■iini' ii all' I ,:. CHINA HER HISTORY, DIPLOMACY, AND COMMERCE RICl'I AND PAUL ZI (COSTUME OF MING DYNASTY) From au old picture published by the Chinese Jesuit Pfere Hoang iFronlispiece THANSLATIOX OP WORDS IN COHNKH The sire Zi (ciiuonisod as) WSn-tiiir/ (leanieil, resolute) iritli Li-isz Mii-l(ti ("jiicius," or lliccl Matthew) discussiiiy the ]\'unl pictvre CHINA HER HISTORY, DIPLOMACY, AND COM- MERGE, FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE PRESENT DAY BY E. H. PARKER PROFESSOR OF CHINESE AT THE VICTORIA UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER ; FORMERLT OHE OF HIS majesty's CONSULS IN CHINA ; IN 1892-3 ADVISER ON CHINESE AFFAIRS TO THE BURMA GOVERNMENT WITH MAPS SECOND EDITION NEW YORK E. P. BUTTON AND COMPANY 1917 PREFACE It is just sixteen years since I penned prefatory remarks to the first edition of this book : this was when the South African War and the '* Boxer " trouble were both being settled up, the first having naturally tied our hands a little in dealing satisfactorily with the second ; but the alliance with Japan in 1902 restored a balance satisfactory to our general interests in China and the Indian Ocean, whilst two great wars have had the effect of transferring to Japan a large, well-merited, and honourable share in the policing of the China seas as the trusted ally of both Russia and Britain. Meanwhile China herself has passed through the throes of an incalculable upheaval, and a numxber of important events fore- shadowed in the earlier impressions of this work have actually taken place. Apart from the disappearance on very generous terms of the once prudent and illustrious Manchu dynasty itself — a picturesque catastrophe which after all chiefly concerns the family pride of a few foreign princely families, — means have been found quietly to merge the mass of settled Manchus, including their characteristic " pigtail," in the general body of Chinese- — from whom, especially in the north, the males are physically almost indistinguishable- — with liberty to intermarry, engage in trade, travel freely, and so on ; yet the " pigtail " is by no means penally tabued, even vi PREFACE among Chinese cranks. Although the Republi- can flag of five colours, adopted with that end in view, gave expression to the hope that Mongols, Tibetans, and Turki (Mussulmans) might also find in the vast undivided domain a common level to the general weal, yet separative aspira- tions to complete independence may in the end defeat this desire so far as the two first are con- cerned, whilst the Chinese themselves apparently now see clearly, so far as touches the third, that only a modified equality can be arranged for uncompromising religionists, some Turki speak- ing, other Chinese speaking, who live largely under the government of their own princes and beys, or even under semi-independent Chinese Muslim generals. The last of the three new chapters added to the present edition endeavours to give a succinct account of how political reform arose from humiliating foreign defeat, and how the hitherto suppressed and stunted spirit of democracy as- serted itself through these vague yearnings for reform, so there is no prefatory need to labour this particular point again here. Suffice it to say that, although in Europe we seem day by day to hear chiefly of revolts and political squabbles in China, as a matter of fact the " Eighteen Provinces " are not in such a very parlous condi- tion after all, the chief reason for this modicum of happiness being that China is, as it ever has been, a nation of small owners and hardy cultivators, whose ethical teaching has for 2,000 years past inculcated a spirit of deference and order, a right to self-protection, and a family or clannish detachm.ent from public and political authority. In spite, then, of alarums and excursions on all sides, the Foreign Customs revenue for 1916 is in sterling the very highest ever collected, whilst the Salt Gabelle, under the vivifying influence of PREFACE vii Sir Richard Dane's purifications, promises to rival the Customs itself in " rich blessings." Even the Post-office, owing its success to French brilliancy of strategic management, is a vast paying concern. I have not given a special chapter to Railways, for they are diffusing themselves apace over the Chinese dominions in such wise that any statistics ventured upon to-day would be practically obsolete a year hence. Up to the moment of writing 15,000 miles of first-class lines have been conceded, of which total two-fifths are now actually working, with another fifth under construction. It is under- stood that Russia, Japan, Britain, and France are financially interested to the extent of over sixty million pounds sterling, against seven millions for Germany and fifteen millions for China herself (at present high silver rates). All these railways develop trade in a marvellous and scarcely hoped-for way by opening up vast tracts of country twenty years ago almost as little known to the foreign trader as Tibet, and by enabling the industrious Chinese farmer to get rid of vast surpluses of produce formerly too often an indigestible drug on the local markets : with the absence of roads and banking facilities there was previous to the advent of the steam horse no stimulus to produce m.ore than at best a prosperous clan subsistence, whereas now the railway brings exchange imports so to speak to the very door ; and the foreign commercial traveller, no longer condemned to sail in cramped boats over dangerous rapids, or to wheelbarrow and donkey-riding over apologies for roads, for weeks at a time, with unrestful repose in verminous inns, can now fly hither and thither with his flaming posters, heavy samples, and cash exchange or credit facilities in a com- fortable sleeping-carriage, creating demand in viii PREFACE every village for foreign "fancies." Besides, the Post Parcel Office is teaching the interior Chinese that a vast miscellaneous trade can be done in this way too without any effort at all. Long before the " Boxer " war and the con- sequent native yearning for better things in their political administration, it had been evident that the German merchants were taking more pains and bestowing more intelligent thought in the conduct of their business than the conserva- tive and unimaginative British trader of the old school. All over the Far East they enjoyed com- plete "freedom of the seas," and in our colonies and settlements, where they were much esteemed as solid and orderly guests, they shared absolute equality of right and privilege.; but they never at any time showed any particular inclination to " rough it " either in the commercial or the missionary line, and it was only when the French railway to Yiin Nan and the steamer facilities to Sz Ch'wan and Hu Nan opened up Central and West China, in a way never seen before, that the careful Germans, finding they could operate safely and comfortably, hastened to take full advantage of British, French, and Japanese pioneering. The result has been that they have opened up, chiefly in Central China, entirely new export trades in native produce, besides securing almost a monopoly of electrical, mining, and other engineering in provinces scarcely even visited, except by missionaries, twenty years ago. More- over, in doing all this they have received from unsuspecting British banks facilities greater than any German bank would risk. There may have been good-natured professional envy, often mixed with admiration, on the part of the less active British trader of "muddied oaf" tendency, but there was certainly no angry hostility, still less any of the malignant Prussian hatred the PREFACE ix existence of which the Great War has generated and propagated in the naturally meek German mind : the superior energy and foresight of the Teuton traders were freely if regretfully ad- mitted, and many were the occasions on which British and American consuls, customs officials, travellers, etc. — the present writer himself often included' — called attention publicly to the neglect on the part of British trade generally to revise its methods ; especially in the direction of adver- tising, preparing intelligible price-lists, visiting likely customers on the spot, granting less rigid terms of credit, shaking off compradoric strangu- lation, treating the native trader more cour- teously and indulgently, and so on. It is right to admit that these lessons have been taken to heart in a few cases, and it is well known that certain British tobacco and patent medicine enterprises have made huge successes on these new lines ; one or two British exporters of fresh and frozen provisions, following Teuton example, have organised proper receiving, cleaning, and packing establishments for facilitating the col- lection, shipping, and distribution, and for the sorting and repacking in workmanlike condition of edible produce ; and besides this, at least one British firm or syndicate has secured a strong controlling position in connection with the out- put of important Chinese mines ; so there is a fair prospect that in the near future the old " sit still at the chief port and as to inland depend upon the comprador e " system will gradually be replaced by one of more hustle and energy, especially as the Shanghai Munici- pality' — and no doubt other analogous bodies — has recently seriously roused itself to wake- fulness upon the necessity of teaching the young British trader practical Chinese, so that import agents, buyers, and exporters may move freely X PREFACE off beaten tracks and visit native exporters, importers, producers, and consumers at any likely spot in the interior, making their own transport, likin^ and credit arrangements, free from the shackles of compradoric restraint and monopoly. Honourable competition on these lines may easily be hoped for in neutral China ; but so