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THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
THE 
 CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 THE CONFLICT OF ORIENTAL AND 
 WESTERN CULTURES IN CHINA 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD ALSWORTH ROSS, Ph.D., LL.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN 
 
 AUTHOR OF "SOCIAL CONTROL," "FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY," 
 
 "SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY," ETC. 
 
 :! %S&&>rfs&44£ 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE CENTURY CO. 
 
 1911 
 
-> 
 
 
 Copyright, 1911, by 
 
 The Century Co. 
 
 Copyright, 1911, by The Ridgway Company 
 
 Published, October, 1911 
 
 *V 
 
 ©CI.A2 078G0 
 I 
 
The Cliff: of the Thousand Gods, on the Kialing 
 River in North Szechuan 
 
TO 
 DR. AMOS P. WILDER 
 
 AMERICAN CONSUL GENERAL AT SHANGHAI 
 
 FRIEND OF THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 AND ELOQUENT 'INTERPRETER TO THEM 
 
 OF THE BEST AMERICANISM 
 
 THIS BOOK 
 
 IS DEDICATED 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 China to the Ranging Ete 3 
 
 Medieval aspect of the cities — Streets, water supply, light- 
 ing and fuel — Contrast between Chinese and Japanese in 
 point of neatness — Costume, pailows and pawn-shops — 
 River traffic and the riverine population — Rural ties of 
 city-dwellers — Characterizing influence of the loess — Ruth- 
 less destruction of the forests — Calamitous results of de- 
 forestation — No hope of improvement in our time — Why 
 game is so plentiful — The Great Wall — Racial contrasts 
 between Northern and Southern Chinese. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 The Race Fiber of the Chinese 33 
 
 Selection and survival in China — Relentless elimination of 
 the less fit — Testimony as to the effect upon race physique 
 — Quick and sure recovery of the Chinese from grave 
 wounds and surgical operations — Their comparative free- 
 dom from blood poisoning, dysentery, typhoid and small- 
 pox — Their bluntness of nerve — Diseases they fail to 
 resist — The Chinese physique distinguished, not by a 
 primitive vitality, but by specific immunities from the 
 poisons of congested life — Their toleration of noxious 
 microbes unique and not likely to be developed in other 
 races — Military and industrial significance of the tough- 
 ness of the Chinese. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 The Race Mind of the Chinese 51 
 
 The Chinese reflective rather than impulsive — Their re- 
 sponse to stimuli slow but strong and persistent — Their 
 self-control, steadiness and reliability — Conservatism not 
 a race trait, but a by-product of their social history — 
 Cause of the early arrest of their cultural development — 
 Prospect of the early release of the Chinese intellect 
 from the spell of the past — Comparative ability of the 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 yellow race and the white — Naturalness and likableness 
 of the Chinese — Their sense of humor, politeness and re- 
 spect for age — Why their old men are so often attractive 
 — Mere borrowing cannot put them abreast of the West; 
 they must establish a new relation between population 
 and opportunities and this will take time. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 The Struggle for Existence in China 70 
 
 Extraordinary utilization of the soil — Aerial tillage — 
 Made fields — Why the cities are scavenged for nothing — 
 Queer foods — Strange gleanings and pilferings — Men kill- 
 ing themselves by toil — Incredible poverty of the masses 
 — Absence of comfort — Cheapening of human life — Why 
 the Chinese are so cohesive and clannish — Why so utili- 
 tarian — No cause for such a struggle for existence save 
 over-population — How ancestor worship whets the desire 
 for large families — Marriage early and universal — Pro- 
 creative recklessness and the appalling infant mortality 
 resulting therefrom — Famines and migrations — The Chi- 
 nese death-rate will be brought down sooner than the 
 birth-rate — Prospect of extreme overcrowding and out- 
 thrust — Chinese emigration likely to become a world 
 question. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 The Industrial Future of China 112 
 
 The military "yellow peril" a bogey — Difficulty of reviv- 
 ing the fighting spirit in the Chinese — The industrial 
 "yellow peril" — Amazing cheapness of labor in China — 
 Factories rapidly springing up — But China herself offers 
 an enormous market for their products — Low wages not 
 the same as low labor-cost — Not enough capital to build 
 railways and also expand manufactures — How a rapa- 
 cious government paralyzes the spirit of enterprise — 
 Untrustworthiness of the Chinese in joint-stock under- 
 takings — Nepotism and favoritism, place-holders and sine- 
 curists — The problem of the foreign expert — Inefficiency 
 of native management — Oriental competition will be our 
 grandchildren's problem. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 The Grapple With the Opium Evil 139 
 
 Growth and extent of the luxury-use of opium — Why the 
 opium pipe is so seductive to the Chinese — Why society 
 has been so slow to react against the vice — Motive be- 
 
CONTENTS ix 
 
 PAGE 
 
 hind the Anti-Opium Edict — Provisions of the Edict — 
 Economic difficulties in the way of suppressing opium- 
 growing — Tragic incidents of the fight on the poppy — 
 Practical results of the campaign — Testing the mandarins 
 for smoking — Increasing restrictions on the sale and use 
 of opium — The Foochow policy — The impression on public 
 opinion and current moral standards — The agreement 
 with England — The end of opium in sight — Lessons from 
 China's experience. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Unbinding the Women of China 174 
 
 Extent, motives and consequences of foot-binding — The 
 missionaries initiate the fight against the custom — Work 
 of the Natural-Foot Society — Support from the Empress 
 Dowager — Progress of the reform in the upper classes — 
 Foot-binding still wide-spread and will die out but slowly. 
 Inferior position of the female in the family — Chinese 
 opinion of woman's character — Relative value of the two 
 sexes — The female exists for the sake of the male — So- 
 cial intercourse organized for men — No mixed society — 
 The status of the daughter in the family — Rearing mar- 
 riages, child-betrothals and parental match-making — 
 Heart-binding even more damaging to woman's health 
 than foot-binding — The bride's subjection to her mother- 
 in-law — Point of view of a Confucian — The revolt of the 
 silk-reelers against marriage — Mission-school girls — Gov- 
 ernment education of girls — Freer customs — "Liberty 
 girls" — The effect of female emancipation upon the fu- 
 ture of the Chinese. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Christianity in China 216 
 
 Lama worship compared with practical Christianity — 
 The low plane of Chinese religions — The people saturated 
 with superstition — The mission force in China — How the 
 Chinese explain the presence of the missionary — Cause of 
 anti-missionary outbreaks — Changing attitude of the 
 mandarins — Contrast of aims between British missions 
 and American — New conceptions of mission work — "Rice 
 Christians" — Transforming power of Christianity — What 
 conversion entails — Deceptive "mass-movements" — What 
 the higher classes think — Types drawn to the Christian 
 ideal — The higher standing of daughter and wife among 
 converts — The indirect and unseen fruits of missionary 
 labor — Animus of critics — Missionary mistakes and prob- 
 lems — Reaction of missionary work upon native faiths — 
 Future of Christianity in China. 
 
x CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Fab West of the Far East 260 
 
 Chinese highways — Signal towers — Monuments — Cost of 
 carriage — The currency problem — Strange aspect of the 
 country — Idyllic harvesting — Havoc wrought by deforesta- 
 tion — What is lost when the woods go — Missionary life 
 and work — Sianfu — The Pei-lin — Religious rivalry — The 
 Tartar bannermen — The new army — Itinerant harvesters 
 — Fgngsiangfu — Mountaineers of West Shensi — "Eoad of 
 the Golden Ox" — Highway neglect — Characterizing influ- 
 ence of rice culture — The great road of North Szechuan 
 — Packmen — Beauty of West-China types — Ravages of 
 disease — Squalor and dreariness of life in overpeopled 
 Szechuan — The Chengtu plain — Incredible productiveness 
 — Manure traps — Irrigation wheels — Progressiveness of 
 Chengtu — What holds the Chinese back — Why the mar- 
 tial virtues vanished — The hampering ideals of the 
 scholar type — How to unleash the native energy of the 
 race. 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 The New Education 310 
 
 Medievalism of Chinese thinking — Ignorance of the prin- 
 ciple of efficiency — Secret of the impotence of old China 
 in coping with Western nations — Characteristics of the 
 old education — Motives to the introduction of the West- 
 ern branches — The scope of present education in China — 
 Inefficient management of the higher schools — Sinecurism 
 — Poor use of the foreign teacher — The overloaded course 
 of study — Errors of the Board of Education — Traits of 
 the Chinese student — Indications as to his capacity — 
 His lack of discipline, reliance upon mass action, and 
 contempt for manual labor — His poor physique and neg- 
 lect of physical training — His attitude towards sports — 
 The burden of the ideographic language; efforts at sim- 
 plification — The reaction of the educational revolution 
 upon moral standards — The golden opportunity of the 
 mission colleges. 
 
 Index 347 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Cliff of the Thousand Gods, on the Kialing 
 
 River in North Szechuan Frontispiece 
 
 A pottery — the walls built with defective pots 5 <•-' 
 
 A blocked path 5 
 
 Typical ornamental gateways 10 
 
 House-boats lining a river avenue 15 
 
 Indian bullock in a Quangsi bullock-cart 20 
 
 A Peking cart 20 
 
 A half-buried gate-tower 26 
 
 A silted-up bridge in Shansi. One of the ultimate results of 
 
 deforestation 26 
 
 The great wall 31 
 
 A Canton water-front crowd 37 " 
 
 Station platform faces 37 '-' 
 
 The river stairs up which all the water for Chungking is borne 44 v 
 
 Scene in the Imperial City, Peking 49 1^ 
 
 Hovel on beach at Kiukiang. Over the door the character for 
 
 "happiness" 49 \S~ 
 
 A police squad in Sianfu 56 ^ 
 
 Meeting of the first provincial assembly of the Province of 
 
 Fokien, Foochow, October, 1909 56 '"" 
 
 Altar, Temple of Heaven, Peking 59 
 
 View in the Temple grounds of the Ming Tombs. Mountains 
 
 near Peking 59 
 
 A rustic Endymion of West China 67 ^ 
 
 An old farmer 67 
 
 Cave dwelling of a coal miner 76 ■ 
 
 Perfected tillage of the valley of an affluent of the Wei River 76 '• 
 
 Junk on the Yangtse 81 v ~ 
 
 Fishing with cormorants 81 
 
 What passes for a public highway 88 
 
 A common carrier 88 
 
 One of the three life boats that escorted us through the gorges 93 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTEATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 An ancient mariner 93 ^ 
 
 Braving the Yangtse flood. Cliff swallows' nests at Chung- 
 king 100 v 
 
 A wayside beggar 107 l/ ' 
 
 Professional beggar dinning to make a shopkeeper contribute 107 " 
 
 The railway police at a station 115 ' 
 
 Chinese officers 115* 
 
 Tracking a junk through the gorges of the Yangtse . . . 121 ^ 
 
 Working a Yangtse junk with oar and sweep 124 v 
 
 Cash equivalent to $3.15, weight 50 lbs. . .' . . . . . 129 £/ 
 
 A slow freight on the Great Northern Road 129 w ' 
 
 Weighing silver ingots in a Sianfu bank 135/ 
 
 A protected monument at Sianfu 135 v/ 
 
 Family and home vanishing into the opium pipe .... 144 v 
 
 South half of the west wall of Sianfu, from the west gate . 147 
 
 City wall and five-story pagoda, Canton 147 
 
 Opium pipes confiscated by the Anti-Opium Society . . . 154 
 
 Captives of the lamp and pipe 162 
 
 Death in the lamp of the opium smoker 165 
 
 Burning of opium pipes and other paraphernalia confiscated 
 
 by the Foochow Anti-Opium Society (eighth time) . . 167 
 
 An old Chinese garden at Taiku 186' 
 
 Flower pagoda, Canton 186 
 
 One of the south gates into the Tartar City, Peking . . . 191 17 
 
 Temple of Five Hundred Genii, Canton 191 
 
 Gate between two provinces in West China 200 
 
 Scenic archway at the crest of a mountain pass 200 
 
 No chance for them 208 
 
 Joss house, Foochow and Baby Tower where girl infants are 
 
 thrown when not wanted 208 
 
 One of two hundred day schools organized by a Foochow mis- 
 sionary 213 
 
 A bride's canopy, Peking 213 
 
 High altar of a Buddhist temple of the Kushan monastery . 221 v 
 
 Temple in a gorge, Kushan monastery 221 >' 
 
 A wealthy Shansi family of foreignizing tendencies . . . 226 
 
 Monks of Kushan Monastery 226 
 
 A noble type of Christian 232 l/ 
 
 A distinguished pastor whose face reveals the high possibili- 
 ties of his race 232 
 
 How a road wears down into the loess 237 v 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTEATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Buddhist monks on pilgrimage to Wutaiskan on the Five Sa- 
 cred Mountains 237 ^ 
 
 Temple in Canton 243 * 
 
 An Alpine road in western Shensi 248' ^ 
 
 Monastery on the "Little Orphan" isle on the Yangtse . . 248 t -'' 
 A Cliff shrine near the northern frontier of Szechuan . . 254 ^ 
 
 Looking south from the Bell Tower, Sianfu 263 ^ 
 
 The east gate of Taiyuanfu, showing macadamized street . 263 l/ 
 An ancient ornamental gate over the Southwestern Highroad 269 - 
 One of the ancient brick signal-towers occurring every three 
 miles on the Southwestern highroad uniting Peking with 
 
 the remote provinces 269 
 
 The type of public monument universal in Shansi .... 278 
 
 Grave-stones, Chihli 278 
 
 Cedars on the main road across Northern Szechuan. Each 
 
 tree is protected by a tablet warning against depredation 283 
 Patriarch on the highway. Willows line the road most of the 
 
 way from Tungkwan to Sianfu 283 
 
 Ferrying across the Yellow Biver 292 
 
 Houses with brick stoops and benches, showing resort to mud 
 
 and brick in a timberless country 292 
 
 Noontide in a street of Paisiang 300 ' y 
 
 In the valley of the Wei 300 
 
 A horseshoe tomb in a South China hillside 305 
 
 Coffins in rest-house waiting for the lucky day 305 
 
 Outlook tower of the Temple of the Flowing Waters in South- 
 ern Shensi. Founded about 200 B. C 313 ^ 
 
 Wayfarers resting in the shade of a tree protected by the 
 
 monuments and the temple 320 
 
 Traffic through the loess en route to the distant railroad . . 320 
 The seething whirlpools in the gorges of the Yangtse . . . 329 
 In the gorges of the Upper Yangtse 329 u 
 
PKEFACE 
 
 The old China hand is quite sure one can get 
 nowhere by a diligent half year of travel and in- 
 quiry in the Far East. "I have been here thirty 
 years," says the Chief Engineer, "and the longer 
 I stay the less I understand these people." "I 
 thought I had made them out after I had lived 
 here a couple of years," says the Trader, "but the 
 longer I am here the queerer they seem." No 
 traveler, if he consults the old treaty-port resi- 
 dents, will ever find courage to write anything 
 about the Chinese. 
 
 The fact is, to the traveler who appreciates how 
 different is the mental horizon that goes with an- 
 other stage of culture or another type of social 
 organization than his own, the Chinese do not 
 seem very puzzling. Allowing for difference in 
 outfit of knowledge and fundamental ideas, they 
 act much as we should act under their circum- 
 stances. The theory, dear to literary inter- 
 preters of the Orient, that owing to diversity in 
 
xvi PEEFACE 
 
 mental constitution the yellow man and the white 
 man can never comprehend or sympathize with 
 one another, will appeal little to those who from 
 their comparative study of societies- have gleaned 
 some notion of what naturally follows from isola- 
 tion, the acute struggle for existence, ancestor 
 worship, patriarchal authority, the subjection of 
 women, the decline of militancy, and the ascend- 
 ancy of scholars. 
 
 Edward Alsworth Koss„ 
 
THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
THE 
 CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 CHINA TO THE BANGING EYE 
 
 CHINA is the European Middle Ages made 
 visible. All the cities are walled and the 
 walls and gates have been kept in repair with an 
 eye to their effectiveness. The mandarin has his 
 headquarters only in a walled fortress-city and 
 to its shelter he retires when a sudden tempest 
 of rebellion vexes the peace of his district. 
 
 The streets of the cities are narrow, crooked, 
 poorly-paved, filthy and malodorous. In North 
 China they admit the circulation of the heavy 
 springless carts by which alone passengers are 
 carried ; but, wherever rice is cultivated, the mule 
 is eliminated and the streets are adapted only 
 to the circulation of wheel-barrows and pedes- 
 trians. There is little or no assertion of the 
 public interest in the highway and hence private 
 interests close in upon the street and well-nigh 
 block it. The shopkeeper builds his counter in 
 front of his lot line ; the stalls line the street with 
 their crates and baskets; the artisans overflow 
 into it with their workbenches, and the final 
 result is that the traffic filters painfully through 
 
 3 
 
4 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 a six-foot passage which would be yet more en- 
 croached on but for the fact that the officials in- 
 sist on there being room left for their sedan chairs 
 to pass each other. 
 
 The straitened streets are always crowded 
 and give the traveler the impression of a high 
 density and an enormous population. But the 
 buildings are chiefly one story in height and, with 
 the exception of Peking, Chinese cities cover 
 no very great area. For literary effect their 
 population has been recklessly exaggerated and, 
 in the absence of reliable statistics, every trav- 
 eler has felt at liberty to adopt the highest guess. 
 
 Until recently there was no force in the cities 
 to maintain public order. Now, khaki-clad po- 
 licemen, club in hand, patrol the streets, but their 
 efficiency in time of tumult is by no means vin- 
 dicated. A slouching, bare-foot, mild-faced gen- 
 darme such as you see in Canton is by no means 
 an awe-inspiring embodiment of the majesty of 
 the law. 
 
 There is no common supply of water. When 
 a city lies by a river the raw river water is borne 
 about to the houses by regular water-carriers 
 and the livelong day the river-stairs are wet 
 from the drip of buckets. When the water is 
 too thick it is partially clarified by stirring it 
 with a perforated joint of bamboo containing 
 some pieces of alum. 
 
 There is no public lighting and after nightfall 
 the streets are dark, forbidding, and little fre- 
 quented. Until kerosene began to penetrate the 
 
A pottery — the walls built with defective pots 
 
 A blocked, path 
 
_ 
 
CHINA TO THE BANGING EYE 7 
 
 Empire the common source of light was a candle 
 in a paper lantern or a cotton wick lighted 
 in an open cup of peanut oil. Owing to the lack 
 of a good illuminant the bulk of the people retire 
 with the fowls and rise with the sun. By mak- 
 ing the evening of some account for reading or 
 for family intercourse, kerosene has been a great 
 boon to domestic life. 
 
 Fuel is scarce and is sold in neat bundles of 
 kindling size. Down the West Eiver ply innu- 
 merable boats corded high with firewood floating 
 down to Canton and Hong Kong. Higher and 
 higher the tree destruction extends and farther 
 and farther does the axman work his way from 
 the waterways. Chaff and straw, twigs and 
 leaves and litter are burned in the big brick bed- 
 steads that warm the sleepers on winter nights 
 and under the big shallow copper vessels set in 
 the low brick or mud stoves. Fuel is econo- 
 mized and household economy simplified among 
 the poor by the custom of relying largely on the 
 food cooked and vended in the street. The port- 
 able restaurant is in high favor, for our preju- 
 dice against food cooked outside the home is a 
 luxury the common people cannot afford to in- 
 dulge in. 
 
 Proper chimneys are wanting and wherever 
 cooking goes on the walls are black with the 
 smoke that is left to escape as it will. Chinese 
 interiors are apt to be dark for, in the absence 
 of window glass, the only means of letting in 
 light without weather is by pasting paper on 
 
8 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 lattice. The floors are dirt, brick or tile, the 
 roof tile or thatch. To the passer-by private 
 ease and luxury are little in evidence. If a man 
 has house and grounds of beauty, a high wall 
 hides them from the gaze of the public. Open 
 lawns and gardens are never seen and there is 
 no greenery accessible to the public unless it be 
 the grove of an occasional temple. 
 
 In the houses of the wealthy, although there 
 is much beauty to be seen, the standard of neat- 
 ness is not ours. Cobwebs, dust, or incipient 
 dilapidation do not excite the servant or mortify 
 the proprietor. While a mansion may contain 
 priceless porcelains and display embroideries 
 and furniture that would be pronounced beauti- 
 ful the world over, in general, the interiors 
 wrought by the Chinese artisan do not compare 
 in finish with those of his Western confrere. 
 
 Most striking is the contrast between China 
 and Japan in respect to neatness. The Chinese 
 seem neglectful, and ignorant of the art of care- 
 taking and repair. They have never acted on 
 the maxim "a stitch in time saves nine." They 
 prefer to build new rather than to keep up the 
 old. With " China" rise recollections of tat- 
 tered mat sails catching the wind like a sieve, 
 leaning and crumbling walls, sagging temple 
 roofs, moss-grown loosened tiles, cracked pave- 
 ments, ragged thatch, rotting ceiling-cloths, rick- 
 ety screens and paved roads with their stones 
 tilting and broken. In Japan everything looks 
 spick and span — thatch well trimmed, walls well 
 
CHINA TO THE RANGING EYE 11 
 
 washed, mats bright, roads in good repair, piles 
 of rubbish nowhere to be seen. Nothing have I 
 seen to compare with it save in Holland, Nor- 
 mandy and parts of England. After the memor- 
 able inundations of August, 1910, the celerity with 
 which these wonderful Japanese cleaned up and 
 set things in order was marvelous. 
 
 About Japanese cottages you see none of the 
 piles of rubbish, muck heaps, dirty pools, mud 
 holes, sagging roofs, toppling walls, rotting 
 thatch or loose stones one notices about most 
 Chinese villages. When a roof, wall, fence, 
 hedge, dam, bridge, or path is damaged, it is re- 
 paired at once. Among us, only New England 
 and places settled from Yankeedom can compare 
 with Japan in tidiness. 
 
 No memory of China is more haunting than 
 that of the everlasting blue cotton garments. 
 The common people wear coarse deep-blue 
 "nankeen." The gala dress is a cotton gown of 
 a delicate bird's-egg blue or a silk jacket of rich 
 hue. In cold weather the poor wear quilted cot- 
 ton, while the well-to-do keep themselves warm 
 with fur-lined garments of silk. A general adop- 
 tion of Western dress would bring on an economic 
 crisis, for the Chinese are not ready to rear 
 sheep on a great scale and it will be long before 
 they can supply themselves with wool. The 
 Chinese jacket is fortunate in opening at the 
 side instead of at the front. When the winter 
 winds of Peking gnaw at you with Siberian 
 teeth, you realize how stupid is our Western way 
 
12 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 of cutting a notch in front right down through 
 overcoat, coat and vest, apparently in order that 
 the cold may do its worst to the tender throat and 
 chest. On seeing the sensible Chinaman bring 
 his coat squarely across his front and fasten it 
 on his shoulder, you feel like an exposed totem- 
 worshiper. 
 
 Wherever stone is to be had, along or spanning 
 the main roads are to be seen the memorial arches 
 known as pailows erected by imperial permission 
 to commemorate some deed or life of extraor- 
 dinary merit. It is significant that when they 
 proclaim achievement, it is that of the scholar, 
 not that of the warrior. They enclose a central 
 gateway flanked by two and sometimes by four 
 smaller gateways, and comform closely to a few 
 standard types, all of real beauty. As a well- 
 built pailow lasts for centuries and as the erection 
 of such a memorial is one of the first forms of 
 outlay that occur to a philanthropic Chinaman, 
 they accumulate, and sometimes the road near 
 cities is lined with these structures until' one 
 wearies of so much repetition of the same thing 
 however beautiful. 
 
 In South-China cities a tall moat-girt building, 
 six or seven stories high, flat-topped and with 
 small windows high up, towers over the mean 
 houses like a medieval donjon keep. It is the 
 pawnshop, which also serves the public as bank 
 and safety deposit vault for the reason that it 
 can for some hours bid defiance to any robber at- 
 tack. In the larger centers sumptuous guild- 
 
CHINA TO THE BANGING EYE 13 
 
 halls are to be seen and the highly embellished 
 club-houses of the men from other provinces, who 
 feel themselves as truly strangers in a strange 
 land as did the Flemish or the Hansa traders in 
 the London of the thirteenth century. Some- 
 times men from different provinces join in es- 
 tablishing such headquarters and I recall in 
 Sianfu the stately ' ' Tri-province Club" accom- 
 modating strangers from Szechuan, Shansi and 
 Honan. 
 
 In the absence of good roads and draft animals 
 the utmost use has been made of the countless 
 waterways and there are probably as many boats 
 in China as in all the rest of the world. No- 
 where else are there such clever river-people, no- 
 where else is there so lavish an application of 
 man-muscle to water movement. The rivers are 
 alive with junks propelled by rowers who oc- 
 cupy the forward deck and stand as they ply 
 the oar. Sixteen or eighteen rowers man the 
 bigger boats and as, bare to the waist, they forge 
 by in rhythmic swing chanting their song of labor 
 the effect is fine. Save when there is a stiff 
 breeze to sail with, the up-river junks are towed 
 along the bank, and, as no tow-path has ever 
 been built, the waste of toil in scrambling along 
 slippery banks, clambering over rocks or creep- 
 ing along narrow ledges with the tow-rope is 
 distressing to behold. 
 
 In the South population is forced from the land 
 onto the water and myriads pass their lives in 
 sampans and house-boats. In good weather these 
 
14 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 poor families, living as it were in a single small 
 room with a porch at either end, seem as happy as 
 people anywhere. There is no landlord to 
 threaten eviction, no employer to grind them 
 down, no foreman to speed them np. There is 
 infinite variety in the stirring life of river and 
 foreshore that passes under their eyes; the bab- 
 ble and chatter never cease and no one need ever 
 feel lonely. The tiny home can be kept with a 
 Dutch cleanliness for water is always to be had 
 with a sweep of the arm. They pay no rent and 
 can change neighbors, residence, scenery or oc- 
 cupation when they please. No people is more 
 natural, animated and self-expressive, for they 
 have simplified life without impoverishing it and 
 have remained free even under the very harrow- 
 tooth of poverty. 
 
 Their children, little river Arabs, have their 
 wits sharpened early and not for long is the baby 
 tied to a sealed empty jar that by floating will 
 mark his location in case he tumbles into the 
 water. The year-old child knows how to take 
 care of himself. The tot of three or four can 
 handle the oar or the pole and is as sharp as our 
 boys of six or seven. Nothing escapes their pry- 
 ing black eyes and they can coax coppers out of 
 you as prettily as any Italian bambino. 
 
 Although the gates of the Chinese city close 
 at night, the city is by no means so cut off from 
 the open country as with us. The man in the 
 street never quite lets go of his kinsfolk in the 
 rural village. When, a little while ago, ship 
 
CHINA TO THE BANGING EYE 17 
 
 building and repairing became dull in Hong 
 Kong, there was no hanging of the unemployed 
 about the wharves, not because they had found 
 other jobs, but because most of them had dis- 
 persed to their ancestral seats in the country, 
 there to work on the old place till times im- 
 proved. The man's family always give him a 
 chance and there is rice in the pot for him and 
 his. Nor is this tie with the mother-stem al- 
 lowed to decay with the lapse of time. The suc- 
 cessful merchant registers his male children in 
 the ancestral temple of his clan, contributes to 
 its upkeep and is entitled to his portion of roast- 
 pork on the occasion of the yearly clan festival, 
 visits the old home during the holidays, sends 
 money back so that his people may buy more 
 land, takes his children out so they will get ac- 
 quainted and perhaps lets them pass their boy- 
 hood in the ancestral village so that, after he is 
 gone, they will love and cherish the old tie to the 
 soil. By such means, provided war or flood or 
 famine has not uprooted the stock, a city family, 
 even after the lapse of generations, retains a con- 
 nection with its rural kindred. A Chinese city 
 is not, therefore, a genuine civic community but 
 rather an agglomeration of persons who are 
 members of numerous little groups. No doubt 
 the establishment of municipal councils and the 
 grant to the citizens of control over their com- 
 mon affairs will tend to create a community- 
 spirit and weaken the feeling for the rural clan. 
 The mementos of the departed are so promi- 
 
18 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 nent that one might hesitate to say whether 
 China belongs to the living or to the dead. The 
 dead have been interred in burial places of 
 families or clans, not collected into cemeteries. 
 In the vicinity of the cities the landscape is 
 pustuled with graves and the dedication of the 
 land to this pious use makes very difficult an 
 extra-mural growth of the city. The campus of 
 the Canton Christian College represents three 
 hundred and sixty separate conveyances and is 
 still dotted with grave sites, the owners of which 
 refuse to sell. "Best houses" are provided 
 where encoffined bodies are kept for months, 
 sometimes for years, until a lucky day and place 
 for interment are discovered by the geomancer. 
 The Chinese coffin is put together not of boards 
 but of split hollowed logs and this pious but ex- 
 travagant custom has something to answer for 
 in the denuded appearance of the country. 
 
 Some of the most characteristic impressions of 
 China are connected with the great loess deposit 
 that mantles the larger part of North China to 
 the depth sometimes of hundreds of feet. Geol- 
 ogists interpret it as an accumulation of the dust 
 that the prevailing winds blowing from the arid in- 
 terior of Asia have sifted over the country. It is 
 unstratified, splits vertically, contains land shells 
 but no marine shells, and shows vertical tubes 
 as big as a needle which are supposed to have 
 been left by the decay of the roots of the grass 
 that clothed the surface as the deposit slowly 
 built up. "Where this mantle of dust fell on the 
 
Indian bullock in a Quangsi bullock-cart 
 
 A Peking cart 
 
CHINA TO THE BANGING EYE 21 
 
 mountains it was soon worn thin so that the 
 bones of the land protrude. But what has been 
 washed from the steeper slopes has settled about 
 their base, filled up the lesser depressions and 
 softened the original outlines of the country. 
 
 The streams have cut down through the loess 
 and are all deeply stained with its characteristic 
 brown-yellow. Sweeping along so much of it they 
 cannot maintain a free channel for heavy navi- 
 gation and after they debouch upon the plain they 
 are prone to choke their bed and shift their 
 course. It is the loess that gives us Yellow 
 Eiver, Yellow Sea, Yellow Emperor (Hwangti) 
 and makes yellow the imperial color. The north- 
 ern half of the Peking-Hankow Eailway trav- 
 erses a vast yellow universe with scarcely a 
 stone, hill or tree. The soil and the streams are 
 yellow, the flat-roofed houses are yellow, the 
 walls of cities and villages are yellow. The air 
 is yellow with dust, the vegetation is coated with 
 it, the yellow people and their clothing are pow- 
 dered with it, and everything melts into the most 
 monochrome countryside peopled by civilized 
 men. 
 
 The loess slices like cheese and after three or 
 four years the marks of pick and spade are still 
 plain on the sides of the railway cuttings. Hence 
 most of the people in the mountains house them- 
 selves simply by digging a cave in a bank which 
 when plastered gives them a clean dry habita- 
 tion, warm in winter, cool in summer, and ex- 
 cellent in everything save ventilation. Some of 
 
22 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 these have two or three stories, boast framed 
 windows and doorways, and are well furnished. 
 It is rather startling, however, to look over a 
 broad flat country checkered with fields in a 
 state of high cultivation and see no roads, 
 houses, people or domestic animals. The roads 
 have cut their way into the loess and run at the 
 bottom of canyons sometimes seventy or eighty 
 feet deep. In the cliffs that line the roads and 
 watercourses the viewless population have carved 
 their dwellings and stables. 
 
 In China the notion of an undistributed public 
 good distinct from private goods has never es- 
 tablished itself in the general mind. The State 
 has been tribute-taker rather than guardian of 
 the general welfare, so the community is sacri- 
 ficed to the individual, the public to the local 
 group, and posterity to the living. Along the 
 Wei Eiver great quantities of quick-growing trees 
 are scattered amid the crops while the mountains 
 two or three miles away are denuded. Instead 
 of growing their wood and fuel on the rough 
 land which is good for nothing else, they grow 
 it in their fields to the detriment of their crops 
 because, in the absence of public administration, 
 the mountains are a no-man's land which all may 
 ravage and abuse. 
 
 The destruction of the remaining forests goes 
 on apace for the officials are utterly indifferent. 
 In North Chihli near Jehol there has recently 
 been a great butchery of what was but a few years 
 ago a noble forest. One finds enough fine 
 
CHINA TO THE BANGING EYE 23 
 
 straight poles of larch and pine piled up to string 
 a telegraph wire a thousand miles. There they 
 lie rotting while crooked willow carries the wires. 
 No doubt some official got his "squeeze" out of 
 the cutting of the trees for these poles, and now 
 nobody cares what becomes of them. 
 
 On the Kowloon hills opposite Hong Kong there 
 are frightful evidences of erosion due to deforesta- 
 tion several hundred years ago. The loose soil 
 has been washed away till the country is knobbed 
 or blistered with great granite boulders. North 
 of the Gulf of Tonkin I am told that not a tree 
 is to be seen and the surviving balks between the 
 fields show that much land once cultivated has 
 become waste. Erosion stripped the soil down 
 to the clay and the farmers had to abandon the 
 land. The denuded hill-slopes facing the West 
 Eiver have been torn and gullied till the red 
 earth glows through the vegetation like blood. 
 The coast hills of Fokien have lost most of their 
 soil and show little but rocks. Fuel-gatherers 
 constantly climb about them grubbing up shrubs 
 and pulling up the grass. No one tries to grow 
 trees unless he can live in their midst and so 
 prevent their being stolen. The higher ranges 
 further back have been stripped of their trees 
 but not of their soil for, owing to the greater 
 rainfall they receive, a verdant growth quickly 
 springs up and protects their flanks. 
 
 Deep-gullied plateaus of the loess, guttered 
 hillsides, choked water-courses, silted-up bridges, 
 sterilized bottom lands, bankless wandering 
 
24 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 rivers, dyked torrents that have built up their 
 beds till they meander at the level of the tree- 
 tops, mountain brooks as thick as pea soup, tes- 
 tify to the changes wrought once the reckless ax 
 has let loose the force of running water to re- 
 sculpture the landscape. No river could drain 
 the friable loess of Northwest China without 
 bringing down great quantities of soil that would 
 raise its bed and make it a menace in its lower, 
 sluggish course. But if the Yellow Eiver is more 
 and more "China's Sorrow" as the centuries 
 tick -off, it is because the rain runs off the de- 
 forested slopes of its drainage basin like water 
 off the roof of a house and in the wet season 
 rolls down terrible floods which burst the im- 
 mense and costly embankments, spread like a lake 
 over the plain and drown whole populations. 
 
 The British in Kowloon and the Germans in Kia- 
 ochow have made beginnings in re-afforestation; 
 but, save for some plantations for growing sleep- 
 ers which the Peking-Hankow Bail way Company 
 has made on the flanks of the mountains in North- 
 ern Hupeh, one sees no restoration by the Chinese 
 themselves. If the Chinese had not so early rid 
 themselves of feudalism the country might have 
 profited, as did Europe during the Middle Ages, 
 by the harsh forest laws and the vast wooded 
 preserves of a hunting nobility; or a policy of 
 national conservation would have availed if be- 
 gun five centuries ago. Now, however, nothing 
 will meet the dire need of China but a long 
 scientific, recuperative treatment far more ex- 
 
A half -buried gate-tower 
 
 A silted-up bridge in Shansi. One of the ultimate 
 results of deforestation 
 
CHINA TO THE RANGING EYE 27 
 
 tensive and thorough-going than even the most 
 enlightened European governments have at- 
 tempted. Since that is clearly beyond the fore- 
 sight and administrative capacity of this genera- 
 tion of Chinese, the slow physical deterioration 
 of the country may be expected to continue dur- 
 ing our time. 
 
 Despite absence of game protection, China con- 
 tains far more wild life than one would expect. 
 Tigers and leopards abound in some parts, ducks 
 swirl above the Yangtse in flocks of ten thou- 
 sand and many foreigners find royal sport for 
 the hunter within reach of the treaty ports. One 
 reason for so much game in an old thickly-set- 
 tled country is that Chinese gentlemen have had 
 no taste for the chase, and delight in the de- 
 struction of life is not general; another is that 
 the government puts so many obstacles in the 
 way of the people obtaining firearms that they 
 lack the means of killing game. 
 
 The Great "Wall is undoubtedly the grandest 
 and most impressive handiwork of man. Be- 
 side its colossal bulk our boasted railway em- 
 bankments and tunnels seem the work of pyg- 
 mies. Save the Pyramids of Egypt and the 
 Panama Canal there is no prodigy of toil to be 
 mentioned in the same breath with it. The brick 
 and stone in every fifty miles of this wall would 
 rear a pyramid higher than that of Cheops — and 
 there are at least seventeen hundred miles of 
 it! At Nankow Pass the wall is wide enough 
 for seven or eight men to march abreast along its 
 
28 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 top, twenty feet high, faced with hewn stone, 
 battlemented, and is strengthened every forty or 
 fifty rods by huge towers ten yards square in- 
 side. It clambers boldly up the steepest slopes, 
 creeps along the sheer precipices, and springs 
 from height to height leaving a square crenel- 
 lated tower on every crown. It follows the comb 
 of the mountains in order that the ground may 
 slope from it both ways. It zigzags from crest 
 to crest, dips into ravines and reappears mount- 
 ing the range beyond, so that it is seen in frag- 
 ments, the linking parts being hidden in the de- 
 files. For perhaps thirty miles the eye follows 
 this serpent in stone now streaking up the slopes, 
 now passing across the line of vision defined 
 against the black of the mountains beyond, now 
 cutting the afternoon sky with its battlements 
 as it follows some distant ridge. To the north 
 the mountains drop away into foothills each 
 crowned with its watch-tower. Then a plain, 
 another range of mountains with another wall, 
 and, beyond, the bleak wind-swept plateau of 
 Mongolia. 
 
 As one looked one could in imagination see 
 snag-toothed, thin-mustached nomads, in sheep- 
 skin coats with the fleece turned inside, halt on 
 their shaggy ponies, rest the butts of their spears 
 on the ground and search with restless disappoint- 
 ed eyes for some weak spot in this wall that had 
 never barred the path of their plundering fore- 
 fathers. And no doubt the parapet of the wall 
 was lined with Chinese soldiers in blue nankeen 
 
CHINA TO THE RANGING EYE 29 
 
 who jeered at the discomfiture of their dreaded 
 hereditary enemies and shot arrows at them 
 through the slits in the stone. Now, thanks to 
 Buddhism and the Lama priests who have taken 
 all the fierceness out of the Mongols, the wall is 
 useless. Endless traffic streams unafraid through 
 the gateway at the pass. Mile-long trains of 
 great shaggy two-humped camels stalk by, bring- 
 ing in wool and hides and timber or taking out 
 brick tea, matches and kerosene. 
 
 That the Chinese are more homogeneous in 
 civilization than in blood comes out clearly when 
 one compares the Southern Chinese with the 
 Northern. The people of Chihli, in which Peking 
 is situated, must be at least six inches taller than 
 the Cantonese and the Hakkas. They show the 
 effect of the series of admixtures of Tartar blood, 
 for they are big sturdy people with a fresh 
 color and a frank eye. The railway guards look 
 and act like green, honest, good-natured American 
 lads fresh from the farm. They are deliberate 
 of movement and slow in mental processes, but 
 make good friends and good fighters. In the 
 South people are smaller, yellower, less manly 
 and less courageous. The ugly, wrinkled, cat- 
 like wily Chinamen of dime-novel fiction come 
 from the South. They are quicker of wit than 
 the Northerners but harder for us to understand 
 or trust. Upon the Canton type is built the cher- 
 ished literary legend of the unfathomableness and 
 superhuman craftiness of the Oriental. 
 
 The Northern Chinese, although less fertile in 
 
30 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 ideas, appear to be steadier in character than the 
 Cantonese and more faithful. They are truer to 
 their friends and, owing to their mutual trust, 
 they combine better. For this reason they may 
 be able to work the joint-stock company better 
 than the keen, clever merchants of the South and 
 hence take the lead in industrial development. 
 
The great wall 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE KACE FIBEK OF THE CHINESE 
 
 OUT of ten children born among us three, 
 normally the weakest three, will fail to grow 
 up. Out of ten children horn in China these 
 weakest three will die and probably five more be- 
 sides. The difference is owing to the hardships 
 that infant life meets with among the Chinese. 
 If at birth the white infants and the yellow in- 
 fants are equal in stamina, the two surviving 
 Chinese ought to possess greater vitality of con- 
 stitution than the seven surviving whites. For 
 of these seven the five that would infallibly 
 have perished under Oriental conditions of life 
 are presumably weaker in constitution than the 
 two who could have endured even such con- 
 ditions. The two Chinese survivors will trans- 
 mit some of their superior vitality to their off- 
 spring; and these in turn will be subject to the 
 same sifting, so that the surviving two-tenths will 
 pass on to their children a still greater vitality. 
 Hence these divergent child mortalities drive, 
 as it were, a wedge between the physiques of the 
 two races. If, now, for generations we whites, 
 owing to room and plenty and scientific medicine 
 and knowledge of hygiene, have been subject to 
 a less searching and relentless elimination of the 
 
 33 
 
34 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 weaker children than the Chinese, it would be 
 reasonable to expect the Chinese to exhibit a 
 greater vitality than the whites. 
 
 With a view to ascertaining whether the marked 
 slackening in our struggle for life during the last 
 century or two and our greater skill in keeping 
 people alive has produced noticeable effects on 
 our physique, I closely questioned thirty-three 
 physicians practicing in various parts of China, 
 usually at mission hospitals. 
 
 Of these physicians only one, a very intelligent 
 German doctor at Tsingtao, had noticed no point 
 of superiority in his Chinese patients. He de- 
 clared them less resistant to injury, less respon- 
 sive to treatment and no more enduring of pain 
 than the simple and hardy peasants of Thuringia 
 amongst whom he had formerly practiced. Three 
 other physicians, each of whom had practiced a 
 quarter century or more in China, had observed 
 no difference in the physical reactions of the two 
 races. I fancy their recollections of their brief 
 student practice at home had so faded with time 
 that they lacked one of the terms of the com- 
 parison. Moreover, two of these admitted under 
 questioning that the Chinese do stand high fevers 
 remarkably well and that they do recover from 
 blood poisoning when a white man would die. 
 
 The remaining twenty-nine physicians were 
 positive that the Chinese physique evinces some 
 superiority or other over that of their home peo- 
 ple. As regards surgical cases, the general opin- 
 ion is voiced by one English surgeon who said, 
 
THE RACE FIBER OF THE CHINESE 35 
 
 "They do pull through jolly well!" It was com- 
 monly observed that surgical shock is rare, and 
 that the proportion of recoveries from serious 
 cuttings is as high in the little, poorly equipped, 
 semi-aseptic mission hospitals of China as in the 
 perfectly appointed, aseptic hospitals at home. 
 Dr. Kinnear of Foochow, recently home from a 
 furlough in Germany, found that in treating 
 phlegma of the hand he, with his poor equipment 
 and native assistants, gets as good results as the 
 great Von Bergman working under ideal condi- 
 tions on the artisan population of Berlin. The 
 opinion prevails that under equal conditions the 
 Chinese will make a surer and quicker recovery 
 from a major operation than the white. 
 
 Many never get over being astonished at the 
 recovery of the Chinese from terrible injuries. 
 I was told of a coolie who had his abdomen torn 
 open in an accident, and who was assisted to the 
 hospital supported by a man on either side and 
 holding his bowels in his hands. He was sewed 
 up and, in spite of the contamination that must 
 have gotten into the abdomen, made a quick recov- 
 ery! Amazing also is the response to the treat- 
 ment of neglected wounds. A boy whose severed 
 fingers had been hastily stuck on anyhow and 
 bound up with dirty rags came to the hospital 
 after a week with a horrible hand and showing 
 clear symptoms of lockjaw. They washed his 
 hand and sent him home to die. In three days he 
 was about without a sign of lockjaw. A man 
 whose fingers had been crushed under a cart some 
 
36 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 days before came in with blood-poisoning all up 
 Ms arm and in the glands under the arm. The 
 trouble vanished under simple treatment. A pa- 
 tient will be brought in with a high fever from a 
 wound of several days ' standing full of maggots ; 
 yet after the wound is cleansed the fever quickly 
 subsides. A woman who had undergone a serious 
 operation for cancer of the breast suffered infec- 
 tion and had a fever of 106° during which her 
 husband fed her with hard water chestnuts. Nev- 
 ertheless, she recovered. 
 
 Nearly all are struck by the resistance of the 
 Chinese to blood-poisoning. From my note books 
 I gather such expressions as, "Blood-poisoning 
 very rare; more resistant than we are to septi- 
 caemia"; "Belative immunity to pus-producing 
 germs"; "More resistant to gangrene than we 
 are; injuries which at home would cause serious 
 gangrene do not do so here"; "Peculiarly resist- 
 ant to infection"; "With badly gangrened wounds 
 in the extremities show very little fever and 
 quickly get well"; "Women withstand septicaemia 
 in maternity cases wonderfully well, recovering 
 after the doctors have given them up " ; " Eecover 
 from septicaemia after a week of high fever that 
 would kill a white man." No wonder there is a 
 saying rife among the foreign doctors, "Don't 
 give up a Chinaman till he's dead." 
 
 In the South, where foot binding is not preva- 
 lent, the women bear their children very easily, 
 with little outcry, and are expected to be up in a 
 day or two. Dr. Swan of Canton relates that 
 
A Canton water-front crowd 
 
 Station platform faces 
 
THE RACE FIBER OF THE CHINESE 39 
 
 more than once on calling for a sampan to take 
 him across the river he has been asked to wait a 
 quarter or a half an hour. By that time the mis- 
 tress of the boat would have given birth to a 
 child, laid it in a corner among some rags, and be 
 ready to row him across! In childbirth the 
 woman attended by a dirty old midwife in a filthy 
 hovel escapes puerperal fever under conditions 
 that would certainly kill a white woman. In cases 
 of difficult birth, when after a couple of days the 
 white physician is called in and removes the dead 
 infant, the woman has some fever but soon re- 
 covers. The women, moreover, are remarkably 
 free from displacements and other troubles pecul- 
 iar to the sex. 
 
 Living in a supersaturated, man-stifled land, 
 profoundly ignorant of the principles of hygiene, 
 the masses have developed an immunity to noxious 
 microbes which excites the wonder and envy of 
 the foreigner. They are not affected by a mos- 
 quito bite that will raise a large lump on the lately- 
 come foreigner. They can use contaminated 
 water from canals without incurring dysentery. 
 There is very little typhoid and what there is 
 occurs in such mild form that it was long doubted 
 to be typhoid. The fact was settled affirmatively 
 only by laboratory tests. All physicians agree 
 that among the Chinese smallpox is a mild dis- 
 ease. One likened it to the mumps. Organic 
 heart trouble, usually the result of rheumatic 
 fever, is declared to be very rare. 
 
