t/ Christianity's Becistot f^our in China Gate of the Tung Ming Hwei, one of the Political Party Headquarters, decorated with flags, evergreens and chrysanthemums The Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. 156 Fifth Avenue, New York 1889 Christianity’s Decisive Hour in China I. South China REV. H. V. NOYES, D.D. “Half a Million Queues Cut” — Christians in Office — The New Education — The Fight Against Vice O N the loth of last November when the revolutionary party took possession of the government, the inhabitants of Canton were wearing queues. But scissors at once were in demand. Barbers multiplied. A Fati student showed his blistered fingers and said that he had cut off 150 queues that day. In less than ten days more than half a million queues had disappeared. In a long walk through the crowded streets, not one was seen. Nothing visible gave a stronger impression of the willingness of the people to discard the old govern- ment and welcome, the new. What had been tenaciously worn for 250 years, as a national badge, and a sign of allegiance to the Manchu government, was gone and gone forever. Are the hopes of the people for benefit from the change likely to be realized? The following are favorable indications. 1. Like the central government at Peking, the provincial government is every day getting a stronger grip on the situation. The lawlessness which came with a, sweeping change of officials, and the subsidizing of robber bands for soldiers, is now largely under control. Military rule, with its many summary executions, which seemed harsh to many, but which perhaps for the time were necessary, has given place to the milder forms of civil administration. The prospect of se- curing necessary funds is all the time growing brighter. 2. The changed attitude towards Christianity. This is more than simple re- ligious toleration. Under the old regime, students in mission schools and preach- ers were not even allowed a voice in the election of members to the Provincial Assembly. Now they may not only be members of the Assembly, but have been placed in many important official positions. The four leading officials who have successfully brought under subjection the turbulent bandits who, from their moun- tain retreats, were making all the northwestern parts of the province around Lienchou unsafe, are graduates of the Fati Theological Seminary. The present Commissioner of .Education is the Dean of the Canton Christian College. A high official in the foreign office was the principal of the High School of /the Baptist Mission. The present judge of the Supreme Court is a Christian and! the son of a preacher. Many more names could be added to this list. 3. The Educational Bureau is reviving interest in educational work. It is laying plans for a system of graded schools from the Kindergarten up to the University. It is also giving attention to education for industrial occupations, placing lines of study in this direction in its curricula. Proclamations have been posted re- quiring children to attend school. A Normal School with about 1,000 students has been established. A plan is on foot to send lecturers through all parts of the province to explain republican principles and show the importance of educa- tion to insure their success. Some of the Christian Chinese are giving dramatic exhibitions showing the absurdity or uselessness of some of the Chinese customs as compared with the results of Christian teaching, and these are attracting large audiences. 4. The government is suppressing gambling, opium selling, opium smoking, and houses of ill-fame. 5. Benevolent institutions have been encouraged and established. The Superin- tendent of Police has not only been vigorously clearing the city of thieves and robbers, but is much interested in otherwise benefiting the people. He has been for some time a friend and helper of the Hospital for the Insane. Now he has turned his attention to the blind and is planning a home for them. Meanwhile he has asked Dr. Niles to take charge of nearly one hundred whom he has already gathered. The largest scheme at present is a home and school for slave girls. These are usually bought to be servants in families. Their lot is often a hard one. The effort is probably to do away with this custom entirely. Already some 500 of these slave girls have been placed in a large public building in Fati. Some of these are freed by those who own them, others where abused are rescued by the police.