long as the tame and subservient German race remains under the baleful spell of the neurotic Prussian braggart and moral abortion whose blasphemous buf- fooneries have plunged Western civilisation into a caldron of boiling passion, making both cowards and bullies even of the non- Prussian army and navy officers, it will be quite impossible, so far as British colonies are concerned, to grant or to allow British banks to grant to German banks and traders the generous facilities they enjoyed in such amplitude before the war, and of which they everywhere took a mean advantage, under the cunning and unscrupulous wire-pulling of Potsdam, in order to secure in their own exclu- sive hands the key-strings of finance, and the key-commodities of commerce and (ultimately) of war. Until this contempt of human law and decency be purged clear, the German — official, commercial, or other — should be treated as a lupinum caput, unworthy of trust in or near any isolated fold, and above all not be suffered to gain a foothold anywhere in the Far East, whether at Tsing-tao or in Indo-China. Every one knows the many innate good qualities of the genuine Germans ; but the Prussian Old Man of the Sea must be first cast off by the German Sinbad, and ample reparation made before pardon can be granted or any off chances taken. ^ 1 In Vol. xxiii. (May-July, 1820) of the Quarterly Review (John Murray), an able winter who reported on German conditions after the Napoleonic wars thus delivers himself : — " These very qualities which we so much admire are liable on the other hand PREFACE xi As things now stand, there is every prospect of China going smoothly ahead under the con- ciliatory presidency of Li Yiian-hung, so long at least as the Prussian viper is not allowed to find another nestling-place in her bosom, wherein to brew its poison. Sir Robert Hart, Sir Richard Dane, M. Piry, Mr. Kinder, Dr. Tim.othy Richard, may be cited as but a few instances of Britons and Frenchmen who have loyally served with great and permanent results the exclusive interests of China : but where is the German, official or missionary, who has ever done any thing disinterested ? The eagerness to under- take army instruction, to supply men-of-war and guns, the monopoly in the miscellaneous arms trade, the greedy hold on mines and electric engineering, — ^this is all part and parcel of the ultimate design to secure military control in the interests of the Potsdam octopus. Japan's recent attitudes have from time to time been considered harsh towards China, but it must be remembered that she also is now fighting for her future life, and she is as fully determined that China shall never again have a German-com- to be perverted in the most naischievous manner. The sincerity of the Germans exposes them to be the dupes of others to a dangerous degree ; their enthusiasm is apt to evaporate in absurd projects, and their perseverance to degenerate into obstinacy. . . . The composure and secrecy of debate on grievances suit the genius of the German better than any sudden exertion for their removal. His imagination dwells with delight on gloom and mystery, to the neglect of all its gayer and more airy fancies, whilst the milk of human kindness with which his bosom may be stored is apt to turn to a mixture of ferocity and sentiment extremely disgusting. Hence this country has at all times been fertile in secret and peculiar associations, into which its natives have entered with an enthusiasm totally unknown in other parts of the world. . . . The whole system of the Prussian Government, although carried on with a strict attention to the principles of justice, is extremely severe in its mode of operation. Their fiscal regulations are in many respects arbitrary and vexa- tious in the extreme, especially where their newly acquired pro- vinces are concerned," xii PREFACE manded (for that is what German-trained means) army and navy as she is resolved that Germany shall never again, if she can prevent it, set foot in Tsing-tao or any other vantage point on the China coast : it has recently been " mooted " (probably indirectly, as a feeler from Potsdam) that Germany would give back Alsace in ex- change for Indo-China ; but even if Japan would tolerate German presence anywhere in the China seas, France is far too generous and noble-minded a nation to hand over the effemin- ate and defenceless Annamese she has christian- ised to the tender mercies of a pack of unnatural Karl Peters and Puttkamers, whose cowardly brutalities in Africa have an appropriate sequel in the recent Prussian treatment of Belgians, Serbians, Armenians, and French occupes ; not to mention the craven business of the Lusitania and the sinking of numerous hospital ships. Japan, true, is not of our blood, faith, or habit, but her record for a generation has been stedfast and honourable, and she is — despite this natural separation in sentiment- — a far more noble ally to cultivate than any wedge-pated Hohenzollern of Prussia can ever be again ; and, indeed, it is doubtful if the Po-Russians or " next to the Russians " are ethnologically related to us at all ; they seem to have "adopted" German just as the Bulgarians have adopted Slav. As to what the real policy of Japan towards China is to be, no better definition of it could be desired than that set forth in Viscount Motono's speech as Foreign Minister delivered in the Imperial Diet on 23rd January last, and tele- graphed in extenso to the Times of 27th January. Certainly, there are some points in the general settlement of disputes on which China and Japan have not yet arrived at complete agreement ; probably this is because Japan cannot well PREFACE xiii declare, and China neither feels nor understands, the importance, in her own interests as well as in the interests of peace and civilisation, of extracting the viper's fangs once for all. As to American suspicions of Japan, these may be dismissed at once if the United States will only continue to approach chocs d' opinions in a spirit of reasonableness ; and indeed some of our own colonial dominions may well revise their attitude, if only in recognition of Japan's spontaneous assistance in scotching the serpent's head. E. H. P. 14 (fOBMKBLY 18), QaMBIEB TeBBAO£, Liverpool, 8 March, 1917. CONTENTS CHAPTER I GEOGRAPHY Accurate notions of Chinese geography — Eighteen Provinces and natural Umits — ^Natural movements of popiilation — Significant dia- tinction between east and west parts — Its bearing upon British commerce — China has spread outwards : we regard her inwards — Original movements of ancient Chinese — Changes of Yellow River stream — Early Chinese capitals — Supposed Babylonian origin — Attacks by nomads — Line of Chinese further advance — Dialect areas — Non-Chinese populations in China — How distributed in northern and southern halves, and in eastern and western halves — Frontier tribes — Lolo tribes and their system of writing ; the Mission d'Ollone ; — M. Jacques Bacot and the Moso tribes — ^The Kachyns — Mrs. Bird- Bishop on some Tibetan tribes — Cave-dwellers of Sz Ch'wan — Shans in Hainan ; Rev. Samuel Clarke's book — Spread of J early Chinese through Yang-tsze Valley — By way of the lakes to Canton — Rise and erratic course of Yellow River — The loss region, and von Richthofen's theory — Navigability of Yellow River ; Mr. Rodney Gilbert's travels — Corruption in repairing its banks — China's real " Sorrow " — Chinese engineers and the dykes ; recent American plans — Source of the Yang-tsze — Chinese ideas on the subject, and their reason — Limit of navigation — Rev. S. ChevaUer's great charts — The Irrawaddy sources — Skill of steamer pilots — True sources of Upper Yang-tsze — Once a region competed for by Siamese and Tibetans — The Canton or West River — Its trade and the treaty port Wu-chou — Chinese have advanced along lines of least resistance — Its commercial significance — Salt trade ; Sir R. Dane's reforms — Yang-tsze Valley — Movmtain ranges — Barrier between Tartars and Chinese — Between Tartars and Tibetans — Between Yang-tsze and West River valleys — Other ranges — Dr. Bretschneider's excellent map ; modern changes in city designations . . Pages 1-15 CHAPTER II HISTORY Insipidity of earliest annals — Confucius' " Spring and Autumn " history — The destruction of the old literature — M. Chavannes and Sz-ma Ts'ien's great history — Interest begins with foreign relations and nomad wars — ^The " First Emperor's " unification of China — xvi CONTENTS The monosyllabic races of men — Roman comparisons — Comparisons with the states and territories of America — First news of Japan — The Han dynasty — The Hiung-nu (Huns or Turks) — Corea — The^old Canton kingdom,_and Wu Ti's conquest — The old Foochow kingdom — Conquests in Turkestan — Buddhism and India — Burma and Roman ships during later Han dynasty — ^New division into provinces — The "Three Empire" period — Sundering of North and South interests — The West drops into obhvion — Ts'in dynasty, ideally " Chinese " — Tartar movements and displacement of dialects — Comparison with the Latin languages — "North and South" dynasty period — Comparison with the Empire of Charlemagne — Confusing succession of ephemeral dynasties — Unification under the Sui dynasty — The Franks — The nomad empire of the Jeujen — The Turks — Corean compUcations — Annexation of Aimam — Japan's new name and pretensions — Siam — Loochoo — Formosa — West Turks — Tibetans — T'ang dynasty replaces that of Sui — " Men of T'ang " — Rules from Persia to Corea — Turks succeeded by Ouigours — Stone inscriptions stiU extant — Tribal names apphed to kingdoms — Arabs — Tibetan inscriptions — Tibetan and Siamese ambitions — Kashmir, Balti, JNepaul, and India — South Sea peoples — The Franks again — Hiung-nu and Tinrk ; repetition of history — Ephemeral dynasties follow that of T'ang — ^I'he Sung dynasty : its