 It is universally remarked that in taking chloro- 
 
40 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 form the Chinese rarely pass through an excited 
 stage, but go off very quietly. From after-nausea 
 they are almost wholly free. One physician of 
 twenty-five years' practice has never had a death 
 from chloroform, although he has not administered 
 ether half a dozen times. The fact is, however, 
 they stolidly endure operations which we would 
 never perform without anesthetics. Small tumors 
 are usually thus removed and, in extracting teeth, 
 gas is never administered. Sometimes extensive 
 cutting, e. g., the removal of a tumor reaching 
 down into and involving the excision of the de- 
 cayed end of a rib, is borne without flinching. 
 Only three physicians interviewed failed to re- 
 mark the insensibility of their patients to pain. 
 Here, perhaps, is the reason why no people in the 
 world have used torture so freely as the Chinese. 
 This bluntness of nerve, however, does not appear 
 to be universal. The scholars, who usually neg- 
 lect to balance their intense brain work with due 
 physical exercise, are not stoical. The meat-eat- 
 ing and wine-bibbing classes lack the insensibility 
 of the vegetarian, non-alcoholic masses. The 
 self-indulgent gentry, who shun all activity, bodily 
 or mental, and give themselves up to sensual grati- 
 fication, are very sensitive to pain and very fear- 
 ful of it. Some make the point, therefore, that the 
 oft-noted dullness of sensibility is not a race trait, 
 but a consequence of the involuntary simplicity 
 and temperateness of life of the common Chinese. 
 One doctor remarks that at home it is the reg- 
 ular thing for a nervous chill to follow the pass- 
 
THE EACE FIBEE OF THE CHINESE 41 
 
 ing of a sound into the bladder, whereas among 
 his patients it seldom occurs. Another co mm ents 
 on the rarity of neurasthenia and nervous dys- 
 pepsia. The chief of the army medical staff 
 points out that during the autumn manceuvers the 
 soldiers sleep on damp ground with a little straw 
 under them without any ill effects. I have seen 
 coolies after two hours of burden-bearing at a dog 
 trot shovel themselves full of hot rice with scarcely 
 any mastication, and hurry on for another two 
 hours. A white man would have writhed with 
 indigestion. The Chinese seem able to sleep in 
 any position. I have seen them sleeping on piles 
 of bricks, or stones, or poles, with a block or a 
 brick for a pillow, and with the hot sun shining 
 full into the face. They stand a cramped position 
 longer than we can and can keep on longer at 
 monotonous toil unrelieved by change or break. 
 
 But there is another side to the comparison. 
 There is little pneumonia among the Chinese but 
 they stand it no better than we do ; some say not 
 so well. There is much malarial fever and it goes 
 hard with them. In Hong Kong they seem to suc- 
 cumb to the plague more readily than the foreign- 
 ers. Among children there is heavy mortality 
 from measles and scarlet fever. In withstanding 
 tuberculosis they have no advantage over us. 
 While they make wonderful recoveries from high 
 fevers they are not enduring of long fevers. Some 
 think this is because the flame of their vitality 
 has been turned low by unsanitary living. They 
 have a horror of fresh air and shut it out of the 
 
42 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 sleeping apartment, even on a warm night. In 
 the mission schools, if the teachers insist on open 
 windows in the dormitory, the pupils stifle under 
 the covers lest the evil spirits flying about at night 
 should get at them. The Chinese grant that 
 hygiene may be all very well for these weakly 
 foreigners, but see no use in it for themselves. 
 It is no wonder, therefore, that their schoolgirls 
 cannot stand the pace of American schoolgirls. 
 Often they break down, or go into a decline, or 
 have to take a long rest. In the English mission 
 schools with their easier pace the girls get on 
 better. 
 
 Here and there a doctor ascribes the extraordi- 
 nary power of resistance and recuperation shown 
 by his patients entirely to their diet and manner 
 of life and denies any superior vitality in the race. 
 Other doctors practicing among the city Chinese 
 insist that the stamina of the masses is under- 
 mined by wretched living conditions, but that 
 under equal circumstances the yellow man has a 
 firmer hold on life than the white man. 
 
 From the testimony it is safe to conclude that 
 at least a part of the observed toughness of the 
 Chinese is attributable to a special race vitality 
 which they have acquired in the course of a longer 
 and severer elimination of the less fit than our 
 North-European ancestors ever experienced in 
 their civilized state. Such selection has tended to 
 foster not so much bodily strength or energy as 
 recuperative power, resistance to infection and 
 
The river stairs up which all the water 
 for Chungking is borne 
 
THE RACE FIBER OF THE CHINESE 45 
 
 tolerance of unwholesome conditions of living. 
 For many centuries the people of South and Cen- 
 tral China, crowded together in their villages or 
 walled cities, have used water from contaminated 
 canals or from the drainings of the rice fields; 
 eaten of the scavenging pig or of vegetables stim- 
 ulated by the contents of the cesspool; huddled 
 under low roofs on dirt floors in filthy lanes, and 
 slept in fetid dens and stifling cubicles. Myriads 
 succumbed to the poisons generated by overcrowd- 
 ing, and hardly a quarter of those born lived to 
 transmit their immunity to their children. The 
 surviving fittest has been the type able to with- 
 stand foul air, stench, fatigue toxin, dampness, 
 bad food, and noxious germs. I have no doubt 
 that if an American population of equal size lived 
 in Amoy or Soochow as the Chinese there live, a 
 quarter would be dead by the end of the first sum- 
 mer. But the toughening takes place to the detri- 
 ment of bodily growth and strength. Chinese 
 children are small for their age. At birth the 
 infants are no stronger than ours. The weaker 
 are more thoroughly weeded out, but even the 
 surviving remnant is for a time weakened by the 
 hardships that have killed the rest. 
 
 I would not identify the great vitality of the 
 Chinese with the primitive vitality you find in 
 Bedouins, or Sea Dyaks, or American Indians. 
 This early endowment consists in unusual mus- 
 cular strength and endurance, in normality of 
 bodily functions, and in power to bear hardship 
 and exposure. It does not extend to immunity 
 
46 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 from disease. Subjected to the conditions the 
 civilized man lives under, savages die off like 
 tlies. Peary's Eskimos could survive a fetid 
 Greenland igloo but not an airy New York board- 
 ing- bouse. The diseases that the colonizing Euro- 
 pean communicates to natural men clears them 
 away more swiftly than his gunpowder. Entrance 
 upon the civilized state entails a universal ex- 
 change of disease germs and the necessary growth 
 of immunity. Now, it is precisely in his power 
 to withstand the poisons with which close-dwellers 
 infect one another that the Chinaman is unique. 
 This power does not seem to be a heritage from 
 his nomad life o( five or six thousand years ago. 
 It is rather the painful acquisition o( a later social 
 phase. It could have grown up only in congested 
 cities, or under an agriculture that contaminates 
 every growing plant, converts every stream into 
 an open sewer, and tills the land with mosquito- 
 breeding rice fields. Such toleration of pathogenic 
 microbes has, perhaps, never before been devel- 
 oped and it certainly will never be developed 
 again. Now that man knows how to clear away 
 from his path these invisible enemies, he will never 
 consent to buy immunity at the old cruel price. 
 To the AVest the toughness of the Chinese 
 physique may have a sinister military significance. 
 Nobody fears lest in a stand-up fight Chinese 
 troops could whip an equal number of well-condi- 
 tioned white troops. But few battles are fought 
 by men fresh from tent and mess. In the course 
 of a prolonged campaign involving irregular pro- 
 
THE RACE FIBER OF THE CHINESE 47 
 
 visioning, bad drinking water, lying out, loss of 
 sleep, exhausting marches, exposure, excitement 
 and anxiety, it may be that the white soldiers 
 would be worn down worse than the yellow sol- 
 diers. In that case the hardier men with less 
 of the martial spirit might in the closing 
 grapple beat the better fighters with the less en- 
 durance. 
 
 In view of what has been shown, the competi- 
 tion of white laborer and yellow is not so simple 
 a test of human worth as some may imagine. 
 Under good conditions the white man can best 
 the yellow man in turning off work. But under 
 bad conditions the yellow man can best the white 
 man because he can better endure spoiled food, 
 poor clothing, foul air, noise, heat, dirt, discom- 
 fort and microbes. Reilly can outdo Ah San, but 
 Ah San can underlive Reilly. Ah San cannot 
 take away Reilly 's job as being a better work- 
 man; but, because he can live and do some work 
 at a wage on which Reilly cannot keep himself 
 fit to work at all, three or four Ah Sans can take 
 Reilly 's job from him. And they will do it, too, 
 unless they are barred out of the market where 
 Reilly is selling his labor. Reilly 's endeavor to 
 exclude Ah San from his labor market is not the 
 case of a man dreading to pit himself on equal 
 terms against a better man. Indeed, it is not 
 quite so simple and selfish and narrow-minded as 
 all that. 
 
 It is a case of a man fitted to get the most 
 out of good conditions refusing to yield his place 
 
48 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 to a iveaker man able to withstand bad condi- 
 tions. 
 
 * Of course, with the coming in of Western sani- 
 tation, the terrible selective process by which 
 Chinese toughness has been built up will come to 
 an end, and this property will gradually fade out 
 of the race physique. But for our time at least 
 it is a serious and pregnant fact. It will take 
 some generations of exposure to the relaxing 
 effects of drains, ventilation, doctors, district 
 nurses, food inspectors, pure water, open spaces 
 and out-of-door sports to eradicate the peculiar 
 vitality which the yellow race has acquired. Dur- 
 ing the interim the chief effect of freely admitting 
 coolies to the labor markets of the West would 
 be the substitution of low wages, bad living con- 
 ditions and the increase of the yellow race for 
 high wages, good living conditions and the in- 
 crease of the white race. 
 
Scene in the Imperial City, Peking- 
 
 Hovel on beach at Kiukiang. Over the door 
 the character for "happiness" 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE BACE MIND OP THE CHINESE 
 
 THE more cheaply gotten-up races of men have 
 a short mental circuit and respond promptly 
 to stimulus. Knowing the impulses aroused in 
 them by their experiences you can foretell their 
 actions. They cannot inhibit their impulses and 
 let them accumulate until reflection has fused them 
 into a conscious purpose. But the races of the 
 higher destiny are not so easily set in motion. 
 They are able to hold back and digest their im- 
 pulses. The key to their conduct is to be found, 
 not in their impressions, but in their thoughts and 
 convictions. Their course is to be interpreted 
 not by their impulses but by their purposes. Their 
 intellect is a massive fly-wheel by means of which 
 continuous will power is derived from confused 
 and intermittent stimuli. The man of this type 
 does not act till he has made up his mind and he 
 does not make up his mind till he has heard both 
 sides. His emotion is not as the crackling of dry 
 thorns under a pot, but like the lasting glow that 
 will smelt iron. He obeys not his promptings, but 
 his decisions. His conduct is not fitful and zigzag, 
 but even and consistent. More and more this 
 steady and reliable type is demanded in a social 
 organization so complex that normal action must 
 
 3 51 
 
52 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 be deliberate and in a civilization so scientific that 
 pondered knowledge is essential to wise decis- 
 ion. 
 
 We like to think of the Anglo-Saxons as of this 
 stable type and feel that snch an endowment makes 
 up to our race for its lack of the quick mobile feel- 
 ing, the social tact and the sensitiveness to beauty 
 so characteristic of South Europeans. Now, of 
 this massive unswerving type are the Chinese. 
 Fiery or headlong action is the last thing to be 
 expected of yellow men. They command their 
 feelings and know how to bide their time. They 
 are not hot to-day, cold to-morrow. Hard are they 
 to move, but once in motion they have momentum. 
 Slow are they to promise, but once they have 
 promised for a consideration they "stick." They 
 are stubborn to convert but they make staunch 
 converts. Their eloquence is more akin to the 
 eloquence of Pitt or Bright than to that of O'Con- 
 nell or Gambetta. One does not term suicide a 
 "rash act" in a land where so many suicides are 
 carried out of set purpose. Instead of assassi- 
 nating the high-placed betrayer of his country, 
 the Chinese patriot sends his Emperor a plain- 
 spoken memorial about the traitor and then kills 
 himself to show he is in earnest. No matter what 
 their intensity of feeling, the members of the pro- 
 vincial assemblies that met for the first time two 
 years ago kept themselves in hand and surprised 
 the world by their self-restraint and decorum. 
 
 Some observations made by a gentleman writing 
 life insurance in Hawaii throw a strong light on 
 
THE EACE MIND OF THE CHINESE 53 
 
 Chinese traits. He found the Japanese impres- 
 sible and easy to persuade, especially if he 
 learns that other Japanese are taking out poli- 
 cies. Tell him his friend So-and-So has insured 
 and he promptly orders a bigger policy. But 
 when a month later the policy arrives from the 
 New York office his interest has cooled and he 
 will never take it unless he was required to make 
 an advance payment. On the other hand, the 
 Chinaman can be neither cajoled nor stampeded. 
 He takes a sample policy home, studies it over 
 night, and is ready next day with his answer. If it 
 is "Yes," he invariably refuses to make an ad- 
 vance payment on the ground that, as yet, he has 
 received nothing of value. When the policy 
 arrives he receipts for it, takes it home, and com- 
 pares it line by line with the sample policy. The 
 next day he is always ready with the premium. 
 I introduce this comparison not to discredit the 
 Japanese, for their gifts are well known, but to 
 bring out the deliberate unimpressible character 
 of the Chinese. 
 
 Chinese conservatism, unlike the conservatism 
 of the lower races, is not merely an emotional atti- 
 tude. It is not inspired chiefly by dread of the 
 unknown, horror of the new, or a fanatical attach- 
 ment to a system of ideas which gives them confi- 
 dence in the established. It is the logical outcome 
 of precedent. Change the ideas of the Chinese 
 and their policy will , change. Let their minds 
 be possessed by a philosophy that makes them 
 doubt the past and have confidence in the future, 
 
54 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 and they will prove to be as consistently pro- 
 gressive as are the Germans of to-day. 
 
 The Nestor of the missionaries, Doctor Martin 
 of Peking, after his sixty years of labor in the 
 Orient, believes that the modern Chinese have 
 somehow lost the originality and inventiveness 
 their forefathers possessed in the great days of 
 old when the civilization of the Middle Kingdom 
 was still in the gristle. He surmises that this 
 precious endowment was wasted by the continued 
 use of the memory-taxing ideographic language or 
 by a cram system of education shaped with refer- 
 ence to passing competitive examinations. To 
 those of us who question the atrophy of a race 
 quality through disuse, and doubt if any amount 
 of sterilizing education can quench the originality 
 of a race beyond the generation submitted to it, 
 it seems more likely that the contemporary 
 Chinese intellect is sterile because of the state of 
 the social mind. 
 
 It is true that the culture development of the 
 Chinese ceased at stages no more difficult to nego- 
 tiate than the earlier stages. In painting they 
 never mastered perspective. In music they never 
 achieved harmony. Their language is lacking in 
 relative pronouns and other words indicating the 
 relation of statements to one another. Their 
 writing is arrested at the level of ancient Baby- 
 lonia and Egypt. For many centuries, however, 
 their psychological climate has been unfavorable 
 to innovating thought. As well expect the apple 
 tree to blossom in October as expect genius to 
 
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 bloom among a people convinced that the perfec- 
 tion of wisdom had been granted to the sages of 
 antiquity. Before he has fairly begun to bring 
 forth, the fresh thinker has been discouraged and 
 intimidated by the leaden weight of conservative 
 opinion about him. In a word, the social atmos- 
 phere has become oppressive, lacking the stimu- 
 lating oxygen it had in the distant days when the 
 Chinese invented gunpowder, block printing, bank- 
 notes, porcelain, the compass, the compartment 
 boat and the taxicab. 
 
 The patent stagnation of the collective mind is 
 due not to native sluggishness but to prepossession 
 by certain beliefs. These beliefs are tenaciously 
 held because in their practical outworkings they 
 have been successful. Under them vast popula- 
 tions have been able to attain order, security and 
 a goodly measure of happiness. Moreover, as 
 these beliefs have expanded their circle of influ- 
 ence, they have never — until lately — encountered 
 any system of ideas that could withstand them. 
 Chinese culture has spread and spread until all 
 Eastern Asia bows to it. Nestorian Christianity 
 flourished there and vanished. The Jews of 
 Kaifeng-fu lost their language and religion and 
 became Chinese in all but physiognomy. The 
 conquering Manchus have forgotten their language 
 and literature. "China," it has been finely said, 
 "is a sea which salts everything that flows into 
 it." The guardians of a culture so vanquishing 
 may well be pardoned for regarding as presump- 
 tuous any endeavor to improve on it. 
 
58 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 For centuries the Chinese have found themselves 
 in the situation our descendants will perhaps find 
 themselves in when, half a thousand years hence, 
 they are enfolded in the colossal body of a single 
 self -consistent planetary culture; when scientific 
 research shall have long been subject to the law 
 of diminishing returns; when nothing but a thin 
 rill of trifling discoveries will trickle from the 
 splendid laboratories; when the proceedings of 
 scientific congresses will be as trivial as the dis- 
 cussions of the Church Councils of the seventh cen- 
 tury; when the elite of the human race will have 
 forgotten the thrill from such fructifying new 
 truths as our generation has enjoyed in the dis- 
 covery of radioactivity, the germ origin of disease, 
 natural selection, mutation, and mental suggesti- 
 bility. Then, perhaps, without any abatement of 
 its powers, the intellect of our race may develop 
 such unshakable faith in the soundness and suffi- 
 ciency of its system of scientific knowledge and 
 thought, that nothing but intercourse with the 
 Martians will be able to release it from the numb- 
 ing grasp of the established and arouse it to fresh 
 conquests. 
 
 It is rash, therefore, to take the observed ster- 
 ility of the Celestial mind during the period of 
 intercourse with the West as proof of race defi- 
 ciency. Chinese culture is undergoing a break- 
 ing-up process which will release powerful indi- 
 vidualities from the spell of the past and of 
 numbers, and stimulate them to high personal 
 achievement. In the Malay States, where the 
 
Altar, Temple of Heaven, Peking- 
 
 View in the Temple grounds of the Ming 
 Tombs. Mountains near Peking 
 
THE EACE MIND OF THE CHINESE 61 
 
 Chinese escape the lifeless atmosphere and the 
 confining social organization of their own land, 
 their ingenuity is already such that unprejudiced 
 white men have come to regard them as our intel- 
 lectual peers. Civil engineers will tell you that in 
 a score or two of years, after bright Chinese youth 
 have had access to schools of technology equal to 
 those of the West, there will be no place in the 
 engineering and technical work of the Far East 
 for the high-priced white expert. In Shanghai, 
 too, the clever Chinese are learning to play the 
 game. I am told they are rapidly getting into 
 their hands, banking, coast-wise navigation, the 
 cotton trade and other branches by which the for- 
 eigners there make their money; indeed, some 
 deem it only a matter of time when white men will 
 be unable to make a living by trade on the Chinese 
 coast, having been frozen out there as they are 
 being frozen out in Japan. 
 
 To forty-three men who, as educators, mission- 
 aries and diplomats, have had good opportunity to 
 learn the "feel" of the Chinese mind, I put the 
 question, ' ' Do you find the intellectual capacity of 
 the yellow race equal to that of the white race?" 
 All but five answered "Yes," and one sinologue 
 of varied experience as missionary, university 
 president and legation adviser left me gasping 
 with the statement, "Most of us who have spent 
 twenty-five years or more out here come to feel 
 that the yellow race is the normal human type, 
 while the white race is a 'sport.' " The trend of 
 opinion is that when the Chinese have become 
 
62 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 equipped with the Western arts and sciences they 
 will match us in intellectual performance, although 
 some think that the gap in ability between the 
 masses and the higher classes is much wider than 
 it is in the West. 
 
 It is significant that superior white men of long 
 residence in the Middle Kingdom often become 
 too Chinese in point of view to be of much service 
 to their governments. Sir Robert Hart was com- 
 plained of as virtually a Chinaman. Many of the 
 consular veterans in the China service are said to 
 champion the Chinese way of looking at things 
 as against the Western. It seems that, little by 
 little, the civilization of the East invades, disarms 
 and takes possession of them. In the finer 
 Chinese they discover an outlook more compre- 
 hensive than their own, a broader tolerance, and a 
 philosophic patience that makes mock of the 
 eager, impetuous West. 
 
 The heart of the case seems to be this : 
 Since the discovery of America the West-Euro- 
 pean whites have overrun the West Indies, the 
 Americas, Australia, Africa, the islands of the 
 Sea and Southern Asia, while their East-European 
 brethren have occupied Northwestern and North- 
 ern Asia. During this expansion the whites have 
 encountered hundreds of races and peoples before 
 unknown to them; but in all this time they have 
 never met a race that could successfully dispute 
 their military superiority, contribute to their 
 civilization, or dispense with their direction in 
 political or industrial organization. Now, after 
 
THE EACE MIND OF THE CHINESE 63 
 
 three centuries of such experience, during which 
 the white man has grown accustomed to regarding 
 himself as the undisputed sovereign of the planet, 
 he makes the acquaintance of peoples in Eastern 
 Asia who are, perhaps, as capable as the whites 
 and who threaten to spread into areas he had 
 staked off for himself. In any case it begins to 
 appear that the future bearers and advancers of 
 civilization will be, not the whites alone, but the 
 white and the yellow races ; and the control of the 
 globe will lie in the hands of two races instead of 
 one. 
 
 Practically all foreigners in China who are cap- 
 able of sympathy with another race become warm 
 friends of the Chinese. They are not attracted, 
 as in the case of the Japanese, by charm of man- 
 ner or delicacy of sentiment or beauty of art, but 
 by the solid human qualities of the folk. The fact 
 is, the Chinese are extremely likable and those 
 who have known them longest like them best. Al- 
 most invariably those who harshly disparage them 
 are people who are coarse or narrow or bigoted. 
 
 They are not a sour or sullen folk. Smile at 
 them and back comes a look that puts you on a 
 footing of mutual understanding. Their lively 
 sense of humor is a bond that unites them to the 
 foreigner. One lone traveler at a critical moment 
 in a Chinese street seized the ringleader of the 
 mob and tied him by his queue to a door-post. The 
 crowd howled with laughter, while the traveler 
 slipped away. Another foreigner of unusual 
 
64 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 stature found he could always get on good terms 
 with a crowd by flinging out his arm over the head 
 of the nearest native. The bystanders grinned at 
 the contrast and their good nature asserted itself. 
 
 Horrible deeds have been wrought by Chinese 
 mobs, but not one whit worse than the atrocities 
 committed by mobs of our ancestors in the Middle 
 Ages. In view of their ignorance and supersti- 
 tion, indeed, the Chinese masses are on a level with 
 our forefathers in the days of witchcraft, Jew- 
 baiting, the dancing-mania, and the flagellants. 
 In view of their limited schooling, one marvels at 
 the diffusion among them of a politeness without 
 a taint of servility. For all their illiteracy, the 
 common people keenly appreciate good form ; and 
 the traveler who approaches them with the man- 
 ners they understand finds few too ignorant or too 
 uncouth to meet him half way. 
 
 Nothing is more creditable to the domestic 
 organization of the Chinese than the attractive 
 old people it produces. The old women, it is true, 
 are not so frequently a success as the old men. 
 The years of pain from their bound feet and the 
 crosses they have had to bear as women too often 
 sour the temper, and kindly-faced grannies seem 
 by no means so common as with us. The natural 
 result of steadily giving one sex the worst of it 
 is a distressing crop of village shrews. On the 
 other hand, I have never seen old faces more 
 dignified, serene and benevolent than I have met 
 with among elderly Chinese farmers. Often it 
 seems as if the soul behind the countenance, purged 
 
THE EACE MIND OF THE CHINESE 65 
 
 of every selfish thought, had come to dwell wholly 
 in the welfare of others. The rights of the parent 
 are such that every man with grandsons is prac- 
 tically endowed with an old age pension. Hence 
 you notice more smooth brows, calm eyes and care- 
 free faces among old Chinese farmers than among 
 old American farmers. 
 
 In general I hold Western individualism supe- 
 rior, for both individual and social advancement, 
 to Chinese f amilism. I rejoice that with us a man 
 is free to decide, to act, to rise without being ham- 
 pered by a host of relatives. I am glad that he 
 is legally responsible only for his own misdeeds, 
 never for the misdeeds of his kinsman. Still, I 
 believe we have gone too far in emancipating 
 grown children from obligations to their parents. 
 Too often among us old age is clouded up by the 
 depressing sense of being shelved and being a 
 burden. Chinese ethics gives the parent more 
 rights and lays upon the sons more duties. Com- 
 ing on the up-curve of life the duties are easy to 
 bear, while, coming on the down-curve of life, the 
 corresponding rights are a real solace. In a word, 
 the added happiness to the old folks far outweighs 
 the inconvenience to the sons. It is not easy to 
 sweeten and brighten old age, and the success of 
 the Chinese ought to inspire in us a doubt about 
 our practical family ethics. 
 
 The high capacity of the sons of Han is no 
 guarantee that they are destined to play a bril- 
 liant role in the near future. Misunderstanding 
 
66 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 the true causes of our. success their naive intel- 
 lectuals who have traveled or studied abroad often 
 imagine that a wholesale adoption of Western 
 methods and institutions would, almost at once, 
 lift their countrymen to the plane of wealth, power 
 and popular intelligence occupied by the leading 
 peoples of the "West. Now, the fact is that if by 
 the waving of a wand all Chinese could be turned 
 into eager progressives willing to borrow every 
 good thing, it would still be long before the indi- 
 vidual Chinaman attained the efficiency, comfort 
 and social and political value of the West-Euro- 
 pean or American. For there is no doubt that 
 the foundations of our advancement are more 
 economic than we think, and that we attribute to 
 our institutions much prosperity that is really due 
 to the fewness of our people in relation to the 
 economic opportunities. Conversely, much of the 
 backwardness and misery in China that we charge 
 to the shortcomings of its civilization and insti- 
 tutions is due simply to too many people trying 
 to live from a given area. 
 
 If this is so, it is idle to expect Chinese society 
 to take on the general appearance of Western 
 society until there has occurred a far-reaching 
 readjustment between population and opportuni- 
 ties. On the one hand, the Chinese will have to 
 build railroads, open mines, sink petroleum wells, 
 harness water-power, erect mills, adopt machin- 
 ery, reforest their mountains, construct irrigation 
 works, introduce better breeds of domestic animals 
 and plants, and apply science to the production of 
 
X 
 
THE EACE MIND OF THE CHINESE 69 
 
 food. All this economic leveling up to onr plane, 
 however, would not in the least improve the qual- 
 ity of Chinese life, if the increase of population 
 promptly took up all the slack, as it certainly 
 would do under the present social regime. At the 
 end of the process there would be nothing to show 
 for it all but twice as many Chinese, no better, no 
 wiser, no happier than before. It is equally neces- 
 sary, therefore, for the Chinese to slacken their 
 multiplication by dropping ancestor worship, dis- 
 solving the clan, educating girls, elevating woman, 
 postponing marriage, introducing compulsory edu- 
 cation, restricting child-labor and otherwise indi- 
 vidualizing the members of the family. All this 
 will take time ; and even if the Chinese should be 
 so fortunate as to experience a smooth continuous 
 social development, unbroken by reaction, foreign 
 domination, or civil convulsion, it will be at best 
 a couple of lifetimes before the plane of existence 
 of their common people will at all approximate 
 that of the common people in America. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE STBUGGLE FOE EXISTENCE IN CHINA 
 
 IN China to-day one may observe a state of so- 
 ciety the like of which has not been seen in the 
 West since the Middle Ages, and which will prob- 
 ably never recur on this planet. For many genera- 
 tions the Chinese, loath to abandon to the careless 
 plow of the stranger the graves that dot the ances- 
 tral fields and reluctant to exile themselves from 
 the lighted circle of civilization into the twilight of 
 barbarism, have stayed at home multiplying until 
 reproduction and destruction have struck a balance 
 and society has entered upon the stationary stage. 
 To Americans, who have had the good fortune to 
 develop their life and standards in the cheerful 
 presence of unlimited free land, the life and stand- 
 ards of a people that for centuries have been 
 crowding upon the subsistence possibilities of their 
 environment cannot but seem strange and 
 eccentric. 
 
 The most arresting feature of Chinese life is 
 the ruthless way in which the available natural 
 resources have been made to minister to man's 
 lower needs. It is true that childish superstitions 
 have held back the Chinese from freely exploiting 
 their mineral treasures. It is also true that from 
 five to ten per cent., in some cases even twenty 
 
 ' ' 70 
 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 71 
 
 per cent,, of the farms is given up to the grave- 
 mounds of ancestors. But, aside from these 
 cases, the earth is utilized as perhaps it never has 
 been elsewhere. Little land lies waste in high- 
 ways. Throughout the rice zone the roads are 
 mere footpaths, one to three feet wide, yet the 
 greedy farmers nibble away at the roads on both 
 sides until the undermined paving-stones tilt and 
 sink dismally into the paddy-fields. Pasture or 
 meadow there is none, for land is too precious to 
 be used in growing food for animals. Even on the 
 boulder-strewn steeps there is no grazing save for 
 goats ; for where a cow can crop herbage a man 
 can grow a hill of corn. The cows and the water- 
 buffaloes never taste grass except when they are 
 taken out on a tether by an old granny and allowed 
 to browse by the roadside and the ditches, or along 
 the terraces of the rice fields. 
 
 The traveler who in dismay at stories of the 
 dirt, vermin and stenches of native inns plans to 
 camp in the cleanly open is incredulous when he is 
 told that there is no room to pitch a tent. Yet 
 such is the case in two-thirds of China. He will 
 find no roadside, no commons, no waste land, no 
 pasture, no groves nor orchards, not even a door- 
 yard or a cow-pen. Save the threshing-floor every 
 outdoor spot fit to spread a blanket on is growing 
 something. But, if he will pay, he may pitch his 
 tent in a submerged rice-field, in the midst of a 
 bean-patch, or among the hills of sweet potatoes ! 
 
 In one sense it is true that China is cultivated 
 "like a garden," for every lump is broken up, 
 
72 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 every weed is destroyed, and every plant is tended 
 like a baby. As one crop approaches maturity 
 another is made ready, the new crop often being 
 planted between the rows of the crop that is not 
 yet gathered. So far, however, as the word 
 "garden" calls up visions of beauty and delight, 
 it does not apply. In county after county you will 
 not see altogether a rood of land reserved for 
 recreation or pleasure. No village green, no 
 lawns, no flower-beds nor ornamental shrubbery, 
 no parks, and very few shade trees. Aside from 
 the groves about the temples, the trees that relieve 
 the landscape are grown for use and not for orna- 
 ment. To be sure, there are men of fortune in 
 inner China, but they are relatively very few. I 
 doubt, indeed, if one family in two thousand boasts 
 a garden with its fern-crowned rockery and its 
 lotus pond overhung by drooping willows and 
 feathery bamboos. One is struck, too, with the 
 rarity of grape-arbors, vineyards, orchards, and 
 orange groves. In the country markets one sees 
 mountains of vegetables, but only a few paltry 
 baskets of flavorless fruit. The demand for lux- 
 uries that appeal to the palate is too slight, the 
 call for sustaining food is too imperious, to with- 
 draw much land from its main business, which is 
 to grow rice and beans and wheat and garlic to 
 keep the people alive. 
 
 To win new plots for tillage human sweat has 
 been poured out like water. Clear to the top the 
 foothills have been carved into terraced fields. 
 On a single slope I counted forty-seven such fields 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 73 
 
 running up like the steps of a Brobdingnagian 
 staircase. And the river-bed five hundred feet 
 below, between the thin streams that wander over 
 it until the autumn rains cover it with a turbid 
 flood, has been smoothed and diked into hundreds 
 of gemlike paddy-fields green with the young- 
 rice. In the mountains, where the mantle of 
 brown soil covering the rocks is too thin to be 
 sculptured into level fields, the patches of wheat 
 and corn follow the natural slope and the hoe must 
 be used instead of the plow. Two such plots have 
 I seen at a measured angle of forty-five degrees, 
 and any number tilted at least forty degrees from 
 the horizontal. From their huts near the wooded 
 top of the range half a mile above you men clam- 
 ber down and cultivate Lilliputian patches of earth 
 lodged in pockets among the black naked rocks. 
 Of course the wash from these deforested and 
 tilled mountain flanks is appalling. A thousand 
 feet below, the Heilung, the Han, or the Kialing, 
 slate-hued or tawny when it should be emerald, 
 prophesies of the time when all this exposed soil 
 will be useless bars in the river, and the mountain 
 will lie stripped of the fertile elements slowly ac- 
 cumulated through geologic time. Indeed one 
 hears with a shudder of districts where the thing 
 has run its course to the bitter end. Mountains 
 dry gray skeletons ; the rich valley bottoms buried 
 under silt and gravel ; the population dwindled to 
 one family in four square miles ! 
 
 Nowhere can the watcher of man's struggle 
 with his environment find a more wonderful 
 
 4 
 
74 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 spectacle than meets the eye from a certain seven- 
 thousand-foot pass amid the great tangle of 
 mountains in West China that gives birth to the 
 Han, the Wei, and the rivers that make famed 
 Szechuan the "Four-river province." Save 
 where steepness or rock-outcropping forbids, the 
 slopes are cultivated from the floor of the Tung 
 Ho Valley right up to the summits five thousand 
 feet above. In this vertical mile there are dif- 
 ferent crops for different altitudes — vegetables 
 below, then corn, lastly wheat. Sometimes the 
 very apex of the mountain wears a green peaked 
 cap of rye. The aerial farms are crumpled into 
 the great folds of the mountains and their borders 
 follow with a poetic grace the outthrust or in- 
 curve of the slopes. In this colossal amphi- 
 theater one beholds a thousand fields but only 
 two houses. Here and there, however, one de- 
 tects in a distant yellow bank a row of dark, 
 arched openings like gopher holes. It is a rural 
 village, for most of these highlanders carve their 
 habitations out of the dry tenacious loess. 
 
 The heart-breaking labor of redeeming and 
 tilling these upper slopes that require a climb of 
 some thousands of feet from one's cave home is 
 a sure sign of population pressure. It calls up 
 the picture of a swelling human lake, somehow 
 without egress from the valley, rising and rising 
 until it fairly lifts cultivation over the summits of 
 the mountains. In June these circling tiers of 
 verdant undulating sky-farms are an impressive, 
 even a beautiful sight ; yet one cannot help think- 
 
Cave dwelling of a coal miner 
 
 Perfected tillage of the valley of an affluent 
 of the Wei River 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 77 
 
 ing of the grim, ever-present menace of hunger 
 which alone could have forced people to such 
 prodigies of toil. 
 
 Eice will thrive only under a thin sheet of 
 water. A rice field must, therefore, be level and 
 enclosed by a low dyke. Where the climate is 
 friendly the amount of labor that will be spent in 
 digging a slope into rice-fields and carrying a 
 stream to them is beyond belief. In one case I 
 noticed how a deep-notched rocky ravine in the 
 flank of a rugged mountain had been completely 
 transformed. The peasants had brought down 
 countless basketfuls of soil from certain pockets 
 at the foot of the cliffs. With this they had filled 
 the bottom of the V, floated it into a series of 
 levels, banked them, set them out with rice and 
 led the water over them. So that now instead of 
 a barren gulch there is a staircase of curving 
 fields, perhaps four rods wide and differing in 
 level by the height of a man. I have also seen 
 the sides of a gully in which a child could not stand 
 undiscovered cut into shelves for making a string 
 of rice plots no larger than a table-cloth, irrigated 
 by a trickle no bigger than a baby's finger. One 
 of these toy plots, duly banked and set out with 
 nineteen rice plants at the regulation eight inches, 
 could be covered by a dinner napkin ! 
 
 Were it not for an agriculture of infinite pains- 
 taking, the fertility of the soil would have been 
 spent ages ago. In a low-lying region like 
 Kiangsu, for example, the farmer digs an oblong 
 settling basin into which every part of his farm 
 
78 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 drains. In the spring from its bottom lie scoops 
 for fertilizer the rich muck washed from his fields. 
 It is true the overflow from this pond carries away 
 some precious elements, but these he recovers by- 
 dredging the private canal that connects him with 
 the main artery of the district. In the loess belt 
 of North China the farmer simply digs a pit in 
 the midst of his field and scatters the yellow earth 
 from it as a manure. A Chinese city has no 
 sewers nor does it greatly need them. Long be- 
 fore sunrise tank-boats from the farms have crept 
 through the city by a network of canals, and by 
 the time the foreigner has finished his morning 
 coffee a legion of scavengers has collected for the 
 encouragement of the crops that which we cast 
 into our sewers. After a rain countrymen with 
 buckets prowl about the streets scooping black 
 mud out of hollows and gutters or dipping liquid 
 filth from the wayside sinks. A highway trav- 
 ersed by two hundred carts a day is as free from 
 filth as a garden path, for the neighboring 
 farmers patrol it constantly with basket and rake. 
 No natural resource is too trifling to be turned 
 to account by a teeming population. The sea is 
 raked and strained for edible plunder. Sea- 
 weed and kelp have a place in the larder. Great 
 quantities of shell-fish no bigger than one's finger- 
 nail are opened and made to yield a food that finds 
 its way far inland. The fungus that springs up 
 in the grass after a rain is eaten. Fried sweet 
 potato vines furnish the poor man's table. The 
 roadside ditches are bailed out for the sake of 
 
THE STEUGGLE FOE EXISTENCE 79 
 
 fishes no longer than one's finger. Great pan- 
 niers of strawberries, half of them still green, 
 are collected in the mountain ravines and offered 
 in the markets. No weed nor stalk escapes the 
 bamboo rake of the autumnal fuel gatherer. 
 The sickle reaps the grain close to the ground, 
 for straw and chaff are needed to burn un- 
 der the rice kettle. The leaves of the trees 
 are a crop to be carefully gathered by the chil- 
 dren. One never sees a rotting stump or a molder- 
 ing log. Bundles of brush carried miles on the hu- 
 man back heat the brick kiln and the potter's 
 furnace. After the last trees have been taken, 
 the far and forbidding heights are scaled by lads 
 with ax and mattock to cut down or dig up the 
 seedlings that would, if left alone, reclothe the 
 devastated ridges. We asked a Szechuanese if 
 he did not admire a certain craggy peak with 
 gnarled pines clinging to it. "No," he replied, 
 "how can it be beautiful when it is so steep that 
 we cannot get at the trees to cut them down?" 
 Such facts helped me understand why a match 
 from the native factories at Taiyuanfu and 
 Sianfu has in it perhaps a third as much wood as 
 one of our matches. 
 
 The cuisine of China is one of the toothsome 
 cuisines of the world ; but for the common people 
 the stomach and not the palate decides what shall 
 be food. The silkworms are eaten after the 
 cocoon has been unwound from them. After 
 their work is done horses, donkeys, mules, and 
 camels become butcher's meat. The cow or pig 
 
80 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 that has died a natural death is not disdained. 
 A missionary who had always let his cook dispose 
 of a dead calf noticed that his calves always died. 
 Finally he saturated the carcass of the calf with 
 carbolic acid and made the cook bury it. There- 
 after his calves lived. In Canton rats and cats 
 are exposed for sale. Our boatmen cleaned and 
 ate the head, feet, and entrails of the fowls used 
 by our cook. Scenting a possible opening for a 
 tannery, the Governor of Hong Kong once set on 
 foot an inquiry as to what becomes of the skins 
 of the innumerable pigs slaughtered in the colony. 
 He learned that they are all made up as "marine 
 delicacy" and sold among the Chinese. Another 
 time he was on the point of ordering the extermi^ 
 nation of the mangy curs that infest the villages 
 in the Kowloon district because they harassed 
 the Sikh policemen in the performance of their 
 duties. He found just in time that such an act 
 would "interfere with the food of the people," 
 something a British colonial governor must never 
 do. 
 
 Though the farmer thriftily combs his harvest 
 field, every foot of the short stubble is gone over 
 again by poor women and children, who are con- 
 tent if in a day's gleaning they can gather a 
 handful of wheat heads to keep them alive the 
 morrow. On the Hong Kong water front the path 
 of the coolies carrying produce between ware- 
 house and junk is lined with tattered women, 
 most of them with a baby on the back. Where 
 bags of beans or rice are in transit a dozen wait 
 
Junk on the Yangtse 
 
 Fishing with cormorants 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 83 
 
 with basket and brush to sweep up the grains 
 dropped from the sacks. On a wharf where crude 
 sugar is being repacked squat sixty women scrap- 
 ing the inside of the discarded sacks, while others 
 run by the bearer, if his sack leaks a little, to 
 catch the particles as they fall. Where sugar is 
 being unloaded, a mob of gleaners swarm upon 
 the lighter the moment the last sack leaves and 
 eagerly scrape from the gang-plank and the deck 
 the sugar mixed with dirt that for two hours has 
 been trampled into a muck by the bare feet of 
 two score coolies trotting back and forth across 
 a dusty road ! 
 
 The pilferings one hears of are hardly less 
 significant than are the gleanings. The Peking- 
 Hankow Railway complains of the nightly theft 
 of ringbolts and plates; no fewer than 60,000 
 bolts a month and 10,000 plates per annum dis- 
 appear, to be made into razors and scissors, hoes 
 and ploughshares. The cook will extract half its 
 strength from soup meat and then sell it through 
 his window to an itinerant food vender. From 
 the daily drawing of tea given him he will ab- 
 stract a few leaves and hide them. When he has 
 accumulated a pound he will get the dealer to de- 
 liver this pound and give him part of the money 
 his mistress pays for the stolen pound. Even 
 the old hair that hangs in tatters from the camels 
 when they are changing their coat is subject to 
 theft. 
 
 Haunted by the fear of starving, men spend 
 themselves recklessly for the sake of a wage. It 
 
84 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 is true that the Chinese are still in the handicraft 
 stage and the artisans one sees busy on their 
 own account in the little workshops along the 
 street go their own gait. The smiths in iron, tin, 
 copper, brass and silver, the carvers of ivory, 
 amber, tortoise-shell, onyx and jade, the workers 
 in wood, rattan, lacquer, wax, and feathers, the 
 weavers of linen, cotton, and silk seem, in spite 
 of their long hours, less breathless and driven, 
 less prodigal in their expenditure of life energy, 
 than many of the operatives in our machine in- 
 dustries who feel the spur of piece wage, team 
 work, and " speeding up." Still, it is obvious 
 that in certain occupations men are literally kill- 
 ing themselves by their exertions. The treadmill- 
 coolies who propel the stern-wheelers on the West 
 River admittedly shorten their lives. Nearly all 
 the lumber used in China is hand-sawed, and the 
 sawyers are exhausted early. The planers of 
 boards, the marble polishers, the brass filers, the 
 cotton Suffers, the treaders who work the big 
 rice-polishing pestles are building their coffins. 
 Physicians agree that carrying coolies rarely live 
 beyond forty-five or fifty years. The term of a 
 chair-bearer is eight years, of a ricksha runner 
 four years; for the rest of his life he is an in- 
 valid. Moreover, carriers and chair-bearers are 
 afflicted with varicose veins and aneurisms be- 
 cause the constant tension of the muscles inter- 
 feres with the return circulation of the blood. A 
 lady physician in Fokien who had examined some 
 scores of carrying coolies told me she found but 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 85 
 
 two who were free from the heart trouble caused 
 by burden-bearing. 
 
 In Canton, city of a million without a wheel or 
 a beast of burden, even the careless eye marks in 
 the porters that throng the streets the plain signs 
 of overstrain: faces pale and haggard, with the 
 drawn and flat look of utter exhaustion ; eyes pain- 
 pinched, or astare and unseeing with supreme ef- 
 fort; jaw sagging and mouth open from weariness. 
 The dog trot, the whistling breath, the clenched 
 teeth, the streaming face of those under a burden 
 of one to two hundredweight that must be borne 
 are as eloquent of ebbing life as a jetting artery. 
 At rest the porter often leans or droops with a 
 corpse-like sag that betrays utter depletion of vital 
 energy. In a few years the face becomes a 
 wrinkled, pain-stiffened mask, the veins of the 
 upper leg stand out like great cords, a frightful 
 net of varicose veins blemishes the calf, lumps 
 appear at the back of the neck or down the spine, 
 and the shoulders are covered with thick pads of 
 callous under a livid skin. Inevitably the chil- 
 dren of the people are drawn into these cogs at 
 the age of ten or twelve, and not one boy in eight 
 can be spared till he has learned to read. 
 
 There are a number of miscellaneous facts that 
 hint how close the masses live to the edge of sub- 
 sistence. The brass cash, the most popular coin 
 in China, is worth the twentieth of a cent ; but as 
 this has been found too valuable to meet all the 
 needs of the people, oblong bits of bamboo circu- 
 late in some provinces at the value of half a cash. 
 
86 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 A Western firm that wishes to entice the masses 
 with its wares must make a grade of extra cheap- 
 ness for the China trade. The British-American 
 Tobacco Company puts up a package of twenty 
 cigarettes that sells for two cents. The Stand- 
 ard Oil Company sells by the million a lamp that 
 costs eleven cents and retails, chimney and all, for 
 eight-and-a-half cents. It is a curious fact, by 
 the way, that the oil of its rival, the Asiatic Oil 
 Company, does not burn well in this cunningly 
 devised lamp! Incredibly small are the portions 
 prepared for sale by the huckster. • Two cubic 
 inches of bean curd, four walnuts, five peanuts, 
 fifteen roasted beans, twenty melon seeds — make 
 a portion. The melon vender's stand is decked 
 out with wedges of insipid melon the size of two 
 fingers. The householder leaves the butcher's 
 stall with a morsel of pork, the pluck of a fowl 
 and a strip of fish as big as a sardine, tied together 
 with a blade of grass. In Anhwei the query cor- 
 responding to "How do you make your living?" 
 is "How do you get through the day?" On tak- 
 ing leave of his host it is manners for the guest to 
 thank him expressly for the food he has provided. 
 Careful observers say that four-fifths of the con- 
 versation among the co mm on Chinese relates to 
 food. 
 
 Comfort is scarce as well as food. The city 
 coolie sleeps on a plank in an airless kennel on 
 a filthy lane with a block for a pillow and a quilt 
 for a cover. When in a South China hospital all 
 the beds were provided with springs and mat- 
 


 3 
 
THE STEUGGLE FOE EXISTENCE 89 
 
 tresses supplied by a philanthropic American, all 
 the patients were found next morning sleeping 
 on the floor. After being used to boards covered 
 with a mat they could not get their proper slumber 
 on a soft bed. 
 
 Necessity makes the wits fertile in devising new 
 ways of earning a living. I have heard of persons 
 keeping themselves alive by hiring themselves to 
 incubate hen's eggs by their bodily warmth. In 
 some localities people place about the floors of 
 their sleeping and living rooms flea traps, i. e., tiny 
 joints of bamboo with a bit of aromatic glue at 
 the bottom which attracts and holds fast the 
 vermin. Eecently in Szechuan — where there is a 
 proverb, "The sooner you get a son the sooner 
 you get happiness" — some wight has been enter- 
 prising enough to begin going about from house to 
 house cleaning the dead fleas and dried glue from 
 the traps and recharging them with fresh glue. 
 For this service he charges each house one- 
 twentieth of a cent. 
 