* They are taught both book-learning and various forms of indus- try so as to be able to care for themselves. The teachers employed are Christians from various missions. This seems like a promising field for Christian influence. We were asked some weeks ago whether these girls might attend the Fati Church services. They were assured of a warm welcome, but they were not then per- mitted to come. Mrs. Noyes then wrote to the Superintendent of Police asking whether she could visit the school. His reply expressed a warm appreciation of the work the missionaries are doing, but suggested some delay lest the people in general might not be pleased. The door will no doubt open wider in due time. Restraints seem less already as some of the inmates have lately attended church services. The above are some of the indications of how widely the field of opportunity is opening in South China, and how this old Eastern Empire after long years of delay is at last “rolling out of the darkness into the light.” *Note — When these slave girls were arrested it was found that some of them were blind, and the Presbyterian School for the Blind, under the charge of Dr. Mary Niles and Miss Lucy Durham, was asked to take these blind slaves in their care until the Chief of the Police could provide a home for them. A full account of this is given in the January number of "All the World.” II. Shanghai REV. GEORGE F. FITCH. Changes — Foot-Binding and Opium-Smoking — The Passing of the Idol F ORTY years ago the writer was struggling with the intricacies of the Chinese language, trying to detect those delicate distinctions in sound which are so easy to the Chinese but so difficult to the untrained foreigner, and with- out which he might be calling a foreigner a sheep, or The Lord of Heaven, the Cook of Heaven. Many valuable helps have since been provided for the acquisi- tion of this marvelous language, so that the road is somewhat shorter and not quite so thorny, but the Chinese language, with its strange sounds and symbols and idioms, still remains. At that time the English and American Settlements of Shanghai, now called the International Settlement, was a small place of a few tens of thousands of Chinese! and a little over a thousand foreigners. Now it is a great city of over half a million Chinese — not including the French Settlement and the Chinese City beyond where there are probably as many more Chinese, say a million in all — - and fifteen thousand foreigners. Then there were no waterworks, but we drank the waters of the muddy Whangpoo, which were clarified by being put into “kangs” or large earthen jars and stirred with alum which soon caused the mud to settle to the bottom, after which the water was boiled and filtered before drink- ing. Now even the native city has its own waterworks and clear, wholesome water is carried to all who desire it. Missionaries were very few in those days and their operations confined to a comparatively small number of cities. Missionary methods were perhaps rather crude owing to lack of experience and the difficulties inherent in the beginnings of work in such a vast field and among such an intellectual people. The mis- sionary of today has a rich inheritance in the experience of the past, and he certainly is a dullard who does not profit by it. In accordance with the spirit of the age they are also working more hand in hand, and their work is becom- ing more co-ordinated and unified. Forty years ago we were very much divided as to the proper terms for God and Holy Spirit; today we are almost a unit, effected not so much by compromise as by a better understanding of one an- other and of the Chinese language. Then the voice of the missionary was lifted up against foot-binding and opium- smoking, but his cry seemed scarcely heard. Now both of these are being banned by the majority of the well-to-do everywhere, and the missionary is simply a f co-worker in these reforms among a vast multitude. The queue, that relic of Manchu rule and badge of servitude, is fast passing forever. It is true that many of the people, especially in out-of-the-way places are still sceptical, not yet satisfied that Republicanism has come to stay, or that the Manchus will not again return to power when every queueless head would be lopped from its shoul- ders — or so they believe. While in great cities, like Shanghai and Hangchow, but (few queues are to be seen, in a recent trip across the country I counted twenty queues to two queueless. But for Christianity the decisive hour would seem to have come. There are open doors such as never existed before. There are opportunities which are simply glorious in their possibilities, provided the Christian Church is prepared to enter in with needed men and means, and a faith that will move mountains. China is at the parting of the ways, not only as regards her government, but also as regards her religion. She is parting rapidly, in many places, with her idolatry. It is said that in one city in the south the Buddhist nunneries have all been closed. All •those beyond thirty years of age are allowed to remain, and will be cared for at the public expense. Those between fifteen and thirty were to be advertised and 1 sold for wives at two dollars and a half each, while those under fifteen were to be placed in training schools and well taught and pro- vided for. In some places even Confucius is being dethroned from his position as a demi-god, and given only his appropriate place as a philosopher and a sage. As an interesting illustration of the new spirit of change that is coming over the people the writer might mention that he was recently invited to officiate at a Chinese wedding which was solemnized in the Union Church (English) of this place, at which some of the Chinese guests came in automobiles, and he was himself actually given a fee, the first in all his experience