character — The Kitans — The Niichens — Old China and the Tientsin trade area — North and South empires once more — Displacement of populations — The Mongol conquests : general transformation — Kublai's vast empire — The Ming dynasty replaces the Mongols — Great marine activity in the South Seas — Japanese piracy and Loochoo — Growth of the Eleuth power — ^Manila — The Franks coining by sea — Dutch and English — Abandonment of the Chinese in the South Seas by the Ming and Manchu dynasties — Ming influence in Asia weak — Miserable collapse of the dynasty — How the Manchus gained head- way — Nurhachi's wars with China — His son Abkhai — Wu San-kwei and the Chinese rebeUion — The Manchus seize the opportunity — Utihse Mongol troops — Conquest of China completed — Conquest of Western MongoUa, Tibet, and Turkestan — Chmax of Manchu power — Submission of Nepaul — Annam, Burma, and Siam — Japan and Loochoo — Sulu — Manchus no aptitude for the sea — Land power compared with that of Kublai — ^Manchus better than Mongol — The "Boxers" Paget IQ~AI CHAPTER III EARLY TRADE NOTIONS Interest begins with relations abroad — Chinese contempt for traderft — Early ideas on trade — Tribute and trade — Indifference to wealth — Growth of desire for gain — Early currency — W^ars and scarcity — Rough treatment of traders — Army contractors — Salt and iron monopohsts — Arbitrary sumptuary laws — Trade staples — Chines© standards of wealth — ^Diplomatic trade — Fans and horse trade — Tungusic trade — Turkestan and Canton trade — Syrian trade with the Far East — PUny and Ptolemy — Where was Kattigara ? — Limited number of possible ports — Romans got silk and iron from China — — Land trade vid Parthia — ^Traders by sea and by land not always identified — Chinese agents on the Persian Gxilf — Chinese priests make the round tour by land and sea — Division into two empires accounts CONTENTS xvii for much ignorance — Hindoo and Arab colonies — Peaceful inter- national relations — Roman traders at Nanking — Probable Irrawaddy and Momein route — Authors repeat the same stories — No question of duties or taxation — Arabs and Franks — Attempt of the Emperor to reach the Franks — Anachronisms in national names — Active Arab trade — Arab and Persian attack at Canton — Turkish land trade — The iron trade again — Tea — Nestorian Stone and foreigners at Si-an Fu — Decline of Canton monopoly — Rise of Hangchow and Ningpo — Marco Polo's Zaitun — Rare book on trade by a royal Chinese — Chinese trade in Indian Ocean — " Faifo " as a place of call — No trade with Tonquin — Sumatra ports — Marco Polo's accounts : amply corroborated by Chinese — Colonel Yule's splendid work — Eunuch emissaries from China to the Indian Ocean . Pages 4:2-58 CHAPTER IV TRADE ROUTES Two 'main branches of the great road to the West — Karakoram Pass not to be confused with Karakoram city — Sir Aurel Stein — Sup- posed " land-compass" and trade road to the South — Discovery of West River by Chinese — Hosie and Ainscough — Hu Nan route to Canton — Parthian and Indian road measures — Trade junction at Kokand — Has a 2,000 year history — No silk went by sea until the Parthians drove it thither — The Burma route — The travels of the monk Fah-hien — Cosmas on sixth-century trade — Hiian-chwang'a travels and Sir A. Stein — The Haiathala, or EphthaUtes — Tokhara and the Arabs — Chavannes' translation of other monks' travels — Proof that trade routes existed — Mongols kept to northerly routes — Justin's mission to the Turks — Persia and the silk trade — Persian and Arab sea trade — Persian appeal to China — Arab and Persian struggles round Kokand — Arabs work their way to the Kokonor region — Arabs and Ouigours — Rodney Gilbert — Arab alliance with Tartars of North China — Arab missions by sea : their route — Nes- torians and Jews at this period — Chinese sea trade; Hirth and Rockhill — Canfu and Zaitun — Arabia and African coast — Persians and Nestorians confused — Parallel confusion later on between Franks and EngUsh — Conquests of Genghiz Khan — Roads followed by his messengers — And by Rubruquis, Haiton's brother, etc. — First Mongol Mussulmans — Marco Polo's route — Burmese routes again — Tonquin railway — Where was Zaitvm ? — Parallels in nomen- clature — Marco Polo's sea route — Ibn Batuta's voyage to China — Nestorian evidences — Takakusu's discoveries — Chavannes, PeUiot, Tachibana — Turkish and Ouigour evidences — Carpini, Rubruquis, Odoric, Monte-Corvino — Marignoli, Pascal, and other Franks — Missions to and from Tamerlane--Goes was the first to identify "China" with "Cathay" — Lieutenant Wood — Ming eunuchs' sea routes — Early name for Formosa — Land routes to Nepaul and Tibet — Manchu discoveries — Kalmuck wars, and consequent Manchu conquests — Roads to and from Tibet — Khotan road — Kokand and the Kashmir trade — Abb6 Hue's route — Nepaul and Lhassa roads — British expedition of 1904 — Sources of Irrawaddy — Chinese pilgrims to Mecca — Mongol, Manchu, and Corean roads — Spread of railways in Mongolia — Armamese roads and trade — French railway to Yiin Nan — General conclusions and principles — Progress : is it of happy omen ? Pages 59-86 2 xviii CONTENTS CHAPTER V ARRIVAL OF EUROPEANS St. Francis Xavier, the first missionary, dies at Sanciano — Founding of Macao — Arrival of Ricci — " Franks " at last identified — The first Portuguese traders — Mission to Peking ends in disaster — Frank guns, and how Macao was founded — Mendez Pinto, Ningpo, and Zaitun — Restrictions on trade — Rivalry of Dutch and Japanese — Portuguese settle quietly down — Macao's degeneracy — Spaniards and Manila — Spaniards and Portuguese one realm — ^Massacre of Chinese at Manila — Koxinga threatens it — Chinese in Manila — The Dutch — EarUest known Chinese settlements in Formosa — Japanese rivalry — Koxinga drives out the Dutch — ^Dutch mission to Peking — Chinese obtain Dutch aid against pirates — Chinese incorporate Formosa with Fuh Kien — Dutch tribute to China — Van Braam's mission — Dutch remain quiet till 1863 — CooUes for Sumatra — Dutch policy — Chinese demands after " Boxer " war — Ricci's death and successors — The Manchus and Schaal — Verbiest makes cannon — Religious dissen- sions — Queen EUzabeth and China — EngUsh attack Canton, and are mistaken for Dutchmen — EngUsh at Amoy before 1730, and even earher at Ningpo — EarUer still at Canton — Opium War of 1840-2 — History of opium — Chinese also to blame — Reforms since 1906 — Friction concerning right of entry into Canton — A Chinese junk visits England — Second war — More treaty ports — Russia takes advantage — Extension of missionary rights — British influence fu-st — Japan looms to the front — Germany pushes forward — French influence decUnes — Murder of Margary — Chefoo Convention and more ports — Opium Convention — Sikkim Convention — B\irma Convention — Convention of 1897 — Iviang-hung Convention — Kowloon and Wei-hai Wei agreements — England has her fair share — Expedition to Tibet in 1904 — The Russians — Serve Mongols as body-guards — Pinto meets Russians — Russian captives at Peking — Incidents of Russian political intercovirse — Kalgan trade convention — Hi question — China's weak Manchurian poUcy — Changed — Siberian railway and Cassini Convention — Manchuria now Russian — New " all-Russian " railway — Manchviria and division of " rights " with Japan — France and Mangu Khan — Franks and Fulin — French " ferocity " and self-effacement — Treaty of Whampoa — ^Taiping religious rebellion — France and the second war — Cession of Saigon — Explorations in Indo-China — Garnier killed by Black Flags — Riviere's similar fate — Tonquin rebellion — Hostilities with China — Fournier Treaty — Haiphong trade — Inland " ports " — Benefit to Hongkong — The Yiin Nan railway through Tonquin — Sz-mao opened to French and English trade — French occupy Kwang-chou Wan — Germany an vmknown quantity — Prussian treaty — Rising pretensions after Franco-German War — Frederick the Great's venture — Sides with the strongest after the Japanese War — Claims reward at I^ao Chou — Evil example — Japan ejects Germany — The United States — Surrender of Terranuova — Treaty of Wang-hia — American support at Taku — Treaty of Washington — Chinese immigration — Honest broker attitude — Conscience money given back to China — Good influence in Corea — Lack of force — The Manila white elephant — Belgium — Portuguese position at Macao — Sr. Branco's activity — Japanese aloofness — Perry's treaty — Lord Elgin opens Japan to British trade — Japanese revolution — ^Transformation — Treaty of 1871 with China — Formosa dispute — CONTENTS xix Loochoo — Japanese rights in Corea — Chinese intrigue — War with China — Shimonoseki Treaty — Opening of Soochow and Hangchow — The " Boxers" give Japan her opportiinity — She becomes a first- class Great Power, and annexes Corea — Denmark — Spain — Policy at Manila — Cuba coolie question — Exchange of envoys — Loss of Pliilip- pines — Senor Cologan's services — Italy and the Pope — "Cultured barbarians" — Treaty of 1866 — Italy and Corea — Demands in the Cheh Kiang province rejected — Austria — Baron Czikann a " brilliant second" — ^Swiss — Red Cross and Postal Convention — Peru — Brazil — Mexico and ill-treatment of Chinese — Congo State — Sweden — Mr. Carl Bock — Turkey's fiasco in the Far East — Serbia, Rumania, Corean " Empire," Uruguay — List of Treaties, etc., to 1906 Pages 87-125 CHAPTER VI SIBERIA, ETC. The Tartars — Hung equally over Europe and Asia — Russia occupies their place — ^Two main civihsations, Roman and Chinese — Russia caps the pair — Zones separating both Rome and China from Hyper- boreans — Hiung-nu Empire, Huns, and Avars — Tungusic Empire replaces Hiung-nu — JNever included Turkestan — Japanese captives — Rule North China — Fail as a nomad power — Comparison with Mongols — The Jeujen Empire — Not Avars — The Turks — EarUer, Later, and Western