ready for any excess. Moreover, Wang, in an impassioned speech, said that their misfortunes, the famine even, were all produced by the workings of the foreign devils and the evil influence of their tower. The people were frenzied, mad, and made clamorous for blood by this speech.

“We will go to the honourable Hing Fai,” said Wang, “and get him to lead us against our common enemy.”

The whole crowd, lusting and thirsting for blood, surged to the house of Hing Fai, calling on him as their deliverer. Hing Fai was partly drunk, and in a state of recklessness born of his misfortunes. The clamour of the rabble had its effect, and, arming himself with a sword, he led the rabble against the mission-house with shouts and the glare of many torches. The gates of the mission compound were closed, as the noise of the crowd had already penetrated the mission, and they feared the intrusion of disorderly persons, imagining that some drunken carousals had taken place in the neighbourhood. The gate was soon broken down by Hing Fai’s orders, and someone slew the aged gate-keeper. The sight of blood roused the lust of killing in the famished and misery-stricken crowd; headed by Hing Fai they rushed through the compound, hacking and maiming the terror-stricken Chinese servants, straight to the missionaries’ house. The Rev. Jones stood in the lighted doorway, his arms upheld as though commanding silence; but Hing Fai, blind with rage, rushed forward and cut at his head with his sword. The missionary fell, and was kicked and clubbed into a shapeless mass of flesh. Lamps were overturned, doors dashed open, and upstairs was found Mrs. Jones praying wildly and screaming with fear; twenty knives were plunged into her as she knelt, and the now frenzied rabble hacked, smashed, and kicked everything in the house, spreading a ghastly ruin over all. Then arose a quick alarm of fire. An overturned lamp in the hall had set the wooden house in a blaze; the stairs were already ignited, and the rush of the rabble to descend caused them to fall. A frightful scene now ensued: the house was well alight, the stairs were gone, and a leap from the upper landing meant leaping into hell. Hither and thither the murderers rushed, trying to find some means of escape. Wang, the beggar, had already rushed down the stair before it was destroyed by the flames, but Hing Fai remained above in an atmosphere already becoming intolerable; he rushed to a window, cutting down two or three in the way with his sword, and leapt out. Others remained and suffered an awful death in the blazing house.

Hing Fai writhed and groaned in the lurid light of the burning mission, and was soon found by the beggar Wang. He had broken a leg, and was carried on the back of the evil-smelling Wang to his own residence. The home authorities were justly indignant, and demanded full reparation from the Chinese Government, and the Viceroy of the province was ordered to investigate and punish the guilty parties.

The unfortunate Hing Fai with a broken leg was painfully dragged to the execution ground and there decapitated. A brand new mission with a particularly fine stone church and spire was built at the expense of the already overtaxed and famine-stricken community, and there reside a yellow-haired Scotch missionary named McTaggart with his wife.

They possess a zealous convert and most efficient colporteur named Ah Wang. His well-shaved head is covered with scars, and the people say that formerly he was a beggar, and used to secure the sympathies of the benevolent by beating his head on a stone.

The pleasant residence of the late Hing Fai is now in ruins, it being considered unfortunate to reside in any house overshadowed by the lofty spire erected by the foreign devils.