of Chinese wed- dings, indeed it has always been the other way. The great question of the hour is, shall this great people be taught what sin really is; and that while the wages of sin is death, yet the gift of God is eter- nal life through Jesus Christ? We rejoice greatly in the Forward Movement which is taking place in the United States, looking to a campaign somewhat commensurate with the demands of the hour. Our trust is that it will not be a spasmodic effort, but long continued and persistent, until all of these millions shall know Christ. III. Shantung J. B. NEAL, M.D. The Visit of Dr. Sun — The Great Railway Development — The Permanent Constitutional Government A S I sit down to write this morning on the present situation in this empire, the city of Tsinan, the capital of the province of Shantung, with its popu- lation of thirty millions, is all agog with excitement over a visit from Dr. Sun Yat Sen, the remarkable man who engineered the revolution against the Manchus, and when they were safely gotten out of the way laid down his office of Temporary President of the Chinese Republic in favor of Yuan Shih Kai, as being the strongest man the Republicans could put up to reorganize the country. No man in China holds the unique position that Dr. Sun does today, nor is any man so popular among all classes, even the Manchus vying with each other to do him honor, during his recent stay in Peking. Yesterday crowds went out to meet him at the railway station on his arrival from Tientsin, the streets were hung with the five-colored flag of the Repub- lic, and between five and six the Governor gave a reception for him at his official residence, to which were invited a few foreigners and many from among the Chinese engaged in educational work in the city. We had the pleasure of meeting and having some conversation with Dr. Sun, who is a very unassum- ing, modest man, of medium height, whom one would never suspect of being capable of twenty years of quiet persevering work for the overthrow of the Manchu Dynasty, to be crowned with complete success in the end. He is said to be a member of the Christian Church, and evidently is deeply interested in education, as he is this morning holding a review of all the schools in the* city at the hall used for the meetings of the Provincial Assembly. The parade of the Christian Students on the day when they were invited to visit the Government and Gentry Schools and the officials in Wei Hsien City. The students are stopped before the gate of one of the Political Party Headquarters in the City. The Wei Hsien City wall appears on the right and the East Gate in the distance Dr. Sun’s particular hobby just now is the development of railways through- out the empire, especially lines running east and west, the two trunk lines already in existence, one from Peking to Hankow, and the other from Tientsin to Nanking, serving pretty well to connect the north and south, so far as the north- ern part of the country and the Yangtse valley are concerned, and later' the line from Hankow to Canton will serve the southern district. He plans for three great trunk lines from east to west, one in the south, one in the center and one in the north of the country, somewhat on the came lines as our great trans- continental roads, from which I have heard he got the idea. As to the present situation, there is every reason to hope that the Republic has come to stay, and that it will be a great improvement over the ancient Manchu regime, but poor old China has a long road to travel yet before she gets; rid of the system of squeezing and general corruption, which seems to permeate the whole body politic from the highest officials down to the coolie class. Last Sunday the first anniversary of the beginning of the revolution was celebrated, the ioth of October being the date when the first gun was fired in Wuchang which lit up the flames which rapidly spread over the whole coun- try. Never, I suppose, in all history has such a wide-spread and thorough-going revolution been accomplished with so little bloodshed. It makes one feel rather proud to know that the Christians throughout the country are all deeply in- terested in the new government and are entering into the spirit of the new order of things with great enthusiasm. Almost to a man, I should say, they are staunch Republicans, which we Americans of course feel is quite the right thing, and the only attitude they could take with their .training under their for- eign teachers from countries with so much political freedom. Before this article is in print the permanent government will have been in- augurated in Peking — the date set being some time in December, I believe — and readers of this leaflet will have had a chance to judge from the dispatches from Peking how matters are progressing. We all hope that Yuan Shih Kai will be elected permanent President and I am informed that Dr. Sun is advocating this course, as President Yuan has the confidence of the foreign powers as no one else has, and is an exceedingly strong man. All of us who came into contact with Yuan during the Boxer times are impressed with his strength of character and his