 The great number hanging on to existence "by 
 the eyelashes" and dropping into the abyss at a 
 gossamer's touch cheapens life. "Yan to meng 
 ping," "Many men, life cheap," reply the West 
 Eiver watermen when reproached for leaving a 
 sick comrade on the foreshore to die. In a 
 thronged six-foot street I beheld a shriveled, hor- 
 ribly twisted leper prone on his back hitching him- 
 self along sideways inch by inch and imploring 
 the by-passers to drop alms into his basket. It 
 contained four cash! In the leper village of 
 
90 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 Canton the government furnishes two cents a day 
 which will buy two bowls of cooked rice. For 
 their other needs they must beg. Ax and bamboo 
 are retained and prison reform is halted by the 
 consideration that, unless the way of the trans- 
 gressor is made flinty, there are people miserable 
 enough to commit crime for the bare sake of 
 prison fare. Not long ago the Commissioner of 
 Customs at a great South-China port — a foreigner, 
 of course — impressed by the fact that every 
 summer the bubonic plague there carried off about 
 ten thousand Chinese, planned a rigid quarantine 
 against those ports from which the plague was 
 liable to be brought. When he sought the co- 
 operation of the Chinese authorities, the taotai 
 objected on the ground that there were too many 
 Chinese anyway, and that, by thinning them out 
 and making room for the rest, the plague was 
 a blessing in disguise. The project was dropped 
 and last summer again the plague ravaged the 
 city like a fire. But the taotai was not unreason- 
 able. After all, it is better to die quickly by 
 plague than slowly by starvation; and, as things 
 now are, if fewer Chinese perish by disease more 
 would be swept away by famine. 
 
 In a press so desperate, if a man stumbles he 
 is not likely to get up again. I have heard of 
 several cases where an employe dismissed for 
 incompetence or fault returned starving again and 
 again, because nowhere could he find work. In 
 China you should move slowly in getting rid of 
 an incompetent. Euthless dismissal, such as we 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 91 
 
 tolerate, is bitterly resented and leads to extreme 
 unpopularity. Again, no one attempts to stand 
 alone, seeing the lone man is almost sure to go 
 under. The son of Han dares not cut himself off 
 from his family, his clan, or his guild, for they 
 throw him the life-line by which he can pull him- 
 self up if his foot slips. Students in the schools 
 are strong in mass action — strikes, walkouts, etc., 
 — for their action, however silly or perverse, is 
 always unanimous. The sensible lad never thinks 
 of holding out against the folly of his fellows. 
 The whole bidding of his experience has been, 
 "Conform or starve." Likewise no duty is im- 
 pressed like that of standing by your kinsmen. 
 The official, the arsenal superintendent, or the 
 business manager of a college, when he divides 
 the jobs within his gift among his poor relations, 
 is obeying the most imperative ethics he knows. 
 
 It is an axiom with the Chinese that anything 
 is better than a fight. They urge compromise even 
 upon the wronged man and blame him who con- 
 tends stubbornly for all his rights. This dread 
 of having trouble is reasonable under their cir- 
 cumstances. "When a boat is so crowded that the 
 gunwale is scarce a hand's breadth above the 
 water, a scuffle must be avoided at all costs, and 
 each is expected to put up with a great deal be- 
 fore breaking the peace. 
 
 In their outlook on life most Chinese are rank 
 materialists. They ply the stranger with ques- 
 tions as to his income, his means, the cost of his 
 belongings. They cannily offer paper money in- 
 
92 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 stead of real money at the graves of their dead, 
 and sacrifice paper images of the valuables that 
 once were burned in the funeral pyre. They pray 
 only for material benefits, never for spiritual bless- 
 ings; and they compare shrewdly the luck-bring- 
 ing powers of different josses and altars. Some 
 sorry little backwoods shrine will get a reputation 
 for answering prayer and presently there will be 
 half a cord of gratitude tablets heaped about it, 
 testimonials to its success. If a drouth continues 
 after fervent prayers for rain, the resentful peo- 
 ple smash the idol! Yet no one who comes into 
 close touch with the Chinese deems this utilitarian- 
 ism a race trait. They are capable of the highest 
 idealism. Among the few who have come near to 
 the thought of Buddha or Jesus one finds faces 
 saintlike in their glow of spirituality. The 
 materialism is imposed by hard economic con- 
 ditions. It is the product of an age-long anxiety 
 about to-morrow's rice and not to be counter- 
 acted by the influence of the petty proportion 
 whose circumstances lift them above sordid anx- 
 ieties. 
 
 Contrary to the theory of certain sociologists 
 this intensified struggle for life has no perceptible 
 effect in promoting economic or social improve- 
 ment. It is a static rather than a dynamic in- 
 fluence. It makes for exertion and strain but not 
 for progress because the prime means of progress 
 are inventions and discoveries, and it is just these 
 that bond-slaves to poverty, under the stress of the 
 struggle to keep alive, are not able to bring forth. 
 
One of the three life-boats that 
 escorted us through the gorges 
 
 An ancient mariner 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 95 
 
 Most of the stock explanations of national 
 poverty throw no light on the condition of 
 the Chinese. They are not impoverished by the 
 niggardliness of the soil, for China is one of 
 the most bountiful seats occupied by man. Their 
 state is not the just recompense of sloth, for no 
 people is better broken to heavy, unremitting toil. 
 The trouble is not lack of intelligence in their 
 work, for they are skilful farmers and clever in 
 the arts and crafts. Nor have they been dragged 
 down into their pit of wolfish competition by waste- 
 ful vices. Opium-smoking and gambling do, in- 
 deed, ruin many a home, but it is certain that, 
 even for untainted families and communities, the 
 plane of living is far lower than in the West. 
 They are not victims of the rapacity of their 
 rulers, for if their government does little for them, 
 it exacts little. In good times its fiscal claims are 
 far from crushing. With four times our numbers 
 the national budget is a fifth of ours. The basic 
 conditions of prosperity — liberty of person and 
 security of property — are well established. There 
 is, to be sure, no security for industrial invest- 
 ments ; but property in land and in goods is reason- 
 ably well protected. Nor is the lot of the masses 
 due to exploitation. In the cities there is a sprin- 
 kling of rich, but out in the province one may 
 travel for weeks and see no sign of a wealthy class 
 — no mansion or fine country place, no costume 
 or equipage befitting the rich. There are great 
 stretches of fertile agricultural country where the 
 struggle for subsistence is stern and yet the culti- 
 
96 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 vator owns Ms land and implements and pays 
 tribute to no man. 
 
 For a grinding mass poverty that cannot be 
 matched in the Occident there remains but one 
 general cause, namely, the crowding of population 
 upon the means of subsistence. Why this people 
 should so behave more than other peoples, why 
 this gifted race should so recklessly multiply as 
 to condemn itself to a sordid struggle for a bare 
 existence can be understood only when one un- 
 derstands the constitution of the Chinese family. 
 
 It is believed that unless twice a year certain 
 rites are performed and paper money is burned 
 at a man's grave by a male descendant, his spirit 
 and the spirits of his fathers will wander forlorn 
 in the spirit world "begging rice" of other spirits. 
 Hence Mencius taught "there are three things 
 which are unfilial ; and to have no posterity is the 
 greatest of them." It is a man's first concern, 
 therefore, to assure the succession in the male line. 
 He not only wants a number of sons, but — since life 
 is not long in China and the making of a suitable 
 match for a son is the parent's prerogative — he 
 wants to see his son settled as soon as possible. 
 Before his son is twenty-one he provides him with 
 a wife as a matter of course, and the young couple 
 live with him till the son can fend for himself. 
 There is none of our feeling that a young man 
 should not marry till he can support a family. 
 This wholesome pecuniary check on reproduction 
 seems wholly wantiug. The son's marriage is 
 the parents ' affair, not his ; for they pick the girl 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 97 
 
 and provide the home. In the colleges one out of 
 twenty or ten, but sometimes even one out of five 
 of the students is married, and not infrequently 
 there are fathers among the members of the gradu- 
 ating class. 
 
 As the bride must be younger than the groom, 
 early marriage for sons makes early marriage 
 for daughters. The average age of Chinese girls 
 at marriage appears to be sixteen or seventeen 
 years, although some put it at fifteen. In the cities 
 reached by foreign influence, the age has advanced. 
 In Peking it is said to be eighteen, in Shanghai 
 twenty, in Wuchow twenty, in Swatow sixteen to 
 eighteen, in Chungking seventeen or eighteen 
 where formerly it was fourteen or fifteen. 
 Schooling, too, postpones marriage to about 
 twenty, but not one girl in two thousand is in a 
 grammar school. About two years ago the Board 
 of Education at Peking ruled that students in the 
 government schools should not marry under 
 twenty in the case of girls and twenty-two in the 
 case of boys. 
 
 At twenty practically all girls, save prostitutes, 
 are wives and five-sixths of the young men are 
 husbands. This means that in the Orient the 
 generations come at least a third closer together 
 than they do in the Occident. Even if their 
 average family were no larger than ours, they 
 can outbreed us, for they get in four generations 
 while we are rearing three. But their families 
 are larger because their production of children is 
 not affected by certain considerations which weigh 
 
98 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 with us. Clan ties are so strong that if a poor 
 man cannot feed his children he can get fellow 
 clansmen to adopt some of them. Thanks to an- 
 cestor worship and to reliance on sons for support 
 in old age, there is a great deal more adopting 
 than we can imagine. In fact, the demand for 
 boys to be adopted by couples who have no son has 
 been eager enough to call into being a brisk kid- 
 napping trade that is giving trouble to the 
 Shanghai authorities. Then there are funds left 
 by bygone clansmen for the relief of necessitous 
 members. These stimulate procreative reckless- 
 ness precisely as did the parish relief guaranteed 
 under the old Poor Law of England. 
 
 The burden of the child on the parent is lighter 
 than with us, while the benefit expected from the 
 male child is much greater. Lacking our op- 
 portunities for saving and investment, the Chinese 
 rely upon the earnings of their sons to keep them 
 in their old age. A man looks upon his sons as his 
 old age pension. A girl baby may be drowned 
 or sold, a boy never. In a society so patriarchal 
 that a teacher forty years old With a family still 
 turns over his monthly salary to his father as a 
 matter of common duty, the parents of one son 
 are pitied while the parents of many sons are 
 congratulated. 
 
 Moreover, the very atmosphere of China is 
 charged with appreciation of progeny. From 
 time immemorial the things considered most 
 worth while have been posterity, learning and 
 riches — in the order named. This judgment of 
 
Braving the Yangtse flood. Cliff swallows' 
 nests at Chungking 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 101 
 
 a remote epoch when there was room for all sur- 
 vives into a time when the land groans under 
 its burden of population. So a man is still envied 
 for the number of descendants in the male line 
 who will walk in his funeral train. Grandchil- 
 dren, and, still more, great-grandchildren, are 
 counted the especial blessing of heaven. 
 
 Hence a veritable passion to have offspring — 
 more offspring — as many as possible. In Kuang- 
 tung I am told that the women are so eager for 
 many children that they place their suckling with 
 a wet nurse so as to shorten the interval between 
 conceptions. In the West there are plenty of par- 
 ents willing to unload their superfluous children 
 upon an institution, whereas a Chinese parent 
 never gives up a male child till he is in sore straits 
 and reclaims it the moment he is able. The boy 
 is a partly-paid-up old age endowment policy 
 that shall not lapse if he can help it. What chil- 
 dren's home with us would dare undertake, as 
 does the Asile de la Sainte Enfance among 320,- 
 000 Chinese in Hong Kong, to care for all children 
 offered and to give them back at the parents ' con- 
 venience ? 
 
 With us a rich man may not lawfully beget 
 and rear more children than one wife can bear 
 him. In China, however, the concubine has a legal 
 status, her issue is legitimate and a man may con- 
 tribute to the population his children by as many 
 women as he cares to take to himself. With us 
 one-sixth of the women between thirty and thirty- 
 five are unmarried, while in China not one woman 
 
102 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 in a thousand remains a spinster, so that nearly 
 all the female reproductive capacity of each gen- 
 eration is utilized in child bearing. 
 
 Thus all things conspire to encourage the 
 Chinese to multiply freely without paying heed to 
 the economic prospect. Their domestic system is 
 a snare, yet no Malthus has ever startled China 
 out of her deep satisfaction with her domestic sys- 
 tem. She believes that, whatever may be wrong 
 with her, her family is all right; and dreams of 
 teaching the anarchic West filial piety and true 
 propriety in the relations of the sexes. It has 
 never occurred to the thinkers of the yellow race 
 that the rate of multiplication is one of the great 
 factors in determining the plane on which the 
 masses live. Point out this axiom of political 
 economy to a scholar and he meets it with such 
 comforting saws as, "One more bowlful out of 
 a big rice tub makes no difference," "There is 
 always food for a chicken," "The only son will 
 starve" (i.e., will be a ne'er-do-well). Or he may 
 argue that there can be no relation between density 
 and poverty by citing big villages in which people 
 are better off than in neighboring little villages ! 
 
 If people will blindly breed when there is no 
 longer room to raise more food, the penalty must 
 fall somewhere. The deaths will somehow con- 
 trive to balance the births. It is a mercy that in 
 China the strain comes in the years of infancy, in- 
 stead of later on dragging down great numbers 
 of adults into a state of semi-starvation until they 
 are thinned out sufficiently. The mortality among 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 103 
 
 infants is well-nigh incredible. This woman has 
 borne eleven children, and all are dead; that one 
 is the mother of seven, all dying young; another 
 has only two left out of eleven, another, four left 
 out of twelve. Such were the cases that occurred 
 offhand to my informants. One missionary can- 
 vassed his district and found that nine children 
 out of ten never grew up. Dr. McCartney of 
 Chungking, after twenty years of practice there, 
 estimates that seventy-five to eighty-five per cent, 
 of the children born in that region die before the 
 end of the second year. The returns from Hcmg 
 Kong for 1909 show that the number of children 
 dying under one year of age is eighty-seven per 
 cent, of the number of births reported within the 
 year. The first census of the Japanese in For- 
 mosa seems to show that nearly half of the chil- 
 dren born to the Chinese there die within six 
 months. 
 
 Not all this appalling loss is the result of 
 poverty. The proportion of weakly infants is 
 large, probably owing to the immaturity of the 
 mothers. The use of milk is unknown in China 
 and so the babe that cannot be suckled is doomed. 
 Even when it can, the ignorant mother starts it 
 too early on adult food. In some parts they kill 
 many by stuffing the mouth of the tender infant 
 with a certain indigestible cake. The slaughter 
 of the innocents by mothers who know nothing of 
 how to care for the child is ghastly. And yet 
 so necessary is this loss in order to keep numbers 
 down to the food supply that more than one phy- 
 
104 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 sician endorsed the remark of a medical mis- 
 sionary: that the doctor who should get these 
 mothers together and teach them how to save their 
 babies would be assuming a very grave responsi- 
 bility! 
 
 Still, much of the child mortality is the direct 
 consequence of economic pressure. A girl is only 
 a burden, for she marries before she is of use to 
 her parents and is lost into her husband's family. 
 Only in default of male children may she invite her 
 parents to live with her husband and herself. 
 Small wonder, then, that not infrequently the 
 female infant is murdered at birth. Again, when 
 the family is already large, the parents despair of 
 raising the child and it perishes from neglect. In 
 Hupeh a man explaining that two of his children 
 have died will say: "Tin lio Hang ~ko hai tsi," "I 
 have been relieved of two children." Another 
 factor is lack of sufficient good food, which also 
 makes so many children very small for their age. 
 The heavy losses from measles, and scarlet fever, 
 are closely connected with overcrowding. 
 
 For adults overpopulation not only spells priva- 
 tion and drudgery, but it means a life averaging 
 about fifteen years shorter than ours. Small 
 wonder, indeed, for in some places human beings 
 are so thick the earth is literally foul from them. 
 Unwittingly they poison the ground, they poison 
 the water, they poison the air, they poison the 
 growing crops. And while most of them have 
 enough to eat, little has been reserved from the 
 sordid food quest. Here are people with stand- 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 105 
 
 ards, unquestionably civilized — peaceable, indus- 
 trious, filial, polite, faithful to their contracts, heed- 
 ful of the rights of others. Yet their lives are 
 dreary and squalid for most of their margins have 
 been swept into the hopper for the production of 
 population. Two coarse blue cotton garments 
 clothe them. In summer the children go naked 
 and the men strip to the waist. Thatched mud 
 hut, no chimney, smoke-blackened walls, unglazed 
 windows, rude unpainted stools, a grimy table, a 
 dirt floor where the pig and the fowls dispute 
 for scraps, for bed a mud hang with a frazzled mat 
 on it. No woods, grass, nor flowers; no wood 
 floors, carpets, curtains, wall-paper, table-cloths 
 nor ornaments; no books, pictures, newspapers, 
 nor musical instruments; no sports nor amuse- 
 ments, few festivals or social gatherings. But 
 everywhere children, naked, sprawling, squirming, 
 crawling, tumbling in the dust — the one possession 
 of which the poorest family has an abundance, and 
 to which other possessions and interests are fa- 
 natically sacrificed. 
 
 In a census paragraph my eye catches the 
 report of the headmen for a country district 
 of eleven square miles in Anhwei. They re- 
 turn 14,000 souls, nearly 1,200 to the square 
 mile or two to the acre. Despite its quantity 
 of waste land Shantung seems to have 700 to 
 the square mile. Yet it would be an error to 
 assume that at any given moment all parts 
 of China are saturated with people. In Shansi 
 thirty-odd years ago seven-tenths of the in- 
 
106 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 habitants perished from famine, and the vacant 
 spaces and the crumbling walls that meet the 
 eye show that the gaps have never been quite 
 filled. Since the opening of the railroad to 
 Taiyuanfu, the capital, wanderers from congested 
 Shantung are filtering into the province. The 
 same is true of Shensi which, besides losing five 
 millions of its people in the Mohammedan uprising 
 of the seventies, lost three-tenths of its people by 
 famine in 1900. Kansuh, Yunnan, and Kuangsi 
 have never fully recovered from the massacres 
 following great rebellions, and one often comes on 
 land once cultivated that has reverted to wilder- 
 ness. The slaughters of the Taipings left an 
 abiding mark on Kiangsu and Chekiang. Kuang- 
 tung and Fokien, the maritime provinces of the 
 South, have been relieved by emigration. The 
 tide first set in to Formosa and California, later 
 it turned to the Dutch Indies, Malaysia, Indo- 
 China, Singapore, the Philippines, Burmah, Siam, 
 Borneo, and Australia. About ten millions are 
 settled outside of China with the result of greatly 
 mitigating the struggle for existence in these prov- 
 inces. Within recent years $9,000,000 have 
 flowed into the Sanning district from which the 
 first Kuangtung men went out to California and 
 to Singapore. It has all been brought back or 
 sent back by emigrants. The fine burnt-brick farm 
 housec with stone foundations, the paved threshing 
 floors and the stately ancestral halls that astonish 
 one in the rural villages along the coast of Fokien 
 
g5 
 
 a ** 
 
 88 O 
 
 o 
 
 CD 
 CD 
 
 a- 
 
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 5" 
 
 en? 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 109 
 
 are due to remittances from emigrants. In the 
 tiger-haunted, wooded hills thirty miles from Foo- 
 chow one comes on terraces proving former culti- 
 vation of soils it is no longer necessary to till. 
 
 The near future of population in China may 
 be predicted with some confidence. Within our 
 time the Chinese will be served by a government 
 on the Western model. Rebellions will cease, for 
 grievances will be redressed in time, or else the 
 standing army will nip uprising in the bud. 
 When a net of railways enables a paternal gov- 
 ernment to rush the surplus of one province to 
 feed the starving in another, famines will end. 
 The opium demon is already in the way of being 
 throttled. As a feeling of security becomes 
 established the confining walls of the cities will 
 be razed to allow the pent-up people to spread. 
 Wide streets, parks and sewers will be provided. 
 Filtered water will be within reach of all. A uni- 
 versity-trained medical profession will grapple 
 with disease. Everywhere health officers will 
 make war on plague-bearing rats and mosquitoes 
 as to-day in Hong Kong. Epidemics will be fought 
 with quarantine and serum and isolation hos- 
 pitals. Milk will be available and district nurses 
 will instruct mothers how to care for their in- 
 fants. In response to such life-saving activities 
 the death rate in China ought to decline from the 
 present height of fifty or fifty-five per thousand 
 to the point it has already reached in a modern- 
 ized Japan, namely, twenty per thousand. 
 
110 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 But to lower the birth rate in equal degree — 
 that, alas, is quite another matter. The factors 
 responsible for the present fecundity of fifty to 
 sixty per thousand — three times that of the Amer- 
 ican stock and nowhere matched in the white 
 man's world, unless it be in certain districts in 
 Russia and certain parishes in French Canada — 
 will not yield so readily. It may easily take the 
 rest of this century to overcome ancestor worship, 
 early marriage, the passion for big families and 
 the inferior position of the wife. For at least 
 a generation or two China will produce rapidly in 
 the Oriental way people who will die off slowly 
 in the Occidental way. When the death rate has 
 been planed down to twenty the birth rate will 
 still be more than double, and numbers will be 
 growing at the rate of over two per cent, a year. 
 Even with the aid of a scientific agriculture it is, 
 of course, impossible to make the crops of China 
 feed such an increase. It must emigrate or 
 starve. It is the outward thrust of surplus 
 Japanese that is to-day producing dramatic polit- 
 ical results in Corea and Manchuria. In forty 
 or fifty years there will come an outward thrust 
 of surplus Chinese on ten times this scale. With 
 a third of the adults able to read and with daily 
 newspapers thrilling the remotest village with 
 tidings of the great world, eighteen provinces will 
 be pouring forth emigrants instead of two. To 
 Mexico, Central and South America, South- 
 western Asia, Asia Minor, Africa, and even old 
 Europe, the black-haired bread-seekers will 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOE EXISTENCE 111 
 
 stream, and then "What shall we do with the 
 Chinese 1" from being in turn a Calif ornian, an 
 Australian, a Canadian, and a South African 
 question, will become a world question. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE INDUSTRIAL FUTURE OF CHINA 
 
 THERE are three possibilities known as the 
 "yellow peril.' ' One is the swamping of 
 the slow-multiplying, high-wage, white societies 
 with the overflow that is bound to come when 
 China has applied Western knowledge to the sav- 
 ing of human life. This is real and imminent, 
 and nothing but a concerted policy of exclusion 
 can avert it. Another is the overmatching of 
 the white people by colossal armies of well-armed 
 and well-drilled yellow men who, under the in- 
 spiring lead of some Oriental Bonaparte, will 
 first expel the Powers from Eastern Asia and 
 later overrun Europe. 
 
 This forecast is dream-stuff. One who goes 
 up and down among these teeming proletarians 
 realizes that, save among the Mohammedans of 
 the Northwest, the last traces of the military 
 spirit evaporated long ago. The folk appear to 
 possess neither the combative impulses nor the 
 energy of will of the West Europeans. Chinese 
 lads quarrel in a girlish way with much reviling 
 but little pounding; with random flourishing of 
 fists, but only when there is no danger of their 
 
 finding the opponent's face. A row among coolies 
 
 112 
 
INDUSTBIAL FUTUKE OF CHINA 113 
 
 impresses one much more with the objurgatory 
 richness of the language than with the fighting 
 prowess of the race. 
 
 Very striking is the contrast with the game- 
 cock Japanese who, fresh from a military feudal- 
 ism, are still full of pugnacity. At Singapore 
 three thousand Chinese were detained in quaran- 
 tine with three hundred Japanese. The latter 
 made insolent demands such as that they be served 
 their rice before the Chinese. The Celestials 
 could easily have crushed this handful of brown 
 men but in the end, rather than have "trouble," 
 they accepted second table. Not that the Chinese 
 is chicken-hearted. Indeed, there is tiger enough 
 in him when aroused; but he simply does not 
 believe in fighting as a way of settling disputes. 
 To him it is uneconomical, hence foolish. In 
 Malaya it has been observed that, no matter how 
 turbulent a crowd of Chinese may become, if one 
 of their headmen holds up his hand, they quiet 
 down till they have heard what he has to say. 
 Their tumult is calculated and they do not get 
 beside themselves with rage as will a mob of 
 Japanese or East Indians. 
 
 The new army is a vast improvement, but still 
 its fighting spirit may well be doubted. ' ' How do 
 you like the service?" an American asked a 
 couple of reservists. "Very well." "How if a 
 war should break out?" "Oh, our friends will 
 let us know in time so we can run away. ' ' Smart- 
 ing under repeated humiliations the haughty 
 Manchu princes are forging the new army as an 
 
114 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 instrument of revenge; but the Chinese people 
 prize it as a buckler only and do not intend it 
 shall take the offensive. In the officers one misses 
 the martial visage, the firm chin and set jaw that 
 proclaim the overriding will. The wondering look 
 and the unaggressive manner of the private re- 
 veals the simple country lad beneath the khaki. 
 The Japanese peasant has the bold air of the 
 soldier; the Chinese soldier has the mild bearing 
 of the peasant. Belief that right makes might 
 and that all difficulties can be settled by appeal- 
 ing to the li, i. e., the Beasonable, so saturates 
 Chinese thought that nothing but a succession of 
 shocks that should move the national character 
 from its foundation will lay them open to the 
 military spirit. Long before they have lost their 
 faith in peace, the Chinese will be too strong to 
 be bullied and too flourishing to seek national 
 prosperity through conquest. 
 
 The third "yellow peril" is the possibility of 
 an industrial conquest of the West by the Orient. 
 Contemplating the diligence, sobriety and clever- 
 ness of the Chinese in connection with their 
 immense numbers and their low standard of 
 comfort, some foresee a manufacturing China 
 driving us out of neutral markets with great 
 quantities of iron, steel, implements, ships, ma- 
 chinery and textiles of an incredible cheapness, 
 and obliging our workingmen, after a long dis- 
 astrous strife with their employers, to take a 
 Chinese wage or starve. Against such a calamity 
 the great industrial nations will be able to protect 
 
The railway police at a station 
 
 Chinese Officers 
 
 Note lack of the determined, firm-jawed military visage 
 

INDUSTRIAL FUTURE OF CHINA 117 
 
 themselves neither by immigration barriers, nor 
 by tariff walls. 
 
 Assuredly the cheapness of Chinese labor is 
 something to make a factory owner's mouth 
 water. The women reelers in the silk filatures 
 of Shanghai get from eight to eleven cents for 
 eleven hours of work. But Shanghai is dear; 
 and, besides, everybody there complains that the 
 laborers are knowing and spoiled. In the steel 
 works at Hanyang common labor gets $3 a month, 
 just a tenth of what raw Slavs command in the 
 South Chicago steel works. Skilled mechanics get 
 from eight to twelve dollars. In a coal mine near 
 Ichang a thousand miles up the Yangtse the coolie 
 receives one cent for carrying a 400-lb. load of 
 coal on his back down to the river a mile and a 
 half away. He averages ten loads a day but must 
 rest every other week. The miners get seven 
 cents a day and found; that is, a cent's worth of 
 rice and meal. They work eleven hours a day up 
 to their knees in water, and all have swollen legs. 
 After a week of it they have to lie off a couple 
 of days. No wonder the cost of this coal (semi- 
 bituminous) at the pit's mouth is only thirty-five 
 cents a ton. At Chengtu servants get a dollar 
 and a half a month and find themselves. Across 
 Szechuan lusty coolies were glad to carry our 
 chairs half a day for four cents each. In Sianfu 
 the common coolie gets three cents a day and feeds 
 himself, or eighty cents a month. Through 
 Shansi roving harvesters were earning from four 
 to twelve cents a day and farm hands got five or 
 
118 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 six dollars a year and their keep. Speaking 
 broadly, in any part of the Empire, willing labor- 
 ers of fair intelligence may be had in any number 
 at from eight to fifteen cents a day. 
 
 With an ocean of such labor power to draw on, 
 China would appear to be on the eve of a manu- 
 facturing development that will act like a con- 
 tinental upheaval in changing the trade map of 
 the world. The impression is deepened by the 
 tale of industries that have already sprung up. 
 In twenty years the Chinese have established 
 forty-six silk filatures, thirty-eight of them in 
 Shanghai. More than a dozen cotton-spinning 
 mills are supplying yarn to native hand looms. 
 Two woolen mills are weaving cloth for soldiers' 
 uniforms. In Shanghai there are pure Chinese 
 factories making glass, cigarettes, yellow-bar 
 soap, tooth-brushes, and roller-process flour. 
 The Hanyang Iron and Steel Works — with 5,000 
 men in the plant and many thousands more mining 
 and transporting its ore and coal — is doubling 
 its capacity, having last year contracted with an 
 American syndicate to furnish annually for fif- 
 teen years from 36,000 to 72,000 tons of pig-iron 
 to a steel plant building at Irondale on Puget 
 Sound. 
 
 Those who judge by surfaces anticipate a de- 
 velopment swift and dramatic; to our race a 
 catastrophe or a blessing according as one cares 
 for the millions or the millionaires. But, peer- 
 ing beneath the surface, one descries certain 
 factors which forbid us to believe that the in- 
 
INDUSTKIAL FUTUEE OF CHINA 119 
 
 dustriai blooming of the yellow race is to occur 
 in our time. 
 
 Before flooding world markets the yellow-labor 
 mills must supply the wants of the Chinese them- 
 selves for manufactured goods ; and, even if, man 
 for man, they have not more than a seventh of the 
 buying power of Americans, China still offers a 
 market more than half as large as that of the 
 whole United States. Its estimated annual con- 
 sumption of cotton goods would carpet a road- 
 way sixty feet wide from here to the moon ! Ow- 
 ing to the indefinitely expanding market Eastern 
 Asia will afford for the cheap machine-made 
 fabrics, utensils, implements, cutlery, toilet 
 articles and time-pieces to pour forth from the 
 native factories to be established, the evil day is 
 yet distant when the white man's product will 
 be beaten from the South American or African 
 fields by the handiwork of the yellow man. 
 
 Then production is not always so cheap as wages 
 are low. For all his native capacity, the coolie will 
 need a long course of schooling, industrial train- 
 ing, and factory atmosphere before he inches up 
 abreast of the German or American workingman. 
 At a railway center in North China is a govern- 
 ment establishment that imports bridge materials 
 from Europe, builds up the beams, fits and 
 punches them, and sends them out in knock-down 
 state to the place where the bridge is needed. 
 Yet, with labor five times as cheap, it cannot 
 furnish iron bridges as cheaply as they can be 
 imported from Belgium, which means that at pres- 
 
120 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 ent, one Belgian iron-worker is worth more than 
 five Chinese. It will take at least a generation 
 or two for the necessary technical skill to become 
 hereditary among these working people. 
 
 Active China, which is about as large as the 
 United States east of the Eocky Mountains, has 
 less than 7,000 miles of railway. Owing to the 
 thick population and the intensive agriculture the 
 traffic potency of most parts is even now so great 
 that, no doubt, ten times the present mileage, if 
 economically constructed and managed, would 
 yield handsome dividends on the investment. 
 Now, at best it would take China's spare capital 
 for the next thirty years to build the railways the 
 country ought to have. It must be borne in mind, 
 too, that, outside a few treaty ports, the new in- 
 dustries await the initiative of the Chinese. Gone 
 forever are the halcyon days of Li Hung Chang's 
 railway and mining concessions, when a single 
 foreigner could obtain the exclusive right to mine 
 coal and iron over 5,400 square miles of the rich- 
 est mineral-bearing province. The rising nation- 
 alism with its cry, "China for the Chinese," has 
 put an end to all that. The Government has re- 
 covered certain of the railway concessions and 
 the people of Shansi paid the Peking Syndicate 
 two-and-one-quarter millions of dollars to re- 
 linquish an undeveloped concession. China will, 
 no doubt, block the path of the foreign exploiter 
 as carefully as Japan has, and her mills and mines 
 will be Chinese or nothing. But the courage of 
 the Chinese capitalist is chilled by the rapacity of 
 
INDUSTEIAL FUTUBE OF CHINA 121 
 
 officials unchecked by law court or popular suf- 
 frage. One of the directors of the Shanghai- 
 Hangchow Railway — a purely Chinese line — tells 
 me their chief trouble in building the road was 
 the harassing ''inspections" which obliged them 
 to bribe the officials in order to go on with the 
 work. Moreover, Peking forced upon the com- 
 pany a large, unneeded foreign loan which would 
 have been expended by government men without 
 the stockholders knowing how much stuck to the 
 fingers of the officials. So, instead of using the 
 money for building the road, the company loaned 
 it out in small amounts at a high interest and will 
 repay it as soon as the terms of the loan permit. 
 
 The case of Fokien shows how irresponsible gov- 
 ernment paralyzes the spirit of enterprise. For 
 half a century Fokienese have been wandering into 
 the English and Dutch possessions in Southeast- 
 ern Asia, where not a few of them prosper as 
 merchants, planters, mine operators, contractors 
 and industrialists. Some of them return with 
 capital, technical knowledge, and experience in 
 managing large undertakings. Yet, aside from a 
 saw mill — the only one I saw in China — I hear of 
 not one modern undertaking in the province. The 
 coal seams lie untouched. The mandarins lay it 
 to the difficulty of getting the coal to tidewater. 
 The Fokienese rich from his tin-mining in 
 Perak — there are thirty Chinese millionaires in 
 the Malay States — tells you it is dread of official 
 ' ' squeeze. ' ' 
 
 The country back of Swatow is rich in minerals. 
 
122 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 But what probably would happen to a retired 
 Singapore contractor so rash as to embark on a 
 mining venture there? The clan of Hakkas in 
 the neighborhood of the ore deposit would demand' 
 something for letting him work it unmolested. 
 The local mandarin would have to be squared. 
 The "li kin" officials would sweat him well before 
 letting his imported machinery go up the river. 
 The magistrate of every district his product 
 touched in going down to the coast would hold him 
 up. Finally, at any moment, his operations might 
 be halted by an outbreak of superstitious fear lest 
 they were disturbing the earth dragon and spoil- 
 ing the luck of the community. Small wonder a 
 high imperial official confessed to me — in confi- 
 dence — that not one penny of his fortune ever 
 goes into a concern not under foreign protection. 
 
 His Excellency Wu Ting Pang is so impressed 
 with the blight of insecurity that he suggests that, 
 instead of clamoring for an early parliament, the 
 people exact of the Imperial Government a Magna 
 Charta guaranteeing the following rights: No 
 arrest without a proper warrant; public trial 
 within twenty-four hours; no punishment or fin- 
 ing of the relatives of a convicted person ; no con- 
 fiscation of the property of his partners or busi- 
 ness associates. 
 
 Although vast in aggregate the agriculture of 
 China is petty agriculture and its industry is petty 
 industry. Its business men are' unfamiliar with 
 the management of large-scale enterprises and 
 
INDUSTRIAL FUTURE OF CHINA 125 
 
 have had no experience with the joint-stock com- 
 pany. Highly honorable as merchants and bank- 
 ers, they have never worked out an ethics for the 
 stock company, and in such relations they are the 
 prey of a mutual distrust which is only too well 
 founded. 
 
 The taking of commissions has become so in- 
 grained in the Chinese that it is no longer a moral 
 fact but only an economic fact. Your cook takes 
 his wages as a recompense for his technical serv^ 
 ices only; for his services as a business man in 
 buying for your household he feels himself en- 
 titled to a profit. Bray him in a mortar but you 
 will not get the notion out of him. A customs 
 chief tells me how thirty years ago when he was a 
 newcomer he complained bitterly to his Chinese 
 teacher about the way he as a foreigner was 
 robbed by his servants. "But," explained the 
 scholar, "we Chinese suffer from the practice as 
 much as you do. If I give the old woman who is 
 my servant five cash to buy food for me she keeps 
 one cash. If I give her one cash to buy vinegar 
 she cannot pocket her commission, but she will not 
 be foiled; she spills a little of the vinegar!" 
 
 This is why as soon as a business capital is any- 
 where got together it begins mysteriously to melt 
 away. A company formed to build a certain rail- 
 way maintains an idle office staff of ten, and 
 station-masters have been engaged and put on the 
 pay-roll, although not a rail has been laid. Much 
 of the pay of these lucky employes goes, no 
 doubt, to those who appointed them. Sleepers 
 
126 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 were bought in great quantities, and after lying 
 for a year were sold to carpenters. One of the 
 government railways called for tenders for sleep- 
 ers. A German firm bid lowest and filled the 
 order. Later, when more sleepers were wanted, 
 the purchasing official, instead of calling for new 
 bids, telegraphed to the firm, "Your Japanese 
 competitor has come down to your figure, but you 
 may have the contract for a moderate commis- 
 sion." The offer was ignored, and the Japanese 
 supplied the sleepers, no doubt after giving a 
 douceur. 
 
 In a big government works the foreign expert 
 after due tests designated a certain coal as the 
 best in heating capacity. The first lot supplied 
 to him by the purchasing agent of the works was 
 K. The second was poor, although the agent 
 stoutly insisted it was the same coal. He had been 
 given a commission to substitute the inferior fuel. 
 The railway engineer, whether foreigner or Chi- 
 nese, is continually put out by the arrival from 
 oversea of machinery or materials different in 
 kind or grade from what he had ordered. The 
 cause is not inadvertence. There are thirteen 
 railways now being constructed on the basis of 
 "everything Chinese," and most of them have one 
 trait in common; the money goes faster than the 
 construction. The Amoy-Changchowfu line, the 
 first in Fokien, proceeds with disappointing slow- 
 ness. Great piles of rails and ties lie deteriorat- 
 ing, waiting for road-bed. The construction of 
 the Canton-Hankow line advances at what the 
 
INDUSTRIAL FUTUEE OF CHINA 127 
 
 stockholders feel to be a snail's pace. The Anhwei 
 Railway Company has disbursed five million taels 
 and not a mile of track is completed. The piers 
 for the bridges are ready, the structural iron for 
 them is on the ground, and thirteen miles of grad- 
 ing is completed. But the company's money and 
 credit are gone, the shareholders are disgusted, 
 and work is nearly at a standstill. There are 
 enough of such experiences to make one call China 
 ' ' the land of broken promise. ' ' Some of the trou- 
 ble is due to bad judgment, but too often the man- 
 agement has been pulled out of plumb by the itch 
 for commissions. 
 
 "With us the individual early detaches himself 
 from his family and circulates through society as 
 a free self -moving unit. In China family and clan 
 ties mean more, and there are few duties more 
 sacred than that of helping your kinsmen even 
 at other people 's expense. You feel it is right to 
 provide berths for your relatives and no scruple 
 as to their comparative fitness tweaks your con- 
 science. When an expectant is appointed to office 
 (not in his own province, of course), his relatives 
 even unto the n th degree call upon him with con- 
 gratulations and suggest that he find places for 
 them in his new post. After he takes office the 
 proteges of his predecessor, realizing that their 
 room is more prized than their company, have the 
 grace to get out as soon as they can "look 
 around. ' ' 
 
 Now, this pestilent nepotism quickly fastens it- 
 self upon industrial undertakings. The manager 
 
128 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 of a government plant on looking into one of the 
 departments, which was going badly, found that 
 thirty-three out of the fifty-five men in that depart- 
 ment were relatives of the foreman. Since two 
 years ago, when the Peking-Hankow Railway 
 came under Chinese management, the positions 
 along the line have been filled on the basis of sheer 
 favoritism, with the result of loading the pay-roll 
 with incompetents. No wonder the ticket-seller 
 regards the crowd at the ticket-window as a nui- 
 sance, and lets them fume while he chats with his 
 friends. And you may hear the track manager 
 complain bitterly of having to put in and retain 
 certain relatives of the director, who cannot do the 
 work assigned them. 
 
 So desperate is the struggle to live and so in- 
 grained is the spirit of nepotism that whenever 
 a capital is laid out by anyone else than the owner 
 employes multiply like locusts. They drop out 
 of the clouds and spring up from the ground. 
 The government offices at Peking are clogged with 
 useless place-holders. You marvel that colleges 
 with twenty-five or thirty teachers maintain ten 
 officers of administration until you realize that 
 half of them are sinecurists. In one plant the 
 foreign expert found thirty-six parasites sucking 
 the water-pipe all day and drawing good pay. 
 One was purchaser of coal, another purchaser of 
 wood, another custodian of the steam-fittings, and 
 so on. 
 
 At Lin Ching a Belgian company came to terms 
 with a Chinese company with a concession by giv- 
 
n 
 
 ■A a 
 
 o\ 2 
 
 o 
 
INDUSTRIAL FUTURE OF CHINA 131 
 
 ing them half the stock and agreeing to pay a 
 Chinese director and a Chinese engineer in addi- 
 tion, of course, to the foreign director and the for- 
 eign engineer. The theory is that the Belgians 
 and the Chinese are partners in operating the col- 
 liery; but the naked fact is, that the latter are 
 mere parasites on the enterprise. The Chinese 
 director lives at Tientsin on his seven hundred dol- 
 lars a month, and never goes near the mine. The 
 Chinese engineer with his two hundred and twenty- 
 five dollars a month and a fine house built him 
 near the mine gives no technical services whatever 
 but goes about suppressing the petty native coal 
 diggings that impair the exclusiveness of the com- 
 pany's concession! 
 
 In another place a German company has opened 
 coal mines under an arrangement whereby the 
 Chinese take half the nominal capital and a Chi- 
 nese director is paid a fine salary. He lives at 
 Tientsin and never comes near the works. The 
 German manager directs and he earns his salary. 
 If the coal is being pilfered and he makes com- 
 plaint to the hsien magistrate against the culprits, 
 they are persistently let off until the manager 
 calls and fills the pockets of the worthy mandarin 
 with dollars. Then the thieves are bambooed. 
 Under such harassments the foreign staff as a 
 whole can take no holiday. They must be on the 
 spot all the time, for the moment they leave things 
 go badly and in a short time the plant would be 
 ruined. 
 
 At the present stage the Chinese business man 
 
132 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 can get along neither with the foreign expert nor 
 without him. Four hundred miles up the West 
 Eiver you see tons of heavy machinery lying on 
 the bank. It was imported for smelting silver ore 
 in the mountains fifteen miles away. The Chinese 
 found themselves unable to set up the smelter, so 
 the machinery rusts while the ore is smelted in 
 England. An engineer will be given lot after lot 
 of bad coal because his manager never thinks of 
 fuel in terms of heating capacity. To him coal is 
 coal and the cheapest is the best. Shansi is the 
 Pennsylvania of the Empire, and at great price 
 the provincials regained the right to exploit its 
 mineral wealth themselves. Yet a certificated 
 colliery manager has been four years at Shansi 
 University as professor of mining and never has 
 his professional opinion been sought on a mining 
 question ! 
 
 The Hanyang Company appreciates the expert 
 and employs twenty-two French and Belgians to 
 supervise the making of steel. But not always 
 are the Chinese so fortunate. The first Swatow 
 Electric Light Company failed through reliance 
 upon a foreigner who was less of an expert than 
 he represented himself to be. About three years 
 ago the " Protection of Shansi" Mining Company 
 undertook to develop coal-mining in their prov- 
 ince. The first expert they employed was to 
 reconnoiter and report. He spent several months 
 going about, but, as he failed to map his wander- 
 ings and finds, his reports were worth little. 
 Then a great English expert was engaged, but 
 
INDUSTRIAL FUTURE OF CHINA 133 
 
 when, on reaching Tientsin, he learned he was ex- 
 pected to spend months in the field instead of a 
 few weeks, he took his expenses and went home. 
 When, finally, a twenty-foot vein of coal was at- 
 tacked, expert after expert quit because each in- 
 sisted on having things done right, and the com- 
 pany would not follow his advice. It is plain that 
 both the native capitalists and the imported 
 experts have grievances. The situation is un- 
 fortunate, and cannot but retard development 
 until China has good engineering and technical 
 schools for training experts of her own. 
 
 The inefficiency of the management of Chinese 
 undertakings is heart-rending in its waste of 
 sweat-won wealth. The superintendent of con- 
 struction of a railroad will be a worthy mandarin, 
 without technical knowledge or experience, who 
 has to rely wholly on his subordinates. Or the 
 prominent financier chosen president of the com- 
 pany feels himself quite above the vulgar details 
 of management and so delegates the task to some- 
 one of less consequence. This gentleman, too, 
 feels above the work, and passes it down to some- 
 one else. So the big men become figureheads and 
 little men run the enterprise. Any government 
 undertaking suffers from the conceit and un- 
 practically of the mandarins. The initial price 
 of the cement from a government plant was fixed 
 at a dollar a barrel more than the cost of good 
 foreign cement. The officials thought that the 
 people would beg for "imperial cement" regard- 
 less of price. 
 
134 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 When the government match factory was pro- 
 jected for Taiyuanfu the factory was built, ma- 
 chinery was ordered from, the United States and 
 workmen were hired. But the machinery never 
 came for no money had accompanied the order, 
 and the workmen were paid for doing nothing un- 
 til in a couple of years the fund allotted to the 
 enterprise was exhausted. Not long ago the en- 
 terprise was revived and the government product 
 has now crowded out the Japanese matches. 
 Near Wuhu is a modern brick kiln which under 
 a foreign superintendent turned out excellent 
 bricks at the same price as those from the native 
 kilns ; but under Chinese management the quality 
 has sunk until the output is little better than the 
 native bricks. 
 
 Again, the Chinaman is handicapped by his lust 
 for immediate profit without regard to the future. 
 For example, near the end of 1909 Captain Plant 
 began running the "Shutung" through the 
 Yangtse Gorges to Chungking. It was the first 
 steam service on that dangerous reach and the 
 little steamer made money so fast that her Chinese 
 owners, intent only on the gain of the moment, 
 gave the Captain no time between trips to clean 
 her engines. Only when the indispensable 
 skipper refused to make another trip was he 
 granted a week to overhaul her vitals. 
 
 Years ago Dr. Nevius, a missionary at Chefoo, 
 set out the best of American fruit trees and the 
 product of his orchard became famous through- 
 out the Far East. But on his death the orchard 
 
INDUSTRIAL FUTURE OF CHINA 137 
 
 came into the hands of a Chinaman who, greedy 
 of the maximum profit, made it a pasture for pigs, 
 neglected to loosen the soil and never pruned the 
 trees. As a result the fruit has greatly deterior- 
 ated, the cherries have become small, the apples 
 and pears knotty, woody and wormy. 
 
 The fact is the faulty past lies too heavily on 
 the mind and the character of contemporary 
 Chinese. The real strength of the race will not 
 generally declare itself till a new generation is 
 on the stage, bred in the new education and en- 
 forcing a higher code. Perhaps the moral atmos- 
 phere will not clear till there has come a marked 
 let-up in the struggle for existence. At the back 
 of the business man's mind lurks, I fancy, a dim 
 sense of a myriad clutching hands. People do not 
 judge one another very strictly when each acts with 
 the abyss ever before his eyes. The excellent 
 reputation enjoyed by the Chinese business men 
 in Malaysia suggests that only in a land of op- 
 portunity does the natural solidity of character 
 of the yellow race show itself. In the Straits Set- 
 tlements the Chinese are successful producers of 
 pith helmets, chemicals, medicines, lighthouse 
 lenses, machine-carved furniture, ice-making ma- 
 chines, wines, liqueurs and other articles not yet 
 attempted by their brethren at home. 
 