Empires — The Siberian tribes — The Ouigour Empire — Their Manicheism and the Chavannes-Pelliot documents — Tungusic power reappears — Kitans and Niichens — The old Puh-hai kingdom — Kara- Kitans — Mongols — Kipchaks — Alans — Bulgars — Russians — Ancient Wusun and mediaeval EphthaUtes — — Who are the Hungarians ? — Novgorod Republic — First ideas of Siberia — Kalmuck or Eleuth power — Tamerlane and the Kipchaks — Realm of Sibir or Issibur : Tobolsk — Ivan the Terrible and the Yugurs of Sibir — Chinese and Russians in accord concerning the Khan of " Catch 'em " — ^The Strogonoff and the Cossack Yarmak — His raids and discoveries — Contract with the Kalmucks — Prudent PoUcy of the Czars : " Heads I win, tails you lose " — Hiatus in Kalmuck history — Russian missions to Altyn Khan on the Kem River — Alleged Chinese mission to Russia, 1619 — The first tea — Russian advance to the Amur — Little danger in the extreme north — Attempt to explore the Sungari — Albazin conflict — Treaty of Ner- chinsk — Kiachta tea trade — Aigun treaty secures the Amur to Russia — Peking treaty secures Ussuri province to Russia — Tibet — Nepaul — Manipur — Burma — Siam — Japan — Corea . Pages 126-140 CHAPTER VII MODERN TRADE Old co-hong system — East India Company — Life at Canton — Natvire of Trade — Treaties of Nankin, Tientsin, etc. — Comparison of 1880 trade with the trade of 1899 and 1913— The Tea Trade— Good position of Great Britain — Revenue : its relation to trade — Cotton goods — Opium disappears — Woollens and metals — Russian imports — Mackay treaty of 1902 — British Textile Commissioner — France and silk — Revolution of ideas caused by kerosene and flovir — New XX CONTENTS cigarette trade — Foreign clothing — Aniline dyes — Demand for liixuries — Curious sugar finance — Exports — Soya hiapida and bean- cake — Straw-braid — The new feather and albumen trades — Hides, skins, and tobacco — Mats, hemp, oils, spirits, leather — Shipping — Foreign population — Pakhoi trade — Hoihow trade — Lappa and Kowloong — Lai'ge silk filature trade at Canton — Li Hung-chang'a intelligence — Transit-pass Nemesis at Wu-chou — Rival provincial capitals — Swatow trade — Amoy or " Zaitun " — Disappearing tea trade — Bad government in Fiih Kien — New port of Santu Ao — Foochow's decline — Wenchow trade — Ningpo transformations — Railway bickerings — Hangchow trade and likin understandings — Sununer resort of Kvding — The Poyang Lake and the railway — Shanghai the great centre — River trade — Chungking — Novel condi- tions of trade — Branch at Wan Men — Ichang and its transhipment trade — Sz Ch'wan railway — ^Tea and hides — ^Shashi, a failure — Rail- way to Hu Nan — Yochou and its possibilities — Ch'ang-sha and its antimony — Hankow's central position — Tea still flourishes — Kewkiang trade fairly flourishing — Wuhu and its great rice trade — The port of Nanking, a great railway centre — Chinkiang and its prospects — Great increase in the Newchwang trade — Port Arthur not now a treaty port — Ta-lien Wan as a railway terminus — Tientsin : enormous development of its trade within recent years — Ranks almost next to Shanghai — Great wool trade with Mongolia — Great area served by Tientsin — Advantages of Ts'in-wang Tao as an ice- free port, coal export — Kalgan, Kia-yiih Kwan, and the Russian land trade — Chef oo and her extended trade — Kiao Chou as a limited " free port" was entirely German — Wei-hai Wei's doubtful status as a port — Corean trade now Japanese affair — Shanghai the great centre — Caution in estimating trade totals — Tonquin trade and railways — Mengtsz — Lungchow — Sz-mao — Kwang-chou Wan — Soochowand the Shanghai-Nanking railway — Kongmun and Kumchuk — Other mis- cellaneous quasi-ports, on various frontiers, making up the Foreign Customs total of forty- seven .... Pages 141-176 CHAPTER VIII THE GOVERNMENT Central Government not essential — Eighteen Provinces — Old nanaea still used — Comparison with French provinces — Theory of provincial government — Changed relations of former Viceroy and Governor — Memorials to the Emperor have now become " submission " to the President and Boards — Division of labour not yet quite definite — Judicial and executive governments — Reorganisation of each province separately — Jehol and other extra-mural governments — New relation of province to province — Each a state — MongoUa, Manchuria, Turkestan, Tibet — Disappearance of Banner canton- ments — Modern development of armies and Salt Gabelle — The Board and provincial revenues — New taxes under the Republic — System of budget finance — Give-and-take principles — China one vast democracy — Manchu privileges and disabilities aboUshed — In spite of revolutions and failures, China and Peking have both really advanced — Caste distinctions now abohshed — The hien is the real unit of government — Number and size of hien districts — Largest towns may append to a small hien city — Personal associa- CONTENTS xxi tion with native city — The Men Hke the Lord Mayor — Embodiment of " the State " — " Father and Mother," or factotum for the people — His staff of secretaries — Not so black as he is painted — Judicial and executive distinction has deprived him of much power — New police system for all China — Full description of the " good viceroys' " efforts and of Yiian Shi-k'ai's example at Tientsin — Means of obtaining office — How he raises money — Reforms intro- duced after " Boxer " war — Ill-defined duties oi a, fu; this nebulous official now abolished along with his imaginary " city " — The ante- rooms of a Governor — The pickings of a former prefect — Distri- bution of patronage — K'ang Yu-wei's contemptuous view of ronds de cuir in 1898 — Description of taotais' functions — Now styled taoyin — But things all round are still (1917) in a state of flux — Other special, salt, and grain taotaia — Illustrative table . Pages 177-190 CHAPTER IX POPULATION Ancient population extensive — History of the Census — Unnecessary to go back beyond a.d. 600 — Relative statistics for China and Corea — Mouths and households — Dr. Lionel Giles on the Census — Proof indirect from army statistics — Population during the eleventh century — Freemen, villeins, and serfs — North and South extremes to be excluded — Population of Tartar-governed China in twelfth century — Proportion of households to acres — Negative estimates for South China — Mongol populations — Before and after Bayen's conquests — Manzi and Cathay — Marco Polo's estimates — Fearful ravages of war — Hon. W. W. Rockhill as an authority — Depopu- lation of Sz Ch'wan — During 1,500 years, an average of 50,000,000 souls — After the Tartars had all been ejected — Artificial decrease of population — Manchu statistics — Steady rise — Great prosperity and liberality — System of levying land tax — K'ang- hi' s reforms — Free heads — K'ien-lung's new way of looking at things — Enormous increase — Effects of Taiping rebellion — Difficult to slay millions — Chinese official statistics the sole evidence — Opinions alone are worthless — Special conditions of Sz Ch'wan — Did not pay to be a mandarin there ... ... Pages 191-204 CHAPTER X REVENUE Revenue regarded as food for government — A tithe of produce — Salt comes next — Customs more modern — No space now for elaborate detail — Consider the Manchu dynasty alone — Revenue 250 years ago — Corruption existed — Prosperity of the eighteenth century — One tael equal there to one pound here — Balances, surpluses, and sale of titles — Peking share of the revenues — Nothing done until after the " Boxer " war — Crushing effect of " Boxer " indemnities on the public — Expenditures — Waste on the Yellow River — Real revenue and expenditure at least double the nominal — As much once more for " squeezes" — And once more again for local rates — The decrees of the Board of Revenue — Specimen of an old^appro- xxii CONTENTS priation " bill " — Great military expenditure — General financial confusion — Very little improvement under the Republic — Foreign loans and novelties — " Boxer " affair of course did still further con- found matters — Defence against Russia and France — Contributions to other provinces — Specimen of annual revenue-receipts table — The measure of the nominal appropriations — Underlings at head- quarters — Expense of remitting — Curious contrasts — Specimens of Republican budgets ...... Pages 205-221 CHAPTER XI THE SALT GABELLE Illustrative of natural geography — Earliest excise on salt — Description of the Two Kwang salt system — Annual yield of revenue — Corners of other provinces supplied — Irregularities — Swatow and part of Fuh Kien — Fuh Eaen salt system — The supply of salt to Formosa — Enormous clandestine trade up the Wenchow River — Old adminis- trative divisions for Chdh Kiang salt — Sir Richard Dane's reforms — Geographical reasons affecting An Hwei — The island salt supply — Price of salt now increased throughout the empire — Large revenue receipts — Clever engineering in the Hwai salt region — North and South varieties — Compromise with the Sz Ch'wan industry — Description of the system — Field for native investments — Serves the Yang-tsze Valley — Sz Ch'wan salt and hydrogen wells — Fuel supplied by nature — Three Yang-tsze viceroys used to manage the salt revenues — Sir R. Dane and Republican changes — Personal experiences — Salt serves as small change — Sudden changes depre- cated — One exit only from Sz Ch'wan — Area served — Yiin Nan and Kwei Chou arrangements — Tibet's position — Supplies Nepaul — Black salt wells in Kublai Khan's time — Wu San- kwei and the Panthay Mussulmans exploit the salt — Muang-u salt — Manchurian salt — Changes since " Boxer " war — Mongolian salt — Goes east to Peking and west' to near Russian frontier — Possibly the salt industry of 2,000 years ago — Revenues very small — Old China — Geographical significance once more — Chinese a Yellow River