ability to establish the new Republic on firm foundations, if only he is well supported. A danger which seemed to threaten the stability of the government some time since, but which seems to have been dissipated, was quarrels between rival parties in Peking. The visit of Dr. Sun to Peking and his support of Yuan Shih Kai has had an excellent influence in promoting harmony, and it is now hoped that Yuan will be elected Presi- dent, with little or no opposition, and that all parties will unite with him in establishing peace and order throughout the country. Christian Chinese are in positions of power and influence. The Church has the opportunity of the ages. IV. North China REV. C. H. FENN, D.D. The First Presidential Reception— A “Bien” — A Great Sunday School Procession L ITTLE more than a year ago who would ever have thought of receiving an invitation to a President’s reception in China? It is true that there have been not a few imperial receptions in Peking, during the past few years, to which the high and mighty of other lands have been invited, and a few others have squeezed in as interpreters ; but these have been formal in the extreme, and, while an advance on the past, have been distinctly imperial in their dignity. The approach of the first anniversary of the revolution has brought to us foreigners, one and all, an open invitation to watch China’s President re- view the troops of the Republic, partake of a foreign luncheon, and pay our respects to the President himself, his Cabinet and many other high officials, who mingled freely among us. It was indeed an unique occasion. Several scores of officials, who a year ago would have appeared, if they appeared at all, in gorgeous silk and embroidered robes, with the official hat and button and peacock feather, and queue, and stood and bowed with infinite dignity, were t Students from the Christian schools, Government and Country schools and the Merchants’ Guild drawn up in lines between the speaker’s platform and the arch, the merchants are in the first few rows, the Government students in uniform behind them, while the four hundred Christian students from the College and the Point Breeze Academy are behind them. Wei Hsien City wall shows at the left of the picture and the East suburb wall at the right sauntering about in a crowd of foreigners dressed in foreign frock coats and with foreign silk hats, which they raised in approved fashion from queueless heads as they held out the right hand for the foreign shake and uttered foreign greetings in a foreign tongue. Some of the costumes, it is true, were odd com- binations; the foreign hat without the foreign clothes, a frock coat over an extremely bright blue vest, a frock coat made of native satin, etc. ; but they were not as bad as we see on the street, where the foreign socks and Boston garters are worn outside the trousers, or the whole “foreign” costume may consist of a suit of balbriggans ! The oddest touch of the old in the Presi- dent’s reception was the presence of the living Buddha of Inner Mongolia, with his suite of llamas in yellow and lavender. The reception wound up with a regular American “three cheers and a tiger” for the President as he passed through our midst with his cordial salutes. For that day and the two which followed it, vast throngs of queueless citizens passed in and out of a large court in the southern city where Occidental and Oriental athletics were presented side by side, and relics of the revolutionary heroes were exhibited The new cordiality of our relations with our neighbors has recently been exhibited in the presentation to the members of this compound of a “bien” in recognition of the protection afforded the neighborhood at the time of the loot- ing last spring. For months we had been planning with our neighbors for mu- tual protection in case of a revolutionary upheaval in the city. This finally did not occur, but when the soldiers in the city mutinied and plundered and burned large areas of the business streets, the safest places were the Mission com- pounds and the immediately adjoining buildings, as these, even though unguarded by foreign soldiers, were scrupulously spared. Our neighbors, especially a wealthy shop to the west, appreciated the fact that they owed their immunity to our pres- ence, and expressed their gratitude for this and for the quieting effect of the pres- ence of foreign soldiers shortly after, by putting up in our gateway a very expen- sive signboard, or “bien,” acknowledging their indebtedness. It is really quite a handsome decoration. One of the most interesting features of the incident, how- ever, is the fact that our local Chinese minister does not like to look at it as it reminds him more strongly of the shameful looting of the city by soldiers of his own country than it does of the gratitude of our neighbors ! This, too, is a sign of the new spirit. , Another unique event in China is a Sunday school procession through the streets of the capital! In the neighborhood of 2,000 Sunday school scholars from the various schools in the city, on the first Sunday in October, marched, with banners flying, through the great streets of the city