 It is not likely, then, that the march of indus- 
 trialism in China will be so rapid and triumphant 
 as many have anticipated. Jealousy of the 
 foreigner, dearth of capital, ignorant labor, offi- 
 cial squeeze, graft, nepotism, lack of experts, and 
 
138 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 inefficient management will long delay the harness- 
 ing of the cheap labor power of China to the 
 machine. Not we, nor our children, but our 
 grandchildren, will need to lie awake nights. It 
 is along in the latter half of this century that 
 the yellow man's economic competition will begin 
 to mold with giant hands the politics of the planet. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE GEAPPLE WITH THE OPIUM EVIL 
 
 IT was in West China. Our sedan chairs were 
 a mile behind us, and we were not sure of the 
 road. ' ' How far is it to Paoki f ' ' the consul asked 
 a peasant. No answer. ''How far is it to 
 Paoki?" The man turned his head a little. The 
 third asking brought a glimmer of speculation 
 into the vacant eyes. On the fourth asking he 
 caught the idea ' ' Paoki. ' ' The fifth punctured his 
 mental fog with "How far?" and slowly and 
 thickly as from a sleep-walker came the reply, 
 "Forty li." "What does it mean?" I demanded 
 after a dozen such experiences in a single morn- 
 ing. " Is it sheer natural stupidity ? " " No, ' ' re- 
 plied the consul, ruminating, "probably opium. 
 You have heard the saying 'Out of ten Shensi 
 people, eleven smokers!' " 
 
 This was my first good look at China's Skele- 
 ton in the Closet. 
 
 Opium smoking was first heard of in China in 
 the fourteenth century. In 1729 there was an 
 edict issued which prohibited the use of opium 
 and ordered the closing of the smoking-dens. 
 Nobody knows whether or not it was enforced. 
 Late in that century, in consequence of the British 
 East India Company's pushing its Bengal opium 
 
 139 
 
140 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 into the various ports of China, the habit took 
 root in all parts of the country. The British 
 found that it was a lucrative trade and never let 
 up. The total gain from Indian opium — that is, 
 the amount paid by China and Eastern Asia for 
 that commodity above its cost price between 1773 
 and 1906 — has been estimated at two billion, one 
 hundred millions of dollars. About 1840, the 
 Chinese Emperor became so alarmed at the in- 
 roads of the poison that he appointed Lin Im- 
 perial Commissioner at Canton with orders to put 
 down the trade. His efforts brought him into 
 collision with the English traders and his de- 
 struction of ten thousand chests of opium pre- 
 cipitated the First Opium War. It ended in Eng- 
 land's forcing on China a humiliating treaty 
 which heavily indemnified the traders for their 
 losses. In 1857 came the Second Opium War re- 
 sulting in the Treaty of Tientsin which bound the 
 government of China not to interfere with nor 
 limit the introduction of Indian opium into the 
 Empire. 
 
 Until this time the government had not tol- 
 erated the cultivation of the poppy plant; but 
 now, rather than see the country drained of silver 
 to buy of India a narcotic that can easily be pro- 
 duced on the soil of China, the government re- 
 moved its restriction, and the poppy spread with 
 great rapidity. In the end six-sevenths of the 
 opium consumed by the Chinese was home-grown. 
 
 Meanwhile the luxury use of opium spread 
 with appalling rapidity. Four years ago the 
 
GRAPPLE WITH THE OPIUM EVIL 141 
 
 Chinese were using seventy times as much, opium 
 as they were using in 1800. Annually twenty-two 
 thousand tons of the drug were absorbed, most 
 of it converted into thick smoke and inhaled by 
 a legion of smokers estimated to number at least 
 twenty-five millions. Even the English allow there 
 were eight million smokers. In the poppy provin- 
 ces opium was so plentiful and cheap that a 
 shocking proportion of the adult population be- 
 came addicted to the habit. In Szechuan, in the 
 cities half of the men and a fifth of the women 
 came to smoke opium. In the country the pro- 
 portions were fifteen per cent, and five per cent, 
 respectively. In Kansuh three men out of four 
 were said to be smokers. In western Shensi 
 we came upon districts where we were assured 
 that nine-tenths of the women above forty smoked. 
 In Yunnan the principal inquiry in matrimonial 
 negotiations was, "How many opium pipes in the 
 family?" this being a certain indication of its 
 financial standing. Whole populations had given 
 themselves up to the seductive pipe and were sink- 
 ing into a state of indescribable lethargy, misery 
 and degradation. 
 
 The pipe has a peculiar seduction for the 
 Chinese because their lives are so bare of interest. 
 They indulge in none of that innocent companion- 
 ship of men and women which contributes such a 
 charm to life. They take to their twin vices — 
 opium smoking and gambling — as a relief from 
 the dreary flatness that results from sacrificing 
 most of the things that make life interesting in 
 
142 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 the mad endeavor to maintain the largest possible 
 number of human beings on the minimum area. 
 Under a family system that tempts them to multi- 
 ply without regard to prospects the Chinese have 
 pruned away much that lends value to life. Five 
 years ago the Philippine Opium Commission ob- 
 served in its report: 
 
 "What people on earth are so poorly provided 
 with food as the indigent Chinese, or so destitute 
 of amusement as all Chinese both rich and poor? 
 There are no outdoor games in China, or indeed 
 any games except in a gambling sense. Absolute 
 dullness and dreariness seem to prevail every- 
 where. As these two demons drive the Cauca- 
 sians to drink so they drive the Chinese to opium. 
 As an individual may by habitual toil and atten- 
 tion to business become incapable of amusement, 
 so a race of almost incredible antiquity, which has 
 toiled for millenniums, may likewise reach a point 
 in its development where the faculty of being 
 amused has atrophied and disappeared, so that all 
 that remains is the desire to spend leisure in 
 placidity. And nothing contributes so much to 
 this as opium. In Formosa the merry Japanese 
 boys are teaching the placid Chinese lads to play 
 tennis, foot ball, polo, vaulting, etc., with the view 
 — the Japanese teachers say — of improving them 
 physically and also of developing in them a love 
 of sports which will prevent them from wishing to 
 spend their leisure indoors smoking opium. And 
 the poor who have no leisure? They often have 
 no food, or so little that any drug which removes 
 
GKAPPLE WITH THE OPIUM EVIL 143 
 
 first the pangs of hunger, and later the healthy- 
 cravings of appetite, seems a boon to them. Add 
 to this the feeling of peace and well being that 
 often accompanies the smoking of opium, and it 
 is not difficult to see why the indigent Chinese use 
 it. We administer morphine to relieve pain. The 
 life of the indigent Chinese coolie is pain caused 
 by privation. The opium sot is an object of pity 
 rather than of contempt. If the Chinese seem 
 more easily to contract such evil habits than other 
 nations, and are more the slave of them, is not 
 that due to the dullness of the lives of the well- 
 to-do and to the painful squalor of the indigent ? ' ' 
 A month's travel by sedan chair gave me some 
 light on why the coolie hankers for his pipe. Our 
 chair and baggage coolies took with them no wrap 
 nor change of clothing and eight successive days 
 of rain brought them to a state of utter misery. 
 After twelve hours of splashing and slipping up 
 and down the mountain roads and fording swollen 
 torrents in a cold drizzle under a weight of from 
 seventy to ninety pounds they would come at even- 
 ing utterly exhausted to a cheerless, comfortless 
 Chinese inn. No fire, no clothing save two soaked 
 cotton garments; no bed save a brick hang with 
 a ragged mat on it; no blankets. For supper 
 nothing but rice and bean curd or macaroni. 
 What wonder that, after eating, the poor fellow 
 curled up on the mat with the tiny lamp beside 
 him, rolled the black bead and sucked the thick 
 smoke till he passed beyond the reach of cold, 
 discomfort and weariness ! 
 
144 
 
 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 One may wonder why the cancer was allowed to 
 eat so deeply into the social body. To be sure, 
 the hands of the government were tied by the 
 treaty privileges of the trade in foreign opium. 
 Still, what Western society would tolerate the 
 ravages of alcohol as China has supinely tolerated 
 the ravages of opium? Even if government 
 
 FAMILY AND HOME VANISHING INTO THE OPIUM PIPE 
 
 (Native reform cartoon) 
 
 could do nothing, other agencies would have 
 sprung into activity. The pulpit, the platform, 
 the school, the chair, the press, and the temperance 
 societies and movements would have set bounds 
 to the gangrene. But Chinese society lacks most 
 of these organs of self-protection. In the re- 
 ligions of China there is no place for preaching 
 or church discipline. The schools were expected 
 
GEAPPLE WITH THE OPIUM EVIL 145 
 
 to teach nothing but the classic learning. News- 
 papers did not circulate. Private associations, 
 even innocent societies for moral purposes, were 
 under the ban of government. Above all, women, 
 the natural foes of destructive vice, were bound 
 and dumb. One of the greatest forces behind the 
 temperance movement in the West has been the 
 influence of women, rallying, organizing, and 
 agitating in defense of the home. But in China 
 not one woman in a thousand can read. Women 
 have no part in discussion, no place in public 
 life and hence no means of voicing the woe that 
 comes to them from the smoking of opium by 
 their men folk. 
 
 What finally moved the Imperial Government, 
 at a heavy sacrifice of public revenue, to enter on 
 its great struggle was not so much pity for the 
 wreck and misery caused by the seductive narcotic 
 as a realizing sense of the weakness of the Chinese 
 nation in the presence of the Western Powers. 
 The reign of apathy and selfishness among the 
 Chinese, their lack of public spirit and effective 
 cooperation at critical moments were inviting 
 treatment ever more aggressive and ruthless. It 
 became clear even to the haughty and hide-bound 
 Manchu that, unless the people speedily renounced 
 the vice that was undermining its manhood and 
 recovered its normal resisting power, there was 
 no hope for China among the nations. 
 
 The famous Anti-Opium Edict issued by the 
 Empress Dowager September 20, 1906, which 
 commanded that the growth, sale, and consump- 
 
146 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 tion of opium should cease in the Empire within 
 ten years was the opening gun in what is un- 
 doubtedly the most extensive warfare on a vicious 
 private habit that the world has ever known. The 
 gigantic moral conflict has raged over a territory 
 comparable in size to the United States. Hun- 
 dreds of thousands of officials, gentry, students, 
 merchants and den-keepers have been drawn into 
 it. Blood has been shed and property has been 
 destroyed on a great scale. The stake is the lives 
 of some millions of opium-users, to say nothing 
 of the oncoming generations. The guerdon of 
 victory is the assured independence of the yellow 
 race and its eventual participation on equal terms 
 with the white race in the control of the destinies 
 of the planet. 
 
 Once see the poppy in her pride and you realize 
 that there is nothing drab nor homespun about 
 opium raising. Among plots of sordid beans or 
 pulse or cabbages the poppy field stands out like 
 a flame. At full bloom its splendor befits a crop 
 that is to lure and ruin men rather than nourish 
 them. The dominant note is snow white, but bells 
 of all gorgeous hues are to be seen : purple, ruby, 
 crimson, scarlet and pink, besides white blossoms 
 tipped or streaked with these — a riot of color. 
 For rich prodigal beauty no field crop under the 
 sun can match it. The flowering poppy is vivid, 
 dramatic and passionate, like some superb ad- 
 venturess luring troops of lovers and, vampire- 
 like, sucking out their souls with her kisses. 
 
South half of the west wall of Sianf u, from the west gate 
 
 City wall and five-story pagoda, Canton 
 
GEAPPLE WITH THE OPIUM EVIL 149 
 
 Nor is the harvesting commonplace. When the 
 poppy's time has come all you see is thousands 
 of spherical pods one or two inches through, erect 
 each on its slender reed-like stem. A man with 
 a small knife follows the rows cutting lightly 
 around every pod. Drop by drop a juice exudes, 
 milky at first but which in a day or two turns 
 brown and gummy. Then the reaper goes about 
 scraping from the pods this precious gum. Just 
 a few pounds of drug to the acre — that is all 
 there is to it. And the stalks dry and bleach like 
 the cast-off skin of a rattlesnake until they are 
 gathered for fuel, and the pods are threshed for 
 the poppy seed to be ground for food or pressed 
 for oil. 
 
 Now, raw opium is a poison, and when the crop 
 is in the unhappy women who have been waiting 
 for it — for women abhor a violent death — seize 
 their opportunity. When we were at Wukung 
 in Shensi the mission ladies there were being 
 called out nearly every day to give an emetic and 
 save the life of some poor creature who thought 
 to end her sorrows with the only poison within 
 her reach. From the adjoining province a cor- 
 respondent writes: ''One benefit of the continual 
 rise in the price of opium is the manifestly de- 
 creasing number of attempts at suicide by taking 
 the drug. One now finds it hard to extract death 
 from ten rolls of opium and the increased cost of 
 poison is deterring many would-be suicides. The 
 present make of opium-rolls, selling at ten cash, 
 contain only about three parts of opium to seven 
 
150 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 of horse-hoofs and other leather waste." In 
 other words, when suicide costs as much as ten 
 cents it is a luxury that few can afford. In a 
 province where a servant gets eighty cents a 
 month and finds himself, this is not to be wondered 
 at. 
 
 In most parts of China the cultivation of the 
 poppy has been spreading at an alarming rate 
 within our own time. It is especially, however, 
 the interior provinces, shut away by mountain 
 ranges from the commercial highways, that have 
 gone over to poppy growing. The reason is that 
 opium is the one crop that can be got to market 
 without most of its value being eaten up in the 
 cost of transportation. A coolie will trot a picul 
 [133 lbs.] of opium to market over several hun- 
 dred miles of atrocious roads without seriously 
 adding to the cost of the drug that sells for from 
 two to ten dollars a pound. No mere food prod- 
 uct of the same soil could profitably be carried 
 a twentieth of the distance to find a market. To 
 the farmers of Yunnan, Kweichow, Szechuan, 
 Shensi, or Kansuh, opium is the only road to the 
 market, just as in "Washington's time whiskey 
 was the only route by which the trans- Allegheny 
 settlers could get their surplus corn to tidewater. 
 And poppy prohibition stung some of them into 
 resistance just as the Federal taxes on spirits 
 galled the farmers of Western Pennsylvania into 
 the Whiskey Eebellion of 1798. 
 
 When the Empress Dowager took opium by the 
 
GRAPPLE WITH THE OPIUM EVIL 151 
 
 throat half the acreage of certain interior prov- 
 inces was given over to the poppy during its sea- 
 son. So much had the plant cut into the produc- 
 tion of food that the cost of the necessities of 
 life was crowding the local laboring people to the 
 verge of starvation. There was more money in 
 opium than in anything else, and so leases, land 
 rentals and mortgages became adjusted to the 
 lucrative opium crop. To many a farmer the re- 
 linquishment of the poppy would spell blue ruin. 
 The stopping of opium-growing looked about as 
 simple and feasible a proposition as the stopping 
 of corn-growing in the West or of cotton-plant- 
 ing in the South by Act of Congress. Many 
 thought the effete Imperial Government would 
 never show the force and authority necessary to 
 wipe out the chief money-making crop of the peas- 
 antry. 
 
 The ins and outs of the fight on the poppy are 
 full of the Arabian Nights flavor. When the 
 magistrate proclaims the Anti-Opium Edict and 
 announces that he intends to see it obeyed the cul- 
 tivators call upon him in a body, grovel on their 
 faces before him, remind him that he is the 
 "father and mother" of them all and beseech him 
 to save them from ruin by letting them grow their 
 poppy just this season. Of course there is a fat 
 bribe lurking in the background for the official 
 who is open to that sort of persuasion; and un- 
 less the official is a reformer at heart or else 
 afraid of losing his place, he is not wholly ob- 
 
152 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 durate. The salary of the mandarin is nominal 
 and he has somehow to squeeze a living income 
 out of his district. 
 
 But if importunity avails not the farmers re- 
 sort to ruse. They raise the poppy in small 
 patches in out-of-the-way places off the main road 
 — behind walls or trees or up a little side valley — 
 or they cut off the leaves and flowers so the crop 
 cannot be recognized at a distance. They rely 
 on steering-off or bribing shut the eyes of the 
 "runners" sent out from the magistrate's head- 
 quarters to look for infractions of the Edict. If, 
 nevertheless, the mandarin hears of illicit poppy- 
 growing and comes in his big green sedan chair 
 borne on the shoulders of four bearers, with a 
 force of men to pull up the outlawed plants, the 
 tactics suddenly change. He may be met by the 
 men of several confederated villages armed with 
 sickles, pitchforks, and billhooks and intent on 
 mischief. At Wukung shortly before our visit 
 the mob put to flight the satellites" of the magis- 
 trate and even laid rude hands on the official him- 
 self. He took refuge in a temple and sagely let 
 it be known the farmers might grow poppy for 
 all he cared. 
 
 At Kin Kiangai in Kansuh, the prefect who 
 had come to destroy the growing opium was set 
 upon in the official inn and beaten nearly to death. 
 In a few weeks, however, several of the leaders 
 of the riot were beheaded after a public trial and 
 the overawed farmers hastened to dig up their 
 poppy fields. At Wenchow in Chekiang, when the 
 
CO 2 
 
 O 
 
 •a 
 
 SB ni 
 
 O m 
 
 P< 
 
GBAPPLE WITH THE OPIUM EVIL 155 
 
 magistrate appeared with a company of soldiers 
 and proceeded to destroy the evil crop, about two 
 thousand farmers attacked his force and a number 
 of rioters and soldiers were injured. Three hun- 
 dred troops and a gunboat were presently dis- 
 patched to the scene and the law-breakers were 
 quelled. 
 
 Near the capital of Shansi a certain Kung who 
 had fortified himself with drink went about beat- 
 ing a gong and threatening to kill anyone who 
 failed to sow his poppy. When later the magis- 
 trate sent to arrest him he had disappeared. 
 Later on, several women went to his yamen and 
 demanded leave to grow opium. Things looked 
 ugly and the magistrate appealed to the gover- 
 nor of the province who sent him a mandarin with 
 a detachment of three hundred soldiers. Several 
 villages combined and met the force with bucolic 
 weapons in hand. The mandarin became alarmed 
 and ordered his soldiers to fire. After a volley 
 of blank cartridge which only excited derision, 
 the troops fired ball cartridge and fifty fell killed 
 or mortally wounded. Both sides were aghast 
 at the deadliness of the rifles, which the soldiers 
 knew scarcely more about than the peasants. 
 The Chinese soldier is allowed ten cartridges a 
 year for practice, but after the various ' ' squeezes ' ' 
 have been made he gets about three. 
 
 The ordinary penalty for growing poppy has 
 been a fine and in some cases forfeiture of the 
 field. Though no one has been executed for grow- 
 ing poppy, there have been cases in which the 
 
156 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 resisters to authority, after due trial and sentence, 
 have been taken out and decapitated in their own 
 fields and their blood has run down between the 
 rows of the poppy they prized more than the 
 public welfare. 
 
 Since the driving force behind the fight on the 
 poppy comes from above, radiates from the apex 
 of the governmental hierarchy at Peking, the 
 higher officials are, in general, more vigorous in 
 enforcing the Edict than the lower. There are 
 fewer of them; they can be watched, and if they 
 prove lukewarm they can be fined, cashiered, or 
 degraded. In many cases viceroys, governors and 
 taotais have been dismissed for lack of zeal, and 
 new trusty men have been put in their place for the 
 express purpose of putting through the govern- 
 mental policy. But the little local mandarins are 
 too numerous to be generally shaken up or cash- 
 iered. So many of them who have their couple of 
 pipes a day on the sly and want to let things 
 go on in the good old easy way shrink from the 
 risk of enforcing the Edict. Indeed, some of the 
 more enterprising use the threat of enforcing as 
 a club wherewith to blackmail the opium growers 
 and den-keepers. One hears of all sorts of tricks 
 by the small magistrates. One, on learning that 
 his taotai was cruising about the country looking 
 for poppy, saw to it that not one plant was left 
 within sight of the main road; but the taotai 
 foxily took the back road, which was lined with 
 poppy fields, and the tricky magistrate lost his 
 button of rank. 
 
GRAPPLE WITH THE OPIUM EVIL 157 
 
 It is easy for the magistrate when called upon 
 to report to clap his telescope to his blind eye, 
 like Nelson at Copenhagen, and declare, "I see 
 no poppy in my district." So sometimes the 
 viceroy or taotai sends out trusty commissioners 
 — workers in the anti-opium societies that are 
 standing shoulder to shoulder with the govern- 
 ment in the fight — to go up and down looking for 
 poppy. If any is discovered, it will be destroyed 
 and the magistrate will be punished. 
 
 The missionaries are sworn enemies of opium. 
 Indeed, it was the great memorial signed by 1,333 
 missionaries from seven countries which, pre- 
 sented in August, 1906, drew forth in Septem- 
 ber the famous Edict, some of it in the very 
 language of the memorial. It was fitting and 
 natural, then, that one of the roving commissioners 
 in Fokien should call on the secretary of a mis- 
 sionary organization and say, "I am very anxious 
 to find and uproot every poppy field; but I can 
 not go everywhere myself to locate these fields. 
 The local police or 'runners' are very venal and 
 they will find the fields, threaten owners with ex- 
 posure, receive their bribes for keeping still and 
 I shall fail in my work. Now, your missionaries 
 are in every part of the district I am sent to in- 
 spect. Please ask them for me to send to you a 
 report of any opium fields in their neighborhood ; 
 and then you give their reports to me, and I will 
 see that the plants are torn up." Within a few 
 hours a circular letter was on its way to a hun- 
 dred men who could not be bought nor brow- 
 
158 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 beaten, and the astonished missionaries found 
 themselves for once in their lives cogs in the Im- 
 perial Administration of China. 
 
 The completer a blockade, the greater is the 
 temptation to blockade-running. In like manner, 
 as poppy prohibition approaches success and the 
 price of opium jumps to several times the old 
 figure, the schemes to smuggle through a crop 
 become more and more brilliant. Perhaps the 
 most elaborate ruse on record was worked last 
 year in Szechuan, the great interior province 
 that only two years ago was so given over to 
 poppy-growing that food stuffs had reached an 
 almost prohibitive price. The energetic Viceroy 
 stamped out the poppy in every county but one — 
 Fouchou hsien, about four hundred miles from 
 the Viceroy's capital. In this county, seventy 
 miles across, four-fifths of the cultivated area 
 was in poppy last year and, as the price of opium 
 is from five to ten times what it was, the tricky 
 farmers made their fortunes. 
 
 The scheme was worked as follows : In Janu- 
 ary the taotai at Chungking, hearing that poppy 
 had been sown despite the prohibition, visited 
 Fouchou with soldiers, deposed the local magis- 
 trate, fined him seven thousand dollars and sent 
 out the soldiers to cut down the poppy. But the 
 farmers covered with earth the sprouts just com- 
 ing up and where the soldiers did see poppy grow- 
 ing they cut off the tops, but took care to cut 
 high enough not to kill the plant. No doubt there 
 were inducements. When after a week the taotai 
 
GRAPPLE WITH THE OPIUM EVIL 159 
 
 and his minions had departed with a fine sense 
 of duty performed, the farmers hastened to un- 
 cover the poppy sprouts. Then they planted peas, 
 beans, or wheat between the rows so that the 
 growth of these crops should later hide the poppy 
 bloom from any distant view. Of course there 
 was the new mandarin to be reckoned with. But 
 he, either scenting a squeeze for himself or acting 
 under secret orders, put out a very orthodox 
 proclamation that poppy was prohibited and then 
 announced that he would make personal inspection 
 in June. If he found any poppy then he would 
 confiscate the land and have the owners beaten. 
 Dear man, he knew quite well that by June all 
 the poppy crops would be harvested and out of 
 sight ! 
 
 Such wiles can be worked once and no more. 
 The solid fact remains that in opium-steeped 
 Szechuan which was producing a third of the 
 drug produced in China the acreage has been cut 
 down by eighty per cent. No more incontestable 
 evidence of suppression can be offered than the 
 great upward leap in the price of opium. In 
 Honan we found it had doubled in a year and 
 was worth more than its weight in silver. At 
 Taiku in Shansi where no poppy grew last year 
 it was selling for two and a half times its weight 
 in silver and the pipe fiends of the rich old bank- 
 ing families, anticipating a long siege, had laid 
 in a stock to supply their needs for three years. 
 At Hwachow in the same province it was six 
 times as dear as the year before. At Sianfu in 
 
160 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 Shensi it sold at fifty cents an ounce, three or 
 four times the price of the previous year. At 
 Tehyang in Szechuan where not a spear of poppy 
 grows the price was 1,600 cash an ounce as against 
 120 cash two years ago. 
 
 It is a striking fact that in four of the great 
 poppy provinces prohibition has been followed 
 by a season of wonderful harvests which have 
 gone far to compensate the farmers, for their 
 sacrifice and so reconcile them to the reform policy. 
 The_ missionaries see the hand of God in this 
 record wheat crop running from twenty-eight to 
 forty bushels to the acre. This and the restora- 
 tion of so much land to food-growing has made 
 food more plentiful and cheap than it has been 
 for years. New trade is springing up and the 
 Hupeh merchants who were wont to drift every 
 summer through far Kansuh buying the opium 
 crop are now bringing back with them, instead of 
 the enervating drug, goat skins, eagles ' wings, pig 
 bristles, donkey hides, and human hair. In this 
 province the Chinese experts in the agricultural 
 school are by their experiments showing the 
 farmers that they can grow beet root, potatoes and 
 cotton instead of opium. In Fokien farmers are 
 obtaining from our Department of Agriculture 
 cotton seed for experimental planting in fields 
 once given over to poppy growing. 
 
 As earnest of its resolve to shake off its lethargy 
 and make itself fit to speak with the enemy in the 
 gate the Imperial Government proceeded to purge 
 its ranks of opium-smokers. It was felt the 
 
GBAPPLE WITH THE OPIUM EVIL 161 
 
 mandarins must set an example to the common 
 people. In the words of the Edict, "If the offi- 
 cials are fond of the vice, how can they guide 
 the honest folk under them?" So, while officials 
 over sixty years of age were tolerated in case they 
 found themselves unable to throw off the smoking 
 habit, all others were given a stated term within 
 which to break off. If at the end of the term 
 they were not cured, they were obliged to resign. 
 Certain results of these regulations were start- 
 ling. Not only were hundreds dismissed but 
 several high officials — among them two governors 
 and two vice-presidents of Imperial Boards — 
 died in their persevering efforts to conquer the 
 habit. These distressing cases caused the regula- 
 tions to be relaxed so as to allow smokers past 
 fifty to continue in office. 
 
 Nothing turns a man into a liar like the black 
 smoke, and it soon appeared that many an official 
 who could not or would not quit the pipe was 
 concealing his indulgence in order to keep his of- 
 fice and its emoluments. Suspicions and denun- 
 ciations became the order of the day. It was 
 found necessary to clear the situation by establish- 
 ing testing bureaus at Peking and certain pro- 
 vincial capitals. The suspect was obliged to sub- 
 mit himself to a rigid test. After being searched 
 for concealed opium he was locked up for three 
 days in a comfortable apartment and supplied 
 with good food but no opium. If he held out 
 he was given a clean bill of health, for no opium 
 smoker can endure three days' separation from 
 
162 
 
 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 his pipe. The strongest resolution breaks down 
 under the intolerable craving that recurs each 
 day at the hour sacred to the pipe. Eegardless 
 of ruin to his career the secret smoker, be he even 
 a viceroy or a minister, will on bended knees with 
 tears streaming down his cheeks beg the at- 
 tendant to relieve his agonies by supplying him 
 
 captives of the lamp and pipe {Native reform cartoon) 
 
 with the materials for a soothing smoke. Cer- 
 tain highnesses, Princes of the Blood even, were 
 by this means literally "smoked out" and sum- 
 marily cashiered. In the army prohibition has 
 teeth in it, for both officers and common soldiers 
 have been beheaded for obdurate indulgence in 
 the pipe. 
 
 Foochow, long a seat of missionary influence, 
 has made the most spectacular fight on opium. 
 
GBAPPLE WITH THE OPIUM EVIL 163 
 
 When I was there no one under penalty of 
 confiscation of his goods might smoke opium 
 without registering and taking out a permit. 
 Such a permit is issued only to one who can prove 
 that he has the opium-smoking habit. The num- 
 ber of his permit is posted outside the house 
 where he may smoke and he must not smoke any- 
 where else. While he is smoking no one may 
 visit him on any pretext, and after he is through 
 all his paraphernalia — pipe, bowl, lamp, opium 
 box, needle, etc., — must be gathered up and put 
 away. The aim is to lessen illicit smoking and 
 to discourage the indulgence by making it soli- 
 tary. 
 
 Opium may be sold only by licensed dealers 
 who account for and pay a tax on every ounce 
 they sell, and it may not be sold in the place where 
 it is smoked. No one may cook his opium him- 
 self; he must buy it prepared. The amount the 
 registered smoker may buy daily is stated in his 
 permit. The salesman stamps in a blank space 
 on his permit the amount of each purchase and it 
 must never exceed the amount specified. The 
 smoker must renew his permit every three months 
 and each time it must be filled out for a less 
 amount. After buying his opium he must carry 
 it through the street openly. He may not carry 
 it in his pocket, nor wrapped up, nor in his closed 
 hand, nor in a closed box. No one may make or 
 expose for sale the implements for opium smok- 
 ing. The existing supply must suffice and as this 
 is being reduced from time to time by solemn pub- 
 
164 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 lie burnings of stacks of paraphernalia, the basis 
 for the vice is continually being cut away. 
 
 Under the leadership of Lin, grandson of the 
 famous Imperial Commissioner who destroyed 
 the Indian opium, numerous anti-opium societies 
 sprang into existence and cooperated with the 
 officials. Their agents are given full authority to 
 force an entry to any place. Every night their 
 vigilance committees accompanied by policemen 
 to enforce their demands for admittance patrol 
 the -streets on the lookout for illicit selling or 
 smoking. At times they have been attacked and 
 some of them severely beaten but nothing turns 
 them aside. The societies collect and break up 
 paraphernalia seized in their raids or given up by 
 reformed smokers. Prom time to time the stock 
 on hand is stacked up in a ' public place and 
 solemnly burned to signalize the progress of the 
 campaign. Eleven burnings have taken place and 
 the pipes, bowls, plates, lamps, and opium boxes 
 sacrificed by fire are upwards of twenty -five thou- 
 sand. Nothing is spared and no curio seeker need 
 hope to rescue some rare and beautiful pipe by a 
 tempting bid. 
 
 Thanks to these various endeavors the amount 
 of opium sold in Foochow has fallen off four- 
 fifths and the number of opium-smoking permits 
 out now is less than half the number originally 
 issued. Hardly any but low-class people smoke. 
 Since no new registrations are permitted, opium 
 wins no recruits and its finish is in sight. 
 
 Perhaps no city matches Foochow in the clever- 
 
GRAPPLE WITH THE OPIUM EVIL 165 
 
 ness of its campaign. In many places the effort 
 was made to close the shops and dens at a single 
 sweep. But always, after the rejoicings and 
 felicitations had died away, the dens quietly re- 
 opened without the usual signboard and smoking 
 went on as before. Spasms of prohibition have 
 
 DEATH IN THE LAMP OF THE OPIUM SMOKER 
 
 (Native reform cartoon) 
 
 failed and only the process of pinching off the 
 evil by a gradually tightening ligature of permits 
 and licenses has succeeded. 
 
 The story of the fight on the dens is full of in- 
 cidents and alarms. In Anhwei one official went 
 out at night dressed as a coolie and found eight 
 dens filled with people. He had them all bam- 
 booed on the spot, giving the proprietor 300 blows 
 and the smokers 200. The next day not a shop 
 
166 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 was open. In Amoy the sub-prefect led raids on 
 places where opium smoking was going on, private 
 residences as well as shops. The smokers caught 
 were beaten and their appliances destroyed. In a 
 city in Hunan ten dens were secretly reopened. 
 The magistrate had the places raided at night, the 
 shops were confiscated and sold and the proprie- 
 tors were imprisoned, beaten and cangued. The 
 proceeds from the sale of the property went to 
 support schools and police. 
 
 Two years ago the founder of the Anti-Opium 
 League reported: "In one city the doors of 
 seven thousand dens have been shut. In other 
 cities from two to three thousand have been closed 
 while in still other cities a thousand such places 
 have been done away with. In a hundred thou- 
 sand market towns throughout the land the dens 
 and divans have been closed. Altogether between 
 one and two million places for the smoking of 
 opium have been removed." 
 
 Thanks to the posted proclamations and the ex- 
 hortations of officials to headmen and gentry, to 
 the warnings of missionaries, to the soap-box 
 oratory of reformers, to the teachings in the gov- 
 ernment colleges and to the preachments of the 
 rising native press, in many centers a public 
 opinion has been formed which holds up the hands 
 of the government. It is coming to be "bad 
 form" to smoke opium. It is no longer fashion- 
 able to pass around pipes at dinner parties and 
 and young men do not have to acquire the taste 
 as one of the polite accomplishments. A national 
 
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 O 9! 
 
 I 5 ' 
 a) a. 
 
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 ss: 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 A- ' *■ 
 
GRAPPLE WITH THE OPIUM EVIL 169 
 
 conscience is beginning to show itself and the 
 slave of the pipe is put to the blush. It is now 
 worth while to make the smoker carry his pur- 
 chased opium in his open hand and wear his per- 
 mit on a big wooden tablet that he cannot conceal. 
 No one has a greater horror of "losing face" than 
 the Chinese, and there is hope that the rising gen- 
 eration will shrink from opium as they shrink 
 from a cobra. 
 
 Think of it! In thousands upon thousands of 
 communities over this huge empire a battle has 
 been going on. On the one side poppy-growers, 
 den-keepers, dealers and some of the smokers ; on 
 the other, the thoughtful few — reformers and pa- 
 triots who realize China is doomed to be the 
 world's serf if the drug is to go on sapping the 
 strength of the people. Greed versus patriotism 
 — it is just our line-up on liquor, conservation 
 and child labor over again. And the people are 
 coming out of their stupor and their selfishness. 
 They are becoming unified through a common 
 cause. A public has come into being — a public 
 that cares about moral questions. Public opin- 
 ion, which was biting its coral three hundred years 
 ago in the coffee-houses of Shakespeare's London, 
 is taking its baby steps in China. Millions for 
 the first time in their lives have thought, "What 
 is the public good?" And mandarins, dismount- 
 ing from their immemorial high horse, have 
 called together the gentry, the merchants and the 
 headmen of the villages and preached to them of 
 righteousness, judgment and the wrath to come. 
 
170 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 When Peking allowed ten years for the cleans- 
 ing of the land from the opinm habit, it little 
 dreamed of the enthusiastic response its initiative 
 would call forth or of the rising spirit of patriot- 
 ism that would come to its aid. The accomplish- 
 ment of the five years elapsed has surpassed all 
 anticipations. The production of opium in China 
 has certainly been cut down sixty or seventy per 
 cent., and the reform leaders even insist on eighty 
 per cent. Millions of smokers are breaking off 
 because the price of the drug has risen clear out 
 of their reach. 
 
 But every stride towards the suppression of 
 poppy-growing leaves the imported Indian opium 
 a larger factor in the situation. In 1907, when 
 the exports of Indian opium to China aggregated 
 51,000 chests or three thousand four hundred tons, 
 the British Government agreed to reduce this 
 total export at the rate of one-tenth, or fifty-one 
 hundred chests, a year until 1911, with the assur- 
 ance that the reduction would be continued in the 
 same proportion beyond that period provided the 
 Chinese Government had within the period cut 
 down its home production in like degree. 
 
 In May, 1906, the House of Commons unani- 
 mously resolved that the Indo-Chinese opium 
 trade "is morally indefensible" and requested 
 the Government "to take such steps as may be 
 necessary for bringing it to a speedy close." 
 Nevertheless, when, in May, 1910, the Government 
 was asked whether, seeing that the production of 
 opium in China is being largely restricted, the 
 
GKAPPLE WITH THE OPIUM EVIL 171 
 
 British Government felt inclined to respond to 
 the desire of the Chinese Government to shorten 
 the period of nearly eight years during which In- 
 dia is to continue to send opium to China, the 
 Under-Secretary of State for India answered in 
 substance that his Majesty's Government was not 
 disposed to disturb the settlement arrived at. 
 The Christian people of Great Britain replied by 
 making the twenty-fourth of last October, the fif- 
 tieth anniversary of the ratification of the shame- 
 ful treaty of Tientsin, a day of humiliation 
 throughout the British Empire, and of prayer that 
 the opium trade might speedily cease. This dra- 
 matic stroke sent a new reform wave through 
 China and led to the forming of a National Anti- 
 Opium Society with headquarters at Peking. 
 
 The Chinese Senate in a series of most earnest 
 resolutions appealed to the British Government 
 to release China from her treaty obligations to re- 
 ceive Indian opium. It was pointed out that the 
 great crusade was nearing its crisis. The peas- 
 ants were becoming very restive when they saw 
 their little patches of opium destroyed while the 
 foreign merchant vessels laden with tons of the 
 poison are permitted freely to enter Chinese 
 ports. 
 
 This spring England yielded to the accumula- 
 ting pressure and entered into an agreement with 
 China whereby she consents to the imposition of 
 a higher duty on opium, agrees not to convey 
 opium to any province of China which has sup- 
 pressed the cultivation and import of native 
 
172 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 opium, engages to cut down the exports of opium 
 from India until the complete extinction of the 
 trade in 1917, provided China keeps step with her 
 in the suppression of opium growing, and even 
 promises to give the Indian opium trade its coup 
 de grace before 1917 in case proof is received that 
 the production of opium in China has ceased, 
 Thus we are about to see ' ' Finis ' ' written on one 
 of the blackest pages in the history of the rela- 
 tions between East and West. 
 
 The experience of the Chinese with opium 
 shatters the comfortable doctrine that organized 
 society need not concern itself with bad private 
 habits. The hand of government was withheld 
 for a long time in China, and if any salutary 
 principle of self-limitation lurked in the opium 
 vice it ought to have declared itself long ago. If 
 it were in the nature of opium-smoking to confine 
 its ravages to fools and weaklings, if out of each 
 generation it killed off the two or three per cent, 
 of least foresight or feeblest self-control, it might 
 be looked upon as the winnower of chaff; and 
 society might safely concede a man the right to go 
 to the devil in his own way and at his own pace. 
 But the vice is not so discriminating. Like a 
 gangrene it ate deeper and deeper into the social 
 body spreading from weak tissue to sound till the 
 very future of the Chinese race was at stake. 
 Now, liquor is to us what opium is to the yellow 
 man. If our public opinion and laws had been 
 so long inert with respect to alcohol as China has 
 been with respect to opium, we might have suf- 
 
GRAPPLE WITH THE OPIUM EVIL 173 
 
 fered quite as severely as have the Chinese. The 
 lesson from the Orient is that when society real- 
 izes a destructive private habit is eating into its 
 vitals, the question to consider is not whether to 
 attack that habit, but howl 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 UNBINDING THE WOMEN OF CHINA 
 
 A FEW years ago there was a great rising 
 in Kansuh, the northwest province. The 
 Mohammedan rebels closed in on the capital, Lan- 
 chow, slaughtering whom they met. The terrified 
 countrymen fled for life to its protecting walls, 
 but the women, on account of their poor bound 
 feet, fell behind and, failing to arrive before the 
 gates shut, were butchered at the very threshold. 
 While the shrieking women beat despairingly upon 
 the iron-bound doors as they saw their blood- 
 thirsty pursuers drawing near, hundreds of an- 
 guished husbands who had outrun their crippled 
 wives knelt before the English missionary and 
 begged him to urge the Governor to open the gates 
 and let the late-comers in. The missionary ex- 
 plained how this would let the cutthroats in too, 
 and added, "You would have your wives small- 
 footed, wouldn't you? Well, this is your punish- 
 ment. ' ' 
 
 That prince of diplomats, Minister Wu, used 
 to stir his American audiences with the remark, 
 "Yes, we bind our women's feet; but you bind 
 your women's waists. Which is the worse?" 
 And we would look guiltily at one another and say, 
 "Now, there is something in that." The fact is, 
 
 174 
 
UNBINDING THE WOMEN OF CHINA 175 
 
 that with us tight lacing affects only the one in 
 ten who would be fashionable ; while in China foot- 
 binding bore on nine out of ten. And tight lacing 
 is self-imposed ; while foot-binding is a mutilation 
 forced on helpless children. 
 
 The Hakka women of southern Kuangtung do 
 not bind their feet. In Canton, only the daughters 
 of the well-to-do follow the custom and it was five 
 days ere I saw a bound foot. You can go thence 
 up the West Eiver five hundred miles and never see 
 a woman hobble. In the extreme North of China 
 again, the Manchu women leave the foot natural 
 and this, perhaps, is why they are so big, healthy 
 and comely. In the rest of the Empire, foot- 
 binding has been not the folly of the idle, nor the 
 fad of the fashionable, but a custom that bore upon 
 all classes, poor and rich alike. At Kalgan on 
 the Mongolian frontier the field women work kneel- 
 ing, with great pads over the knees to protect them 
 from the damp soil. In three districts in Kansuh, 
 women are still crawling about their houses upon 
 their knees, reduced to the locomotion of brutes to 
 please the perverted taste of men ! In Shansi and 
 Shensi, I saw the women wielding the sickle, not 
 stooping — that would hurt their poor feet too 
 much — but sitting, and hitching themselves along 
 as they reaped. The women had to be carried to 
 the wheat field on wheelbarrow or cart, and their 
 helplessness is such that most of them never in 
 their lives get a mile away from the house to 
 which they were taken as brides. 
 
 In the course of the morning we would meet 
 
176 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 perhaps a thousand men, but not three women. 
 They cannot get from town to town unless car- 
 ried. They hobble about their village a little, 
 steadying themselves by a hand on the house-walls, 
 or leaning on a staff. They move stiff -kneed like 
 one on stilts. In our walk there is a point in the 
 stride when the weight of the body comes upon 
 the ball of the foot and the toes, and at this mo- 
 ment the other leg is bent and swings forward. 
 But in their case, the front part of the foot being 
 useless, the other foot is brought forward sooner, 
 and hence little knee action is necessary. This 
 is why the woman seems tottering on pegs. This, 
 too, is why the muscles of the' calf never develop, 
 from the knee down the legs are broomsticks, and 
 there are folds of superfluous skin. 
 
 They tell us these tiny deformed feet appeal to 
 the aesthetic in man. I doubt it. Take the poor 
 mountaineer of western Shensi. Are we to sup- 
 pose that this frowy dweller in a cave in the loess, 
 this sloven denizen of a thatched hut with dirt 
 floor, smoke-blackened and cobweb-festooned 
 walls, a tattered paper window, a mud kang under 
 a verminous mat and a couple of stools, where 
 the pig and the dog dispute with the fowls the 
 crumbs brushed from the master's grimy table — 
 are we to suppose that this unlettered hind is so 
 sensitive to beauty that at the cost of fighting the 
 battle for existence with a crippled partner at his 
 side, he insists on having a wife who, below the 
 coarse garment of an Indian squaw, exhibits the 
 ' 'golden lily" of a four-inch foot! 
 
UNBINDING THE WOMEN OF CHINA 177 
 
 Is it any wonder that, crippled, crushed by con- 
 ventional restrictions and regarded with contempt, 
 such a woman shows none of the home-making in- 
 stinct that in America brightens even the log hut 
 of the mountain backwoodsman with crazy quilts, 
 rag carpets, tidies and old newspapers scissored 
 into ornamental patterns and pasted around the 
 clock shelf or over the windows? One notes no 
 effort to adorn, no bit of white or color, no sign 
 of "woman's hand." There is not even a fam- 
 ily meal, but each fills his bowl from the rice 
 bucket and lounges about eating when he pleases. 
 Man has confined the woman so closely to the 
 home that she knows not how to make a "home." 
 
 The Chinese have a saying, "For each pair of 
 bound feet there has been shed a tubful of tears." 
 Very likely, since the bandaging begins between 
 the fifth and the seventh years, and, after three 
 years of misery, the front part of the foot and 
 the heel ought to be so forced together that a dol- 
 lar will stick in the cleft. Says Mrs. Little, who 
 fifteen years ago founded the T'ien Tau Hui 
 (Natural Foot Society) : "During these three 
 years the girlhood of China presents a most mel- 
 ancholy spectacle. Instead of a hop, skip, and a 
 jump, with rosy cheeks like the little girls of Eng- 
 land, the poor little things are leaning heavily on 
 a stick somewhat taller than themselves, or car- 
 ried on a man's back, or sitting, sadly crying. 
 They have great black lines under their eyes, and 
 a special curious paleness that I have never seen 
 except in connection with foot-binding. Their 
 
 
178 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 mothers mostly sleep with a big stick by the bed- 
 side, with which to get up and beat the little girl 
 should she disturb the household by her wails; 
 but not uncommonly she is put to sleep in an out- 
 house. The only relief she gets is either from 
 opium or from hanging her feet over the edge of 
 her wooden bedstead so as to stop the circulation. 
 
 They say one girl in ten dies from the process ; 
 but, worse yet, a descendant of Confucius tells 
 me that in Shansi girl babies are sometimes killed 
 • at birth precisely because foot-binding so harrows 
 up the feelings of the parents ! No wonder that 
 on account of exaggerated foot-binding the women 
 there are "extra dirty and extra lazy." They 
 pass their lives on the hang, take no exercise and 
 never get fresh air or a change of scene save on a 
 rare festival day when the well-to-do are driven 
 out in a springless Peking cart. 
 
 One motive only induces a mother to impose 
 such suffering on her little daughter — the fear of 
 her not winning a husband. Until lately only 
 prostitutes and slaves had natural feet, and a 
 girl with such feet stood no better chance of mar- 
 riage than a hunchback. A bridegroom finding 
 that his bride had normal feet when he expected 
 "golden lilies" would be justified by public opin- 
 ion in returning the girl to her parents. But not 
 even the bridegrooms are chiefly to blame. If 
 Jack chose his Jill there would be some chance for 
 the natural-foot girl. Many things enter into sex 
 charm and young men would never have become 
 so conventionalized but that a cherry lip, a roguish 
 
UNBINDING THE WOMEN OF CHINA 179 
 
 eye, or a quick wit might have offset the handicap 
 of a natural foot. But Chinese matches are made 
 entirely by parents, so, in the final analysis, this 
 terrible cross — the heaviest that has ever been 
 laid on woman in a state of civilization — has been 
 laid on the girlhood of China by the denatured 
 taste of middle-aged fathers, each bound that his 
 son shall have as modish a wife as the next one ! 
 