people — China's Sorrow — The oldest salt industry Shan Tung — ^Two branches of the salt trade — Used to be one with the Tientsin salt syndicate — History of first Chinese salt administration — Salt and iron monopolies — ^The Tientsin or " Long-reed " salt industry — Mer- chants are heavily " squeezed " by the Government — The recent farce of Government " faith bonds " — Divided condition of Ho Nan in her salt supplies — Shan Si or Ho-timg salt system — Its history in Tartar hands — Achmac, the villainous minister of Kublai Khan — Commissary lives at P'u-chou — Sir R. Hart's land-tax scheme fails — Chang Kien proposes'*all-round increase in price of salt Pages 222-244 CHAPTER XII LIKIN Origin of likin — A special levy on tea and salt to support troops operating against Taipings — Extensions of the idea — ^Tax becomes an imperial one — Shanghai likin and foreigners — Our own weakness causes the trouble — Chinese recognise its unconstitutionality — Ho CONTENTS xxiii Nan likin — Evidently likin was a voluntary " benevolence " at first — Taku and Tientsin levies for " Sam Collinson's " troops — Chefoo liJcin — Charges levied on native opium — Mr. Wade and Mr. Lay — Native opium in Yiin Nan — Likin in Manehiiria — Li Han-chang collects for Liu K'un-yih's troops — Chungking likin — Likin along the Cheh Kiang trading routes — Kwang Si accounts — Kiang Nan charges — Definition made precise — Our responsibility is double — The foreign howl of anguish — Sir Brooke Robertson's deliberate policy — Blocks the way until his death — Sir Brooke condoned — Peking rapacity — Effect of the Foreign Customs — Effect of Taiping rebellion upon the land-tax — A big combine — Compromise neces- sary — All share the plunder — The Republic no better — A huge Tammany Hall — National conscience — Proposal in 1902 to abolish likin in exchange for increase in import dues — Comparison of Chinese and French exactions on Yiin Nan trade — Under the Re- public the semi-independent miUtary governors practically are law unto themselves at present — Sir Robert Hart's salt likin arrange- ments of 1898 — The estimated likin revenue in 1911 and 1913 — The redoubtable General Chang Hiin and his army feeding on the country — Opium likin a thing of the past — Effect of likin on the railways — British and American protests — China's lack of public disinterestedness — General considerations — Increase of duties — What is wanted ........ Pages 245-255 CHAPTER XIII THE ARMY Manchu military organisation — ^Nvichen and Eatan banner organisation the soul of it — Manchu, Mongol, and Chinese banners — Bought out by the President of the RepubUc — Civil and military " domiciles " — Strength of the banner army — " Stiffeners " at the conquest — Provincial banner garrisons — Jealousy caused — Drain on the provinces — Contrast with India — Degeneracy — The Green Flag, or Chinese Army — Provincial and brigadier generals — Changes of titles under the Republic — Service in one's own province — Relative rank — Corruption and peculation — Distinction between " soldiers " and " braves " — All a question of honesty — Efforts at reform previous to the Japanese War — Effects of the Japanese War — Difficulties in the way of reform — German occupation of Kiao Chou — The young Emperor's reforms — The Empress-Dowager is egged on to interfere — Endless circle of savings and waste — Yiian Shi-k'ai's effective army — ^The " Boxer " fiasco — Recent reforms — Viceroy Chang denounces the Green Flag and drills foreign-trained troops — The new military spirit turns out a Frankenstein monster — Central control over armies and railways wrecks the dynasty — Provincial generals and pronunciamentos — New armies of 1905 and 1911, with new nomenclature — Chinese soldiers not entirely Gilbertian, but have a bottom or fundament of good qualities Pages 256-270 CHAPTER XIV PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS Rev. A. Smith's excellent book upon this subject — Personal opinion upon Chinese character — Observations upon Manchua — Marriages xxlv CONTENTS with Chinese — Manchu officials and princes — "Mean whites" among the scions — Drinking habits — Comparison of Manchu with Chinese bravery — Bravery generally — Manchus and Chinese — Different groups of Chinese — Distinctions — Take the common Chinese view of ovu-selves — Republican sumptuary changes — We take the same general but inaccurate view of the Chinaman — Question of truthfulness — Distinctions in lying — Not much worse than we are ourselves — Question of thieving — Ordinary care and common honesty — Practical honesty of thieves — Cleanliness and dirt — More definitions and distinctions — Great fidelity — Respect for justice — Politeness — Effect of the Republic — Definitions and comparisons — Cruelty and callousness, and their explanation — The Viceroy Liu disapproves of it — A true bill — Commercial rectitude — Recent degeneration — Government credit — Libidinous nature — Marriage and concubinage — Puritanical virtue — Chinese women — Position improved under the Republic — Local reasons — Infanticide — Virility — Treatment of children — ^Inferior position of girls — Recent improvement — Hold-of¥ attitude of parents — Mothers are petty tjTants — Patria potestas — Children and pigs — ^Temperance in eating and drinking — ^Theory of gluttony, vice, opium, and drink — Dis- tillery laws — Aphrodisiacs — Industry a ruling virtue — Artificial light, and effect of latitude — Sagacity in money making — Official smugglers — ^The handy man — A cold time for barbers — ^What the Chinaman can not do — Time will show effect of change Pages 271-292 CHAPTER XV RELIGION AND REBELLION Meaning of " religion " — Effect of it at home — Much the same in China — Like to appear whole in the next world — Care not for doctrine — Over-zeal of missionaries — Early or natural religion — Confucianism — Improvement in articulate ideas — Republic first abandons and then harks back to the old philosopher — Revolution of ideas in Asia just before our era — Good effects of Buddhism — Position of women — Comparison with Romish Church — Toleration of the Chinese mind — Mussulmans — Early Christianity in China — Regulars and their disputes — Zeal and doctrine too much, charity too little — Female foot- squeezing — Missionaries and their views — Opium — Hearty British co-operation — Drink — Slavery — Concubin- age — Words not to be taken too harshly — Marriage — Popular con- ventions — Village feasts — Church rates — Narrow sectarianism — Religious mind of the Chinese — Ideas of a soul — Filial piety — The basis of Chinese Law — Mussulmans tamed down — Rodney Gilbert's Turki experiences — Wisdom of Russian Church — Secret societies — White Lily sect — Cause of two dynasties' collapse — " Boxer " re- volts — ^Taiping rebellion — Later " Boxer " consequences Pages 293-306 CHAPTER XVI LAW Law reform in 1905 — Foreign codes consulted — British law just aa cruel once — China has a consecutive law history — Patria poteataa and filial piety — Austin and Maine on law — Chinese law ia purely CONTENTS XXV criminal — State and family — ^War and crime — Family law no affair of state — Civil law almost as little — Contract and custom — Ancient myths and traditions — History dates from 841 B.C. — Early Chinese codes — Comparison with Roman Twelve Tables — Roman contrasts — Chinese Solons and Dracos — Gradual steps towards uniformity and mercy — Maxims — The First Emperor's Procrustes bed — Basis of successive dynastic laws — ^The Marcus Aurelius of China — Son's responsibility for father — Simplification and mildness always advance a step — List of punishments — Tartar rule in North China — Comparison with the Germanic tribes — Introduction of foreign religions — 1,400 years of clumsy classification — Appeals and con- science — Instances of crown cases reserved — The ratio decidendi — The Emperor and the Pope on Infallibility or Supra legea aumua — History of law continued backwards from the Manchus — Ancient obiter dicta still in force — Fierce treason laws — The Emperor K'ang-hi — Jurisprudence falls off with advent of Europeans — Sir George Staunton and the Chinese code — A Chinese Doctors' Commons — The Ming dynasty and back again to the Mongols and other Tartars — The T'ang dynasty and the Han dynasty are the two leading houses for jurisprudence — Legal reform in the twentieth centtiry after " Boxer " wars — Executive, legislative, and judicial functions first separated — Independence of judges — Parliament — Wu T'ing-fang, Foreign Secretary and Codifier of Law — Shen Kia-pen, native law specialist — Practical justice still leaves much to be desired Pages 307-342 CHAPTER XVII LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE Bone inscriptions, Shang dynasty 1770-1190 B.C., and most ancient forms of writing — Literary revolution of 827 B.C. — Script originally regarded as " names " only — Bronze specimen in London dating several centuries later — Connected thoughts begin — Laborious writing art — Fan origin of " books " — Confucius' history — 1,000 "names" increase to 3,000 "ideas" — Perishable materials — Feudal China forcibly united — Writing simplified — Destruction of conten- tious literature and cranks — Revival of literature, simplification carried further — Sounds, rhymes, and tones distinguished for 9,000 words — Writing materials — Sir Aurel Stein's discoveries — No foreign ideas ever affected Chinese script — Absurd to connect with Babylon — All men the same — Presumption that they all used their organs the same way — "History" is simply "Events" — Reason for perishable materials — Caesar and Sz-ma Ts'ien of equal literary merit — Chinese script good for any language. All languages equally easy — Chinese differences only suggest diffi- culty — No Chinese talk exactly alike — Learners must stick to one dialect till mastered — Irish and Scotch accents as illustrations — Monosyllabic