to the most central of the Christian churches, where a great meeting in the interests of the work was held. The Sunday schools of the city are all being reorganized on strictly modern lines, through the activity of the resourceful, energetic secretary of the new Chinese Sunday School Union. This, too, is revolutionary. The students of our Union Theological College are realizing the vastly in- creased opportunities for evangelism, and are of their own accord organizing work at various marketplaces in the city, to which they go as often as time permits. The whiteness of the harvest and the fewness of the laborers are impressing many. Three young men came to me the other day, asking when we would organize another Special Class (for non-college graduates) as they were all anxious to join it and prepare themselves for a ministry of redemp- tion to their fellow-countrymen. Our nearest out-station to the city, at Ching He, had been so barren of fruitage for several years that we were talking seriously of abandoning it en- tirely. Suddenly the word came that the place was thronged. A large number of students had just come to the near-by Military School, among them about 100 Christians from other parts of China, and large relays of them were flocking to the chapel, which is altogether too small to accommodate these crowds and the others who are drawn in by their coming. This field also presents a large opportunity in the woolen mills which are not far away, and still an- other in the Ching Hwa College, the school maintained with the portion of the Boxer indemnity returned or remitted by the United States. At this school are more . than three hundred students, a large number of them Christians, and some of them so eager for Christian worship and fellowship that they ’walk three miles to find it at the little chapel at Ching He. In the city our schools are overflowing, and the ingathering of inquirers from our street chapels and through the influence of our members is larger than ever; but we are constantly appalled by the number of inviting doors that we are positively unable to enter on account of the insufficiency of our force. t Students from the Government and Gentry Schools at the Triumphal Arch on the river bank at Wei Hsien V. Hunan REV. A. R. KEPLER. Robert Morrison and the New Republic— “The Army of Heavenly Salvation” — The New Station at Changsha I HAVE just come in from the street. A few minutes ago I passed a com- pany of fifty or more girls, sixteen years of age or thereabouts, marching along the streets, preceded by flags and buglers. They were the students of the Siangtan Middle School for Girls, parading the city, and celebrating the first anniversary of the launching of the revolution in Wu Chang. This incident evidenced several phases of the tremendous forward movement in China. Six years ago such a spectacle would have been unheard of any- where in China, not to mention this interior and most conservative province of Hunan. In the first place, there would not have been any Girls’ School, except such as were conducted by missions; secondly, respectable girls would not have ventured out in such fashion on the streets; thirdly, had they wanted to do so, it would have been impossible for them to march with tiny, bound feet; more- over, there was not enough patriotism in the land to call forth such a demon- stration. Not, however, that these new movements are the result of the past six years alone. That Chinese statesman read history aright, who said that the Chinese revolution had its inception on the day Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary, arrived in China in 1807. The face of China has undergone quite a change in the past twelve months, at least in Hunan. Unfortunately we cannot say that the change in appearance has invariably been for the better. Almost every eligible citizen is making a strenuous effort to raise a mustache, mostly with feeble results. It is nearly as difficult to find a queue in Hunan today as it was to see a queueless man a year ago. So many of the men find a perfectly clean shave of the pate the easiest way of getting rid of the offending queue, that one at first wonders if a large part of the male population has joined some Buddhist monastic order. Most of the rest have their hair cut in such individualistic styles, that one is tempted to wish that they too would join the shavers. You see, we are a thou- sand miles from the coast, and we are a little behind our fellow citizens there in adjusting ourselves perfectly to the styles of the West. But give us time: we are anxious to learn. However, some of the young men in our schools are really quite fine looking in their new Western coiffure, giving us a glimpse of what the face of China will be at its best, not many years hence. Speaking of schools, the new era has popularized our Mission Schools, and the number of students has greatly increased. Our Siangtan Boys’ School has an increase of 40 per cent, over last year’s enrollment. They all pay tuition, and a number come from as far away as Bao Ging, 150 miles away from Saing- tan. This school today had special exercises — gotten up by the boys — to