 Thanks to foreign influence, thoughtful men be- 
 came aroused to the evils of the custom and a few 
 years ago an edict of the Empress Dowager 
 commanded the people to abandon it. The mis- 
 sionaries, who used to be tender of native cus- 
 toms, have stiffened their attitude. They preach 
 against it, denounce it in their Bible classes, and 
 some even refuse membership to the woman who 
 presents herself at the altar with bound feet. 
 Nowadays the woman independent enough to turn 
 Christian generally has the courage to unbind. 
 In most mission schools no bound-foot girl is ad- 
 mitted. Others admit them, but the feeling runs 
 so high among the pupils that soon every girl who 
 is not hindered by a conservative relative unbinds. 
 One such school invited the officials and gentry 
 to its closing exercises, consisting of marching, 
 calisthenics and choruses by the pupils. Two of 
 the little girls had bound feet. The contrast be- 
 tween their pathetic helplessness and the lithe 
 grace of the pretty rosy-cheeked girls who wheeled, 
 turned, and tripped their way through the mazes 
 was so impressive that on the spot the mandarin 
 declared, "Foot-binding must go." Within five 
 
180 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 days the gentry — so as not to be beholden to the 
 missionaries — opened a girl's school of their own. 
 Last year the government ordered that no 
 foot-bound girl be received into any of its schools. 
 The npper classes seethe with rebellion against 
 the senseless custom. Progressive ladies throw 
 away bandages, massage their feet with oil, and 
 vie with one another in recovering the natural 
 foot. Think of a group of Chinese women 
 eagerly comparing feet to see whose are larg- 
 est! In China innovators must face insult and 
 abuse. A girl with natural feet venturing on 
 the streets of Wanhsien on the upper Yangtse 
 had her clothes nearly torn from her back. 
 Even the wives of mandarins make ready stock- 
 ings and shoes but put off unbinding until they 
 can find other ladies who will join them. So, for 
 mutual support, the society people in a town fre- 
 quently unite in a "Natural Foot Society" and 
 pledge themselves to unbind and not to bind their 
 daughters' feet. To brighten the matrimonial 
 prospects of such girls, fathers sometimes pledge 
 one another not to betroth their sons to girls with 
 squeezed feet. These local societies enlist influ- 
 ential persons, import neat patterns of Western 
 ladies' shoes, hold meetings, circulate tracts, and 
 encourage officials to make a public stand. The 
 T'ien Tau Hui, which is now run by the Chinese, 
 circulates upwards of thirty pieces of literature, 
 edicts, proclamations, placards, poems, folders; 
 some in local dialect, some in Mandarin, some in 
 "Wenli, the language of scholars; written by offi- 
 
UNBINDING THE WOMEN OF CHINA 181 
 
 cials, by missionaries, by physicians and by na- 
 tive reformers. Eoentgen-ray illustrations of the 
 bound foot and the natural foot, portrayal of the 
 sufferings from bandaging, description of the in- 
 jury to the general health, arguments showing 
 the loss in woman's practical usefulness, com- 
 parison of foot-binding to the mutilations of sav- 
 age tribes — all manner of appeals are made. As 
 ulceration, gangrene and death are tragic inci- 
 dents of the practice, the "anti" movement de- 
 velops warmth and emotion. There are poems on 
 the " sorrows of foot-binding" which move peo- 
 ple to tears, and one of these has been set to music 
 and is sung with great effect. 
 
 Speaking broadly, the reform has not reached 
 farther than the cities and the higher classes. 
 Much of the open country is not yet aware there 
 is such a movement. The poor fear ridicule and, 
 besides, they hope to get a better bride-price for 
 their girls. "Where child-betrothal prevails the 
 parents of a girl feel they have no right to dis- 
 appoint the expectations of the boy's family. 
 Thus people are tied together and each hesitates 
 to follow his common sense. One Fokien village 
 petitioned the Viceroy to command them to unbind 
 their daughters' feet. All disapproved of the 
 cruel custom but no one had the courage to lead 
 the way. 
 
 Chinese from the big coast ports, where West- 
 ern influence is ascendant, will tell you in good 
 faith that foot-binding has nearly died out. The 
 fact is the release of the overwhelming majority 
 
182 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 of its victims is yet to come. Doctor Morrison, 
 China correspondent of the London Times and a 
 recognized authority, after traversing the central 
 provinces of the Empire not long ago recorded it 
 as his deliberate opinion that 95 per cent, of the 
 females of the Empire above the age of eight are 
 still mutilated. I think his estimate too high, but 
 I feel sure that three-fourths of them are still so 
 bound. It is safe to say that at the present mo- 
 ment there are in China seventy million pairs of 
 deformed, aching, and unsightly feet — the sac- 
 rifice exacted of its womanhood by a depraved 
 masculine taste. The wiser anticipate that it will 
 be more than a generation ere the custom dies out. 
 Japan is in the forty-third year of its Era of En- 
 lightenment ; yet outside the cities you meet great 
 numbers of women who at marriage followed the 
 old custom of staining their teeth black in token 
 they have forever renounced the thought of at- 
 tracting the other sex. 
 
 But cotton bandages are not the only bonds on 
 the women of China. 
 
 On a sultry July morning after passing the 
 sedan chairs of an official and his wife I meet a 
 coolie carrying two little cloth-covered boxes bal- 
 anced on the bamboo across his shoulder. In 
 each is a child of five or six. The boy's box has 
 a tiny open window that allows him to get air and 
 see what is passing; but the window of the other 
 box is screened. His little sister has to endure 
 the heat and the dark because she is a female and 
 propriety commands it. Shut away from light 
 
UNBINDING THE WOMEN OF CHINA 183 
 
 and knowledge — how symbolic of the lot of the sex 
 in China! 
 
 If in passing a Shensi shop one looks for a mo- 
 ment at a woman who is not a grandmother, she 
 turns hastily and slips back into the gloom of the 
 women's apartment. To endure the glance of a 
 man is immodest. Towards the close of a stifling 
 day the village women come out of their houses 
 and sit on a mat in front sewing and enjoying the 
 coolness. If one of them sees a foreigner coming 
 she scurries into the house as a frighted quail 
 ducks and dodges into the stubble. Even girls of 
 nine shrink away into the interior of the house if 
 your eye lights on them. "When the harvest is in 
 full swing every hand is needed and by dawn 
 mothers and grandmothers, tads and tots, pile into 
 a cart and are off with the men folks to the field. 
 But never a female of from ten to twenty-five is to 
 be seen, and one might suppose they had all been 
 carried off by a plague. 
 
 On the occasion of a special church service for 
 old people, the hospitable wife of a college presi- 
 dent in Poochow innocently plans to serve the vis- 
 itors tea at her house, the men in one room, the 
 women in another. But it appears that the gath- 
 ering of these aged people under one roof, al- 
 though in different rooms, clashes with Chinese 
 notions of propriety. So far have they carried 
 the estrangement of the sexes. 
 
 A Hakka tells me that among his people the 
 etiquette in the country districts forbids husband 
 and wife to be seen talking together. Thus a 
 
184 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 young man and his wife meet in an empty lane 
 and, supposing themselves unobserved, he asks 
 her for the key of the garden gate. She throws 
 it on the ground without looking at him and, once 
 indoors, rates him roundly for speaking to her in 
 public. ' ' Suppose, ' ' she says, l ' someone had seen 
 us!" 
 
 A woman never thinks of shaking hands with 
 a man. If a gentleman wishes to give a lady a 
 fan, he does not hand it to her lest their hands 
 touchy but places it beside her. This sort of thing 
 was made so much of that about the time of Aris- 
 totle a local prude asked Mencius, "If one's sister- 
 in-law is drowning, ought she to be drawn out 
 with the hand?" To which the sage sensibly re- 
 plied, "It is wolfish not to draw out a drowning 
 sister-in-law. ' ' 
 
 Brothers and sisters are separated at eight or 
 ten years of age and thenceforth associate only 
 under formal conditions. In Chinese literature 
 nothing is suggestive save the love-songs — this 
 because the canons of propriety never gave lati- 
 tude for courting and love making, so they were 
 scandalous from the first. One never sees a du- 
 bious photograph of a Chinese woman, even of a 
 Magdalen. Our illustrated corset and underwear 
 advertisements shock the Chinese, and no lady 
 missionary shows them the photograph of a sister 
 or friend taken in decollete. What notions of our 
 modesty they gather from our undraped statuary, 
 paintings of the nude, theatrical posters, and bal- 
 lets, may be imagined. 
 
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UNBINDING THE WOMEN OF CHINA 187 
 
 Such restrictions might be looked upon as the 
 safeguards by which the women of China are kept 
 as modest and chaste as any women in the world. 
 But, balancing their burdens against those of the 
 men, it is clear that the laws governing woman's 
 life are not for the sake of society or the race so 
 much as for the male sex. In its every chapter 
 Chinese culture is man-made and betrays the naive 
 male view-point. Even the ideographs imbed im- 
 perishably men's contempt for women; thus, re- 
 peat the character for "woman" and you get "to 
 wrangle." Three women together symbolizes 
 " intrigue. " "Woman" under "roof" means 
 "quiet," — man's quiet, mark you, not woman's. 
 In Chinese thought the world is divided between 
 good and evil, Yang and Yin. Darkness is ' ' Yin, ' ' 
 cold is "Yin," earth spirits are "Yin"; and 
 woman is "Yin." Although necessary, she is in- 
 ferior, and must be held under firm control. The 
 sages stressed the danger of letting women become 
 educated and go about freely, for thus might 
 women gain the upper hand and wreck society. 
 
 The most beautiful and characteristic art-form 
 in China — one you find repeated a thousand times 
 — is the roadside "pailow" or ornamental stone 
 portal. It commemorates always some act or life 
 held worthy of universal honor. Now, a girl re- 
 maining for life unwed, in case her betrothed died 
 before their marriage, is considered worthy of a 
 pailow. But they rear no pailow to the youth who 
 remains single out of regard for his lost betrothed. 
 Such constancy would be deemed weak and ridicu- 
 
188 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 lous, rather than noble. For from the male view- 
 point it is fitting that woman be sacrificed to man, 
 but not that man be sacrificed to woman. This 
 was why, some centuries ago, the Chinese held 
 that the widow ought to kill herself at her hus- 
 band's funeral ; whereas the notion that a widower 
 ought to do the same at his wife's funeral never 
 entered the Celestial mind. 
 
 The wife guilty of unfaithfulness is to be stoned, 
 drowned, or hanged. But the men are fair; 
 they don't intend that morality shall be "a jug- 
 handled proposition." So public opinion holds 
 that if a husband be found unfaithful, his wife has 
 a right to scold him good and hard ; and he ought 
 not to beat her for it, either. 
 
 A class of Chinese students were horrified to 
 learn from their teacher that in America a young 
 man proposing marriage to a maiden might be 
 refused. To them the rejection of a man by a 
 mere woman implied a loss of "face" too dreadful 
 to contemplate. 
 
 A young mandarin taking office in another prov- 
 ince may leave his wife behind to be a daughter to 
 his parents in their declining years. Under the 
 circumstances, nobody, not even his wife, thinks 
 the less of him if he consoles himself by taking a 
 "secondary wife" ; but the abandoned wife has no 
 such means of "consoling" herself. Her part is 
 constancy, no matter how long her lord's absence. 
 Chinese law recognizes but one wife, and counte- 
 nances the taking of a "secondary wife" only in 
 case there is no male heir. But the men have 
 
UNBINDING THE WOMEN OF CHINA 189 
 
 come to do about as they please and Chinese tell 
 me that from three to five per cent, have one or 
 more such concubines. One reason is that, while a 
 man may not choose his wife, he can choose his 
 concubine ; so he may have his love affair after all. 
 
 At the height of summer the proportion of men 
 in south and central China who go about in buff 
 to the waist corresponds to the proportion of men 
 in our Gulf States who go about in their shirt- 
 sleeves. The women, on the other hand, never ap- 
 pear save fully clothed and what they suffer in 
 the damp heat of the airless lanes and the low 
 dwellings beggars description. A girl playing 
 tennis with her arm bare to the elbow, is more ex- 
 posed than any woman you will see in China. 
 
 The boy's upbringing is not shaped to please 
 women. But everything in the upbringing of the 
 girl — her foot-binding, " tottering lily" gait, hair 
 dressing, skill in embroidery, innocence, ignorance, 
 obedience — is obviously a catering to the male. 
 No tinselled box of bon-bons is a plainer challenge 
 for favor than is the bride when, on her wedding 
 day, dressed to kill, loaded with all her finery and 
 jewelry, her feet squeezed to their tiniest, her nails 
 manicured, her cheeks rouged, her oiled hair as 
 stiff and elaborate as a blackwood carving, she 
 stands supported on either hand by a maid and, 
 with downcast eye and expressionless face, en- 
 dures the inspection of the wedding-guests. 
 
 The women of the people — boat-women, water- 
 carriers, servants, scavengers, fuel gatherers — 
 come and go freely, but the women of the classes 
 
190 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 rarely go out save in a closed cart or a covered 
 chair. For the most part they pass their lives 
 within four walls, away from the stimulus of street 
 and public resort. They have few acquaintances 
 save relatives and, as life goes on, their circle of 
 friends contracts rather than enlarges. Not for 
 them picnics, excursions and feasts. Social di- 
 version is organized for men, not for women. 
 Toilet, opium-smoking, gossiping with the serv- 
 ants, visits from a few friends — what a round! 
 No wonder the doctors find their worst cases of 
 nervous exhaustion among these victims of empti- 
 ness and repression. 
 
 But Nature punishes man's presumption. 
 Shrewd observers agree that opium-smoking and 
 gambling — both repugnant to the prudence and 
 keen property sense of the race — are the beset- 
 ting vices of the Chinese upper classes because 
 of the vacuity of their lives; and this is the 
 penalty for keeping woman "in her place." The 
 masses have crippled and cowed their women till 
 they can't make a home, and the classes have 
 barred women from their social life. Ignorant 
 of the freshness and charm that lies in the in- 
 nocent association of the sexes, the men sought 
 relief from ennui in pipe and dice and the women 
 were beginning to solace themselves in the same 
 way. 
 
 Among the common people the sexes do not 
 greatly differ in size; but, observing the great 
 numbers of dainty silk-clad ladies going about 
 the Nanking Exhibition, I could not but be struck 
 
>» Itll 
 
 i- ■ ■ " ■ * 'C^S§Sd|^E 
 
 . 
 
 One of the south gates into the Tartar city, Peking 
 
 Temple of Five Hundred Genii, Canton 
 
UNBINDING THE WOMEN OF CHINA 193 
 
 by their smallness and frailness. They were of 
 a stature with American girls of fourteen or 
 fifteen. They seemed hardly larger than the 
 women of Japan, though their men folk are much 
 bigger than the Japanese men. It is not clear 
 whether this diminutiveness is due to a prefer- 
 ence for the little operating through many gener- 
 ations, or to foot-binding, confinement, and lack 
 of exercise during the growing period. 
 
 In the Chinese family male predominance is 
 mitigated by the sanctity of age. After the wife 
 becomes the mother of a boy, her status rises and 
 she is the envy of the women of India and Persia. 
 Filial piety is owed as much to the mother as to 
 the father. The mother, and still more the grand- 
 mother, is nearly co-equal with her spouse in au- 
 thority over her children. The detestable Ori- 
 ental doctrine of the "Three Obediences," that 
 woman is never to be free, but must pass her life 
 under the tutelage, first of father, then of hus- 
 band, and finally of son — does not hold in its last 
 clause for the daughters of Han. 
 
 As for the girl, bride, and wife, however, con- 
 ventionality binds their hearts quite as cruelly 
 as their feet. Because the married daughter 
 with her children is lost to her parents and or- 
 dinarily cannot care for them in their old age, 
 from a tenth to a twentieth of the girl-babies — 
 this on Chinese authority — are abandoned or 
 done away with from economic reasons; but a 
 boy-baby, never. Then, to escape the bother of 
 raising a girl for some other family's benefit, it 
 
194 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 is quite common for the poor to give up their fe- 
 male children to parents who want to rear wives 
 for their sons. There are whole districts where 
 never more than one daughter in a family is 
 reared by her parents. This early separation 
 of a girl from her natural parents is excused on 
 the ground that it spares the shock of separa- 
 tion when she marries! The girl thus reared in 
 the future bridegroom's family is likely to be 
 treated as a drudge and naturally, from the 
 first,- she is subjected to the whims of her in- 
 tended. I heard of a boy of six saying to the 
 nurse-girl who had neglected his intended, aged 
 two, "Why don't you look after my wife better?" 
 In case the boy dies, the "widowed" girl's hand 
 is disposed of by his parents and in the match 
 little is considered save the bride-price. 
 
 Even when the girl is reared at home, she is 
 liable to be betrothed at an early age, and this 
 grotesque practice is fraught with the most sin- 
 ister possibilities. In one case, the son of a na- 
 tive presiding elder was betrothed when a child 
 to a little girl. At the proper age they were mar- 
 ried, and then it was found that the bride was an 
 idiot, her mental growth having been arrested 
 by an attack of scarlet fever years before. After 
 a year the son could stand it no longer and the 
 girl was sent back to her parents. The action 
 was denounced as a breach of custom and the 
 elder had to stand a church trial. He was found 
 guilty, every Chinese voting against him and 
 every missionary for him! Again, the little 
 
UNBINDING THE WOMEN OF CHINA 195 
 
 daughter of a farmer was betrothed to the son 
 of a chair coolie. She showed talent, studied, 
 rose in the schools, was helped through college, 
 took a medical course and became a successful 
 physician. Nevertheless, when the time came, she 
 was obliged by inexorable custom to bow to the 
 arrangement made for her in infancy and ruin 
 her life by marrying a dolt too worthless to hold 
 even a chair-bearer's job. 
 
 There is pathos in the rising protest of the Chi- 
 nese girl against early betrothal. She does not 
 resent being yoked for life to a man she has never 
 seen. But she does beg of her parents a hus- 
 band who is fit for her now and a family-in-law 
 that is now equal in social standing to her own, 
 instead of being handed about in pursuance of a 
 bargain entered into years before when no one 
 could tell what her intended or his family might 
 become. 
 
 At best the maiden's marriage is arranged for 
 her with a young man eligible so far as the pro- 
 fessional match-maker can be trusted; and there 
 is a proverb, "Ten match-makers, eleven liars." 
 The horoscopes of the young people are com- 
 pared, a card bearing the name and age of the 
 girl lies for three days in front of the suitor's 
 ancestral tablets, and if no ill omen appears she 
 is taken. Not until the wedding does either 
 know the other's name or look upon the other's 
 face. No wooing, no love-making, no romance. 
 
 Are they happy? Some observers — Germans 
 and English, mark you, not American — judge that 
 
196 t THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 such matches turn out as well as our own matings 
 of free choice. They argue from the general 
 domestic peace, and from the distress some hus- 
 bands show when their wives are about to un- 
 dergo a hospital operation. At such a crisis the 
 hidden affection meets the eye. So they infer 
 that the adaptability of the sexes in heart matters, 
 when their expectations have not been keyed 
 high, is greater than we have supposed. Now, 
 it must be acknowledged that how happy we can 
 be in our lot depends much on our notion of hap- 
 piness. Miss Plumblossom has never included 
 romantic love, tenderness and chivalry in her 
 idea of a good husband; and so, provided he 
 doesn't beat her and she has children upon whom 
 she can lavish the pent-up wealth of her affection, 
 she may find life tolerable. 
 
 Still, forcing the natural feelings is a danger- 
 ous business. The self-sacrifice and self-efface- 
 ment that preserves domestic harmony in China 
 is borne chiefly by the wives. The constant ef- 
 fort at self-control and the ruthless repression 
 of the feelings cost something. "Witness the nu- 
 merous suicides of young wives. They throw 
 themselves into wells or canals, or swallow raw 
 opium. When the opium is harvested, there is 
 a crop of female suicides. Insanity is distress- 
 ingly frequent among women. The prevalence 
 of neurasthenia among ladies refutes the saying 
 that the Chinese have no nerves. Doctors as- 
 sert there is much heart lesion among women 
 owing to emotional stress and sorrowing. The 
 
UNBINDING THE WOMEN OF CHINA 197 
 
 faces of wives are stamped with pain, patience 
 and gentle resignation rather than happiness. 
 Chinese women tell me the confidences made to 
 them and their friends betray widespread unhap- 
 piness. The custom of "crying one's wrongs" 
 is significant. When a woman simply cannot 
 stand it any longer, she proclaims her woes to 
 the world. A thousand miles up the Yangtse 
 I saw the wife of a tea-house keeper stand on the 
 bank and yell to hundreds of grinning sampan 
 people her opinion of the man. Hurrying 
 through a hamlet late at night we came upon a 
 solitary woman ululating her grievances to high 
 heaven. Lights were out and all were asleep 
 but she stood, lonely and pathetic, in the dark- 
 ness repeating her cry, and took no notice of us 
 by-passers. 
 
 The disposal of superfluous female infants is a 
 great strain on the mothers. In the presence of 
 a lady missionary whom they supposed ignorant 
 of their dialect a number of country-women fell 
 to confessing the number of girl babies they had 
 made away with. Finally she could contain her- 
 self no longer and cried, "Oh, how could you be 
 so cruel !" The women turned on her with al- 
 most savage vehemence. "Do you think we 
 didn't care? Would we do it if we didn't know 
 the new one would take the rice out of the mouths 
 of the others?" "Since then," the lady added, 
 "I appreciate how infanticide is forced on par- 
 ents by economic pressure." 
 
 For the Chinese bride her mother-in-law is no 
 
198 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 joking matter. At sixteen or seventeen the girl 
 becomes virtually the slave of this woman, and 
 her husband dares not utter a word on her be- 
 half. When the baby comes, it is not hers to 
 rear; it is to be brought up just as her husband's 
 mother says. The educated Christian girl is 
 loath to marry into a heathen family for fear of 
 having to misrear or lose her children under the- 
 dictate of an ignorant and superstitious mother- 
 in-law. The situation is really impossible and 
 breeds dark tragedies. A woman doctor tells 
 of being summoned in haste by a frantic husband 
 and finding the young wife in travail with her 
 mother-in-law sitting on her. The girl was roll- 
 ing her eyes, and if the harridan had not been 
 pulled off she would have died in a few minutes. 
 Still, there are checks on a harsh mother-in-law. 
 If the wife's family is strong, they can make her 
 much trouble. Then the threat of suicide is 
 potent, for one who commits suicide on your ac- 
 count can haunt you. Besides it makes a great 
 scandal. A friend of mine saw a woman whose 
 daughter-in-law had killed herself on her account 
 beat the dead girl's face in impotent rage at be- 
 ing thus foiled and brought to shame. 
 
 In the West suicides are three or four times 
 as frequent among men as among women, part 
 of the difference answering no doubt to a real 
 difference in the psychology of the sexes. That 
 among the Chinese suicide is five or ten times 
 as frequent among females as among males 
 throws a piercing ray of light on the happiness 
 
UNBINDING THE WOMEN OF CHINA 201 
 
 of women in a man-made world. Most of these 
 are young married women and young widows. 
 The former take their lives because they are un- 
 happy, the latter usually because they think it 
 the fitting thing to do. (For, mark you, it is not 
 yet two centuries since it was decreed that offi- 
 cial honors were no longer to be conferred upon 
 widows who slew themselves at their husband's 
 death.) Now, the bonds that drive the brides 
 to desperation and the ideas of wifely propriety 
 that impel young widows to make away with 
 themselves originated in the minds of men and 
 have never been molded by so much as a feather's 
 touch by the sex they affect. This great pre- 
 ponderance of female suicide is a grim com- 
 mentary on the theory that the happiness of 
 women lies in their guardianship by the other sex. 
 Nothing could be plainer than that woman's 
 lot in China is not of her own fashioning, but has 
 been shaped by male tastes and prejudices, with- 
 out regard to what the women themselves think 
 about it. The men have determined woman's 
 sphere as well as man's. The ancient sages — 
 all men — molded the institutions that bear upon 
 women, and it is male comment, not really pub- 
 lic opinion, that enforces the conventionalities 
 that crush her. By wit, will, or worth, the in- 
 dividual woman may slip from under the thumb 
 of the individual man — there are many such 
 cases — but never could the sex free itself from the 
 domination of the male sex. The men had all 
 the artillery — the time-hallowed teachings and 
 
202 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 institutions, — and all the small arms — current 
 opinion and comment. Cribbed and confined, the 
 women were without schooling, locomotion, ac- 
 quaintance, conversation, stimulus, contact with 
 affairs, access to ideas, or opportunity to work 
 out their own point of view. 
 
 It is not that the individual man selfishly rules 
 the woman. It is not even that the one sex has de- 
 liberately brought the other into subjection. It 
 is rather that men, regarding themselves as the 
 "Yang" principle of the species, and perfectly 
 sure * of their own superiority in wisdom and 
 virtue, have settled what is fit and proper, not 
 only for themselves, but for women too. 
 
 It all came out beautifully in a conversation I 
 had with a Chinese gentleman who is promoting 
 a revival of Confucianism. I admitted that the 
 Chinese have better ideas than we as to what 
 children owe their parents. "Still," I added, 
 "you '11 admit, we have juster ideas as to the 
 treatment of women." "Not at all," he replied. 
 "The place Confucianism assigns to women is 
 more reasonable than that of the Christian West. ' ' 
 
 "But why should women be so subordinated?" 
 
 "Because women are very hard to control. 
 You can never tell what they will be up to. At 
 the bottom of every trouble, there is a woman." 
 
 "Isn't that due," I asked, "to your depriving 
 women of the educational opportunities which 
 they once enjoyed?" 
 
 "No, it was precisely experience of the dif- 
 ficulty of keeping women under control when 
 
UNBINDING THE WOMEN OF CHINA 203 
 
 they are educated that led our forefathers to les- 
 sen their schooling. ' ' 
 
 "Then you would shut girls out of school ?" 
 
 "No, I wouldn't go so far," he replied. "Let 
 them be taught to read and write. ' ' 
 
 "Nothing more?" 
 
 "Possibly. But it should be very different 
 from the education given to boys. ' ' 
 
 "For example?" 
 
 "Why, teach the girl household arts and ethics 
 so she will know her duties as daughter, wife and 
 mother. ' ' 
 
 "Would you teach her her rights as well as her 
 duties?" I insinuated. 
 
 "No, no. That is quite unnecessary." 
 
 My frank Confucian went on to deplore that 
 nowadays in Hong Kong Chinese ladies come 
 and go in the streets "just like harlots." 
 " Surely," I protested, "such freedom makes 
 them happier and that is something." "No, the 
 unity of the family should be put above individual 
 happiness, and that unity is found in the unop- 
 posed will of the husband." 
 
 How Roman it all is — just the views that Livy 
 puts in the mouth of Cato the Elder I 1 Man, the 
 
 i" Recollect all the institutions respecting the sex, by which 
 our forefathers restrained them and subjected them to their hus- 
 bands; and yet, even with the help of all these restrictions, they 
 can scarcely be kept within bounds. If, then, you suffer them to 
 throw these off one by one, to tear them all asunder, and, at last, to be 
 set on an equal footing with yourselves, can you imagine that they 
 will be any longer tolerable? Suffer them once to arrive at an 
 equality with you, and they will from that moment become your 
 superiors." 
 
204 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 main stem of the race, woman, a "side issue," as 
 Prentice put it. When, a couple of years ago, 
 the prefect proposed a school for girls at Feng- 
 siangfu, an old scholar exclaimed "Open a girls' 
 school ! "When women take to reading, what will 
 there be for the men to do f ' ' 
 
 Of course, hearing men harp on it so much, 
 Chinese women come to believe they are stupid 
 and need control. Still, some find their way to 
 a sense of grievance, even when no foreigner has 
 put into their heads the idea of "rights." 
 'Some years ago nine Cantonese maidens 
 drowned themselves together one night in the 
 Pearl River rather than accept the lot of the wife. 
 In three districts in central Kuangtung, where a 
 girl can always get work at silk-winding, thou- 
 sands of girls have formed themselves into anti- 
 matrimonial associations, the members of which 
 refuse to live with the husband more than the 
 customary three days. Then they take advantage 
 of their legal right "to visit mother" and never 
 return save on certain days or after a term of 
 years. If the parents attempt to restore the run- 
 away bride to her husband she drowns herself or 
 takes opium ; so parents and magistrates have had 
 to let the girls have their way. By presenting 
 herself in her husband's home on certain festival 
 days the bride keeps her wifely status, and if her 
 spouse takes to himself a more tractable mate, 
 she becomes the "number one" wife, and the mis- 
 tress of the other. 
 
 It is a striking illustration of what women can 
 
UNBINDING THE WOMEN OF CHINA 205 
 
 do when they have a chance at self-support. In 
 general, however, it is foreign influence rather 
 than industrial opportunity that is emancipating 
 the women. Christianity is doing its share. 
 The reading of the New Testament exalts women 
 in their own eyes and in the eyes of others. The 
 radiant peace and uplift of soul I have seen on 
 some Christian faces reveal what a moral treasure 
 the Chinese have kept locked up all these cen- 
 turies. I do not wonder that villagers took a 
 certain saintly Bible woman to be ' ' some relative 
 of God." The missionary home is a silent but 
 telling object lesson. After a woman missionary 
 had been talking to a group of women about 
 Heaven, one of them said, "It would be heaven 
 enough for me to have my husband walk beside 
 me on the street as yours does with you." The 
 converts are taught to cherish their daughter and 
 to give her schooling. They are forbidden to 
 override her will in marriage and are urged to 
 inquire into the young man's disposition and 
 to consider whether he can make her happy. 
 The girl is to see him, or at least hear all 
 about him, and may reject him without incurring 
 reproach. 
 
 As in foot-unbinding, so in mind-unbinding, 
 the missionaries have been pioneers. The early 
 pupils of their schools are now grandmothers, 
 while the first class of non-mission girls was 
 graduated only three years ago. At first, to be 
 sure, they administered knowledge in homeopathic 
 doses. In the early years of one school the girls 
 
206 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 were taught to read, but not to write, lest they 
 pen notes to the boys ! In the same school they 
 taught just Bible, and the girls memorized great 
 quantities. The pupils could repeat you Genesis 
 by the hour, skipping from Ch. IX to Ch. XVII, 
 if you liked, and taking up the thread again with 
 perfect readiness. Twenty years ago the course 
 was enriched by natural theology, Church history, 
 arithmetic, geography and music. Five years ago 
 English and history were added. In another 
 school — British — I found the girls feasting from 
 the following menu: "Forenoon — New Testa- 
 ment, text with exposition. Afternoon — Old 
 Testament history." 
 
 The missionaries feel the ground swell of the 
 great "woman's movement" at home and their 
 ideas are continually broadening. Granted they 
 have taught the girls obedience and are proud 
 when parents report that their daughter from the 
 mission school is the most dutiful of their children. 
 But every lady principal of a mission school is at 
 heart a sworn enemy of the Chinese subjection of 
 women. That is not her role, of course, and she 
 will fence with you at first; but finally, if you 
 seem trustworthy, she will own up. She does not 
 egg the girls on to assert this or that right, but 
 she strives to build up in them a personality that 
 will not accept the old status. One doctor in 
 charge of a women's medical school exhorts her 
 young women to shun marriage on the present 
 terms. When a mission-school girl horrifies her 
 family by refusing to abide by a child-betrothal, 
 
No chance for them 
 
 Joss house, Foochow, and Baby Tower where girl infants 
 are thrown when not wanted 
 
UNBINDING THE WOMEN OF CHINA 209 
 
 her teachers, though never interfering, give her 
 "moral support." 
 
 Education, of course, delays marriage. Ten 
 years ago, most of the girls entered the high 
 school betrothed, but now they are teasing their 
 parents to give them an education first, and many 
 girls of nineteen or twenty are not yet engaged. 
 One begins even to meet the Chinese school-mis- 
 tress, who teaches awhile before marrying. "With 
 the establishing of numerous schools for girls by 
 the Chinese themselves within the last five years, 
 there has come a great demand for educated 
 Chinese women, and the graduates of the mission 
 schools are sought as teachers, matrons, and even 
 principals. Fathers who turned a deaf ear to 
 their daughter's plea for an education are relent- 
 ing now that they hear of the fine salaries educated 
 young women are bringing to their parents. 
 
 The taste for the prettyfied, insipid doll-wife is 
 going out wherever the other type is known. The 
 college young man prefers an educated wife and in 
 the matrimonial market the girls with schooling go 
 off like hot cakes. The lady principal, who used 
 to receive such inquiries only from parents, is now 
 frequently called upon by very polite young men 
 who inquire minutely into the scholarship and 
 accomplishments of this or that pupil. Can she 
 sing 1 ? Can she play the piano? Does she know 
 English? Formerly the inquirer mentioned the 
 girl as "the daughter of So-and-So"; now he 
 speaks of her as ' ' Miss So-and-So. ' ' The smitten 
 never addresses himself directly to the charmer, 
 
210 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 but his parents negotiate with her parents and 
 presently the wedding cards are out. 
 
 Inch by inch the old customs are yielding. 
 Courtship is unheard of ; but here and there young 
 people converse under parental eyes. Even when 
 they may not talk together, they are permitted 
 to see each other across a room; or photographs 
 are exchanged. In any case, the young people in- 
 sist on knowing what kind of a parti is proposed 
 for them. The rearing marriage and the child- 
 betrothal have vanished from enlightened circles. 
 Strange to relate, the high school girls do not 
 greatly object to a match arranged for them. 
 What they are wildly athirst for is not Romance 
 so much as Freedom. Freedom from parents, 
 from husband, from mother-in-law, from strang- 
 ling conventionalities. They hear of the larger 
 life open to their sisters of the West and they 
 wildly beat their tender wings against the gilded 
 wires of their cage. 
 
 The new opportunities alter the relation of 
 mother to daughter. The mother is old-fashioned 
 and no mentor for Angelina. As an educated 
 young lady put it, ' * Really, it is the daughter who 
 must act the chaperone. Mother's ideas of pro- 
 priety and conversation are so different from 
 those of the new conditions that I am having con- 
 tinually to make suggestions to her." 
 
 In Tientsin, Hong Kong and Shanghai, girls of 
 the well-to-do classes imagine that "Western 
 style" means pure freedom, and do not realize 
 the unspoken restraints our young people are 
 
UNBINDING THE WOMEN OF CHINA 211 
 
 under. These " liberty girls," as they are called, 
 think they must settle their heart affairs by them- 
 selves, quite unaware how often parental guid- 
 ance prevents our daughters making a mistake. 
 Sometimes, indeed, to get any freedom at all in 
 heart matters, the girl has to elope, and naturally 
 such matches rarely turn out well. One school- 
 girl, in order to avoid having a distasteful mar- 
 riage forced upon her, ran off to Japan with two 
 students and from there wrote her parents that she 
 had n't yet made up her mind which she loved best 
 and would marry ! 
 
 Towards spring the water of a frost-bound 
 Northern lake becomes so deoxygenated that if a 
 hole is cut in the ice the fishes press so frantically 
 to the life-giving air that some are pushed out on 
 to the ice. Nevertheless, oxygen is good for fish. 
 Just so, when foreign example breaks a hole in 
 the rigid custom that confines Chinese woman- 
 hood, the eager rush of young women toward the 
 life-giving liberty and knowledge may leave some 
 of them clear outside their native element. 
 Nevertheless, liberty and knowledge are good for 
 young women. 
 
 The schools under missionary control, however, 
 meet the current need better than the govern- 
 ment schools. A noble Chinese woman physician, 
 a graduate of the University of Michigan, tells 
 me that at their own girls ' schools the girls learn 
 license rather than liberty. She makes the point 
 that only a Christian education gives the girls the 
 moral restraints that are necessary if they are to 
 
212 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 be free from the old tutelage. She is right. It is 
 a trying world the educated Chinese girl enters, 
 for the young men are far from ready to appre- 
 ciate her or show her the delicacy and chivalry that 
 environ our American girls. "How long will it 
 be," I asked a Manchu lady familiar with life East 
 and West, "before your mothers will let their 
 daughters go buggy-riding of an evening with 
 your college boys?" Like a flash came the an- 
 swer, l ' A hundred years ! ' ' 
 
 Among the thoughtful the conviction spreads 
 that China can never be great while the mothers 
 of each generation are left ignorant and uncared 
 for. They are coming to realize the role of the 
 mother in molding the character of her sons. 
 China needs, above all, men, of a high unwaver- 
 ing integrity, and she will not grow them while 
 the impressible boyhood years are passed in 
 the company of an unschooled, narrow-minded, de- 
 spised, neglected woman. Certain missionaries 
 overlooked, at first, the strategic position of the 
 mother, and were presently horrified to find the 
 children of Christian men reverting to heathenism 
 because their mothers had been left untaught ! 
 
 We know that the mothers of Confucius and 
 Mencius had a great share in forming the charac- 
 ter of their illustrious sons, and it is significant 
 that the Chinese have brought forth not one 
 great man since they took to binding the feet and 
 the minds of their daughters. All who work 
 with the women of the yellow race are enthu- 
 siastic over their possibilities. But no testi- 
 
One of two hundred day schools organized by a 
 Foochow missionary 
 
 A bride's canopy, Peking 
 
UNBINDING THE WOMEN OF CHINA 215 
 
 monials are needed. Their faces are full of 
 character — as fine as the faces of women any- 
 where. All the railroads that may be built, all 
 the mines that may be opened, all the trade that 
 may be fostered, cannot add half as much to the 
 happiness of the Chinese people as the cultiva- 
 tion of the greatest of their " undeveloped re- 
 sources ' ' — their womanhood. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 CHEISTIANITY IN CHINA 
 
 IT was vesper service at the Lama temple in 
 Peking. A score of young priests, with 
 shaven polls, sat on low benches amid the shining 
 altars, images, and candelabra, while the sweet 
 incense wreathed and rose before the great golden 
 Buddha. Cross-legged on a dais, sat the leader, 
 a wrinkled Thibetan, arrayed in gorgeous vest- 
 ments of gold brocade. Before each cantor lay a 
 pile of long parchment slips, containing the even- 
 ing liturgy in Thibetan characters. The words 
 of the service were chanted rapidly in unison, in 
 a deep, musical tone, and the effect was like the 
 droning of bees from a thousand hives. Ever 
 and anon came bursts of wild clangor that went 
 through one like a knife; cymbals would clash, 
 drums would throb, and horns of fantastic 
 Chaldean shape would snarl. It was a tapestry, 
 — for the ear, not for the eye, — weird arabesques 
 of instrumental sound thrown against a back- 
 ground of deep droning. 
 
 Over against these set the achievements of a 
 certain Swedish-American missionary I found in 
 a district town in the most opium-ridden and foot- 
 bound province of China. After eight years of 
 work he has gathered a band of two hundred 
 
 216 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA 217 
 
 Chinese Christians, most of them men and from 
 the country. Thirty are school-teachers, of 
 whom twelve have the first degree. Many of 
 his members are prominent people, though none 
 are officials. The mandarins are very friendly, 
 but he is slow to cultivate intimacy with them, 
 lest his converts who have lawsuits should im- 
 portune him for his " influence." He allows 
 none of his flock to disobey the Anti-Opium Edict, 
 and lately he cast out twenty members for grow- 
 ing poppy. Recently he had a revival in his 
 church, and many openly confessed their sins 
 and made reparation. There is nothing flabby 
 about the Christianity that prompts men to lay 
 bare murder and robbery. Being a follower of 
 Luther, he does not require his flock to keep the 
 Sabbath in the Puritan sense. He maintains an 
 opium refuge, where in the winter one hundred 
 and sixteen smokers were treated from a month 
 to six weeks, and most were permanently cured. 
 There is a school where thirty girls follow a nine- 
 years course. At his instigation, a "natural- 
 foot" society was formed among the leading 
 Chinese, and two hundred non-Christian girls 
 and women have unbound their feet. Who will 
 deny that this is "religion pure and undefiled'"? 
 The religious plane of the Chinese will hardly 
 command the admiration of any Occidental, how- 
 ever catholic his sympathy. The followers of 
 Confucius, it is true, promulgate a pure and 
 lofty morality, but Confucianism is not really a 
 religion at all, but an ethical system, and has, 
 
218 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 moreover, little authority outside the learned 
 clan. Taoism, starting as mysticism, has degen- 
 erated into a hotch-potch of the crudest and 
 tawdriest superstitions. As for the Buddhism 
 of China, let no one look to find in it the golden 
 thoughts of the Great Teacher or even the spir- 
 itual elevation of the Buddhism one finds to-day 
 in Burma and Japan. To the spirit of the Sutras 
 it is about as foreign as the Coptic church 
 of Abyssinia is to the spirit of the Gospels. Not 
 one„ priest in a hundred has any glimmering of 
 the Eight-fold Path. The nunneries have a very 
 bad name. Only now and then in the monaster- 
 ies does one come upon reminiscences of the great 
 traditions of the faith. 
 
 To the ranging eye, the fruits brought forth 
 by the religions of China appear to be number- 
 less temples, dingy and neglected; countless 
 dusty idols portraying hideous deities in violent 
 attitudes expressive of the worst passions; an 
 army of ignorant priests, as skeptical as Koman 
 augurs, engaged in divining, exorcising, and 
 furnishing funeral ceremonies for gain; and a 
 laity superstitious and irreverent, given to per- 
 functory kotowing and prayer prompted by the 
 most practical motives. The passing traveler 
 notes sacred trees with bits of red cloth flutter- 
 ing from the twigs; brick screens built just in- 
 side gateways and doorways to check the invisi- 
 ble, rushing demons of the air; wayside shrines 
 ever redolent with lighted joss-sticks left for 
 good luck by passing coolies; cliffs carved into 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA 219 
 
 hundreds of niches, each sheltering the effigy of 
 some god or saint; idols with faces repulsive 
 from the sacrificial blood smeared on their 
 lips; jutting boulders and fantastic rocks black- 
 ened with incense smoke and stuck up with the 
 feathers of sacrificed fowls; and house-boats 
 protected at every point by a smoking joss-stick, 
 with the bow red with the blood of the cock killed 
 at the outset of the voyage. 
 
 In a temple in Soochow one sees in a corner 
 a great heap of broken idols, the massive frag- 
 ments showing the sticks, straw, and mud out of 
 which they were made. Thereby hangs a tale 
 that might have been brought to Rome from 
 Friesland in the eighth century. Not long ago 
 a reforming official, observing that idols had be- 
 come a ruinous infatuation among his people, 
 drew a great crowd by announcing a duel to the 
 death between himself and the idols. Putting 
 one end of a rope about his own neck and the 
 other about the neck of a big idol, he said, "If 
 the idol is stronger than I am, I shall be stran- 
 gled; but if I am the stronger, the idol will fall." 
 Trusting to his bull neck, the mandarin pulled, 
 the idols tumbled, and since then the spirit of St. 
 Thomas is abroad in Soochow. 
 
 At this moment the religious impact of the 
 West upon China is delivered by fourteen hun- 
 dred Roman Catholic missionaries and four thou- 
 sand Protestant missionaries, of whom, how- 
 ever, fully a thousand are wives, and therefore 
 not always free to do full work. The Roman 
 
220 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 Catholic work is three centuries old, and more 
 than a million baptized Chinese are in its fold. 
 The Protestant work is the growth of a century, 
 and about half a million are within its churches, 
 although its communicants do not exceed two 
 hundred thousand. Most of what follows re- 
 lates to Protestant missions, for the writer has 
 had little opportunity to come into touch with the 
 Eoman Catholic corps. 
 
 To the untutored Chinamen the presence of the 
 missionary is a puzzle. They simply cannot im- 
 agine human beings exiling themselves from their 
 native land for the love of men on the other 
 side of the globe. So they frame sundry theories 
 to explain the thing to themselves. One the- 
 ory is that the missionaries are secret political 
 agents bent on gaining an influence over the 
 Chinese, and then swaying them to the advan- 
 tage of their respective governments. Only of 
 late have the natives come to realize that the 
 strangers are not sent by their governments, but 
 by religious groups. According to another the- 
 ory, China is so excellent and renowned that 
 the red-haired barbarians come to live there for 
 the mere pleasure of it. As for their self-deny- 
 ing works of benevolence, these are supposed to 
 be prompted by the desire to acquire merit. 
 
 Unlike the Mohammedan end of Asia, the Far 
 East is not intense in its religious beliefs. The 
 Chinese are Gallios in such matters, and their 
 occasional mobbings of missionaries are not in 
 the least outbreaks of fanatical intolerance. They 
 
tllf' IBS. *-! 
 
 u 
 
 High altar of a Buddhist temple of the 
 Kushan Monastery 
 
 Temple in a gorge, Kushan Monastery 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA 223 
 
 are in part explosions of anti-foreign feeling 
 generated in this most patient of peoples by 
 opium wars, the enforced opium trade, the com- 
 pulsory opening of ports, extra-territoriality, 
 high-handed seizures of territory, and like buf- 
 fets to national pride inflicted by the mailed fist 
 of Western powers. The missionary has no 
 part in these, but when the black thunder-clouds 
 of hatred roll up, he, as the nearest foreigner, 
 receives the lightning stroke. Other violences 
 against him have been deliberately stirred up by 
 the slanders set afloat among the credulous 
 masses by the literary and official class, who fear 
 lest the missionary introduce ideas which will 
 make it harder to maintain the old system of 
 governing and exploiting the common people. 
 But for what is miscalled "forcing Christianity 
 on China," — by which is meant requiring the 
 intolerant Imperial Government to allow teach- 
 ers of religion to travel, live, and work un- 
 molested in all parts of the Empire, — the selfish 
 statecraft of the rulers would have deprived the 
 people for generations of what the missionaries 
 bring them. 
 
 As the Chinese come to know the strangers 
 better, and to perceive the pure motives behind 
 their gentle invasion, they discriminate more 
 sharply between them and those aggressive white 
 men who are in the Far East not to help China, 
 but to make something out of her. The last five 
 years have been marked by a rapidly growing 
 entente cordiale between the missionaries and the 
 
224 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 better elements in Chinese society. The assail- 
 ants of opium and foot-binding gratefully own 
 their debt to the strangers. One mandarin went 
 circuit-riding through his district with the local 
 missionary, both speaking for opium reform 
 from the same platform. The friends of the new 
 education realize how much China owes to the 
 mission schools, which have long been turning 
 out men fitted to communicate Western learning. 
 Lately one often hears of high officials honoring 
 the commencement exercises of such schools 
 with their presence and words. One provincial 
 assembly attended a church conference in a 
 body, and its vice-president and secretary spoke 
 fearlessly for their Christian faith. In the in- 
 terior, where there are no traders to inspire dis- 
 like for the white man, the missionary often finds 
 the mandarin not only appreciative, but even 
 sympathetic and friendly. 
 
 Very striking is the contrast between the Eng- 
 lish mission work and the American. The Eng- 
 lish missionaries center their efforts largely on 
 translating and evangelizing, while the Ameri- 
 cans have done much in the medical and educa- 
 tional fields as well. In the higher education 
 their lead is almost a monopoly. Of fourteen 
 Protestant mission "colleges" and "universi- 
 ties," only one is maintained by the British; the 
 rest are American or union. The English mis- 
 sionary at the head of Shansi University de- 
 clares: "British missionaries, with British con- 
 servatism, have held too much to the idea that 
 

 A wealthy Shansi family of foreig'iiizing tendencies 
 
 Monks of Kushan Monastery 
 
CHEISTIANITY IN CHINA 227 
 
 their office is to evangelize and heal, not to en- 
 lighten the mind. But the American has also 
 applied himself directly to the root of China's 
 pressing temporal need, and spent a hundred 
 times as much money — nay, more — on education 
 as British Missions have done." 
 
 This difference betrays a profound contrast in 
 social creed. Most of the British missionary 
 societies, while solicitous for the eternal welfare 
 of the Chinese, have no thought whatever of rais- 
 ing him intellectually or socially. The Ameri- 
 can societies, with their democratic faith in men, 
 aspire to help the Chinese upward along all lines. 
 One reason, perhaps, for the apathy of the Brit- 
 ish, is the failure of university opportunities to 
 Christianize the Hindu students in India, and 
 the trouble that has been stirred up there by 
 educated Hindus. But one also sees that the 
 British simply do not believe in education as the 
 Americans do. 
 