and tonic languages — Digraphs and diphthongs — All languages " piled up " in practically the same resulting way — No Chinese Malaprops — No " grammar " in Chinese — ^Who knows what " parsing " means ? — A rose by any other name — Universal Chinese ignorance diminishing — Women's day coming — Different sorts of style — No snobbery in Chinese conversation — A man's a man for a' that — Dialects and brogues — Forms of " mandarin " — Talk takes a back seat — Litera scripta manet — 400 syllables for 40,000 XX vi CONTENTS characters — 75 per cent, of them useless — Limit of " learning " — A European may be as sound a " harmless drudge " as the most learned Chinaman — Do not stuff your memory — Japanese get along with fifty syllables — " Thickenings " in Welsh and Japanese — Super-refinement of tones — Ancient Chinese provable from Corean, Japanese, and Annamese — Cantonese the oldest and most highly developed — Tartar corruption of Chinese, and Teutono-GaUic cor- ruption of Latin — The French have, like the Pekingese, lost their " entering tone " — Influence of Indian priests on Chinese language — A " tip " for would-be students — Pekingese and Cantonese alone repay study except for missionaries and "locals" — Question of romanising Chinese — Welsh once more . , Pages 343-364 CHAPTER XVIII THE RISE OF THE CHINESE REPUBLIC Rush of literature on the Revolution — The " Awakening of China " — Li Hung-chang and Chinese struggles against foreign aggression — Corean, Burman, and Tibetan questions — Count Cassini and the Siberian railway — Admiral Lang and the Chinese fleet — Japanese war and loss of Formosa — Li Hung-chang's diplomatic pilgrimage — Germany out in the cold — The Kiao Chou intrigue and violence — General scramble in consequence — The Emperor's fiasco — " Boxer " desperation — The old Dowager a genuine reformer — Yuan Shi- k'ai's good work at Peking and Tientsin — Preparations for a Con- stitution — Efforts at reform by the Yangtsze viceroys — Russo- Japanese war gives breathing time to China — Great Britain and Tibet — Fair dealing with both China and Russia as finale — Death of Dowager and Emperor — The Dalai Lama at Peking — The Regent and the new Dowager — Palace intrigue and dismissal of Yiian Shi- k'ai — Provincial councils and provincial armies begin to feel their helms — Struggle for central or for provincial control — Likin bungling and the moribund Mackay treaty of 1902 — Sympathy for Boy Emperor changes to despair as to obtaining constitutional rights — National Assembly of 1910 — Revolution of 1911 — Sun Yat-sen hurries back to China — Manchu appeal to Yiian Shi-k'ai, who takes char'ge at Peking — Anarchy in the provinces — Emperor announces Magna Charta to his ancestors' spirits — Manchu princes removed from high office — Regent resigns seals of office — " Pigtails " sacrificed — Solar-lunar calendar mooted — Dowager leaves ParUament to decide — Abdication of 12th February — Old Dowager's brother secures a plank from the wreck — Yiian Shi-k'ai as Plenipo. — Republic created not self-made — Sun Yat-sen President; Li Yiian-hung Vice- president — New era introduced — Yiian dishes Sun, and is formally elected President — Looting by Yiian's troops at Peking and Paoting — New Constitution of fifty-six Articles — Its defects — United League and Popular Party intrigues — T'ang Shao-i as Premier — Hwang Hingand Sun Yat-sen placated with high but harmless office — Li Yiian-hung Chief of the Staff — The Five Races — Intermarriage and squeezed feet — Advisory Council in heu of Parliament — Petty revolts and intrigue — Northerners get the pull over Southerners — Foreign loans — National flag — The opium curse — Difficulties with Tibet and Outer Mongolia, Turkestan, etc. — T'ang Shao-i bolts and escapes assassination — Dictatorship bruited — Party CONTENTS xxvii wrangling — Hwang Hing and Sun Yat-sen venture to Peking — Death of new Dowager — Parliament to meet — Yiian suspected re assassination of Sung Kiao-j6n — Hwang Hing joins in revolt against Yiian's pretensions — Chang Hiin and his " pigtailed " army to the rescue — Yiian's "Pride's Purge" and coup d'etat — Chang Hiin propitiated with a Military Governorship ; declares independence, but is bought out and given a high-sounding sinecure — General confidence in Yiian — K'ang Yu-wei placated — Vice-president Li Yiian-hung coaxed to Peking and is " snuffed out " for two years — Parliament gives way to Advisory Council — Useful work in China during 1914 — Hopes for China — How if Yiian die ? — Yiian worships Heaven in state — European war once more gives China breathing space — Projects for new Constitution — Japan ejects Germany — The Press orJy half alive to Japan's future danger — The Peace Association and uncanny rumours — Discrediting of republican principles — Professor Goodnow's officious interference — Dr. Morrison and M. Ariga — Bogus petitions — Suspicious attitude of Yiian's scapegrace son — Liang K'i-ch'ao " smells a rat " — German intrigues — Yiian Shi-k'ai seems hypnotised — Advisory Council recom- mends monarchy — More bogus petitions in support — The idea of a constitutional monarchy not unreasonable — Suggestion of popular vote — Warning by Japan, Britain, and Russia to " go slow " — France and Italy follow suit — General foreign and native confidence in Yiian, but not as Emperor, only as constitutional ruler — Atti- tude of America, Germany, and Austria — Adulatory addresses and thimble-rigging — Yiian offered the imperial crown — Rats leave the labouring ship — Absurd showering of princely and noble titles as bribes— Effort to secure the " Four Intimates " — Eunuchs and pretty girls at an end for palace uses — Duke Confucius collapses — New era of Great Constitution — Ominous revolt in YiinNan — Japan quickly shows her hand against German intrigue — Spread of revolt to the other provinces — Yiian has to " climb down " — ^The fire- eating ex- viceroy Shum — Sun Yat-sen, T'angShao-i, Liang K'i-ch'ao, Wu T'ing-fang all hostile — Risk of South China faUing asunder — Yiian's mad moratorium — Hurried summoning of ParUament — Yiian falls sick and dies of uraemia and mortification — Li Yiian- hung succeeds — Twan K'i-jwei Premier — Deaths of Hwang Hing and Ts'ai Ao — Hopes for China through general conciliation Pages 365-38G Glossary Pagrea 387-394 Index Pagre* 395-419 LIST OF MAPS, ETC. Ricci AND Paul Zi (costume or Mma Dynasty), from AN OLD PICTXTBE PUBLISHED BY THE CHINESE JeSUIT Pere Hoang ..... Frontispiece PAOINQ PAGE 1. Rough sketch of Chinese Empire showing propor- tion OF Eighteen Provinces .... 1 2. Rough sketch-map to illustrate the size of each province ........ 5 3. Rough sketch-map illustrating the spread of Chinese from (1) Yellow River Valleys ; (2) Head Waters of Yang-tsze ; (3) Yueh Valleys 14 4. Rough sketch-map to illustrate the ethnology OF China AND the Chinese expansion . . .16 6. Sketch-map to illustrate convergence of all boads UPON THE Pamir Region ; also to show certain main ROUTES FROM the West .... 48 6. Rough map to illustrate the main directions taken BY the early land AND SEA TRADE WITH ChINA . 50 7. Sketch-map showing most of the names mentioned IN Chinese navigation . . . . .58 8. Map showing the sea routes known to the Chinese OR BY ENVOYS TO ChINA ..... 62 9. Sketch-map to illustrate Chinese land and sea APPROACHES TO InDIA ; ALSO CERTAIN MAIN ROUTES . 64 10. Map to show Chinese knowledge of Africa . . 76 11. Map to illustrate the utmost extent of Chinese rule and the trade routes into China from all SIDES ......... 84 12. Map to illustrate the Eastern Island trade sphere 92 xxix XXX LIST OF MAPS, ETC. FAOINa FAQB 13. Map IIXUSTRATINQ SiBEBIA . . . . .138 14. Map showing the position of all ports and marts OPEN TO foreign TRADE . . . . .174 15. Map illustrating population in 1894 and revenue IN 1898 . . .' . . . . .204 16. Rough MAP TO illustrate chapter ON Salt . . 244 17. General MAP or China (after Bretsohneider) At end CHINA CHAPTER I GEOGRAPHY If we desire to obtain accurate notions touching the poHtical and commercial capacities of China, we must first endeavour to reaUse what her territory is Hke. It has been the native practice in modern times to style " China Proper " by the collective name " Eighteen Provinces." As a matter of fact, since frontier questions with European Powers became acute, the " East Three Provinces " (Manchuria) and the " New Territory " of Turkestan have been so reorgan- ised that there are now practically twenty-two directly governed provinces ; and Formosa formed in a modified degree yet another new one, until, some twenty years ago, the Japanese insisted upon its cession. It will be more con- venient to ignore these recent changes, and to consider first the compact and thickly populated territory lying between the various deserts or steppes and the sea — in other words, the " Eigh- teen Provinces," which are, or were until recently, surrounded to the north, west, and south by tributary or independent states, and to the east by the Pacific Ocean. The natural boundaries of China Proper, as thus limited, have always been much the same— that is, 1 2 GEOGRAPHY [chap, i deserts or steppes beyond mountain chains have prevented the rapid expansion of cultivators in any direction except along the valleys of rivers which run eastwards into the sea. If the poli- tical boundaries have in our times, as often before, been pushed into the desert or upon the plateau, that does not seriously affect the one salient feature of the vast Chinese Dominion, which is that, out of an irregular triangle cover- ing an area of 5,000,000 square miles and sup- porting a total population of 400,000,000 souls, one corner embracing barely one-third of the total surface consists of regulation provinces, ruled under one uniform system, and containing nine-tenths of the population ; whilst the rest of the triangle, so far as it has