cele- brate Independence Day. They invited, among others, the Girls’ Boarding School, as guests. When the pupils of the latter arrived in the hall, the boys rose in unison and saluted with a bow, a compliment which the young ladies bashfully returned. After the exercises, a picture of the two schools together ( !) was taken. Should our friends at home see this picture, they might think we had a co-educational institution in Hunan. China, however, has not yet (with the emphasis on the yet ) been modernized and westernized to this extent. The hospital, too, is showing the fruits of the new era. The work of the doctors and the Red Cross during the war, has given many who were sus- picious of the western ^Esculapius with his magic drugs and his still more fearsome knife, a confidence and trust, which finds expression in the increased number of patients who come to the clinic for treatment. Last week a number of disbanded soldiers got into a fight with some of the regulars in town, with the result, that Dr. Tooker was busy long after midnight trying to repair the damages inflicted. Even so, three died, while two are still in the hospital, convalescing. There is no doubt that the citizens of China are showing a friendlier atti-t tude toward the Christian propaganda than did the subjects of the Manchu em- peror. The fact that the spirit of the Manchus had been anti-Christian and anti-foreign, made it more natural for the new tendencies to be in the opposite direction. As an illustration of this: A Chinese pastor in Shanghai said that he had heard the people saying that since the old government has been put away, the people will have to change their religion also, and idol worship will have to cease. The fact that many leaders in the new government are Christians or are in sympathy with Christianity, is undoubtedly a great factor in influencing the masses to be more friendly and open-minded. In Wu Chang, earlier in the year, .. there gathered over two hundred delegates, both Christian and non-Christian, to discuss the formation of “The Army of Heavenly Salvation,” whose object ; was to be the adoption of Christianity as the national religion, with complete freedom of religious belief. The father of two boys in our school, — a wealthy | ex-official, — told Mrs. Lingle that he would like to see both his boys become if Christians and join the Church: an attitude very different from that of former years. Our reading room on the main street is well patronized by men who wish 1 to see our newspapers and magazines. The newspaper seems to be flourishing in China at present. Peking alone boasts of forty-six. On Sunday I baptized seven new members. There are thirty more inquirers here, but they are not yet sufficiently instructed to be admitted into church mem- bership. Our Chenchow station has added over seventy to its church mem- bership this past year, — the largest number so far received in a single year. Our Mission has just taken over the work and Christians of the London Missionary Society which has withdrawn from Hunan. This makes our Mission, in workers, territory occupied and Christian membership, the largest mission working in Hunan. With the present opportunities, and with the prayers and support of the Church at home, we should reap an abundant harvest. For us in Hunan, the revolution came a little ':oo early to enable us adequately to cope with the situation. We need trained workers for our day schools, and trained evangelists for our out-stations. Our work in the province has not been established sufficiently long for our schools to have had time to have trained men for these purposes. Until that time comes, we must rely upon the other provinces to supply us with trained men. Our Mission has just decided to open a new station, in Changsha. This is the capital of the province, as well as its industrial and educational centre. It isl one of the most prosperous and influential cities in the country. Here meet the scholar and student; merchant and statesman, formulate public opin- ion and then disseminate it to the ends of the province. Hunan, — and, in Hunan, Changsha, — has had more than her proportionate share in influencing the old empire, and in helping to mould the new republic. “CHINA CAMPAIGN SUBSCRIPTION” In view of the emergency in China, and the unprecedented opportunity for Foreign Mission work in the Chinese Empire, I agree to give annually for the next three years, in addition to my regular gifts for Foreign Missions and the other Boards of the Church: On or before Date - each year .Dollars per annum. .191 Signature. Address. Member of ...Church of If any donor feels that he can make but one year’s subscription at this time, he should cancel the phrases “annually for the next three years” and ‘‘per annum.” Pledges and gifts in payment of them should be sent direct to Mr. Dwight H. Day, Treas., 156 Fifth Ave., N. Y. City, who will credit such gifts to the proper church as indicated. ... . Pledges and gifts for the Women’s Board of Foreign Missions, should be sent through the Treasurer of the Local Women’s Foreign Missionary Society. January 1, 1913 Form No. 1889 The Willett Press, New York