 It is certain that the American missionaries, 
 by their literary and educational labors, are do- 
 ing far more to Christianize Chinese public opin- 
 ion, laws, and institutions, than their equally 
 learned and devoted English brethren. All 
 groups, however, recognize how hopeless it is to 
 convert the Chinese by missionary preaching. 
 The West cannot send out men enough to evan- 
 gelize a population so vast over a land so huge. 
 Thirty or forty thousand workers would be needed. 
 Then, too, the missionary rarely gains such mas- 
 tery of the language that all barriers between 
 
228 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 the Chinese mind and his vanish. On the other 
 hand, the capacity and character of the yellow 
 race is becoming apparent to all. So the mis- 
 sionaries realize that their part is to man the 
 needed colleges and theological schools and to 
 supervise the work in the field, while the actual 
 evangelization of China is to be carried on by the 
 trained native, costing a sixth as much to main- 
 tain as the foreign missionary. 
 
 It is fortunate that, as this directive function 
 comes to the fore, a type is coming into the field 
 quite unlike the early missionary. These young 
 men, most of them "student volunteers," have 
 squarer shoulders, a harder grip, a keener eye, 
 a terser speech, and a greater zest for outdoor 
 sports. They are more careful to conserve 
 health and " fitness." They pass fewer hours at 
 their devotions, and keep more in touch with 
 their time. They have broader intellectual in- 
 terests, and through their social and athletic 
 bent find points of sympathetic contact with the 
 treaty-port people. In faith, self-devotion, and 
 heroism there is nothing to choose between the 
 old missionary and the new. Perhaps the former 
 had a sublimer patience, a deeper humility. But 
 the latter is better fitted to meet the new mood 
 that is coming over the Chinese. He is not con- 
 tent with inspiring a saving faith; he aims at 
 an all-round transformation, — what he calls 
 "making the Kingdom of God come in China," 
 — and he is quite as likely to succeed as if he 
 aimed at less. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA 229 
 
 What manly pith the work requires may he 
 gleaned from the varied activities of a young 
 missionary in Fokien whom I observed for three 
 or four days last year. A successful life- 
 insurance agent who gave up everything to obey 
 the "call," he is now in charge of three districts, 
 each with its presiding elder, a score of na- 
 tive pastors, and perhaps thirty congregations. 
 He preaches, holds conference, dedicates 
 churches, examines candidates for the ministry, 
 rebukes, encourages, and directs. He passes the 
 long hours in his sedan chair making observa- 
 tions on bird life which are gladly printed by the 
 Smithsonian Institution. When a man-eating 
 tiger terrifies the villagers, he takes a couple of 
 days off, slays the beast, and gives it, stuffed, to 
 the museum of his church college. Although 
 ignorant of architecture, he has to supervise the 
 construction of a big stone church to seat twenty- 
 five hundred, ordering the tearing out of badly 
 laid sections of wall and devising means of sup- 
 porting a roof of forty-five feet span. With the 
 money he secures from his friends he runs a 
 school with five teachers that supports one hun- 
 dred and fifty boys. The spacious compound, 
 with its thirty thousand dollars' worth of build- 
 ings and its nine-foot wall, is a bit of the twen- 
 tieth century projected into the thirteenth. 
 When a bullet is fired at midnight into a teach- 
 er's room, he has to confer with the anxious 
 mandarins and assure them that he will not com- 
 plain to his consul if they will see that the 
 
230 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 outrage is not repeated. Thus this cheery, 
 masterful American goes about, speaking the 
 dialect, judging, conferring, deciding, organizing, 
 a real field-marshal of militant Christianity. 
 
 The old taunt of "rice-Christian" still raises 
 doubts as to the quality of the mission harvest. 
 A Confucian gentleman will tell you that the 
 genuine convert is greatly improved in charac- 
 ter, but that most of the adherents are self-seek- 
 ers, who impose on the missionaries. The lay 
 critic points out that for his knowledge of the 
 character and standing of the applicant the mis- 
 sionary depends on his native evangelist, who 
 may have his own ax to grind. On the other 
 hand, it is a fact that the converts receive no 
 material aid, but are expected to contribute un- 
 til their church has become self-supporting. In 
 the distributing of famine relief no discrimi- 
 nation is made between believer and unbeliever. 
 Still, there are worldly motives for turning 
 Christian, and the seasoned missionaries make 
 the inquirer wait long before baptizing him. 
 They are all eager to see tokens of sincerity, and 
 one whose most respected members had just laid 
 bare their gross sins during a revival confessed 
 that a load had been lifted from his heart. Per- 
 haps the best proof that the missionaries are 
 not garnering hypocrites is the fact that ten thou- 
 sand Protestant and thirty thousand Eoman 
 Catholic converts perished in the Boxer upris- 
 ing. Many of these could have saved their lives 
 
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CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA 233 
 
 by trampling on a piece of paper bearing the 
 character for " Jesus." 
 
 It would be a gross error to assume that the 
 missionary is intent solely on imparting a saving 
 faith. With him doctrine figures by no means so 
 prominently as with us or as in the earlier mis- 
 sionary work. He aims to effect a profound and 
 far-reaching transformation in the life of the 
 convert. This implies a startling change in 
 fundamental values. Practical in his religion, 
 as in everything else, the ordinary Chinese re- 
 gards his "joss" as a source of worldly benefit. 
 From it he seeks restoration to health, good 
 crops, success in the literary examinations, pros- 
 perity in business, or official preferment. He 
 is amazed at the offer of a religion that will prom- 
 ise none of these things unless they are "best" 
 for him, that guarantees in answer to prayer 
 only spiritual blessings, such as patience, cour- 
 age, and victory over temptation. A mockery it 
 seems at first, and a paradox. But he notices 
 that the Christians are serene of brow, and their 
 meekness under persecution argues a hidden 
 source of strength ; and presently it occurs to him, 
 "What if this inner life should be, after all, the 
 main thing?" 
 
 With Christianity comes also a marked change 
 in ideals. Undeveloped though they are, the 
 Chinese, as a race, are not one whit behind us in 
 capacity for idealism. St. Augustine, no doubt, 
 found our heathen forefathers far less promis- 
 
234 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 ing material. They are moved by charity, pu- 
 rity, and forgiveness, just as we are. The read- 
 ing of the Gospels stirs in them the same secret 
 better self that it stirs in us. There are many 
 to whom the Christ ideal appeals as a new and 
 better life, and they embrace it for the sake of 
 inward peace rather than because of the super- 
 natural authority of Christianity. 
 
 One who really enters into the spirit of the New 
 Testament seems to experience a wonderful up- 
 lift and happiness. It delivers him in a great 
 degree from the fears that have haunted him — 
 the fear of misfortune, the fear of disease, and, 
 above all, the fear of death. Oriental life and 
 thought offer but a cheerless outlook to the 
 meditative soul, and to such a one the religion 
 from the West offers a true vita nuova. To 
 judge from the beatific expression on the faces 
 of certain superior converts I have met, the Gos- 
 pel means to them what the opening of the hatches 
 of a captured slave-ship meant to the wretches 
 pent up in its hold. 
 
 Besides, the missionaries open more windows 
 than one would think. The wards and sleeping 
 rooms of the Asile de la Sainte Enfance at Hong 
 Kong are kept wonderfully clean and neat. One 
 old native woman recently admitted and lying at 
 the point of death was being instructed by a 
 Chinese pastor in Christian doctrine and was 
 told of Heaven where everything is beautiful and 
 she would be happy. "Why," she remonstrated, 
 "should I want to go to Heaven? Can it be 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA 235 
 
 finer than this? I am perfectly happy in this 
 beautiful place and don't want to die and dwell 
 in Heaven." Poor soul, after a lifetime of strug- 
 gle with dirt and confusion her martyrized wom- 
 an's instinct for order and cleanliness had at last 
 found satisfaction! 
 
 The break of the genuine convert with his past 
 is far more abrupt than anything with which we 
 are familiar. He turns his back on opium, 
 gambling, and unchastity, the besetting sins of 
 his fellows. He abandons cheating, lying, back- 
 biting, quarreling, and filthy language, which are 
 all too rife among the undisciplined common peo- 
 ple. He shuns litigation, often the ruin of the 
 villager. By withdrawing from the festivals in 
 the ancestral hall and from the rites at the 
 graves of his ancestors, he sunders himself from 
 his clan and incurs persecution. Thus the con- 
 verts become separatists, with the merits and 
 defects of separatists. Cut off from the world 
 and thrown on one another, they form a group 
 apart, a body of Puritans that will one day be 
 a precious nucleus of moral regeneration for 
 China. 
 
 The over-sanguine dream of a great ingather- 
 ing in case Christianity, from being merely 
 tolerated, should become one of the recognized 
 religions of the empire, or even the official re- 
 ligion. No doubt recognition would encourage 
 many a promising youth to declare himself, who 
 even now believes, but dreads handicap in his 
 official career. The wiser missionaries, how- 
 
236 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 ever, realize that adversity and persecution 
 are a bracing atmosphere for the infant church, 
 and spare it an influx of the worldly-minded, with 
 whose Oriental wiliness and subtlety the mission- 
 aries are not fitted to cope. 
 
 This feeling is deepened by the fact that every 
 strong popular drift toward Christianity that has 
 set in in this or that district or province has been 
 prompted by worldly motives. Again and again 
 tidings have come of wonderful "mass move- 
 ments" toward the church, which have raised 
 high~ hopes of a sudden and wholesale conversion 
 of the Chinese. But always it came out at last 
 that the movement had been inspired by the hope 
 of gaining missionary support in lawsuits or 
 winning the approval of the mandarins or en- 
 joying consular protection in times of trouble. 
 In one district of Kiang-si, in 1901-02, a single 
 enthusiastic missionary gathered in twenty thou- 
 sand souls, and numerous self-supporting con- 
 gregations arose. But presently the proselytes 
 went to settling old scores with their Eoman 
 Catholic enemies, and the new missionary sent 
 out to sift the wheat from the chaff found him- 
 self, after a year of church discipline, with only 
 a hundred faithful. For a generation it will be 
 impossible to make headway in the district where 
 this bubble burst. Such cases make the experi- 
 enced very apathetic toward mass movements 
 and mushroom growths, and there is a deepen- 
 ing conviction that spiritual Christianity ad- 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA 239 
 
 vances only by winning individuals, never by at- 
 tracting masses. 
 
 The gentry and literati have been wont to de- 
 spise the new religion from the "West. Looking 
 upon us as cunning and formidable barbarians, 
 they have heeded our missionaries about as much 
 as the circle of Maecenas would have heeded 
 Gaulish apostles of Druidism. Of late, however, 
 their self-complacency has been dealt some stag- 
 gering blows, and they are more willing to hear 
 what the foreigner has to say. Certain mission- 
 aries report that their listeners are from a more 
 intelligent class and that the questions with which 
 the preacher is plied at the close show marked 
 intellectual acumen. 
 
 Although the missionaries have gained few con- 
 verts from the superior social classes, they have 
 attracted a superior element from the middle and 
 lower classes. The majority of a native Christian 
 congregation resemble the general population, but 
 a study of their physiognomy shows a greater 
 frequency of noble or intellectual faces. Among 
 a score of farmers in a little congregation gath- 
 ered to dedicate a country chapel in Fokien, I 
 noticed four fine faces and one peasant who might 
 have sat to Leonardo da Vinci for his St. John. 
 In view of the human quality of these Christians, 
 I did not marvel on learning that the chapel, cost- 
 ing two hundred and fifty dollars, had been built 
 by twelve families out of their own resources, 
 and that every stick of timber in it had been car- 
 
240 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 ried on their shoulders from the sea-coast, a 
 league away. 
 
 Kino wing how little the modern woman's move- 
 ment in the West owes to churchmen, one is sur- 
 prised to see how potent is Christianity for the 
 uplift of the women of the Far East. But in 
 China the present need of woman is not industrial 
 and social opportunity so much as improve- 
 ment in her lot as daughter and wife. Thanks 
 to the exalted place of the parent, the position 
 of the mother, with reference to her children or 
 her daughters-in-law, leaves little to be desired. 
 
 The missionaries have not proclaimed the 
 "rights of women" nor insisted upon the full 
 equality of the sexes. But the women converts 
 gain from the reading of the New Testament 
 ideas of their dignity, and come to feel that they 
 have rights which ought to be respected. It 
 gives them courage to become Bible women, 
 teachers, and physicians. From the same source 
 the man learns to look upon his wife in a new 
 light and to feel that he owes her love and re- 
 spect. He substitutes persuasion for coercion, 
 and concedes her full authority in certain mat- 
 ters, such as the management of the household 
 or the direction of the servants. One man told 
 how formerly he had looked upon his wife as a 
 mere toy, but since conversion he had come to 
 love her and consult her, and, to his surprise, he 
 had found that often her judgment was sounder 
 than his. He blushed as he confessed that he 
 "loved" his wife, for the Chinese never talk 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA 241 
 
 about such feelings. It is a fact that Christians 
 have the name of making good husbands, and are 
 preferred as sons-in-law even by unbelieving 
 parents. 
 
 Because she marries young and can do little 
 for her parents in their old age, the daughter is 
 of slight account among the common people. 
 Chinese gentlemen have told me that perhaps a 
 tenth of the female infants are made away with. 
 One woman I heard of had drowned eight. An- 
 other went raving mad every time she saw her 
 husband, who had taken from her her three baby 
 daughters and sold them. Now, into this situa- 
 tion Christianity projects certain new and very 
 emphatic teachings. The convert is urged to 
 cherish and educate his daughter instead of treat- 
 ing her as a burden. He is to give her at least a 
 primary education, so that she may be able to read 
 her Bible. "When she comes of marriageable age, 
 she finds herself far better off than other girls. 
 To be sure, she is not courted after the manner of 
 the West ; but she may be permitted to look upon 
 her suitor, and, in any case, she is fully informed 
 as to his disposition and attainments. She may 
 even refuse to marry the chosen suitor without in- 
 curring the crushing reproach of being "unfilial." 
 Among the common Chinese, marriage negotia- 
 tions are conducted in a very practical spirit, 
 money being the chief consideration; but the 
 Christian parents feel it their duty to consider 
 first the happiness of their daughter. 
 
 The male converts cling to the husband's head- 
 
242 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 ship, buttressing their position with Pauline 
 texts, and are reluctant to admit that deaconesses 
 can be the full equals of deacons; but more and 
 more the woman's position in the church reflects 
 contemporary opinion in England and America 
 rather than the dicta of St. Paul. 
 
 In the older church buildings of South China, 
 in deference to Chinese notions of propriety, 
 a five-foot screen was set up, hiding the women's 
 side from the men's side, but these screens 
 are coming down. Formerly there was much 
 objection in the better families to the attend- 
 ance of unmarried girls at church, but now you 
 see the maidens sitting in mother's pew with 
 their eyes modestly lowered, and looking very 
 sweet with their glossy brown hair falling in a 
 snood down the back. Ten years ago women 
 never testified in religious meetings; but now 
 they speak and pray freely, and the most winning 
 revivalist in China to-day is a young Chinese 
 woman. 
 
 Some scoffers insist that missions exist to turn 
 out converts, just as a factory exists to turn out 
 shoes. Divide your annual outlay by the number 
 of new communicants, and you arrive at the av- 
 erage cost of converting a Chinaman. Now, let 
 conversion be conceived as a mere reminting 
 which changes, indeed, the image and super- 
 scription of the coin, but not its metal, and there 
 is a sting in the gibe, "Is it worth while to con- 
 vert Buddhists into Baptists at so many dollars 
 the head?" 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA 245 
 
 Now, tlie truth is, that, in the very nature of 
 the case, by far the larger part of their ac- 
 complishment can never be claimed by the mis- 
 sionaries as their own. They dig the well and 
 toil at the windlass, but the waters they raise do 
 not flow in an open conduit to the fields they 
 quicken. Most of them disappear in the ground, 
 and when they reappear to make distant wastes 
 bloom, they cannot be identified. "What of the 
 young men leaving the mission colleges uncon- 
 verted, yet imbued with Christian ideals? "What 
 of the bracing effect on the government schools 
 of competition with the well-managed and effi- 
 cient mission schools? "What of the government 
 schools for girls, which would never have been 
 provided if the missionaries had not created a 
 demand for female education and shown how to 
 teach girls? WTiat of the native philanthropies 
 which have sprung up in emulation of the mis- 
 sion care for the blind, the insane, and the leper? 
 What of the untraceable influence of the West- 
 ern books of inspiration and learning which, but 
 for the missionary translators, would not yet be 
 accessible to the Chinese mind? Among Chi- 
 nese who neither know nor care for the " Jesus 
 religion," the changes of attitude toward opium- 
 smoking, foot-binding, concubinage, slavery, 
 "squeeze," torture, and the subjection of women, 
 betray currents of opinion set in motion largely 
 by the labors of missionaries. 
 
 In other words, the running of so many heathen 
 into our religious molds is not the chief accom- 
 
246 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 plislnnent. Over and above the proselytes won 
 are the beneficent transformations, intellectual 
 and moral, wrought in great numbers of people 
 who do not affiliate with the church. Then, over 
 and above such transformations of individuals 
 are the transformations wrought in the society 
 and government of the Middle Kingdom — better 
 treatment of slaves, of prisoners, of orphans, of 
 wives, of commoners. In this the missionaries 
 have a great part, though no man can say how 
 much. Finally, over and above the transforma- 
 tions of society are the transformations wrought 
 in the Chinese civilization. Here again the mis- 
 sionary has planted and watered, but may not 
 gather the fruits into his bin. 
 
 The missionary thinks of himself as a bearer 
 of the Gospel, not as an apostle of Western moral 
 civilization at its present stage. He does not 
 perceive on his nose the twentieth-century spec- 
 tacles through which he reads the Gospel, and 
 so determines what is " scriptural. " "On what 
 ground," I asked a woman evangelist, "do you 
 forbid foot-binding as 'unchristian'?" "On the 
 ground that it does violence to the body God 
 gave us." I thought of the choir invisible of 
 fasters, flagellants, and self-mutilators acting in 
 supposed obedience to the command, "If thy 
 hand offend thee, cut it off," and wondered what 
 they would say to such a reason. 
 
 The missionary is the introducer of current 
 Western standards. He instructs his schoolboys 
 respecting bathing, spitting, the use of the hand- 
 

CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA 249 
 
 kerchief, neatness of garb, the care of one's 
 room, modesty in personal habits. He teaches 
 the people to clean house and yard, to whitewash 
 the walls of the home, to scour the floors of the 
 school-room or church. He enforces the duty of 
 being humane to dumb animals, of rearing de- 
 fective children, of educating daughters, and con- 
 sulting the wife. 
 
 Unwittingly he reads into the Scriptures every- 
 thing that has commended itself to the conscience 
 of Christendom, and becomes, in spite of him- 
 self, the voice of his country and his time. The 
 girls' schools in the American missions reflect 
 American ideas as to woman's proper place. 
 The industrial schools inoculate with American be- 
 lief in the dignity of manual labor a people so dis- 
 dainful of toil that everyone exempt from it ad- 
 vertises the fact by wearing his finger-nails long. 
 The notions of government taught in the mis- 
 sion colleges would have horrified those who 
 Christianized the Irish and the Saxons. The 
 place these same colleges give to natural science 
 and scientific methods betrays the modern spirit, 
 and would have scandalized St. Boniface or St. 
 Francis Xavier. 
 
 The stubborn animosity of the average treaty- 
 port foreigner toward the missionaries is at first 
 unaccountable. How can intelligent men consent 
 to circulate such brutal falsehoods, such patent 
 calumnies? For you will be told that the mis- 
 sionaries speculate in land, that they trade "on 
 the side," that they take it easy and live better 
 
250 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 than they did at home. As for their work, you 
 learn that it is a failure, that the converts are 
 frauds, and that the Christian Chinese is less 
 honest and reliable than the heathen. Indeed, a 
 local trader without twenty words of the lan- 
 guage, dependent on his ''pidgin" English and 
 his comprador, whose contact with the natives 
 is limited to his servants and a few native mer- 
 chants, will aver that the missionary, who ad- 
 dresses the natives freely in their own tongue, 
 comes and goes in their families, sees them off 
 their guard, and counsels them in their intimate 
 personal problems, "doesn't know the Chinese!" 
 The British resent the outspoken hostility of 
 all missionaries to the Indian opium trade. Then 
 there is a belief in commercial circles that the 
 opportunities and stimulus they supply cannot 
 but strengthen the Chinese as competitors and 
 embarrass the white man in his money-making. 
 The rancor of the critics springs, however, from 
 the deathless feud between the worldling and the 
 idealist. Free from home restraints, many a 
 merchant, shipmaster, or customs officer on the 
 China coast lets himself go, and sinks into a life 
 which obliges the missionaries to shun and dis- 
 avow him. The sensualist, whose ruling pas- 
 sions are high living, drinking, gaming, and de- 
 bauchery, resents the silent reproach in the pure 
 and domestic life of the missionaries, and strikes 
 at them with incredible venom. I have heard 
 a libertine, whose ideal vacation is an orgy in 
 the yoshiwaras of Japan, rail at the missionaries 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA 251 
 
 of the Lower Yangtse for gathering with their 
 families during the heated term at a mountain 
 resort like Kuling or Mokanshan; and this, al- 
 though breakdown from overwork is far more 
 frequent among them than among any other 
 white men in China. 
 
 An anti-missionary British consul in Western 
 China was speaking to me of the trying climate 
 of Szechuan. "It 's a shame," he said, "for a 
 government or a firm to keep a white man here 
 for more than three years." 
 
 "But how about the missionaries?" I asked. 
 "I understand they pass their lives here, retir- 
 ing in summer no farther than the hills five miles 
 away. ' ' 
 
 "Well," he replied meditatively, "the climate 
 does n't seem to hurt them. You see, they 're so 
 interested in their work." 
 
 But there are fair criticisms to be made. A 
 Chinese Christian, educated in America and hold- 
 ing a responsible post, told me that during the 
 occupation of Peking by the Allies, when the 
 local Chinese were under a reign of terror, cer- 
 tain thrifty missionaries acquired large amounts 
 of real estate for their missions by forcing sales. 
 They would go to a householder and say, "We 
 find your property is suitable for our purposes. 
 Will you give us the title deed for fifty dollars ? ' ' 
 The intimidated owner did not dare to refuse. 
 The money was counted out to him, and he was 
 notified to yield up possession in five days. Thus 
 was acquired for a ridiculously low price much 
 
252 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 of the real estate in a certain spacious compound. 
 
 At one time the missionaries interfered too 
 freely in lawsuits between a Christian and a non- 
 Christian. The convert expected aid in such 
 cases, for he is apt to conceive the church as akin 
 to one of his mutual-benefit associations, in which 
 all stand by one another in all circumstances. 
 The Roman Catholics have always been strong 
 in protecting their members, and by competition 
 the Protestants were drawn into a like policy. 
 Of course in each case the missionary supposed 
 that he was on the side of right, but often he was 
 misled by ex-parte stories. As there are treaties 
 guaranteeing Chinese converts against persecu- 
 tion, the intervention of the missionary, with 
 consuls and gunboats looming dimly behind him, 
 sometimes frightened the mandarin into an un- 
 fair decision. Such errors not only hurt Chris- 
 tianity by outraging the popular sense of justice, 
 but they attracted self-seekers into the church. 
 When, after the Boxer year, the policy was 
 generally abandoned by the Protestants, there 
 was in some quarters a falling away. 
 
 The question of indemnity for mission property 
 destroyed by rioters is one to perplex a convoca- 
 tion of saints. On the one hand, it would seem 
 that, but for the dread of having to pay indem- 
 nity, the ill-disposed official might withhold all 
 protection and let the mob work its destructive 
 will. On the other hand, in the Changsha riots 
 last year, the mission property was attacked 
 
GO 
 
 =H 
 
 
 
 ?H 
 
 ■43 
 
 =1 
 
 «4 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA 255 
 
 just in order to pile up indemnities for a hated 
 government to pay. The China Inland Mission, 
 with its thousand missionaries, steadily refuses 
 to claim indemnity, on the ground that the money 
 is extracted not from guilty rioters, but from the 
 innocent. Such an example of Christian for- 
 bearance makes a deep impression on the Chi- 
 nese and mightily advances the work of the mis- 
 sion. • The results justify the policy, and no 
 doubt the other missions, in order to escape in- 
 vidious comparisons, will have to adopt it. 
 
 Few of those in the field look for an early con- 
 version of the Chinese. Those who have learned 
 how tough and massive is the race mind expect 
 that centuries will elapse before the yellow race 
 will be as permeated by Christianity as the white 
 race already is. They remember that "it took 
 Buddhism three hundred years before it obtained 
 official recognition and many centuries more be- 
 fore the mass of the people were influenced by 
 it." 
 
 Nevertheless, none despond at the outlook, for 
 they perceive that the aggressive rivalry of Chris- 
 tianity, coupled with the coming diffusion of ed- 
 ucation among the masses, is bound to raise con- 
 tinually the religious plane of the Chinese oy 
 forcing the native faiths to assume higher and 
 higher forms in order to survive. A silent, secret 
 permeation of the religions of the Far East 
 by the ideals and standards of Christianity is 
 inevitable; and if eventually they prove capable 
 
256 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 of making a stand against the invader, it will be 
 owing to their heavy borrowings from it. 
 
 Chinese Buddhism appears to be too far gone 
 to be resuscitated. Debased with popular super- 
 stitions and loaded down with idol-worship, even 
 the missionaries sent to China by the Japanese 
 Buddhists will fail to breathe into it the breath 
 of life. Quite otherwise is it with Confucianism. 
 It is a natural rallying-point for the patriots and 
 conservatives too proud to accept a foreign re- 
 ligion, and there is every prospect that for genera- 
 tions it will be a center of resistance. Already 
 the scholars are reading into the classics ele- 
 vated moral ideas they have unconsciously im- 
 bibed from Christian literature. Already there 
 is a movement that calls itself "Confucio-Chris- 
 tianity"! 
 
 The doubtful attitude of the early mission- 
 aries toward Confucius has given way to a cordial 
 appreciation of his ideals. Confucius offers a 
 faultless example of a life dominated by prin- 
 ciple; Jesus offers a faultless example of a life 
 dominated by love. For the people at large the 
 Gospels contain far more ethical inspiration than 
 the Analects; but for magistrates, judges, and 
 public men, who serve their fellows by conform- 
 ing to principle, the Confucian literature is full 
 of uplift. 
 
 The handicap of Confucianism, in vying with 
 Christianity as a moral force, is its lack of sanc- 
 tion. It presents high ideals, but there is noth- 
 ing to be dreaded by one who fails to live up to 
 
CHEISTIANITY IN CHINA 257 
 
 them. Hardly can it block natural inclinations 
 and wrest lives from the grasp of appetite or pas- 
 sion unless it develops the doctrine of responsi- 
 bility to God. Such a development would hardly 
 be difficult, for Confucius frequently speaks of 
 "Heaven" as on the side of righteousness. 
 Again, Confucianism, in competing with a re- 
 ligion holding out the assurance of immortality, 
 suffers from its silence as to the beyond. When 
 the master was questioned on this, he replied 
 evasively, "If you do not understand life, how 
 can you understand death?" Very likely the 
 doctrine of an after life will somehow be inter- 
 preted into the classics. A Neo-Confucianism 
 may thus be able to vie with Christianity for a 
 long time; for, as a home-grown product, it will 
 appeal strongly to the conservative instincts, 
 mortified by the wholesale borrowings from West- 
 ern culture that must presently be made. 
 
 China's remoteness from our own historical 
 epoch gives wings to the imagination, and the 
 traveler realizes that very likely the mission- 
 aries there face much the same situation that 
 confronted the infant Church in the Eoman 
 Empire — in both cases, temples, gods, images, 
 altars, priests, sacrifices, superstition, an out- 
 worn mythology, ancestor-worship, and moral 
 ideals attracting only the elite. The Eoman 
 Empire was superior to China in civic virtue, 
 but China is superior in domestic virtue. The 
 plane of culture does not appear to be very dif- 
 
258 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 ferent. The subjects of Shien Tung are hardly- 
 more enlightened than were those of Hadrian. 
 Since Christianity made its way through the Ro- 
 man Empire in spite of its being spread at first 
 chiefly by small tradesmen, artisans, and freed- 
 men, why should it not make its way through the 
 Chinese Empire! 
 
 For when the Chinese become sensible of the 
 inferiority of their own culture, Christianity 
 presents itself to them clothed with prestige. It 
 is communicated by picked, trained men, equal 
 in character and learning to any body of apostles 
 that ever carried a faith to an alien people. It 
 has the prestige of impressive antiquity and of an 
 immense following. Moreover, it is in close as- 
 sociation with a material civilization so suc- 
 cessful that China will be obliged to adopt it in 
 its entirety in order to survive. 
 
 There is no reason to believe that there is any- 
 thing in the psychology or history or circum- 
 stances of the Chinese to cut them off from the 
 general movement of world thought. Their des- 
 tiny is that of the white race; that is, to share 
 in and contribute to the progress of a planetary 
 culture. It therefore seems safe to predict that, 
 in the end, whatever happens to Christianity in 
 the West will happen to it in China. If, owing to 
 the discoveries of natural science or the results 
 of the higher criticism of the Scriptures, the phil- 
 osophical or historical basis of Christianity is 
 shattered and it loses ground in the West, 
 it will not move forward in China. The in- 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA 259 
 
 fluential and enlightened classes in China are 
 quite too proud to allow their people to adopt 
 anything cast off by the West. If, on the other 
 hand, Christianity keeps its grip on the West, it 
 is certain to move forward to ultimate triumph 
 in China; for it is quite as congenial to the Chi- 
 nese as it was to the people of the Eoman Em- 
 pire in the third century. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE EAR WEST OE THE FAR EAST 
 
 A JOURNEY with Mr. Arnold, American Con- 
 sul at Amoy, from Taiyuanfu, the capital of 
 Shansi, southwest twelve hundred miles to Cheng- 
 tu, the capital of Szechuan, in the early summer 
 of 1910 enabled the writer to view a section of 
 China that has been very rarely traversed and 
 described by white men. The voyage down the 
 Min and the Yangtse from Chengtu to Chung- 
 king and thence to Ichang, the head of steam navi- 
 gation, takes one through the famous gorges and 
 rapids of the Yangtse, but the route has been so 
 often and so well described that I will ignore that 
 portion of my journey. 
 
 For nearly three centuries the Tartar con- 
 querors of China have let the splendid roads 
 and canals inherited from the Ming dynasty go 
 to pieces. Hence the arterial highway that binds 
 Peking to the remote interior provinces is, 
 through Shansi, mostly a low way. You are 
 startled by seeing a man's head and shoulders 
 gliding mysteriously through the wheat; draw 
 nigh, and lo, a peasant riding on a cart in a 
 sunken road! Often you find yourself traveling 
 some yards below the level of the fields so that 
 you see nothing of the country. After rains such 
 
 260 
 
THE FAR WEST OF THE FAR EAST 261 
 
 a road becomes a canal, sometimes a torrent. 
 Of labor spent npon it there is no sign. When 
 the Empress Dowager fled this way in 1900, 
 stretches were repaired for Her Majesty which 
 had not been touched since 1780! The ruts are 
 never filled, save by nature. The road wanders 
 whither it will and when one track becomes im- 
 passable another is found. As the loess is ground 
 into dust under hoof and wheel and blows away, 
 the road sinks deeper and deeper until you pass 
 under old gate-towers whose foundations begin 
 seven feet above your head. 
 
 For three weeks we were passing square, flat- 
 top towers three miles apart along which by 
 means of signal fires news of distant invasion or 
 rebellion used to be flashed to the Son of Heaven. 
 Now the telegraph line marches over the hills, 
 and lusty saplings are rending the masonry of 
 the abandoned towers. The highway is, also, an 
 open air "hall of fame," being lined with monu- 
 ments erected to bygone worthies by a grateful 
 community. Every mile of his journey the way- 
 farer who can read is reminded of the virtues 
 his countrymen honor. No people has relied so 
 little on police and soldiers to keep the peace as 
 the Chinese and these inscriptions show how they 
 have schooled themselves in morality. 
 
 From the Peking-Hankow line a French rail- 
 road climbs west half a day to Taiyuanfu. 
 Thence south for two hundred miles one meets 
 the produce of the country seeking this rail 
 outlet to Peking and Tientsin — innumerable 
 
262 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 mule carts laden with flour, salt, tobacco, bean 
 oil, hempen rope, paper, locust wood, licorice 
 root, goat's hair, hides, and bales of cotton 
 and wool. Moreover, Shansi is fat with min- 
 erals which may make it a center of indus- 
 trial energy after glowing Westphalia and Bel- 
 gium and Pennsylvania have become a cinder. 
 Once, looking down five hundred feet from the 
 road, I counted in the side of a ravine seven 
 veins of clear coal separated by limestone strata. 
 Here and there one comes on workings where the 
 natives burrow timidly into hillsides and bring 
 out the coal on all fours. Near the pit good 
 lump coal sells for seventy-five cents a ton, 
 whereas a hundred miles away the same coal 
 sells for seven times as much, showing a trans- 
 port cost of four-and-a-half cents a ton-mile. A 
 railroad down the valley of the Fen would cut this 
 to one-tenth and put an end to twenty-five cent 
 wheat and flour half a cent a pound. 
 
 Throbbing with new life, Taiyuanfu boasts 
 electricity, macadam, a uniformed street-clean- 
 ing brigade, a public park with lagoon, bandstand 
 and museum, a nursery growing trees for streets 
 and open spaces, a match factory, a military 
 school, a police force, a reformatory and a semi- 
 weekly newspaper. But a couple of days south 
 all traces of foreign influence vanish. Aside 
 from the huge cigarette posters plastered clear 
 through the province by some advertising van- 
 dal, you are in the pure Middle Ages. The only 
 illuminant is a twist of cotton burning in an iron 
 
Looking south from the Bell Tower. Sianfu 
 
 The east gate of Taiyuaiifu, showing macadamized street 
 
THE FAR WEST OF THE FAR EAST 265 
 
 cup of rape-seed oil. The windows are of thin 
 paper pasted on lattice. Coined silver does not 
 circulate but one carries rough lumps which the 
 dealer accepts according to the verdict of his 
 own scales. On converting them into coin you 
 visit all the money-changers and deal with the one 
 with the most liberal scales. The money of the 
 country is perforated brass cash on strings, two 
 hundred to the string. Ten strings are worth a 
 dollar, and weigh from fifteen to twenty pounds. 
 Once when, according to our contract, we paid 
 each of our coolies the equivalent of forty-three 
 cents, they were so loaded with what is beyond 
 all question "filthy lucre" that next day they 
 could hardly carry us. 
 
 In cities like Taiku and Pingyao, as well as in 
 the capital, one sees signs of the profits reaped by 
 the Shansi bankers who do the principal part of 
 the banking of the Empire. Fine residences with 
 numerous courts, elaborate gateways, parks, lily 
 ponds, stone bridges, summer houses and an- 
 cestral halls, which together with stables, garden 
 and orchard occupy twenty or thirty acres and are 
 enclosed by high walls crowned by an ornamental 
 cornice, battlements and turrets, testify to former 
 prosperity. Until recently poverty was increas- 
 ing owing to opium-smoking and laziness, and, in 
 towns once rich, good houses were being torn down 
 for the sake of the bricks. But smoking is going 
 out, and the tide is turning. Gambling, however, 
 is said to be extending to the business class, and 
 the sons of successful Shansi bankers, giving 
 
266 t THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 themselves up to self-indulgence, theatricals and 
 poetry, let slip from them the businesses their 
 fathers built up throughout the Empire. Some 
 of these rich young men struck me as fat, soft 
 and sensual. There is little to stimulate their 
 ambition, and they see no reason why they should 
 not give themselves up to the nearest pleasures. 
 Zest for sports, or the ideal of bodily "fitness," 
 has not yet taken hold of them. 
 
 From the countryside at home this Shansi land- 
 scape seems almost as remote as a Bedouin en- 
 campment. There is never a pasture, meadow, 
 hay-stack, barn or wind-mill. There are no 
 painted houses, door-yards, barn-yards or grazing 
 cattle. Instead of hedges or fences, open fields 
 with here and there a square village girt with mud 
 walls. Instead of cemeteries, clusters of graves, 
 stone slabs, and brick monuments in the ancestral 
 fields. For shingled frame houses, dwellings of 
 sun-dried brick under tile or thatch, the larger 
 enclosing a courtyard. For white church and red 
 schoolhouse, temple, pagoda, and pailow. For 
 finger-post, crumbling signal-towers and arched 
 gateways. 
 
 Of things outlandish and interesting there is no 
 end. This is a camel country, but, as mules can- 
 not abide a camel, the caravans lie up at camel 
 inns through the day and travel only at night. 
 We meet shaven, red-robed Buddhist monks on 
 pilgrimage to the sacred mount of Wutaishan. 
 They are from Szechuan, and have been two 
 months on their way. All about Wensi looms are 
 
THE FAR WEST OF THE FAR EAST 267 
 
 clacking in the cottages, and the town is gay with 
 long strips of coarse cotton cloth, dyed the char- 
 acteristic blue of work-a-day China, drying from 
 ropes stretched across the street. At Paisiang a 
 sudden beauty blooms in the people and for four 
 days we are frequently charmed with faces of a 
 Greek refinement. At Hwachow in Shensi it ab- 
 ruptly comes to an end and there is nothing but 
 unmitigated Mongol till we enter the streets of 
 Sianfu. 
 
 Rural police there is none, and so in the even- 
 ing the irrigator carries home with him rope, 
 bucket and windlass. For the same reason the 
 tiny shelters of the crop watchers dot the land. 
 Rows of stalks of kaoliang or corn are leaned to- 
 gether and daubed with mud. This makes a 
 shelter like an A tent in which at night the crop 
 guard squats and from which he watches his patch 
 as harvest nears. All this is a heavy tax on the 
 time and sleep of the peasants. 
 
 The valley of the lower Fen is one vast expanse 
 of yellowing wheat and harvest is beginning. The 
 gardens have been given their final drink, the 
 threshing floors smoothed and beaten, the sickles 
 ground, and the schools closed. At break of day 
 the family sets forth from the village, the babies 
 piled on the wheelbarrow or cart along with ket- 
 tles and pots, the women riding to spare their 
 squeezed feet, the boys striding alongside per- 
 fectly naked and the father guiding with his whip 
 the dun bullock or gray donkey that draws the 
 outfit. You see them at work under their flap- 
 
268 .THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 ping straw hats, reaping with sickle or cradle, 
 and taking as long to bind one sheaf as I need to 
 bind five. They indulge in a long siesta through 
 the midday heat and in the cool of the evening 
 ride home on sheaves piled onto the cart with 
 forks from locust branches that have been trained 
 to grow three tines from one point. Poor 
 widows and naked orphans glean about in the 
 stubble and follow the homing cart to gather the 
 heads of wheat shaken from the load. 
 
 It is harvesting as simple and idyllic as that 
 of classical antiquity, and would have the charm 
 of the old Greek life if only the maidens were as 
 free as those of Homer's time. But by "pro- 
 priety" the marriageable girls are excluded from 
 this cheerful harvest-home and must stifle in the 
 tiny close chambers of their low houses while the 
 youths sing amid the sheaves. 
 
 The wheat is strewed about the threshing floor 
 and near midday when it has grown brittle in the 
 sunshine they beat it with flails or make a donkey 
 draw a stone roller round and round over it. 
 Then the straw is lifted aside, the mingled grain 
 and chaff swept into a heap and the picturesque 
 winnowing begins. Always the wheat has the 
 right of way. People flail out their sheaves on 
 the road because it saves making a threshing floor 
 and I have seen half the width of a sixteen-foot 
 main street in a great city occupied by some- 
 body's drying wheat. The traffic squeezed by 
 and nobody protested against the encroachment. 
 
 Nowhere is the havoc wrought by deforesta- 
 
CO g 
 
THE FAE WEST OF THE FAE EAST 271 
 
 tion more evident than in Northwest China. 
 Around Taiyuanfu all the once-wooded moun- 
 tains are bare and bone dry. Down through the 
 province one sees no trees on mountain or foot- 
 hill save those about temples. The original hard 
 woods are all gone, so in the valley one grows 
 cheap soft woods, — poplar, cottonwood, basswood, 
 box-elder and willow. 
 
 Once the tree cover is removed, the rains wash 
 the soil from the hillsides and with it fill the water- 
 courses and choke the valleys. Wherever a 
 brook or a creek debouches into the valley of the 
 Fen it has built with this wash a great alluvial 
 cone, curving down-river, and along the crest of 
 this cone runs the shallow gravelly bed of the 
 stream that once loitered under high banks three 
 or four fathoms beneath its present level. This 
 cone has covered under silt and sand and gravel 
 from a few score acres to several square miles of 
 the former rich bottom lands and they can never 
 be recovered. 
 
 Buildings are imbedded to the waist in the 
 debris. Gateways that once one could ride a 
 camel through one can now only creep through 
 on hands and knees. Twice we came upon ma- 
 jestic stone bridges which once spanned broad 
 affluents of the Fen, but which now, their noble 
 arches half silted up, stand unused amid fields 
 of beans and rape, sad monuments of a bygone 
 prosperity. Since the bridge was built twenty feet 
 of wash from deforested hills has been dropped 
 in that watercourse and the stream no longer 
 
272 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 fed from spongy wooded slopes is a trickle or an 
 underground moisture in summer and a raging 
 flood in the rainy season. 
 
 With the woods vanishes much that makes life 
 worth living. The brooks no longer run clear 
 water filtered through moss and humus but are 
 turbid with the soil of the bared slopes. Fish 
 will not live in them, and bathing ceases to be a 
 joy. In twelve days of Shansi travel I never saw 
 a boy disporting himself in water. The springs 
 dry up and no late-summer pastures are fresh- 
 ened by the seepage from wooded hillsides. Dis- 
 mally the muddy streams wander in the sun over 
 wide shallows instead of lurking as of yore in 
 deep channels under shading banks. No fallen 
 tree or log jam checks the creek and offers an Au- 
 gust lurking pool for the trout. No leafy path or 
 mossy log invites lovers, though, to be sure, 
 China does not believe in lovers. Millions live 
 life through without knowing sylvan glades, 
 "green-robed senators of the mighty woods," 
 the glories of October leaves or the boyhood 
 pleasures of nutting, bird-nesting, and squirrel- 
 hunting. 
 
 Roots, twigs, grass, straw and dung replace fire- 
 wood. Brick or mud is the sole building material. 
 Brick benches and tables replace wooden furni- 
 ture ; brick stoops, wooden porches ; and the high- 
 way stretches glaring hot and dusty to where the 
 lone locust by the tea house offers a patch of 
 shade. Thus, with the woods vanish most of the 
 sources of beauty, the founts of poetry and in- 
 
THE FAR WEST OF THE FAR EAST 273 
 
 spiration dry up, and life sinks to a dull sordid 
 round of food-getting and begetting. 
 
 The most penetrative Western things in China 
 are the Gospel, kerosene, and cigarettes, and I 
 am glad that as between light, heat and smoke, 
 the prophets of light get into the country first. 
 These interior folk gather their first impres- 
 sions of our race from those who want to make 
 converts rather than those who want to make 
 money. They take all foreigners for mission- 
 aries and often were we greeted with "Ping an," 
 "Ping an" (Peace be unto you), the salutation 
 with which they are in the habit of greeting mem- 
 bers of the mission. The inland missionaries 
 freqently garb themselves a la Chinoise in order 
 to get closer to the people. They do not feel it 
 to be a hardship, however, for, in comparison 
 with the practical Chinese costume, the cut of 
 Western dress is about as foolish as anything 
 you find in China. Some go so far as to grow 
 a queue, and when you meet a Scotchman with a 
 bright auburn pig-tail down his back you have 
 seen something memorable. 
 
 Missionary life here is no junket. I met one 
 
 young man of noble face whose sweetheart had 
 
 died of typhus a month before on the very day 
 
 set for their wedding. Neither this shock nor a 
 
 year's suffering from sprue, which one gets by 
 
 "living Chinese" and sitting at the table of one's 
 
 humble converts, had taken from his countenance 
 
 its serene, uplifted look. 
 
 Cut off from kindred, society, music, art, 
 13 
 
274 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 amusement and intellectual companionship, the 
 missionary makes of Eis house a little reteat full 
 of reminders and suggestions of the motherland. 
 The missionary home is a green oasis in a Sahara 
 of dirt and ugliness. Surrounded by so much that 
 is distressing these exiles have to live much in the 
 spirit. If they devour endless devotional litera- 
 ture and sing many hymns and hang fortifying 
 texts on their walls, it is not at all from unwhole- 
 some excess of piety but to find solace from the 
 depressing spectacle of a fine people doomed to 
 a dreary existence which cannot be much relieved 
 in our time. 
 
 Once we met a wayfarer with a singularly noble 
 countenance, who put his bundle down and made 
 us a profound salutation. The Consul conversed 
 with him and after he had passed I asked, "Who 
 is that man? He is one of the finest-looking 
 Chinese I have ever seen." It came out that he 
 was the pastor of a native church. I have not 
 the language to describe what happiness and en- 
 couragement these souls of higher aspiration 
 among the Chinese gain from their fellowship 
 with the kindred spirits from the West. 
 
 While some complain that the missionaries live 
 too well, I have heard the China-Inland mission- 
 aries blamed for undertaking to live on too lit- 
 tle — in some cases not more than a hundred dol- 
 lars a year. In the field, however, you realize 
 that the mission well knows what it is doing. In 
 Hwachow, Shansi, you can get nine eggs for a cent, 
 a pigeon for a cent, a fowl for five cents, a brace 
 
THE FAR WEST OF THE FAR EAST 275 
 
 of pheasants for three cents, mutton without 
 bone for three or four cents a pound. For a cost 
 of sixty cents a week apiece, the ladies of the 
 mission can set their table with the best the 
 market affords. 
 
 These ladies, by the way, are English and kins- 
 women of a gallant British general. They con- 
 duct a self-supporting school with more than a 
 hundred girls and live by themselves with not a 
 white man within a day's journey. One of these 
 sisters is a survivor of the Boxer year. Then 
 she saw her pupils ravished and murdered and 
 her school given to the flames. For weeks she 
 was taken about in chains, lodged in the vilest 
 dungeons and, time and again, the knife of a 
 Boxer was at her throat. Yet she is back in her 
 work at the old station, quite unconscious of her 
 heroism. 
 
 After a fortnight of mule litter we sight an- 
 cient yellow Sianfu, "the Western capital," with 
 its third of a million souls. Within the fortified 
 triple gate the facial mold abruptly changes and 
 the refined intellectual type appears. Here and 
 there faces of a Hellenic purity of feature are 
 seen and beautiful children are not uncommon. 
 These Chinese cities make one realize how the 
 cream of the population gathers in the urban 
 centers. Everywhere town opportunities have 
 been a magnet for the elite of the open country. 
 