not, either de Jacto or de jure, seceded from Chinese control, con- sists of poorly watered desert or plateau, thinly peopled by races forming majorities over the Chinese settlers. It was only when, as in the case of Manchuria and the New Territory of Turkestan, the Chinese element became in some way predominant or equal, that political measures were taken to assimilate an " outer " portion. The Eighteen Provinces thus form a roughly circular mass occupying nearly one-third of the dominion's surface. But, if we bisect this mass from north to south, we shall find that the western half has a general tendency to be moun- tainous, whilst the eastern half has a corres- ponding tendency to be flat. We shall find, moreover, that out of a total population of be- tween 300,000,000 and 400,000,000, the eastern half contains three-quarters, whilst the moun- tainous half only contains one-quarter. As we proceed with our inquiry, we shall discover, besides, that, taken as a whole, the western half is barely self-supporting, and contributes even in B.C. 2000-A.D. 1600] COMMERCIAL ASPECT 3 theory very little to the Central Government at Peking, whilst the eastern half can support itself, feed the Central Government, and also assist the impecunious west, always supposing that war and revolution do not queer the normal pitch. The wealthy province of Sz Ch'wan rather interferes with the truthful harmony of this sweeping arrangement ; but none the less the broad facts are as stated, for it is only the eastern half of Sz Ch'wan that pays a surplus ; in fact of very recent years the western half has been constituted a separate government for many exceptional purposes. We have now got under our eyes a material upon which to work, and it is thus evident from a commercial point of view that the interests of Great Britain lie almost entirely upon the coasts, upon the embouchures of three or four great rivers, upon the valleys of those rivers and their tributaries, and upon the head waters of the Yang-tsze in Sz Ch'wan. In other words, geographical considerations indicate the eastern half of China Proper as the most accessible and the most valuable field for our commercial development ; and, if this region be kept open to us, we can, without great violence to our feelings, relegate to a second place Manchuria, Tibet, and Yiin Nan, in the first of which the legitimate competition of Japan and Russia is likely to be most keen, whilst India and China have joint interests in the tea trade of Tibet, and France through Tonquin has as much to do with Yiin Nan as we have through Burma. Familiar though the names of Chinese pro- vinces are to those who have passed a lifetime in the Far East, I am aware that the general reader is apt to get confused if too many strange names be thrust upon his attention at once. I there- fore give here a simple map with a list of the 3 4 GEOGRAPHY [chap, i Eighteen Provinces in order to illustrate my remarks (see next page). When we Europeans approach China, which is usually done by sea, we are unconsciously im- pressed with the notion that, the farther inland we go, the more we leave " civilisation " behind us. But it must not be forgotten that, from the native point of view, the coasts are the ends of the earth, and the places where least of the true Celestial spirit is to be found. All the solid part of Chinese tradition and history seems to show that the original inhabitants of the Central Kingdom (who have never possessed any national or ethnological designation in the sense of "German," "Turk," "Russian," etc.) were first heard of as Jiioving from the north and west down the valley of the Hwang Ho (Yellow River), the lower half or mouth of which has shifted from time to time, som.etimes leaving the mountain mass known as the Shan Tung Pro- montory to the south, and sometimes to the north. The old capitals of the kings were all in the valleys of the Yellow River or in those of its tributaries, such as the River Wei in Shen Si. Hence all the legends of even the mythical emperors are centred between Si-an Fu and Peking, near which place (Tientsin) the Yellow River once entered the sea. In fact, the trade area now belonging to the single port of Tientsin nearly covers the whole of semi-historical China. Even so far north as Kalgan there are ancient remains of what appear to be signal towers or tombs dating as far back as B.C. 200. On this undoubted fact — that some of the earliest known Chinese advanced from the north and north-west —many ingenious theories have been pro- pounded, connecting them with Babylonia, the Accadians, Persians, Hindoos, and what not. By assuming errors in ancient Chinese records 12/ Jehol H/H VNG NGANf Am CHE N6 JK^IA^ 1^8 ruH lEN^ r r A.D. 1650-1900] LIST OF PROVINCES THE EIGHTEEN PROVINCES, Etc. Name of Province. An Hwei Cheh Kiang ChihLi Fuh Kien . Ho Nan Hu Nan Hu PSh Kan Suh Kiang Si Kiang Su Kwang Si . Kwang Tung Translated Meaning, Peace-Glory Cheh River Direct Rule Happy-Establish River South Lake South Lake North Sweet-Sedate River West River (and) Su Broad West Broad East Archaic Name (as separate State). Kwei Chou . Noble Tract Shan Si . Mountain West Shan Tung . Mountain East Shen Si Sz Ch'wan . Yiin Nan Sheng King Kih-lin Heh-lung Kiang Shen West Four Streams Cloud South Prosperous Capital Happy Forest Black Dragon River Wan Yueh Yen Min I Yii Ch'u I Ngoh { (no general name) Kan Wu I I Yiieh K'ien Tsin Ts'i Ts'in Shuh Tien Remarks. Liao (none) (none) Part of oldEaang Nan; i.e. An(king) andHwei(chou) The Kiang (Yang-tsze) once had a mouth here Peking never under Vice- roy Established (I think) about A.D. 700 South of the (Hwang) Ho South of the (Timg-t'ing) Lake North of the (Tung-t'ing) Lake Kan (chou) and Suh (chou) (prefectures) West (reach of the) Kiang The Yang-tsze about Soo- chow The west and east parts of Kwang Nan, or the old Annam seat of power Perhaps a euphonic form of the old " Kwei State," or Devil Country Chih Li used once to fall within the parts east of the (Hang) Mountain Range West of Shen (an old state practically mean- ing " the Pass ") Once called " Three Streams " South of the Sz Ch'wan Mists, or the Misty Range (Yiin Ling) Also called Feng-t'ien The ancient M a n c h u cradle : possibly from the old Chinese-Corean Kilin Province Also called Tsitsihar Sin Kiang . New Domain (none) Kashgaria-Dzungaria T'ai Wan Terrace Bay (no general name) Formosa (now Japanese) It wiU be noticed that there are two Yiieh and two Kiang. The Chinese characters alone can express the distinctions to the eye. 6 GEOGRAPHY [chap, i here and there, by rigidly adhering to our own Scriptural texts, and by indulging our imagina- tion a little, we might perhaps even trace the first Chinaman back to the Tower of Babel, or, for the matter of that, to the North Pole. I can only state the moderate impressions which the perusal of original Chinese history has left upon me. A capable and settled political race is first heard of in possession of lands along the Yellow River : it is occupied in fighting for its existence with the horse-riding nomads to the north, who raid the stores of wealth accumulated upon culti- vated lands by industrious workmen, and who disappear, when pursued, into their trackless deserts. It is continually being reinforced by other bodies of its own kind coming from the north-west. The next great historical advance seems to be south-west into modern Sz Ch'wan (" Four Streams "), and then through the two great lake regions down south by way of the navigable Kan river of Kiang Si, and the Yiian and Siang rivers of Hu Nan into the region of Canton, which, as will be seen from our sketch map, belongs to an entirely different catchment area. But the valley of the Yang-tsze, as a whole, and the provinces south of it and at its mouth, do not appear to have become properly assimilated, either politically or industrially, before the com- mencement of our Western era. Moreover, the portions of all the seaboard provinces lying very near to the coasts seem to have been out of hand up to a very recent date — say 500 years ago ; so that we must picture in our minds the Chinese race spreading like a fan from the southern bend of the Yellow River towards the Upper Yang-tsze and the coasts, its political force becoming weaker and weaker as it approaches those coasts and the Indo-Tibetan highlands. Hence we A.D. 1650-1900] DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION 7 find that, whereas throughout the whole of interior China one tongue is now spoken — subject to more or less serious variations in dialect, never of an incongruous or impossible kind — in the coast provinces south of the Yellow River, and in those alone, are spoken dialects so excep- tional as to rise almost to the distinction of separate languages ; but only so in the sense that Swedish, Danish, German, and Dutch are languages foreign to one another ; that is, though words differ in sound, they are easily traceable to one indefinable or elastic original. Thus we Europeans, approaching China from the sea, are at once confronted with a practical difficulty which is not nearly as much felt by the Chinese themselves approaching the extremi- ties from the heart, and one of the chief obstacles to our success is this confusion of tongues, which unduly localises every European's efforts. I have above divided the Eighteen Provinces into the eastern and western halves. In a very rough way the eastern half may be stated to be rich, -and densely populated by pure Chinese ; the western half to be poor, and thinly populated by mixed races, often exceeding the Chinese in numbers. In the northern portion of the eastern half there is probably not now left a single individual of aboriginal race, though up to about a thousand years ago certain unidentified " bar- barian " tribes were still mentioned along the southern (Hwai River) bed of the Hwang