 Cinctured with twelve miles of lofty wall dating 
 from the fourteenth century and in perfect re- 
 pair, Sianfu, more than any other city, recalls 
 
276 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 the early history of the "black-haired people" 
 from the "West who from this "Wei valley carried 
 their torch of civilization to the rude peoples of 
 what is now China. Here indeed is the cradle 
 of the Empire. Ages before Peking was or 
 Canton, Sianfu was the central hearth of Chi- 
 nese culture. No other city has been the capital 
 for so long. Off and on it held the scepter for 
 twenty-three centuries. From the battlements 
 you see out across the plain huge tumuli shelter- 
 ing the dust of monarchs who reigned before King 
 Solomon. One commemorates the father of the 
 execrated emperor who, not long after Alexander 
 the Great, sought to break the sway of the past 
 by burning the ancient books and slaying the 
 literati. 
 
 There is in China no museum of antiquities to 
 match the Pei-lin or Forest of Tablets, a collec- 
 tion of more than fourteen hundred historical 
 records in stone running back twelve centuries. 
 The pride of the collection is the famous Nes- 
 torian Stone inscribed in 781, which gives a long 
 account of the Nestorian Christianity which, after 
 nourishing for two centuries, was stamped out 
 by persecution a thousand years ago. How 
 odd that the Cross was carried to China before 
 it reached the Great Britain whose sons are now 
 carrying it to the Chinese again ! 
 
 The Mohammedans have many mosques here 
 and from time to time of late the new self-con- 
 scious aggressive Islam sends out some zealot 
 from Constantinople to warm them in the faith. 
 
The type of public monument 
 universal in Shansi 
 
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THE FAE WEST OF THE FAR EAST 279 
 
 Local Buddhism just now is under a cloud owing 
 to a story that has the tang of the European 
 Dark Ages. Not long ago a wicked monk in a 
 Buddhist monastery here became obnoxious to 
 his fellows and in solemn conclave, the abbot ap- 
 proving, they decided he was not fit to live. So 
 they stuffed him alive into their furnace. The 
 missionaries report that many from the intel- 
 lectual class now listen to the preaching in the 
 central hall and after his sermon the preacher 
 is well heckled with shrewd questions. "Do send 
 out strong men!" was the parting word of a 
 leading missionry; "We need all the equipment 
 we can get to answer the questions the thinking 
 men of China are asking." Naturally the spur 
 of competition is putting new zeal into the friends 
 of the old faith. The Confucians have banded 
 together and are sending out wandering gospel- 
 lers of their own to preach the doctrines of the 
 Sage at fairs and other popular gatherings. 
 And that is something worth while. Whatever 
 their proselyting success the missionaries do suc- 
 ceed in turning men's thoughts to the things of 
 the spirit. 
 
 Sianfu has a match factory, and the half-dozen 
 shops carrying foreign goods show that the Chi- 
 nese are buying patent medicines, tooth brushes, 
 cosmetics, liqueurs, cigarettes, condensed milk, 
 underwear, lamps, clocks, spectacles, penknives, 
 and athletic goods. American kerosene sells for 
 forty-three cents a gallon, but at Yenchuan in the 
 north of the province, where there is an inex- 
 
280 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 haustible supply of petroleum, a uative refinery 
 is producing kerosene which, after two hundred 
 miles of cart carriage, sells here for thirty-one 
 cents. 
 
 When, in the days of Cromwell, the Manchu 
 Tartars overpowered China, they placed Tartar 
 garrisons in the chief cities. These "banner- 
 men," living a privileged caste in their own 
 fortified quarter and fed by government rice, 
 have vegetated and multiplied for generations. 
 In Sianfu the Tartar quarter is a dismal picture 
 of crumbling walls, decay, indolence and squalor. 
 On the big drill grounds you see the runways 
 along which the horseman gallops and shoots ar- 
 rows at a target while the Tartar military man- 
 darins look on. These lazy bannermen were 
 tried in the new army but proved flabby and 
 good-for-nothing; they would break down on an 
 ordinary twenty-mile march. Battening on their 
 hereditary pensions they have given themselves 
 up to sloth and vice, and their poor chest de- 
 velopment, small weak muscles, and diminishing 
 families foreshadow the early dying out of the 
 stock. Where is there a better illustration of 
 the truth that parasitism leads to degeneration! 
 
 The hope is in the new national army, and this 
 is one of its important recruiting centers, for the 
 Mohammedans of this province and Kansuh, 
 sprung in part from West Asian warriors, are 
 far more spirited and pugnacious than the pure 
 Chinese. There is a military preparatory school 
 here with two hundred students, and buildings 
 
THE FAB WEST OF THE FAE EAST 281 
 
 are arising for what is to be one of the four 
 chief military schools of the Empire. In all the 
 public schools there is daily military drill. 
 
 Feeling the closing jaws of the vise, i. e., the 
 Powers, Chinese patriots are making the army 
 the national pet in order to raise the despised 
 calling of the soldier. Patriotic societies as- 
 semble the people and appeal to scholars and 
 other better elements to enlist. The students are 
 stirring up an agitation for the establishment of 
 a volunteer army. In some parts of the Empire, 
 especially in the provinces near to Peking, good 
 men are sought for the ranks, they are promptly 
 paid, and they are taught to make themselves 
 trig and neat. The men are proud of the uni- 
 form and the public is being taught to respect 
 it. When traveling, soldiers are no longer 
 herded in open trucks, but ride third-class. The 
 military ranks have been raised above the cor- 
 responding civil ranks. The officers are prod- 
 ucts of military schools not, as formerly, prize 
 essayists. Princes of the Blood hold high com- 
 mands and constantly wear their uniforms. The 
 infant Emperor has conferred upon the army the 
 supreme distinction of announcing himself as its 
 commander-in-chief. 
 
 Nevertheless, each province does pretty much 
 as it pleases, uniforms and equipments are not 
 yet standardized, and at least fifteen distinct 
 types of rifles are in use. Often the central 
 military authorities show an astonishing lack of 
 snap and efficiency. For example, they allow 
 
282 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 the testing of a foreign machine to train the men 
 to accurate shooting to be interrupted for the 
 hundred days of mourning after the late Em- 
 peror's death and again for five weeks at the 
 Chinese New Year. The following incident re- 
 veals the old listlessness in quarters where the 
 professional spirit ought to be at its keenest. 
 An American captain happened to show certain 
 Chinese officers at Peking a Browning revolver 
 which so pleased them that they inquired how 
 they, could obtain such a weapon. He volun- 
 teered to get them and presently orders for two 
 hundred were taken, mostly among officers of the 
 Imperial Guard. Since a government permit 
 (hu-chao) is necessary if you want to bring arms 
 into Cathay, the captain suggested to the officers 
 that of course they would procure the indispensa- 
 ble hu-chao. They said, "Oh, you get it," and 
 as he would not beseech the Chinese Government 
 for permission to import arms for its own de- 
 fenders, the revolvers never came. 
 
 All the four days to Fengsiangfu the road was 
 lined with reapers returning home to Kansuh. 
 At dawn they would be lying thick by the road- 
 side asleep, and a little later they would be crowd- 
 ing the eating stalls where our chair coolies rest 
 and smoke after three miles of carry. Here a 
 cent buys a big bowl of noodle soup or wheat 
 porridge with a large steamed roll and a sugared 
 doughnut, so the strings of hard-earned cash 
 tied about their waist suffered little. Each 
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 his back a light frame holding his raw felt 
 coat, sleeping mat, cooking pot, sickle, and per- 
 haps some town wares to peddle among his 
 shepherd neighbors. While the harvest is on, 
 hundreds of these cutters are to be seen at day- 
 break in the village streets waiting to be hired. 
 When the cutting is over they work their way 
 four or five hundred miles back home in time to 
 reap the late crops of cool Kansuh. 
 
 Such verdant, uncouth, staring, gaping, ill- 
 smelling, garlicky hinds might have been seen in 
 Europe as late as the Crusades, but hardly since 
 then. It was such unlettered boors, no doubt, 
 who, in the later Roman Empire, by clinging to 
 the old religion long after the cities had accepted 
 the new, made the word for villager, pagan, and 
 for heath dweller, heathen, synonymous with 
 "non-Christian." What irony that to-day the 
 polished Confucian gentleman of the cities is 
 called a "heathen"! 
 
 Thanks to rebellion and famine Shensi is now 
 roomy and its people do not have to work very 
 hard. There is little murder of girl babies,' 
 though, to be sure, opium pellets come in very 
 handy for such purpose. Shensi folk migrate 
 little, live much to themselves, and are rude, con- 
 servative and provincial. I heard of a peasant 
 woman refusing a thousand cash rather than 
 bother to boil a pot of water for a traveler's tea 
 — which is as if one of our farmers' wives should 
 refuse a five-dollar bill for such service. 
 
 At Fengsiangfu we bade good-bye to the road 
 
286 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 which, leads on to Turkestan, to Cashgar and, if 
 you like, to "silken Samarcand." It is a cart 
 road to Lanchowfu where the Yellow Eiver is 
 so swift that a ferryboat rowing hard to get 
 across is swept ten miles down stream ere it 
 touches the other bank. Eecently the governor 
 there had an American engineer built a truss 
 bridge across the river, and when it was opened 
 the canny Mongol carters — who know about stone 
 bridges but not about steel — halted their loads 
 on the approach and went on ahead to inspect the 
 structure and see whether it really would stand 
 up under a cart ! 
 
 Chinese townspeople do not always cut loose 
 from agriculture. In this city trade has been 
 dead for three weeks because so many of the 
 townsmen have been away harvesting their wheat. 
 The city has a progressive prefect from Szechuan, 
 the Massachusetts of West China, who has es- 
 tablished a school for silk culture, introduced the 
 mulberry, and hopes that silk-raising will take 
 the place of the doomed poppy. 
 
 From here we leave wheel track and strike 
 south in sedan chairs to struggle for twelve days 
 with the mountains that give the province a name 
 which means "the western passes." The scen- 
 ery was once Tyrolean, but Nature has been 
 tamed by man and forced to yield him the ut- 
 most of subsistence. Woods, brake, grass, pas- 
 ture, wild shubbery — nearly everything in the 
 nature of wilderness — vanished centuries ago. 
 
THE FAR WEST OF THE FAR EAST 287 
 
 Utility reigns supreme; and all it comes to is to 
 feed a dirty, sordid, opium-sodden people living 
 in hovels, wearing coarse, faded blue garments, 
 crippling their women by foot-binding, and let- 
 ting their boys and girls run about filthy and 
 naked! No music, art, books, poetry, worship, 
 refined association, allure of children, charm of 
 women or glory of young manhood in its 
 strength. No discussions, no politics, no heed to 
 events in the great world. Life on a low plane, 
 the prey of petty cares and mean anxieties. 
 Infinite diligence, great cleverness and ingenuity, 
 abundance of foresight and thrift, few destruc- 
 tive passions; still, a life that is dreary and de- 
 pressing to look upon. And the thing that hath 
 been will be unless new stimuli and higher ideals 
 come in from without. These people pay a 
 heavy price for having crushed woman down into 
 a mere breeder of children. Of the charm, the 
 surprise, the refinement woman can impart to 
 life if only she is granted freedom and opportu- 
 nity, they have no inkling. 
 
 Family meals there are none; armed with 
 a pair of chopsticks each stows his food when he 
 feels like it. The windows are few, small and ob- 
 structed with lattice or oiled paper so that, thanks 
 to the doctrine that "the home is woman's 
 sphere," she passes her days in the semi-dark- 
 ness of a cave. Almost never does one meet a 
 woman traveling. The females of the common 
 people are rarely out of sight of home. But as 
 
288 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 officials liave to take their families about from 
 post to post, we pass perhaps three women a day 
 always in curtained sedan chairs. 
 
 The Celestials let their girlhood bloom un- 
 noticed in a cellar and cannot divine the charm 
 we Americans find in these graceful budding 
 creatures with their innocent and precious af- 
 firmance of the worth of life. I first realized 
 what the East misses by my delight when, on 
 my return, I saw girls and young women at the 
 stations along the Canadian Pacific Eailway con- 
 ducting themselves like natural, uncowed human 
 beings. Their freedom had the witchery of a 
 guarded park where the fawns face you fearlessly 
 in the open and the timid quail run about un- 
 afraid. 
 
 As we go south signs of superstition multiply. 
 Just inside the town gate stands often a dingy 
 little god-house with a horrid idol clutching a 
 human head or eye-ball in his hand. There are 
 many wayside shrines containing little figures 
 of an old king and his consort, seated and benign, 
 genii loci no doubt. Before some jutting stone 
 by the path under the cliff the incense curls all 
 day long and the passing packman pauses long 
 enough to buy a few sticks which the priest, with 
 profound kotows to the smoky stone stuck up 
 with cock feathers, will burn under the nose of 
 the imaginary joss. We met a procession of 
 mourners chanting a weird dirge and on the cof- 
 fin they bore on their shoulders crouched a cock 
 to be sacrificed at the grave. Along the Kialing 
 
THE FAE WEST OF THE FAR EAST 289 
 
 one finds facing each turn in the river a square 
 stone pillar bearing a man's bust. The Romans 
 called such termini. Now, why should the carven 
 head on these Szechuan termini have short curling 
 hair and a Roman cast of features? On this 
 same river we pass a great rock face known as the 
 Cliff of the Thousand Gods. Buddhist piety has 
 pitted it with many hundreds of niches each hold- 
 ing the image of some god or saint, life size or 
 greater. 
 
 Where the road crosses a high divide a wall 
 pierced by a gateway spans the pass and the 
 traveler catches his first sight of the canon beyond 
 as a lovely picture framed in an arch. Temples 
 crown such places and I have seen the roadway 
 for a furlong literally lined with inscribed stone 
 tablets presented by worshipers who wished to 
 commemorate their visit to the holy place. A 
 silk-peddler from far Chefoo was with us when 
 we passed and for good luck he had the priests 
 light joss-sticks for him in front of the god. He 
 was most perfunctory and no thought of prayer 
 as communion with the deity had ever entered 
 his mind. His idea was; you do something nice, 
 such as burn incense, for the god and he, seeing 
 he is a gentleman, will do something nice for you. 
 
 Nevertheless, the priests do protect the trees. 
 On the deforested mountains you can tell a tem- 
 ple fifteen miles away by the clump of trees 
 about it, which stand out on the sharp sky line 
 with great distinctness. Sometimes many acres 
 of ancient woods are in the sacred grove and once 
 
290 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 for two days our way was dominated by a high 
 pine-clad peak with a protecting monastery 
 perched on top. 
 
 Daring and costly as was this "Koad of the 
 Golden Ox" it is, like everything else in this land, 
 neglected. Often we came on a piece of road 
 that had dropped away or been buried by an 
 earth-slip or undermined by the river ; but repair 
 work there is none. In forty days of travel we 
 beheld never a stroke of road-mending. The 
 laden coolies painfully pick their way around the 
 break and traffic flows on. We saw fine stone 
 bridges building, for you can carve your name 
 on a bridge and, besides, a grateful community 
 may raise a tablet in your honor. Indeed, if 
 prefect or philanthropist Tsu builds an entire 
 highway, it will be known as the "Tsu road" and 
 he will be happy. But what glory is there for 
 any one in keeping up the existing highways? 
 So old main roads and bridges are suffered to 
 drop to pieces at the very moment new lesser 
 ones are being built. "What China needs is a 
 highway superintendent in each prefecture who 
 will organize a permanent road-mending force. 
 Let him be an expert, making roads his life work 
 and joy, not an ambitious official on his way up 
 the ladder of promotion with his eye fixed on the 
 rungs above him. 
 
 Frequently for a furlong on each side of the 
 village the paving of the road is missing. I dis- 
 covered at last that the villagers had simply dug 
 up the paving stones and used them to build 
 
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THE FAE WEST OF THE FAE EAST 293 
 
 their pig pens or garden walls. Thanks to these 
 depredations, each year a hundred thousand car- 
 riers go slipping and laboring miserably through 
 these stretches of muck. Yet nothing is done ; the 
 private interest is sacred and must be given 
 the right of way no matter what the damage to 
 the general public. For in Chinese eyes the 
 private right is something distinct and clear-cut 
 which each understands and sympathizes with, 
 while the public right is not vizualized at all or, 
 in any case, commands no sympathy. If my 
 next-door neighbor has a dramatic troupe per- 
 form in front of his house making the night 
 clamorous with gongs and songs, I do not pro- 
 test. It is all his affair. The whole neighbor- 
 hood tolerates the murder of its sleep because 
 each imagines that sometime, perhaps, he will 
 want to have a festivity in front of Ms house! 
 
 Throughout our journey the attitude of the 
 people left nothing to be desired. Once only did 
 we hear the epithet "foreign devil" and that 
 was the innocent prattle of an urchin. We 
 found mission ladies who had heard it but once 
 in seven years. These ladies occupy stations by 
 themselves, go chairing about the country alone, 
 and are never molested or even insulted. They 
 feel perfectly safe with any chairmen they pick 
 up. The other side is the spectacle of evil- 
 doers slowing dying in the open street in the ter- 
 rible "standing frame" where, with his arms 
 pinioned, a criminal hangs by his head in a frame 
 that just lets his toes reach the ground. It is 
 
294 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 blood-curdling when yon meet a party carrying 
 a man with fettered ankles seated in a big 
 wooden cage to reflect that he may be on his way 
 to the headsman's sword, the standing frame, 
 or death-by-the-thonsand-cuts. 
 
 The giant tangle of monntains through which 
 one emerges into the valley of the Upper Han, a 
 thousand miles by river from Hankow, i. e., 
 Han-mouth, seems to be a social frontier. North 
 of this axis all the way to Peking people live in 
 walled villages ; south of it they live in scattered 
 homesteads. Apparently the easily defended 
 passes relieved the people to the south from fear 
 of the Mongols. These people, moreover, do 
 not bind the feet of the women so tightly nor 
 do they keep them so secluded. The girls were 
 everywhere helping thresh the wheat and a single 
 family would be able to have from five to eight 
 flails going on the threshing floor. 
 
 The real line of cleavage between North China 
 and South China comes a little further on where 
 rice culture begins. For with rice the water 
 buffalo becomes the principal farm animal. But 
 if the horse or mule cannot be used in farming, 
 one cannot afford to keep him merely for trans- 
 port. So there is an end of wheeled vehicles, 
 the narrow, stone-paved road replaces the broad 
 dirt road of North China, the coolie becomes the 
 common carrier, and the highway is thickly 
 studded with refreshment stalls for the human 
 pack animals. One travels by chair and no 
 longer by mule litter. The inns are for men 
 
THE FAR WEST OF THE FAR EAST 295 
 
 rather than for beasts. Since the streets of the 
 cities are continuous with the country roads and 
 a part of the same system of communication, they 
 become narrow in the same degree as the high- 
 ways. As neither sun nor wind can get at these 
 straitened streets to dry them, they become foul 
 and unsanitary. Population is more congested 
 than in the north. Mosquitoes bred in the paddy 
 fields make life a torment. In the wheat belt the 
 contents of the family cess-pool are mixed with 
 dry earth and applied without offense. With the 
 cultivation of rice you get the liquid manure, the 
 filth bucket, and the awful stenches characteristic 
 of the South. So that the oft-noted contrasts 
 between the life of North China and that of South 
 China derive not from a difference in the peo- 
 ple, but from the demands of the dominant crop. 
 Wonderful is the high broken land south of the 
 mountain masses that constitutes the great 
 sponge of China. Rounding the shoulder of a 
 height, you see mountains rising behind moun- 
 tains until the distant purple ranges are lost in 
 perpetual cloud. At intervals a great shadow- 
 filled cleft opens to the south whence issues a 
 snow-fed river into an amphitheater of terraced 
 foothills covered to the top with rice fields, each 
 overflowing into the one next below. The gleam 
 near the crown of a hill is the storage pool that 
 gives the rice to drink. Then the river meanders 
 about a widening valley floor and finally for 
 half a hundred miles between the foothills you 
 glimpse its silver on its way to the Yangtse. One 
 14 
 
296 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 sees rivers with other rivers flowing into them 
 and smaller rivers flowing into these, each loiter- 
 ing through its enameled valley. The recesses 
 of a kingdom lie open in the afternoon sunlight. 
 One looks down, as might the Heavenly Eye, on 
 the habitations of countless beings and in im- 
 agination sees them hurrying about their petty 
 food-winning tasks like so many agitated ants. 
 
 There are two ways of traversing broken 
 country. Follow the water courses, now and then 
 climbing over a ridge into the next valley ; or fol- 
 low the water partings, now and then dropping 
 down into a valley in order to reach the next ridge. 
 Local roads follow the valley route where the 
 people are thickest; but a government way may 
 take the high route that gives you dry road, 
 breeze and a magnificent view on either hand. 
 Now, the road that leads from the foot of the 
 passes two hundred-odd miles southwest to 
 Chengtu mounts three thousand feet above the 
 Kialing and then keeps just as high as it can. 
 Save where it dips into a valley it is lined with 
 splendid old cedars, some not less than seven feet 
 through, each protected by its wooden tablet 
 warning against vandalism. 
 
 Through the mountains mule and man vie as 
 carriers. A great quantity of cotton has to be 
 transported from the Wei Basin two hundred and 
 fifty miles to the Han Valley, and for these bulky 
 bales the man is better. We passed thousands 
 of coolies creeping along under their huge white 
 burdens like migrating ants under their eggs, 
 
THE FAR WEST OF THE FAR EAST 297 
 
 carrying from one to two hundred pounds of 
 cotton eight to fifteen miles a day and earning 
 therefor about seven cents. 
 
 As we descend into overpeopled Szechuan, the 
 pack mules vanish and the highway is given up 
 to the packmen. One backs his towering load 
 and carries a little iron-shod T prop to put be- 
 hind him and rest his load on when he takes 
 breath. Another swings his bales from the ends 
 of a six-foot bamboo balanced across his shoulder 
 on a pad. Every two minutes he must shift pole 
 to the other shoulder. The early beginner grows 
 his own pad in the shape of two huge red-blue cal- 
 louses on either side of the base of the neck. 
 
 Each carries cash, sweat rag, fan, water pipe, 
 oiled paper umbrella and a roll of matting to keep 
 his load dry. The pack mule requires an at- 
 tendant to guide, drive, load, unload, feed and 
 collect pay for him. The packman looks after 
 himself and in a fortnight or a month, this slave 
 of poverty delivers his load to the consignee, 
 takes his wage and departs. What can a poor 
 mule do? Such competition simply takes the 
 fodder out of his mouth! 
 
 But oh, the physique of these packmen ! Naked 
 to the middle, they present a superb torso, the 
 muscles of the trunk being developed to perfec- 
 tion under the carrying pole. Never a hollow 
 waist, never a protruding abdomen. There is 
 not an ounce of clogging fat and the play of the 
 well-defined muscles under the clear bronze skin 
 is beautiful to behold. It is a pity that the 
 
298 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 moment the Szechuanese is exempt from phys- 
 ical labor, he begins to degenerate for his ideal 
 is to become as unlike the despised coolie as pos- 
 sible. If he is a prosperous merchant he is proud 
 of his thickening jowl and his sagging waist. If 
 he is of the literati he is proud of his slim hands 
 and his lissome figure. 
 
 In Szechuan the Mongol strain weakens and 
 you come upon fine human types. I saw a strip- 
 ling who might have posed for Michael Angelo's 
 David. Often the eye lights on an oval face with 
 arching penciled eyebrows, delicate temples, 
 straight nose, high-cut nostrils and fine eyes, 
 beautiful as Antinous. The world has been slow 
 to realize that nowhere is there a more high-bred 
 countenance than you can find in China. Its 
 beauty has been veiled by the unbecoming prac- 
 tice of shaving the front of the head, which 
 "brings out" the cranium too much and suggests 
 a precocious baldness. When the queue is gone, 
 — and it seems in the way of going — our painters 
 will find a fresh inspiration in the Endymions 
 and Ganymedes of Szechuan. 
 
 But while the stock is good, its condition is not. 
 The wens, tumors, swellings, wastings, eruptions, 
 sores and ulcers that meet the eye are fairly 
 sickening. No doubt if we went about stripped 
 to the waist, there would be shocking revela- 
 tions. There would be a dreadful accumulation 
 of blemishes, too, if a generation of us grew up 
 without doctor or surgeon. Still, the marred 
 and rotting bodies so common in certain foul 
 
Noontide in a street of Paisiang 
 
 In the valley of the Wei 
 
THE FAR WEST OF THE FAE EAST 301 
 
 old towns suggest syphilitic taint or univer- 
 sal poisoning. When the flesh of scavengers is 
 food, when walls, floors, furniture, garments, and 
 the water in which they are washed swarm with 
 microbes, when one cannot eat or drink or breathe 
 or stir or bathe without risk of infection, even 
 the hardy constitution of the Chinese succumbs. 
 It is a mercy that the hot-drink habit gives 
 the people here at least the benefit of boiled 
 water. 
 
 In teeming Szechuan the food quest is dire, un- 
 remitting and obvious. The country is weedless, 
 tilled like a garden, but coarse utility and anxious 
 calculation look out of it everywhere. No lawns, 
 shade trees, flowers or shrubbery. Not even an 
 orchard, vineyard, or orange-grove; but every- 
 where rice, pulse, cabbages, corn and beans — the 
 maximum of sustenance! Passing a farmhouse 
 you glimpse dirty naked babies, listless foot- 
 bound women, feculent floors, sooty walls, dark 
 rooms, rooting pigs, a mangy cur, a festering 
 cess-pool, a couple of bushels of wheat drying on 
 a mat, a woman or a donkey grinding at a mill. 
 No newspapers, no courting, no social gather- 
 ings, no uplifting religion, nothing that gives out- 
 look, aspiration, hope. In six weeks I saw but 
 one man reading, and he had fallen asleep over 
 his book. The faces of the boys of eight to 
 twelve years are most appealing; they look 
 brighter than white children of the same age. It 
 is sad to reflect that in the absence of good public 
 schools and economic opportunity they can but 
 
302 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 grow up into the same ignorant, superstitious, 
 overworked men their fathers are. 
 
 After a week along the sky line we drop down 
 at last into the world-famous Chengtu plain, 
 really an old lake about seventy miles by thirty 
 which has been filled with the silt gnawed from the 
 great Thibetan mountains by the foamy Min. 
 Two thousand years ago the engineer Li Ping 
 — since exalted to godhead and honored in many 
 temples — caught and split and tamed the Min 
 where it issues from the gorges, so that its still- 
 cold, milky water, strained through a thousand 
 interlacing canals, flashes and rustles and gur- 
 gles down this "Garden of the Flowery Eealm" 
 under apricot and pomegranate, past copses of 
 mulberry and bamboo, irrigating crops that feed 
 three or four thousand to the square mile. The 
 plain is rich but most of the people are poor, for 
 there are at least four millions of them, and if 
 the soil were twice as bountiful there would be 
 twice as many people just as poor. Nowhere on 
 the globe, I suppose, is so much food coaxed from 
 so little soil. One hears of seven crops a sea- 
 son. You easily toss a stone across the plot that 
 must feed a human being a year. In their eager- 
 ness to accumulate fertilizer the farmers have 
 lined the thronged highways with screened pits 
 which emit unspeakable stenches. 
 
 Most of the crops the Min water reaches by 
 gravity, but to the higher tracts it is lifted by 
 huge wheels built of bamboo but as spidery as a 
 Ferris wheel. Set upright in a ditch they turn 
 
THE FAR WEST OF THE FAE EAST 303 
 
 slowly as the swift current beats on the little 
 square mats fixed all around the rim. Between 
 the mats bamboo-joint buckets as big as your 
 forearm are fastened at such an angle that they 
 fill while in the water and spill their contents side- 
 ways into a long trough as they come to the top 
 of the wheel. By this means these clever culti- 
 vators have made the current lift a part of itself 
 thirty-five feet. 
 
 On account of the many streams, one meets 
 with innumerable bridges, many of them of stone 
 and very beautiful. Always in the big bridges 
 a carved dragon's head projects upstream from 
 each pier and on the down-stream side the 
 dragon's lashing tail is seen. "Where wheel 
 traffic is unknown it is possible to introduce the 
 elegant "camel-back" bridge, a single high stone 
 arch over which the road is carried by steps. 
 
 At Chengtu, capital of Szechuan and one of the 
 wealthiest and best-built cities of the Empire, 
 Western influence is seen at its best. When the 
 Viceroy Chao-Erh-Sen took us to the roof of the 
 military college and pointed out the numerous 
 schools and public buildings, he showed a just 
 pride in what is, no doubt, the most progressive 
 of pure Chinese cities. No other can match the 
 paving, the cleansing, the policing of the streets 
 of Chengtu. City water and electric light will 
 soon be in. Here two thousand miles from the 
 ocean and within two hundred miles of Thibet as 
 the crow flies, the Chinese are doing better than 
 in the coast cities that have had intercourse with 
 
304 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 the "West for two generations. If may be in the 
 character of the people, for after devastation the 
 province was resettled in the seventeenth century 
 by pushful immigrants from other provinces. It 
 may be the exemption of Szechuan from the 
 ravages of the Taiping rebellion. It may be, 
 also, that these remote Chinese, free from the im- 
 pressions left by the forced opium trade, treaty- 
 port contempt, gun-boat diplomacy, and the West- 
 ern mailed fist, are in a better mood to appreciate 
 the higher side of the West — its ideas and ideals. 
 
 I say "ideals" advisedly, for not Western 
 wares, nor Western methods and machinery, nor 
 even Western science and technology suffice, 
 even together, to meet the needs of this people. 
 Their fires are banked and we shall never know 
 what they can do till the dampers of their energy 
 are opened. 
 
 Chinese children do not run, romp, and climb 
 like ours. Their schoolboys are less riotous 
 than white boys. Athletic sports are unknown. 
 One recreates with kite flying, cricket fighting, 
 gambling, chess, or letting off fire-crackers. To 
 sip wine and cap verses in a shady arbor or a 
 cool grotto by a lotus pond is a gentleman's ideal 
 of happiness. There is game aplenty in some 
 parts, but no one shoots save the pot hunter with 
 his rusty matchlock. No one bestrides a horse 
 for pleasure. The placid mule is preferred to 
 the horse and a gentle amble to a brisk gallop. 
 When the mounted soldier gets up speed, the 
 sight is a salve for sore eyes. Boxing would 
 
A horseshoe tomb in a South China hillside 
 
 Coffins in rest-house waiting for the lucky day 
 
 , 
 
THE FAE WEST OF THE FAE EAST 307 
 
 never occur to anyone as a sport. Fighting is 
 rare and, far from being a manly exchange of 
 blows, is waged girlwise, with scratching and 
 hair-pulling. The singing of the men is a nasal 
 falsetto in strange contrast to the abdominal 
 bellow of Western males. 
 
 Walking is demeaning, and one never goes 
 afoot if he has the price of a sedan chair. His 
 outlay is a sacrifice to his sense of dignity rather 
 than to his laziness. Promoted to be a "boy" 
 even the hardy coolie behaves as if stricken with 
 locomotor ataxia, and will be chaired. To pay 
 a social call save in a chair is gross discourtesy. 
 Foreign officers promenading the streets of 
 Chengtu have been taken for foreign coolies be- 
 cause they used their legs. The well-off China- 
 man lolls on his couch or in his palanquin and 
 grows fat, sleek and torpid if he is a sensualist, 
 or frail and translucent if he is an ascetic. The 
 scholar shuns vigorous exercise lest he should 
 spoil his skill with the writing brush. Possibly 
 he lets his nails grow and when they reach some 
 inches of length protects them with a silver case. 
 
 The soldier has come from the dregs and con- 
 tempt for him has gone so far as to quench the 
 natural admiration for the martial virtues. No 
 civilian carries weapons, the duel is unknown, 
 and there is little shame in showing the white 
 feather. The mandarins look bold but often they 
 are "lath painted to look like iron." Under 
 nocturnal attack many a villager takes to his 
 heels leaving his family to the robbers. The lat- 
 
308 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 ter give the foreign traveler a wide berth hav- 
 ing learned the fellow will actually fight. The 
 mere presence of the white passenger is said to 
 brace the nerves of the boatmen in the perilous 
 rapids of the Yangtse. It is not considered 
 shameful to weep, and one often hears of men 
 dissolved in tears. Yet the Chinese meet pain 
 and death like Stoics, and Gordon and Wolseley 
 declared they make brave soldiers when well led. 
 "When well led, ' ' aye, there 's the rub ! For Chi- 
 nese pusillanimity testifies not to want of nat- 
 ural grit but to the fact that the bold manly 
 qualities have not been stimulated among them, 
 as they have been among us, by social apprecia- 
 tion. 
 
 For ages Chinese manhood has been scaled 
 by the maxims of the Sages. Spectacled scholars 
 have been the pace-setters and their psychology 
 has been stamped deep on the national character. 
 If the coolie sports fan and umbrella, it is not 
 from effeminacy, but because the common people 
 form themselves on the model of the literati. 
 Pedants and book-worms, myopes and recluses 
 have had to rule the Chinese, largely by moral 
 force, and as their long suit is learning they 
 naturally cry down bodily prowess. So debility 
 has been supposed to be the necessary accompani- 
 ment of intellect. The ascendancy of the in- 
 tellectuals has damped the virility of the race 
 and lies like a wet blanket on its active and com- 
 bative impulses. Hence the Chinese will not cut 
 their nails and harden their muscles till they 
 
THE FAE WEST OF THE FAE EAST 309 
 
 have new ideals. Perhaps the Young Men's 
 Christian Association with its slogan so inspiring 
 to the young, "all-round development — physical, 
 intellectual, moral, and religious — for myself and 
 for others" is the best physician for the lethargy 
 that lies like an evil spell on the energies of the 
 yellow race. 
 
CHAPTEE VIII 
 
 THE NEW EDUCATION" 
 
 WHEN we came to board the ferry plying 
 across the Yellow Eiver at Tungkwan 
 Pass, the boatman slid out two pieces of plank 
 whipsawed from a tree that had frequently 
 changed its mind. They were so crooked they 
 would turn over when you stepped on them. Of 
 course our mules balked at the wretched gang- 
 way, and half an hour was wasted in forcing them 
 to leap into the boat. At debarkation more waste 
 of time in making them jump from boat to beach. 
 A proper gangway with cleats on it would have 
 saved all the trouble. Now, these ferrymen 
 make, say, three thousand trips a year and at 
 least half the time mules are passengers. Ex- 
 perience ought long ago to have convinced them 
 that a mule will not trust himself to their crazy 
 planks. But they ought to work ; so down to the 
 present moment, no doubt, these planks are run 
 out every time the ferry touches shore. 
 
 It is a Chinese trait to go on employing a likely 
 means without considering whether, as a matter 
 of fact, they are getting the coveted results. The 
 river junk has a big eye painted on either side 
 of the prow so that the boat may "look see" its 
 way. They have never inquired whether these 
 
 310 
 
THE NEW EDUCATION 311 
 
 optical craft fare better than others in the 
 crowded waterways. Just inside the gateway to 
 a courtyard a brick screen is built in order that 
 the viewless flying demons of the air may collide 
 disastrously with it when they seek to enter a 
 domicile. To no one has it occurred to mark 
 whether families without such screens have worse 
 luck than other families. In the same uncritical 
 mood our coolies would leave joss sticks burning 
 before the wayside shrines and, two thousand 
 miles from the sea, our boatmen, before starting 
 on the perilous down-river trip, sacrificed a cock 
 at the bow to bring good luck. The sentry on 
 the escort boat moored alongside us rolled his 
 drum and beat his triangle every quarter of an 
 hour through the night to soothe us with the as- 
 surance that he was awake and vigilant. The 
 actual result was a ruined night's rest and the 
 request next day that he desist from such marks 
 of attention. The night watchman steadily claps 
 as he goes his rounds, the theory being that his 
 din will scare away the thieves. In all the 
 centuries no one has pointed out that in practice 
 the thieves are warned of the watchman's ap- 
 proach and, once he is by, work in perfect se- 
 curity. 
 
 If such be the neglect to scrutinize results in 
 simple matters, what guesswork there will be in 
 the higher realm where effects are confused! 
 Thus it looks as if moral precept will mold charac- 
 ter; and so the Chinese endlessly rehearse precept 
 without noting its utter want of effect. It looks 
 
312 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 as if memorizing the noble teachings of the Sages 
 will form the incorruptible official; and so the 
 classics are made the basis of training for gov- 
 ernment service, with the result that nowhere 
 does performance square less with professions 
 than in China. It looks as if eloquent admoni- 
 tions from the throne will check corruption; and 
 so the hortatory edicts continue to pour forth. 
 Of course they never can reform the mandarins, 
 because they furnish no new incentive to right 
 doing. It looks as if a fierce aspect would in- 
 timidate the enemy; and so there were ''tiger" 
 soldiers; in yellow-ochre hoods, with tiger strip- 
 ings down the back of the uniform, and with shields 
 painted to represent the tiger's open jaws! In 
 like vein when, in 1842, the British troops marched 
 on the Woosung forts, the Chinese general had a 
 lot of conical mud heaps whitewashed so as to 
 look at a distance like white tents, and thus sug- 
 gest the presence of a larger garrison. These 
 bright ideas, alas, somehow, never worked. It 
 looks as if parents will make better matches than 
 the young people, so they have given parents 
 full control of matrimony; with the result that 
 there are now in China more foot-bound wives, 
 crippled from girlhood to please the perverted 
 taste of fathers-in-law than there are men and 
 women in the United States ! 
 
 In a word, the Chinese have never accepted 
 the principle of efficiency, which is, that the 
 methods or means to be chosen for a given pur- 
 pose should not be those which seem appropriate. 
 
Outlook tower of the Temple of the Flowing Waters 
 in Southern Shensi. Founded about 200 B. C. 
 
THE NEW EDUCATION 315 
 
 but those which actually do produce most surely, 
 promptly, aud economically the coveted results. 
 They fail to discriminate real from apparent 
 fitness, because they have never made the 
 efficiency of agents and processes an object of 
 inquiry. 
 
 Not that there is anything queer in the work- 
 ing of the Oriental brain. Not in the least. 
 Their popular thought is unripe, that is all. The 
 bulk of the Chinese match up well with our fore- 
 fathers between the fourteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries. For in the Middle Ages white men 
 were just as haphazard, casual and uncritical as 
 are the yellow men to-day. They looked for 
 ' ' signs and wonders in the heavens ' ' and trembled 
 at comets. They held that blood-root, on account 
 of its red juice, must be a blood purifier; liver- 
 wort, having a liver-shaped leaf, will cure liver 
 disease ; eyebright, being marked with a spot like 
 an eye, is good for eye troubles ; and so on. They 
 fasted, exorcised demons, burned witches, trusted 
 talismans, paraded sacred images, wore relics of 
 the saints, sought the king's touch to cure scrofula, 
 marched in religious processions to bring change 
 of weather and hung consecrated bells in steeples 
 to ward off lightning. It was the rise of the 
 natural sciences that cleared the fog from the 
 European brain. In the building of astronomy, 
 physics, chemistry and physiology were wrought 
 out certain methods — observation, measurement, 
 trial and error, experiment — which were as help- 
 ful for practical life as for science. For a method 
 
316 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 that connects cause and effect may also light up 
 the relation between effort and result. 
 
 The army of Frederick the Great is, perhaps, 
 the first big instance of scientific method in the 
 service of efficiency. Later, the Prussian civil 
 service, French engineering, English machine in- 
 dustry and British sanitary administration be- 
 came the world's marvels. To-day, the great 
 models are the army, consular service, labora- 
 tories and industrial schools of Germany; the 
 navy, municipalities and inspection services of 
 Great Britain; the highways, art industries and 
 viticulture of France; and the experiment sta- 
 tions, reformatory systems and industrial plants 
 of the United States. Not a day passes but the 
 quest for maximum efficiency stirs the dry bones 
 in some neglected field. Its watchwords are ' ' ac- 
 counting, " "unit-costs," "cross checking," "case 
 counting," "standardization," "scientific organi- 
 zation. " It is displacing the argument method of 
 determining policy. Reformatory and juvenile 
 court, outdoor relief and charity organization, 
 coeducation and vocational training, the religious 
 revival and the institutional church, equal suffrage 
 and the commission plan of city government — 
 they will all stand or fall according to the outcome 
 of the minute study of their results. Nothing, 
 however fenced and sacred, can withstand the in- 
 vasion, and by the middle of this century the 
 principle of efficiency will be master in every de- 
 partment of Western civilization. 
 
 Pitting. China against a West armed with this 
 
THE NEW EDUCATION 317 
 
 technique of success is like pitting the sixteenth- 
 century man against the twentieth. Our fore- 
 fathers would match us in intellect but not in 
 practical power. Likewise the Chinese, for all 
 their latent ability, are hopelessly outclassed by us 
 in efficiency. Whenever they have measured 
 strength with the West this ancient and proud 
 people, assimilator of so many savage tribes and 
 barbarian hordes, suzerain once of Korea, Annam, 
 Siam, Burma and Nepaul, who have lighted in 
 Eastern Asia a fire at which half a billion human 
 beings warm their hands, has had a maddening 
 sense of impotence — as of a trance-bound man 
 who can neither stir nor cry out. 
 
 It was Japan that shook China's faith in her- 
 self. Her early clashes with English and French 
 made little impression, for she had met warlike 
 barbarians before. Defeat her they might, but in 
 the end she led them captive with her civilization. 
 These "red-haired" people were simply a new 
 and very fierce race of barbarians — that was all. 
 But when, in the war of 1894-95 the l ' Eastern is- 
 landers," who owed all their knowledge and arts 
 to China, overmatched them at every point, the 
 Chinese were staggered. What else but their 
 borrowings from the West could have made the 
 Japanese suddenly so strong? Then came in 
 quick succession the Emperor's reforms, the Em- 
 press Dowager's coup d'etat, the humiliations of 
 1900, and the burden of indemnities. It became 
 clear that dismemberment and serfdom would be 
 the doom of China unless some means were found 
 is 
 
318 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 to energize this ocean of men. What finally sug- 
 gested itself was the adoption of Western civiliza- 
 tion in its main features and education in the 
 special branches that underlie the arts of the 
 West. 
 
 The old education of China was concerned with 
 Chinese history and classic literature. No 
 science, nothing of the geography or history of 
 other nations, nothing of mathematics but the 
 rudiments. Of social science and government no 
 more, than was embodied in the writings of the 
 Sages. The object was to store the memory and 
 cultivate an approved literary style. The gov- 
 ernment provided no schools but held competitive 
 examinations and conferred degrees. Its stamp 
 gave the scholar his rating and to the successful 
 the doors of preferment stood open. At the 
 capitals were acres of tiny examination cells 
 where annually several thousand aspirants passed 
 three days in the throes of literary composition. 
 Every morning some of them were taken out dead. 
 About one per cent, were successful and entitled 
 to enter the great triennial competitive examina- 
 tion at Peking. From the victors in this test most 
 of the government posts were filled. 
 
 Six years ago the Empress Dowager swept all 
 this away with one stroke of the vermilion pen and 
 decreed a system of national education in which 
 schools of all grades were to be provided by the 
 government and the course of study should in- 
 clude Western branches as well as Chinese 
 studies. There was to be a primary school in 
 
Wayfarers resting in the shade of a tree protected by 
 the monuments and the temple 
 
 Traffic through the loess en route to the 
 distant railroad 
 
 , \ 
 
THE NEW EDUCATION 321 
 
 every village, a grammar school in each of the 
 walled towns from which a Jisien or district is 
 governed, a "middle school" in every prefecture 
 and for the province a college and a normal 
 school. Frequently commercial, technical, agri- 
 cultural, military and law schools were added. 
 The edifice was crowned by the Imperial Uni- 
 versity at Peking. 
 
 Enthusiasm for the new education spread like 
 wild fire. The examination cells were razed and 
 on their site rose college halls. Schools were set 
 up in temples and to-day, under lofty pillared 
 roofs, you find little fellows in queues reciting be- 
 fore the grim god of war or the benign Kwan- 
 yin, goddess of mercy. Old schoolmasters threw 
 themselves into "short courses" in order to find 
 a footing in the new system. Those who had 
 picked up the rudiments of some Western branch 
 suddenly commanded salaries that were the envy 
 of ripe scholars of the old type. Not long ago a 
 provincial college sent to a neighboring Ameri- 
 can school for a professor of mathematics. He 
 must know arithmetic through Proportion and 
 solve algebraic problems with one unknown quan- 
 tity! The dearth of teachers prompted a great 
 rush to Japan and three years ago there were 
 fifteen thousand Chinese studying in Tokyo. 
 Then the feeling toward Japan cooled and now the 
 remnant there numbers not over three or four 
 thousand. 
 
 The report of the Ministry of Education for 
 the Chinese year ending February last shows that 
 
322 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 in two years the number of schools at Peking has 
 increased from 206 to 252 and the number of 
 students from 11,417 to 15,774. Outside Peking 
 the government schools grew in number from 
 36,000 to 42,444 and the count of students had 
 leaped from 1,013,000 to 1,285,000. The number 
 of non-government schools exceeds the number 
 of government schools. In Chihli, which naturally 
 responds more promptly than any other province 
 to Peking impulses, the provincial board of educa- 
 tion provides a university at Tientsin, a college at 
 Paotingfu, 17 industrial schools, 3 higher normal 
 schools, 49 elementary normal schools, 2 medical 
 colleges, 3 foreign-language schools, 8 commercial 
 schools, 5 agricultural schools, 30 middle schools, 
 174 higher elementary schools, 101 middle 
 elementary schools, 8,534 lower elementary 
 schools, 131 girls' schools and 174 half-day and 
 night schools. 
 
 Since Chihli is by no means typical, compare 
 with it a backward province like Shensi with its 
 eight million inhabitants. In 1909 its board of 
 education was looking after two colleges and a law 
 school with 520 students, 4 normal schools with 
 410 students, 13 middle schools enrolling 800, 98 
 higher elementary schools teaching 3,433, 21 
 middle elementary schools with 817 pupils, and 
 1,948 lower elementary schools with 41,121 pupils. 
 Moreover, 180 girls were being taught in two girls ' 
 schools. 
 
 While the totals for the Empire are impressive, 
 if one holds in mind the enormous population of 
 
THE NEW EDUCATION 323 
 
 school age to be cared for, it is doubtful if the 
 proportion of young Chinese in school to-day is a 
 twenty-fifth of the proportion taught in American 
 schools. Since the surplus of the people above 
 their physical needs is so much slighter than ours, 
 it will be impossible for China to expand education 
 to the Western scale until the application of new 
 economic methods has greatly stimulated the pro- 
 duction of taxable wealth. 
 
 An immense demand for text-books has sprung 
 up and at Shanghai the Commercial Press, the 
 biggest publishing house in Eastern Asia, employs 
 a thousand people. From it issue primers, read- 
 ers, histories, geographies, mathematics and 
 science books in Chinese, English readers suited 
 to adult beginners, annotated English classics, 
 scrolls, wall-maps and science charts. In its 
 translation department a hundred are kept busy 
 and many scholarly minds are hammering out 
 ideographic equivalents for the thousands of 
 special terms in science, medicine and engineer- 
 ing. These, when accepted by the Bureau of 
 Terminology at Peking become a part of the 
 Chinese language. 
 
 Of course in the new education as in the old, 
 Chinese has to be the ground work, so it is not 
 in the elementary schools but in the middle schools 
 and colleges that one meets with the difficulty of 
 putting new wine into old bottles. The contrasts 
 between these institutions and our own throw a 
 strong light on the differences between China and 
 the West. 
 
324 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 In the Board of War at Peking there are six 
 hundred employes ; but fifty men do all the work. 
 The rest are parasites, mostly Manchus, for whose 
 sake, of course, the Imperial Government pri- 
 marily exists. In a government so graft-ridden 
 it would be too much to expect that the branch 
 dealing with education should be entirely free. 
 The large proportion of non-teaching officers in 
 the schools suggests that soft berths have been 
 provided for somebody's relatives or friends. In 
 my university the corps of instructors is five 
 times as large as the administrative force ; but in 
 a Chinese school of modern languages with twenty- 
 seven teachers I found ten administrators, to say 
 nothing of the servants. Half of them twiddle 
 their thumbs and draw their pay. In a higher 
 commercial school with twenty teachers there are 
 ten officers, of whom three are mere sinecurists. 
 In a law school with 800 students there are twenty- 
 five non-teaching officials, most of them sinecurists. 
 In a technical high school with thirty teachers the 
 dean leaves everything to the manager, the treas- 
 urer's duties are performed by the assistant 
 treasurer, the secretary's by the assistant secre- 
 tary, and the head clerk does nothing but warm 
 a chair. Four sinecurists out of twelve officers ! 
 
 In view of the lack of money for good teachers 
 the abundance of costly apparatus looks a bit sus- 
 picious. In the entrance hall of a certain school 
 you will see fine biological and botanical charts, 
 but will learn on inquiry that no one on the staff 
 can present the subjects or put the charts to use. 
 
THE NEW EDUCATION 325 
 
 Elsewhere you will find a physical laboratory sup- 
 plied with good apparatus covered with dust. The 
 teacher knows nothing of physics save a little of 
 electricity. In a remote provincial college I saw 
 several hundred bottles and jars of chemicals — 
 all from a single supply house in Tokyo — and not 
 one in twenty had the seal broken. There was 
 at least $1,500 worth — enough to stock three of our 
 college laboratories. To the "old China hand" 
 such extravagance indicates that some one is get- 
 ting a commission on the supplies. In an educa- 
 tional center far up the Yangtse the authorities 
 keep bringing out American teachers at great ex- 
 pense under a year contract and then at the end 
 of the year replacing them with others no better 
 qualified. Inasmuch as every such shift calls for 
 an allowance of $300 for travel money, the know- 
 ing ones suspect that some official gets ' ' squeeze ' ' 
 on the travel money and that is the reason for 
 the incessant changing of teachers. 
 
 One is struck, too, by the casualness with which 
 foreign teachers are picked up. It is obvious that 
 hiring an Englishman to teach, botany solely on 
 the personal recommendation of the German pro- 
 fessor of mathematics is no way to get good men. 
 When, forty years ago, the Japanese launched 
 their modern schools, they applied to the gov- 
 ernments or the university presidents of the West 
 for teachers, and these took a pride in sending 
 their very best. Those who adapted themselves 
 were retained for twenty or thirty years — until 
 Japan had reared fit scholars of her own to take 
 
326 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 their places. But the Chinese, selecting in hap- 
 hazard fashion and holding out nothing in the way 
 of security of tenure, fail to get from the West 
 the educational help they so greatly need. 
 
 Not only are the foreign instructors uneven but 
 the Chinese drop them altogether too soon. In 
 a certain capital I visited a college and a normal 
 school. The grounds are spacious and about the 
 dozen courts connected by covered walks and en- 
 closed by low tiled buildings, hangs "the still air 
 of delightful studies." But the four hundred 
 blue-gowned young men are taught by twenty- 
 five professors of whom only one is a foreigner, 
 and he is a Japanese. None of the others has 
 ever been outside of the Middle Kingdom. The 
 professor of German is a raw-looking youth who 
 could not understand one sentence in four in that 
 tongue. In preparation the professors are, per- 
 haps, abreast of our college juniors. It is "the 
 blind leading the blind" — yet this is the crown of 
 the educational system of a province with more 
 people than Pennsylvania has ! 
 
 When English or Americans teach in China no 
 interpreter is necessary since all the pupils in 
 the higher schools are expected to know English. 
 But foreigners at from $1,400 to $1,800 a year 
 are expensive. Japanese teachers require far less 
 pay, but as they have to teach through an in- 
 terpreter they waste half the student's time. If 
 the interpreter is not familiar with the subject 
 his hearers glean little. Moreover, some intelli- 
 gent Chinese firmly believe that in obedience to 
 
THE NEW EDUCATION 327 
 
 secret instructions the Japanese teacher — of 
 medicine, for example — keeps back from his stu- 
 dents some of the finer points of his subject. "When 
 certain strange gaps are discovered in the knowl- 
 edge of his students, the professor pleads that he 
 duly explained these matters but that his hearers 
 failed to understand him. This surmise hooks up 
 with the undoubted fact that in the Japanese 
 military schools, when the professor reaches some 
 new or special point in his subject, he requests the 
 Chinese students present to withdraw and dis- 
 closes it only to the Japanese students. How- 
 ever unjust the suspicion, it is certain that the 
 teachers from Japan are being rapidly dropped 
 and it does not seem likely that the Japanese are 
 destined to be the conveyers of Western learning 
 to China. 
 
 The broad contrast between China and Japan 
 in utilizing Western scholars runs back to their 
 difference in attitude toward our civilization. The 
 Japanese were humble and teachable. Long ago 
 they had borrowed heavily from the mainland and 
 they were not too proud to sit awhile at the feet 
 of Western scholars. But the Chinese, remem- 
 bering that their culture is all their own, are still 
 too haughty to recognize fully their need of the 
 foreign educator. They simply do not compre- 
 hend the massiveness and depth of this alien cul- 
 ture they are trying to assimilate so quickly. They 
 look upon us as clever barbarians who have sur- 
 passed them in mastery of the physical sciences 
 and the mechanic arts : of our advancement in the 
 
328 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 knowledge of the mind, of ethics, of society and 
 government, the very fields the Chinese regard as 
 distinctively their own, they have no apprecia- 
 tion. 
 
 Even the scholar-viceroy, Chang Chih-Tung, 
 whose plea "China's Only Hope" created such 
 a furore twelve years ago, and who as President 
 of the Imperial Board of Education finally in- 
 troduced the reform he had championed — even 
 he never realized the giant bulk of our learning. 
 He .deemed six months a reasonable time to spend 
 on the Western branches and thought two years 
 ample for complete mastery. So he left the cur- 
 riculum so clogged with Chinese studies that the 
 student is crushed under the load. The poor fel- 
 low is in the classroom thirty-five to forty hours 
 a week. Add an hour a day for military drill 
 and the daily time left him for study and read- 
 ing is not over two hours. The result too often 
 is cram and sham. Thus at one time the cur- 
 riculum called for calculus in the junior year. 
 When the literary chancellor of the province in- 
 spected a certain government college its Ameri- 
 can president showed him that the juniors could 
 not possibly reach calculus. The chancellor in- 
 sisted that he must report on the subject, so 
 at his suggestion the professor of mathematics 
 gave a couple of lectures on "the uses of cal- 
 culus." The students were examined on these 
 and thereupon duly certified to as "proficient in 
 calculus." 
 
 Another head, a Han-lin man, after the cigars 
 
THE NEW EDUCATION 331 
 
 were lighted, confessed that he hesitated whether 
 to stick or to resign so difficult is it to manage 
 his provincial college under a Board of Educa- 
 tion that ignores all his recommendations and pays 
 no attention to local needs and conditions. "How 
 can I keep my self-respect," he broke out, "when 
 constantly I am forced to do foolish things ? Here 
 is an applicant thirty-five years old who passes a 
 brilliant entrance examination, but under the cast- 
 iron regulations handed down from Peking I can't 
 admit him because he is not " 'a graduate of a 
 middle school' "! 
 
 This Board of Education is composed of old 
 literary graduates who, having never been out- 
 side of China, underrate the learning that lies 
 behind the terrible efficiency of the West. When 
 I called, the acting head was a conservative 
 Manchu, who seemed to feel sure that China knows 
 what she wants and can just take her time about 
 it. The Manchus, mark you, are not a cultured 
 people. In the time of Shakespeare they were 
 where the Afghans are to-day. Few of them have 
 ever studied abroad, and a Manchu directing the 
 new education in China is as out of place as a 
 Goth directing the schools of Athens in the fourth 
 century. I even heard of a Manchu literary 
 chancellor who could not read the examination 
 essays submitted for provincial honors. So he 
 piled them on the canopy of his bed, poked them 
 with his cane as he lay smoking his pipe, and 
 the thirteen that slid off first were declared 
 winners ! 
 
332 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 With us education is a satisfying career, and 
 the president of the state university is not schem- 
 ing for the governor's chair. But in China, an 
 ambitious mandarin who has been prefect and 
 hopes to become taotai will be given charge of a 
 provincial school till something better turns up. 
 As he brings to it no enthusiasm or special train- 
 ing he is apt to treat it as any other government 
 post. I recall a college director who knows noth- 
 ing of English or Western learning or the art 
 of education. He runs the school for secret profit 
 to himself and welcomes no suggestions from the 
 three foreign members of his faculty. The Amer- 
 ican instructor, who is eager to help the institution 
 reach the Western standard, is politely given to 
 understand that he is paid to do definite work 
 and keep his mouth shut. 
 
 The characteristics of Chinese students throw a 
 strong light on the race mind at its present stage. 
 Their reaction to teaching is much weaker than 
 that of American students. It is against China's 
 educational tradition to question anything taught. 
 Teacher and text are invested with a prestige un- 
 known to us and there is no demand for explana- 
 tion or proof. Moreover, questioning would im- 
 ply that the lecturer had not been clear. Hence 
 the instructor is staggered by the unresponsive- 
 ness of his class. He can only illustrate his princi- 
 ple on every side in the hope that if one illustra- 
 tion fails another will ring the mental bell. 
 
 At first the student regards the experiment, 
 cabinet specimen, or microscope slide as the il- 
 
THE NEW EDUCATION 333 
 
 lustration rather than the source of the principle ; 
 for nothing in Chinese tradition suggests the direct 
 interrogating of Nature. Later, when he has 
 learned to use apparatus, he becomes fascinated 
 with the all-daylight route to truth. In some 
 schools I found the students enthusiastic over 
 chemistry just because it affords them the novel 
 pleasure of learning by demonstration. They are 
 sharp observers and nothing in the experiment 
 escapes them. They catch its significance, too, 
 though one man complained that his boys recorded 
 with scrupulous care unintended and irrelevant 
 happenings such as the cracking of the test tube. 
 Thanks to his drill in recognizing and forming 
 thousands of characters some of them calling for 
 more than thirty strokes of the brush, the Chinese 
 youth bears the palm for feats of memory. He 
 tries to learn even geometry and physics by rote. 
 One professor called the attention of his class to 
 certain tables of logarithms and the next day his 
 students complained of the lesson as "very hard." 
 They had tried to memorize them. In geometry 
 they will learn the proofs given them by heart 
 but do not take quickly to mathematical reason- 
 ing. Says one teacher, "I have to give them a 
 year for the plane geometry the American boy 
 gets in half a year. ' ' Says another, ' ' My boys get 
 on swimmingly with their problems if I provide 
 them with a rule; without it they flounder help- 
 less." A third estimates that not over a quarter 
 of his students can think. They remember words, 
 but not ideas or trains of reasoning, and it is 
 
334 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 doubtful if ten per cent, can handle with success 
 a new type of problem for which they have been 
 given no rule. 
 
 All this would be very flattering to our race 
 pride but for the fact that nearly all the educa- 
 tors attribute it to defective training rather than 
 to race deficiency. One has a boy raised in a 
 missionary family who is free from these faults. 
 Another has noticed that after two or three years 
 his boys wake up and begin to think for them- 
 selves. A French priest tells me that in his 
 seminary there are four students who would be 
 prizemen in France. A mathematical professor 
 reports originality "here and there" and has one 
 pupil who has solved many original theorems. 
 Another has a lad in calculus who is the peer of 
 any white youth he ever taught. A famous 
 sinologue scouts the idea that the Chinese lack in 
 reasoning power and points out that recently the 
 three Chinese in the Naval Academy at Greenwich 
 led their class in mathematics. He insists that 
 the want of "come back" when the teacher ad- 
 vances a proposition is not inborn, but is due to 
 faults in the lower schools. 
 
 There is some complaint that the students lack 
 tenacity. They are easily disheartened and give 
 up before difficulties that would only arouse the 
 pugnacity of the American youth. A Chinese 
 lecturer on medicine contrasted rather sadly the 
 lack of sustained courage in his students with the 
 pluck of the Japanese, who throw themselves in- 
 defatigably upon their hard problems as their 
 
THE NEW EDUCATION 335 
 
 countrymen dashed again and again npon the de- 
 fenses of Port Arthur. This fault may be due to 
 the loss of the military virtues; still, it may be a 
 race trait. For if there is any difference between 
 the endowment of the yellow race and that of 
 the white it will be found, I think, not in intellect, 
 but in energy of will. 
 
 There is a striking contrast between the laxity 
 in the Chinese schools and the strict, semi-mili- 
 tary discipline that, from the first, prevailed in 
 the schools of Japan. One hears of amazing in- 
 cidents — students refusing to take an examination 
 till they get ready, cutting a written recitation, 
 cribbing openly and without rebuke, forcing the 
 dean to cut down the lesson assigned, withhold- 
 ing the customary salute, of rising and bowing, 
 from the teacher who has not corrected their exer- 
 cises to suit them, rebelling against a fee of $20 a 
 year for food, lodging and instruction, slamming 
 their rice on the floor or hurling it at the head 
 of the steward if its quality does not please them. 
 The dean will direct the foreign teacher to set 
 an examination all can pass, or else to mark no 
 paper below the passing grade. Individually the 
 Chinese student is docile, even reverent; but 
 collectively he is a terror to the school officers. 
 The wholesome vigor with which the American 
 educator flunks, whips, or expels stands in re- 
 freshing contrast to Chinese timidity, and par- 
 ents who can afford it show their appreciation by 
 sending their sons to mission colleges. 
 
 The truth is, there is nothing the Chinese lack 
 
336 L THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 so much as discipline. Discipline of the army, the 
 workshop, the ship, the school, the athletic field — 
 yes, even of the home — is needed if they are ever 
 to develop that smooth, intelligent team-work 
 which makes our race so formidable. Their stand- 
 by now is mass action — the strike or the boycott. 
 During the last two years every school in Shan- 
 tung is said to have had a strike. One school 
 struck because the foreign teachers required the 
 student to pass an examination before they would 
 give him a testimonial. Strikes occur alike in 
 boys' schools and girls' schools, and for the most 
 un-understandable reasons. The Chinese school- 
 master frequently gives in, so when the American 
 principal hardens his jaw and points to the door, 
 the students are painfully surprised. This facility 
 in concerted action is really a weakness for it re- 
 veals a certain flabbiness of individuality in the 
 Chinese. "When folly is afoot in an American col- 
 lege, there will be some who by standing aloof 
 spoil the unanimity of the move and it doesn't 
 come off. But the Chinese lad crumples under 
 mass pressure. All his life he has been trained 
 to get in line and so the spirit of conformity rules 
 him. It is all due to a struggle for existence so 
 severe that he realizes he cannot survive without 
 the steady backing of his family, clan or guild. 
 To take a line of one's own would be suicide. 
 
 Chinese gentlemen wear their finger nails long 
 to show they don't work, so it is not surprising 
 that young China despises anything with the taint 
 of manual labor. The professor of engineering 
 
THE NEW EDUCATION 337 
 
 has to speak sharply to his students to get them 
 actually to carry chain and drive stakes, for they 
 consider it ' ' coolie work. ' ' Their idea is to listen 
 and look, but not to do. When the mission school 
 at Swatow was preparing for some festivity a 
 lady teacher said, "Come, boys, help me move 
 these heavy benches." Not a boy stirred; it was 
 " coolie work." Since then they have learned 
 better. In another school the pupils refused to 
 bring in more chairs to seat the guests at a re- 
 ception. They had been trained to care for their 
 rooms, but the mandarins were present, and, know- 
 ing the standards of these gentlemen, they were 
 afraid of ' ' losing face. ' ' The old-school mandarin 
 looks down on the mining engineer or the rail- 
 way engineer as a kind of coolie because he soils 
 his hands, and mummies of this type in Peking 
 are trying to draw an invidious distinction be- 
 tween the returned students who have had a liberal 
 education abroad and those who have had a 
 technical education, the latter ranking lower. 
 
 Bodily development is scorned for it would as- 
 similate one to the despised coolie, mountebank, 
 or soldier. On six weeks of overland journey, I 
 met at least three hundred Chinese with sedan 
 chairs and never but once did I see the owner of 
 a chair walking. Up the steepest mountain stair- 
 ways they insisted on being carried, lying back 
 limp and lackadaisical as if it were a condescen- 
 sion to breathe. To stroll, bird cage in hand, on 
 the city wall in the cool of the evening and give 
 birdie an airing, is their idea of a gentleman's 
 
 16 
 
338 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 exercise. When the tennis court was first nsed by 
 the American professors in a certain North China 
 university, the Chinese could not understand the 
 absurd antics and caperings of their erstwhile 
 dignified teachers. "Can you not afford to hire 
 coolies to do this for you?" asked an interested 
 but scandalized observer. 
 
 Doctor Merrins' measurements in the mission 
 school at Wuchang seem to show that the Chinese 
 boy between his eleventh and his sixteenth year 
 is from two and a half to four inches shorter, 
 and from seven to fifteen pounds lighter, than the 
 Boston boy of the same age. In the same years 
 the Chinese girl appears to be from three to five 
 inches shorter and from fourteen to twenty-four 
 pounds lighter than the American girl. In fact, 
 American girls seem to be heavier than the boys 
 of Central China. The thoracic capacity is poor ; 
 so one is not surprised that the death rate from 
 tuberculosis in the government schools is "enor- 
 mous" owing to hard study and close confine- 
 ment during the growing period, and that half 
 the young Chinese entering the Y. M. C. A. gym- 
 nasium at Shanghai show consumptive tendencies, 
 and are at once urged to open the windows of their 
 sleeping rooms, remove the curtains from their 
 beds and take special gymnastic exercises. 
 
 One lady principal complains that her girls are 
 in a constant blush while studying hygiene, for 
 they have been taught to ignore their bodies. Nor 
 is it easy to make them hold themselves erect. 
 Their Chinese teachers, like all literary men, culti- 
 
THE NEW EDUCATION 339 
 
 vate the scholar's stoop and the pupils imitate it 
 just as men with good eyesight wear broad- 
 rimmed goggles in order to look like scholars. 
 Another principal found that in their field-meets 
 his pupils relied on their natural powers of run- 
 ning and jumping. The idea of deliberately train- 
 ing for athletic proficiency did not appeal to them. 
 "Bob" Gailey at Peking will tell you that at first 
 the Chinese hung back in athletic sports for fear 
 of "losing face" by being defeated. Sometimes 
 a football team would quit abruptly when the game 
 was going against them. Gradually, however, 
 they are being brought around to the spirit of 
 sportsmanship. 
 
 Few of the government schools have got be- 
 yond the idea of drill or provided a director of 
 physical training. You see the students under a 
 big roof swinging Indian clubs or drilling with 
 rifles. In one case, indeed, lissome young men 
 with queues were skipping about the tennis courts, 
 but they wore their hampering long gowns and 
 their strokes had the snap of a kitten playing with 
 a ball of yarn. In fact, the first football and base- 
 ball in China were played by boys in those same 
 blue gowns. In developing a taste for sports the 
 mission schools succeed far better than the gov- 
 ernment schools because the men in charge have 
 genuine enthusiasm and bring their personal in- 
 fluence to bear. 
 
 The response of the yellow race indicates sport 
 as something of universal human appeal. The 
 last of the all-China field meets at Canton under 
 
340 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 the lead! of '.that noble institution, the Canton 
 Christian College, lasted for two days, enrolled 
 over a thousand contestants and drew twenty 
 thousand spectators. The first meet of the kind 
 at Tientsin attracted seven thousand, and the 
 second, held November last, brought together 
 twenty thousand. When one hundred and forty 
 athletes strove for honors in the national games 
 held at Nanking in connection with the Nanking 
 Industrial Exhibition, a thousand enthusiastic 
 Chinese came all the way from Shanghai, two 
 hundred miles distant. The Chinese now manage 
 such events themselves and officials from the 
 Viceroy down to the hsien magistrate attend and 
 applaud. Just as in inner Borneo football is the 
 one enthusiasm common to Britons and Malays, 
 so the athletic feats of Young China are weav- 
 ing a new bond between Chinese and Anglo- 
 Saxons. None of them suspect us of sinister de- 
 signs in inciting their youth to make the most of 
 the body,, But athletics will strengthen the 
 character of Young China as well as the body. In 
 the stations out along the wire that connects 
 Peking with Thibet I found graduates from the 
 telegraph schools of Shanghai and Tientsin turn- 
 ing themselves into effeminate dandies with love- 
 locks framing the face and giving themselves up 
 to sensual pleasure, because their lives held no 
 interest to compete with the gaudy lure of the 
 "sing-song" girls. 
 
 All his teachers bear witness to the beauty, ac- 
 curacy and detail of the anatomical or botanical 
 
THE NEW EDUCATION 341 
 
 drawings made by the Chinese student. This 
 deft hand comes from his long practice in form- 
 ing thousands of characters which may not be 
 carelessly scrawled as ours are, but must be made 
 with great delicacy and precision if they are to 
 be distinguished apart. From this same handling 
 of the brush comes the student's light, sure touch 
 in preparing specimens or slides. But this sup- 
 pleness of hand is bought with a price. "Why 
 is it," I asked the heads of the two Imperial 
 Universities of Japan, "that your students reach 
 the university at the age of twenty-one, three 
 years later than the American students?" "Be- 
 cause," they agreed, "we are burdened with a 
 clumsy language which takes from three to five 
 years longer to master than your alphabetic 
 language. ' ' Here is a heavy handicap which the 
 peoples of the Far East must bear while they are 
 vying with the West. "How long will it take," 
 I asked a scholar who has spent half his life in 
 China, "before the Chinese give up their ideo- 
 graphs?" "Perhaps five centuries," he replied. 
 There is a very practical aspect to the problem. 
 A font of our type weighs fifty pounds and costs 
 five dollars; a font of Chinese type weighs half 
 a ton and costs a hundred dollars. No type- 
 writer can write Chinese characters, no linotype 
 machine can set them. The keyboard would be 
 as big as a dinner table! A typesetter in the 
 Commercial Press walks about a pen four feet 
 by seven and fills his stick from seven thousand 
 little boxes each about an inch and a half square. 
 
342 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 It costs more to equip and produce a Chinese 
 newspaper and it cannot hope to be so universally 
 read as one of our sheets. For the Celestials 
 can never teach so large a proportion of their 
 youth to read a language that takes three or four 
 times as long to learn as a Western language. 
 
 At present not one woman in a thousand and 
 not one man in ten can read. Nevertheless, the 
 reformers are agitating for compulsory education. 
 They propose that the scholars work out a set of 
 three thousand simplified characters. Establish 
 schools everywhere to spread a knowledge of 
 these among the people. Let the newspapers use 
 only these characters. Let a board of trust- 
 worthy men send out from Peking news regard- 
 ing public affairs and let local committees print 
 and circulate this civic news in a sheet which 
 every man will be expected to subscribe for. 
 Utopian, to be sure, but it shows the reformers 
 realize that the selfish private spirit has been 
 their country's bane. 
 
 Eight here we come upon the gravest problem 
 arising from China's change of base; whence 
 will come the morality of to-morrow? In the 
 reaction against the old classical education with 
 its emphasis on ethics there has been a tendency 
 to neglect instruction in morals. Though they 
 must do homage once a month to Confucius' 
 tablet, the young men are inwardly scoffing. 
 "Confucius! He never rode on a train or used 
 the telephone or sent a wireless. What did he 
 know of science f He is only an old fogy ! ' ' And 
 
THE NEW EDUCATION 343 
 
 so the Sage, whose teachings have kept myriads 
 within the safe way, has little authority over the 
 educated part of the rising generation. What 
 they covet is riches and power; and, perceiving 
 that the wealth and martial prowess of the West 
 rests immediately upon exact knowledge, the 
 students are all for science. The hidden moral 
 foundations of Western success they are apt to 
 overlook. Neglecting their own idealism and 
 missing ours, they may develop a selfish material- 
 istic character which will make the awakening of 
 China a curse instead of a blessing. 
 
 At this crisis the dozen-odd mission colleges 
 planted about the Empire, mainly by Americans, 
 have the opportunity to render a great and states- 
 manlike service. In organization, management, 
 staff, curriculum and discipline the best of them 
 are far superior to the government colleges. In 
 their work they apply a scientific pedagogy of 
 which the Chinese know nothing. They impart 
 Western ideals of bodily development, clean liv- 
 ing, individuality and efficiency. They study 
 Confucian ethics with deep reverence; they pre- 
 sent also the Christian outlook on life. Though 
 many of their graduates are not Christians, they 
 go out with high ideals. The gentry more and 
 more appreciate these colleges and gladly send 
 their sons thither when the fees are made high 
 enough to eliminate any element of gratuity. 
 
 Already wealthy Chinese are making gifts to 
 these colleges. They will give much more if the 
 religious societies that founded them could widen 
 
344 THE CHANGING CHINESE 
 
 their vision to perceive that the true destiny of 
 these colleges is to promote higher education in 
 China, just as Harvard, Yale, Princeton and 
 scores of other colleges founded with Christian 
 money to train clergyman, recognized at last that 
 their true destiny was to promote higher educa- 
 tion in America. Let these mission colleges make 
 Christian indoctrination and worship optional in- 
 stead of compulsory on their students. Let them 
 give patriotic Chinese representation on their 
 governing boards. Let them, without surrender- 
 ing autonomy, seek for some basis on which they 
 can enter the educational system of the Govern- 
 ment. Let them but have faith that the whole- 
 hearted promotion of the higher intellectual life 
 cannot but widen the sway of Christian ideals and 
 they will become a giant power for good at this 
 crisis in Chinese morals. 
 
 The Crucifixion was two hundred and eighty 
 years old before Christianity won toleration in the 
 Eoman Empire. It was one hundred and twenty- 
 eight years after Luther's defiance before the 
 permanence of the Protestant Reformation was 
 assured. After the discovery of the New World 
 one hundred and fifteen years elapsed before the 
 first English colony was planted here. No one 
 who saw the beginning of these great, slow, his- 
 toric movements could grasp their full import or 
 witness their culmination. But nowadays world 
 processes are telescoped and history is made at 
 aviation speed. The exciting part of the trans- 
 
THE NEW EDUCATION 345 
 
 formation of China will take place in our time. 
 In forty years there will be telephones and mov- 
 ing-picture shows and appendicitis and sanitation 
 and baseball nines and bachelor maids in every 
 one of the thirteen hundred hsien districts of the 
 Empire. The renaissance of a quarter of the 
 human family is occurring before our eyes and 
 we have only to sit in the parquet and watch the 
 stage. 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX 
 
 Age at marriage, 69, 97, 110, 
 
 209. 
 Age, sanctity of, 193. 
 Agriculture, 46, 71-78, 110, 
 
 122, 302. 
 Alcoholism, 144, 172. 
 American mission work, 224, 
 
 227. 
 Ancestor worship, 69, 96, 110. 
 Anglo-Saxons, 52, 340. 
 Anti-matrimonial associations, 
 
 204. 
 Anti-Opium Edict, 145, 146, 
 
 156, 157, 161, 217. 
 Anti-Opium societies, 157, 164. 
 Army, the new, 113-4, 162, 
 
 280-282. 
 Arrested development, 54-5. 
 Asile de la Sainte Enfance, 101, 
 
 234. 
 Assimilative power, 57, 62, 317. 
 Associations, prohibition of, 
 
 145. 
 Athletics, 339-40. 
 
 Birth rate, 110. 
 Blood-poisoning, resistance to, 
 
 35-39. 
 Board of Education, 97, 328- 
 
 331. 
 Boats, 13, 14, 310. 
 Bodily development, 337-340. 
 
 Boys, 96-101, 182, 272, 298, 
 301, 304, 333-339. 
 
 Brevity of life, 84, 104. 
 
 Bridges, 271, 286, 303. 
 
 Buddhism, 29, 218, 255-6, 266, 
 279. 
 
 Burnings of opium parapher- 
 nalia, 164. 
 
 Camels, 29, 260. 
 
 Canton, 7, 85, 90, 175, 340. 
 
 Capital, need of, 120. 
 
 Cash, 85-6, 265, 282. 
 
 Cato the Elder, 203. 
 
 Cave dwellings, 21-22, 74. 
 
 Cess pools, 295, 301-2. 
 
 Chairing, 286, 307, 337. 
 
 Chang Chih-Tung, 328. 
 
 Character, Chinese, 29-30, 233- 
 
 235, 255, 266, 282, 304-309, 
 
 334, 336, 243. 
 Cheapness of labor, 117-120, 
 
 297. 
 Cheapness of life, 89, 90. 
 Chengtu, 117, 302-304. 
 Child-bearing, 36-7. 
 Child betrothal, 181, 194, 206, 
 
 209-10. 
 Children, 14, 17, 33, 41, 45, 69, 
 
 85, 98-105, 301, 304. 
 China Inland Mission, 255, 274. 
 Chloroform, reaction to, 40. 
 
 349 
 
350 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Christianity, 217, 219-20, 223; Deforestation, 7, 18, 22-27, 73, 
 
 fruits, 233-235; official rec- 79, 271-273. 
 
 ognition, 235-6; uplift of Density of population, 105, 302. 
 
 women, 205, 240-242; pros- Dilapidation, 8, 11. 
 
 pects, 255-259. Discipline, 335-6. 
 
 Christians, 198, 205, 212, 217, Disease, 298, 338; resistance to, 
 
 230-239, 241, 250, 274. 35-46. 
 
 Cigarettes, 86. Domestic animals, 3, 13, 71, 
 
 Cities, 3, 4, 14, 15, 78, 95, 109, 294. 
 
 181, 286, 295, 303. Dreariness of life, 105, 142-3, 
 
 Civilization, stage of, 54, 57. 287, 301. 
 
 Clan ties, 17, 69, 98, 127-8, Dress, 11, 12, 105, 143, 189, 273. 
 
 235. 
 
 Cleanliness, 235, 246, 249. 
 
 Club-houses, 13. 
 
 College students, 97, 209, 332- 
 
 343. 
 Combativeness, 112-114, 307-8. 
 Commercial competition, 1 14- 
 
 119, 138. 
 Commercial morality, 125-128, 
 
 137. 
 Commercial Press, the, 323. 
 Commissions, 125-127. 
 Compromise, 91. 
 Concubinage, 101, 188-9, 204. 
 Confucianism, 202, 217, 256-7, 
 
 279, 285. 
 "Confucio-Christianity," 256. 
 Confucius, 212, 256-7, 342. 
 Conjugal love, 196, 240. 
 Conservation, need of, 24-27, 
 
 271-273. 
 Conservatism, 53-58. 
 Coolies, 84-5, 143, 294, 296-7, 
 
 308. 
 Crop watchers, 267. 
 "Crying one's wrongs," 197. 
 
 Daughteb-in-law, 198. 
 Death rate, 109-10. 
 
 Economic difficulties of China, 
 
 66, 69, 110. 
 Education, the old, 318; the 
 
 new, 318-344; extent, 321- 
 
 323. 
 Efficiency, the principle of, 
 
 312-316. 
 Eloquence, 52. 
 
 Emigration, 106-111, 121, 137. 
 Employment, scarcity of, 91. 
 Empress Dowager, 145, 179, 
 
 261, 317. 
 Engineers, Chinese as, 61. 
 England, opium policy of, 140- 
 
 1, 170-172. 
 English mission work, 224, 
 
 227. 
 Erosion, 23-4, 73, 271-273. 
 Ethics, 65, 203, 328, 342-3. 
 Examinations, 54, 318. 
 Expert, the white, 61, 132-3. 
 Exploitation of nature, 70-79, 
 
 121-2, 134, 137, 286, 302. 
 
 "Face," dread of losing, 169, 
 
 337. 
 Familism, 65, 102. 
 
INDEX 
 
 351 
 
 Family, the Chinese, 17, 65, 69, 
 96-102, 110, 188-190, 193, 
 196, 202-3, 287. 
 Family intercourse, 7, 287. 
 Family size, 97-101, 110. 
 Famine, 90, 106, 108. 
 Favoritism, 127-131. 
 Fecundity, 69, 110, 142. 
 Female education, 202-3, 205- 
 
 213, 241, 245. 
 Fengsiangfu, 282-286. 
 Ferry, 310. 
 Fertility, means of preserving, 
 
 77-8, 302. 
 Fevers, reaction to, 36-41. 
 Flea traps, 89. 
 Floors, 8, 105, 301. 
 Fokien, 23, 106, 109, 121, 157, 
 
 160, 181, 229, 239. 
 Foochow, 162-164, 183. 
 Food, 78-80, 142-3, 151, 160, 
 
 274, 301-2. 
 Footbinding, 36, 64, 174-182, 
 
 193, 246, 294, 312. 
 "Foreign devil," 293. 
 Foreign enterprises, 120, 131. 
 Foreign goods, 279. 
 Foreign teachers, 325-327, 332. 
 Formosa, 103, 142. 
 Fouchou hsien, 158-9. 
 Fruit, 72, 134-5, 301. 
 Fuel, 7, 79. 
 Fuel-gatherers, 23, 79. 
 
 Gambling, 95, 141-2, 190, 235, 
 
 265. 
 Game, 27, 304. 
 Gardens, 72, 265. 
 Gentry, Chinese, 8, 27, 40, 72, 
 
 166, 180, 190, 239, 265-6, 
 
 343. 
 
 Girls, 98, 104, 177-182, 241, 
 
 242, 287, 288, 388. 
 Girls' schools, 203-211, 217, 
 
 245. 
 Gleaning, 80, 83, 268. 
 Government, 22, 27, 52, 90, 95, 
 
 109, 121-2, 127, 130-134, 
 
 151-166, 293, 312, 318. 
 Graves, 18. 
 Great Wall, 27-29. 
 Group solidarity, 91, 127, 
 
 235-6. 
 Groves, sacred, 289. 
 Guild-halls, 12, 13. 
 
 Hakkas, 122, 175, 183. 
 
 Handicrafts, 84. 
 
 Hanyang steel works, 117-8, 
 
 132. 
 Harvesters, 267-8, 282, 285. 
 Heart disease, 84-5, 196. 
 Home, the Chinese, 177, 190. 
 Hong Kong, 17, 41, 101, 103, 
 
 109, 203, 210, 234. 
 House-boats, 13, 14. 
 Humor, 63. 
 Hunting, 27, 304. 
 
 Ideals, 233, 304-309. 
 Idealism, 92, 233-4. 
 Ideographs, 187, 323, 333, 
 
 341-2. 
 Ideographic language, 54, 
 
 341-2. 
 Idols, 92, 218-9, 288-9, 321. 
 Illiteracy, 64, 110, 145, 342. 
 Immigration of Chinese, 47-8. 
 Immunity, 39-46. 
 Imperial Government, 121-2, 
 
 128, 139-40, 145, 151, 160- 
 
 162, 180, 223, 317-8. 
 
352 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Indemnity for mission losses, 
 
 252, 255. 
 Individualism, 65. 
 Individuality, 336. 
 Individualization, 69, 206-211. 
 Industrial competition of 
 
 Chinese, 47-8, 114. 
 Industrial management, 122- 
 
 137. 
 Inefficiency, 133-4, 310-317. 
 Infant mortality, 33, 102-104, 
 
 109. 
 Infanticide, 98, 104, 178, 193, 
 
 197, .241, 285. 
 Inns, 143, 294-5. 
 Insensibility, 40-1. 
 Insanity, 196. 
 Intellectual capacity, 58, 61- 
 
 63, 315, 317, 333-4. 
 Intervention in law-suits, 252. 
 Irrigation, 302-3. 
 
 Japanese, the, 8, 11, 53, 63, 
 109, 113-4, 182, 317, 325- 
 327, 334-5, 341. 
 
 Jews in China, the, 57. 
 
 Junks, 13, 310. 
 
 Kansuh, 106, 141, 152, 160, 
 
 174, 175, 280, 285. 
 Kerosene, 7, 29, 86, 279. 
 Kidnapping, 98. 
 Kinship bond, 17. 
 Kowloon, 23, 24. 
 Kuangtung, 101, 106, 175. 
 
 Labor cost, 119-20. 
 Laborers, Chinese as, 47-8. 
 Lamaism, 216. 
 Lamps, 86. 
 Lepers, 89, 90. 
 
 "Liberty girls," 210-1. 
 Lighting, 4-7, 303. 
 Loess, 18-22, 24, 78, 261. 
 
 Male predominance, 187-193, 
 200-204. 
 
 Manchus, 57, 113, 145, 175, 
 280, 324, 331. 
 
 Mandarins, 3, 4, 122, 127, 131, 
 133, 151-159, 217, 219, 224, 
 286, 290, 307, 312, 331-2, 
 337. 
 
 Manufactures, 114-119, 137. 
 
 Marriage, 96-7, 194-5, 204-211. 
 
 Mass action, 91, 336. 
 
 "Mass movements," 236. 
 
 Match making, 96, 178-8, 194- 
 5, 241, 209-10, 312. 
 
 Materialism, 91-2, 233. 
 
 Memory, feats of, 333. 
 
 Mencius, 96, 184, 212. 
 
 Middle Ages, China's resem- 
 blance to the, 3, 262, 315. 
 
 Military potentiality, 46, 112- 
 114, 280-282, 307-8. 
 
 Mind of Chinese, ch. III. 
 
 Mineral deposits, 70, 120-122, 
 262. 
 
 Mining, 121-2, 131-133, 262. 
 
 Mining concessions, 120. 
 
 Mission colleges, 224, 227, 245, 
 335-6, 339, 343-4. 
 
 Mission girls' schools, 179, 205- 
 211, 245, 249, 275, 338. 
 
 Mission property, 229, 251-2, 
 255. 
 
 Missionaries, 157-8, 160, 179, 
 206, 212, 273-275, 279; nu- 
 merical strength, 219-20; re- 
 ception, 220-224 ; national 
 contrasts, 224-227; types, 
 
INDEX 
 
 353 
 
 216-7, 228-230; influence, 
 
 245-249 ; critics, 249-251 ; 
 
 mistakes, 251-2; problems, 
 
 252, 255; outlook, 255-259. 
 Missionary homes, 205, 274. 
 Mixed society, absence of, 141, 
 
 190. 
 Mobs, 64, 113, 220, 223, 252. 
 Modesty, female, 183-5, 189. 
 Mohammedans, Chinese, 106, 
 
 112, 174, 276, 280. 
 Money changing, 265. 
 Mongols, 28-9, 267, 286, 294, 
 
 298. 
 Monuments, 12, 187, 261. 
 Morality, 211-2, 261, 311-2, 
 
 342-344. 
 Mother-in-law, 197-8. 
 
 Natural-foot Society, 177, 
 
 180-1, 217. 
 Natural selection, 42-48. 
 Nepotism, 91, 127-8. 
 Nestorianism, 57, 276. 
 Neurasthenia, 196. 
 Newspapers, 110, 145, 166, 
 
 341-2. 
 North China, 3, 18-22, 27-30, 
 
 294-5. 
 North Chinese, 29, 30. 
 
 Offspring, appreciation of, 8*9, 
 
 98-101. 
 Old age support, 65, 98. 
 Old people, 64-5. 
 Opium, price of, 149, 150, 158- 
 
 160, 170; the trade in, 139, 
 
 140, 170-172, 250. 
 Opium dens, closing of, 162- 
 
 166. 
 Opium growing, description, 
 
 146, 149; extent, 150, 151; 
 suppression, 151-160, 170, 
 172, 217. 
 
 Opium refuge, 217. 
 
 Opium smoking, history, 139- 
 141; extent, 95, 141; causes, 
 141-145, 190; effects, 139, 
 141, 161, 162, 172, 265; sup- 
 pression, 109, 160-169; opin- 
 ion regarding, 166, 169, 224. 
 
 Opium war, 140. 
 
 Originality, 54. 
 
 Overcrowding, 39, 45-6. 
 
 Overpopulation, 66, 69, 104-5, 
 110, 301-2. 
 
 Overwork, 84-5. 
 
 Pace of labor, the, 84-5. 
 Pailoics, 12, 187. 
 Parasitism, 280, 324. 
 Parental authority, 193, 204- 
 
 206, 210, 240. 
 Patriotism, the new, 145, 166, 
 
 169, 170, 281. 
 Pawn shops, 12. 
 Pei-lin, 276. 
 Peking, 4, 156, 171, 216, 251, 
 
 276, 318, 321, 323-4, 331, 
 
 342. 
 Peking-Hankow Railway, 21, 
 
 24, 128. 
 Peking Syndicate, 120. 
 Philanthropy, 245. 
 Physical types, 267, 298. 
 Physicians, opinions of, 34-42. 
 Physique, Chinese, 34-48, 297- 
 
 8, 337-8. 
 Pilgrims, 266. 
 Plague, 90, 109. 
 Plane of living, 45-47, 80-86, 
 
 105, 142, 287, 301. 
 
354 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Police, 4, 267. 
 Politeness, 64. 
 Poppy, cultivation of the, 140, 
 
 146-151. 
 Population, Chinese ideas 
 
 about, 102. 
 Population pressure, 66, 69, 74, 
 
 110-1, 197. 
 Porters, 84-5, 294, 296-7, 308. 
 Poverty, 80-95, 98, 105, 287, 
 
 301-2. 
 Prayer, 92, 233, 289. 
 Private rights, 268, 293. 
 Progress, 54-63, 92, 303-4, 345. 
 Propriety, 182-184, 201, 242, 
 
 268. 
 Protestants, 219-20, 230. 
 Psychology, Chinese, ch. III. 
 Public opinion, birth of, 166, 
 
 169, 245. 
 Public spirit, lack of, 22-3, 
 
 145, 282, 293. 
 Punishments, 90, 131, 156, 162, 
 
 165-6, 188, 293-4. 
 
 Race traits, chs. II and III. 
 Railway building, 121, 125-6. 
 Railways, 109, 120. 
 Rearing marriage, 194, 210. 
 Registration of opium smokers, 
 
 163-4. 
 Reliability, 52-3. 
 Religions, 144, 218, 255. 
 Resistance to magistrates, 152- 
 
 156. 
 "Rest houses," 18. 
 "Rice Christians," 230. 
 Rice culture, 3, 73, 77, 294-5. 
 Rites, 17, 96, 235. 
 River traffic, 13. 
 
 Rivers, characteristics of, 21, 
 
 24. 
 Roads, 13, 22, 71, 78, 150, 260- 
 
 1, 290, 293-296. 
 Roman Catholics, 219-20, 230, 
 
 236. 
 Roman Empire, Christianity 
 
 in, 257-8, 285. 
 
 Sages, the, 57, 187, 201, 308, 
 
 312. 
 Sanitation, 48, 109. 
 Scholars, 40, 233, 239, 276, 307- 
 
 9, 318, 339. 
 School apparatus, 324-5. 
 School girls, 42, 179, 206-212, 
 
 338. 
 Schools, government, 321-332, 
 
 338-9, 343. 
 Schools, mission, 179, 205-211, 
 
 245, 249, 275, 338. 
 Science, natural, 249, 315, 318, 
 
 327, 333, 343. 
 Screens in church, 242. 
 Septicaemia, resistance to, 35- 
 
 39. 
 Sewage-disposal, 78 1 . 
 Shanghai, 117-8, 210. 
 Shansi, 105-6, 117, 132, 155, 
 
 159, 178, 261-272. 
 Shensi, 106, 139, 141, 149-50, 
 
 176, 183, 285, 322. 
 Shutung, 134. 
 
 Sianfu, 13, 117, 159, 275-280. 
 Signal towers, 261. 
 Silk-winding girls, 204. 
 Sinecurists, 128, 131, 324. 
 Sleeping, 41-2, 86, 89. 
 Smallpox, 39. 
 Soil exploitation, 71-77. 
 
INDEX 
 
 355 
 
 Soil waste, prevention of, 
 
 77-8. 
 Soldiers, 113-4, 155, 281, 307- 
 
 8, 312. 
 Sons, desire for, 96. 
 Soochow, 219. 
 
 South China, 12-14, 294-5. 
 South Chinese, 29, 30, 36. 
 Sport, indifference to, 142, 266, 
 
 304. 
 "Squeeze," 122-127, 151-2, 155- 
 
 6, 325-332. 
 "Standing frame," 293. 
 Stationary stage, 70. 
 Stealing, 83, 131, 267, 290. 
 Stigma on manual labor, 249, 
 
 298, 307, 336, 337. 
 Streets, 3, 295. 
 Struggle for existence, ch. IV, 
 
 137, 142, 273, 285, 287, 296, 
 
 336. 
 Suicide, 52, 149, 196, 198, 201, 
 
 204. 
 Superstition, 42, 64, 70, 122, 
 
 218-19, 288-9, 310-11, 315. 
 Surgical operations, reaction to, 
 
 34-40. 
 Survival of the fittest, 33, 42, 
 
 45-6. 
 Szechuan, 89, 117, 141, 150, 
 
 158, 160, 251, 286, 297-304. 
 
 Taiytjanftj, 261-2. 
 Tartar bannermen, 280. 
 Teachers, 321-328, 338. 
 Temples, 216, 218-9, 289, 321. 
 Termini, 289. 
 Testing bureaus, 161-2. 
 Threshing, 268, 294. 
 Torture, use of, 40. 
 
 Translation, 224, 245, 323. 
 Transport cost, 262, 297. 
 Treaty of Tientsin, 140, 171. 
 Tree growing, 22-3, 72, 289, 
 
 296. 
 Tree worship, 218. 
 Tuberculosis, 41, 335. 
 Tung Ho Valley, 74. 
 Types, contrast of, 29, 30. 
 
 Uppeb classes, the, 8, 27, 40, G2, 
 72, 166, 178, 180, 190, 239, 
 265-6. 
 
 Utilitarianism, 91-2, 233. 
 
 Vice, 95, 109, 172. 
 
 Vitality of the Chinese, ch. II. 
 
 Wages, 117-120. 
 
 Watchmen, 311. 
 
 Water supply, 4. 
 
 Water wheels, 302. 
 
 Wealthy, the, 8, 95, 265-6, 
 343. 
 
 Wei Eiver, 22. 
 
 West River, 7, 23, 175. 
 
 Wheat harvest, 160, 183, 
 267-8. 
 
 Windows, 7, 265, 287. 
 
 Winds, IS. 
 
 Wives, Chinese, 195-205, 
 240-1. 
 
 Women, 36, 39, 145; restric- 
 tions on, 174-184; status of, 
 187-204; revolt of, 204; 
 emancipation of, 205-215. 
 
 Wood, scarcity of, 266, 271-2. 
 
 Wu Ting Fang, 122, 174. 
 
356 INDEX 
 
 Yang and Yin, 187, 202. Yellow River, 24, 286, 310. 
 
 Yellow, as the national color, Y. M. C. A., 309. 
 
 21. Yunnan, 106, 141, 150. 
 "Yellow peril," the, 112-117. 
 
 THE END 
 
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