Ho. In the southern portion of the eastern half there are still a few independent or semi-independent tribes, known as Yao or Miao, occupying the border mountains which separate Kwang Tung on the south from the Hu Nan and Kiang Si on the north. But these tribes give very little trouble, and possess no political importance of any kind. In the mountains of Fuh Kien I have 8 GEOGRAPHY [chap, i myself come across remnants of strange aborigi- nal tribes, and even in Cheh Kiang there are a few. Still, in a general way, and ignoring trifles, it may be truthfully stated that the wealthy, populous, eastern half of China Proper contains none but pure Chinese, or aborigines so closely assimilated as to be indistinguishable from Chinese ; and in all cases these aborigines are of the monosyllabic and tonic tongues so character- istic of China. On the other hand, the western half of the Eighteen Provinces is largely foreign. The miserably poor province of Kwang Si contains many obscure tribes, usually grouped under the main heads of Shan (Siamese) or Miao (no ethnological clue as yet). Not only so, but there are still many aboriginal officials, responsible, however, not to the Central Government direct, but to local Chinese prefects or magistrates. In the adjoining province of Kwei Chou there are also a good many Miao tribes, som.e groups of which I saw myself when there ; they are in appearance not unlike the Kachyns of the Burmo-Chinese frontier, who are known to be of Tibeto-Burman origin. In Yihi Nan there are a great many tribes of the Shan race, not only within the border, but also in those recently delimitated districts which now belong politi- cally to Burma (Great Britain) or Tonquin (France). Among the mountains of north-east Yiin Nan and south Sz Ch'wan, the powerful confederation of so-called Lolo tribes still main- tains its independence. A French missionary named Paul Vial, who had lived amongst them, twenty years ago published a very valuable memoir upon the subject. The Lolos possess a written system of their own, a specimen of v/hich (discovered by Mr. E. C. Babcr in 1880) I have before me, together with a sheet from Perc Vial A.D. 1880-1912] NON-CHINESE TRIBES IN CHINA 9 throwing light upon its nature. Since then the Mission D'Ollone of 1906-1909 has pubHshed two very interesting works about the Lolos and their language, the literary expression of which, however, is of an unsatisfying nature. From time to time very serious collisions take place between the Lolos and the Chinese armies, the result always being a patched-up peace, leaving the uncivilised men very much to their own devices as before. The Kachyn tribes ^ seem to form a link between the homes of the Shans and Tibetans. They extend along the Upper Irra- waddy and the western frontiers of Yiin Nbu. M. Jacques Bacot in 1912 published an equally illuminating book upon the writing system of the Moso tribes nearer to Tibet than the Lolos. The Kamti tribes of the Upper Irrawaddy (the Mali-kha branch) are, however, pure Shans, and their language possesses a strong affinity with Laotian and modern Siamese. On the western frontiers of Sz Ch'wan we have numerous and sometimes very formidable independent Tibetan tribes, such as do not fall within the hierarchical administration of Tibet proper. Mrs. Bird- Bishop has given us interesting particulars about some of these, but she appears to have some reasons (not stated) for suggesting that they are not Tibetan as usually supposed. The cave- dwellers of eastern Sz Ch'wan have mostly dis- appeared, but their abandoned dwellings in the mountain-sides may still be seen anywhere to the west of Chungking ; some of these tribes still exist to the extreme south-east, near the Kwei Chou frontier. In the island of Hainan there are at least two groups of " savages," or non- Chinese, one of which I personally ascertained to be of Shan kinship. Despite the utter con- ^ Cf, my detailed account of these tribes. Fortnightly Review, 1897. 10 GEOGRAPHY [chap, i fusion which reigns both in the Chinese and the European mind touching the south-west bar- barians, taken as a whole, I am disposed to think that in all probability most of them will be found to range themselves either under the Shan or the Tibetan head. In this connection the Rev. Samuel Clarke published a very informing work in 1911, showing that none of the other south- west tribes ever had any writing system, not- withstanding their intelligence and their quick- ness in picking up our romanising novelties. We have seen how the advance of Chinese civilisation has been along the Yellow River and then up its great tributary, the Wei, to the head waters or tributaries on the left bank of the Yang-tsze. A combined movement from those head waters and from the lakes of the Hwai (old Yellow River mouth) system seems then to have gradually taken in the whole Yang-tsze Valley, including the old debouchure at Hangchow. A glance at the map will show how their next obvious move was across the Poyang and Tung- t'ing lakes to Canton. Let us examine these rivers in order. The Yellow River, the dis- covery of whose exact source engaged the earnest attention both of the ablest Mongol and the most ambitious Manchu Emperors, rises among a group of small lakes called Odon-tala (lat. 35° N., long. 96"^ E.). It then runs through Charing Nor eastwards for 300 miles, turns sharply back to the north-west, bisects Kan Suh north-east, and takes a tremendous northerly sweep round part of the desert, inclosing within its bend the often-contested Ordos region. It then turns due south, and forms the dividing line between Shen Si and Shan Si. The pass of T'ung Kwan, at its southern bend, was for many centuries the key to the possession of empire, in the days when the political centre of gravity B.C. 2000-1916] YELLOW RIVER VAGARIES 11 always lay within a hundred miles' radius of that point. The water is clear up to its entry into the loss region — in fact, the Mongols style it the Black River ; but so soon as it reaches Shen Si it begins to take a yellowish tinge from the fine " loose " sandy soil which covers a vast area on both sides of its valley, and the presence of which, according to a theory of the distin- guished geologist Von Richthofen, is to be accounted for by untold generations of dust blown over from the deserts. Quite recently the American traveller (and humorist) Mr. Rodney Gilbert has given us vivid pictures of Mussulman life in these desert regions. This part of the Yellow River is extensively used by salt boats, and by junks conveying iron and other metals from the Shan Si mines ; but from the moment it emerges into the lowlands (between Hwai-k'ing and Ho-nan cities), it becomes erratic, and is practically useless for navigation. Every year or two it bursts its banks, and temporarily destroys some tract or other ; every few centuries it changes its course altogether. Its old bed is often useless, whilst the new one has to be raised or buoyed up between dykes, sometimes high above the surrounding plain. Directly or in- directly, millions of taels have been annually wasted in patching it up and in feeding a corrupt army of peculating official harpies. In a word, the Yellow River amply justifies its traditional sobriquet of " China's Sorrow," and it would be a great blessing for China if proper scientific European specialists would take the matter seriously in hand ; in fact, at this moment, an American syndicate is in treaty with the Repub- lic for a thorough-going reform of the whole Hwai River, Grand Canal, and string of lakes tangle. Meanwhile the Chinese engineers who manipu- late the complicated system of lakes and levels 12 GEOGRAPHY [citap. i forming a network about the Grand Canal and Hung-tseh Marsh, are almost as expert in an empirical sense as the wary Dutchmen who keep an ever- watchful eye upon the Zuider Zee and the intricate system of Netherlands dykes. The supply of water and the sacrifice of land are carefully measured and jealously watched with a view to keeping open the Canal and preventing disasters of great magnitude. The Yang-tsze River is considered by the Chinese to take its rise in the north-west corner of Sz Ch'wan, not far from the point where the Yellow River, as above described, suddenly turns north-Vv^est between mountains 20,000 feet high. The reason for this view of the matter is that the rich plain of Ch'eng-tu was colonised centuries before anything of a definite nature was known of Yiin Nan, which remained practi- cally a sealed book up to the time of Kublai Khan, 650 years ago ; and even now the Chinese have comparatively little acquaintance with what we call the Upper Yang-tsze above P'ing- shan, which is the limit of navigation for all but very small boats. After this, up stream for some distance, it is to nearly all intents a Lolo river, and for several hundred miles forms the boundary between Sz Ch'wan and Yiin Nan. When we speak of the Yang-tsze valley in a com- mercial sense, we really, without intending it, mean the river taken in its Chinese sense just described, and this river with its feeders drains half the area, containing one-half the population of the Eighteen Provinces.^ I need not say any more about the rest of the stream, the Middle and Lower Yang-tsze, which ^ The Rev. S. Chevalier, s.J., in 1901 published a magnificent atlas, with detailed plates, showing the exact configuration of every fraction of the Great River's course between P'ing-shan and Ich'ang. A.D. 900] THE BURMA- YUN-NAN FRONTIER 13 is already so well known from Ich'ang down- wards. European pilots know every bank, and follow the changes of channel day by day : it is marvellous with what skill they will bring a huge steamer down at full speed on the blackest of nights. Touching what European geographers consider the source of the Yang-tsze< — ^that is the longest water-course above Sz Ch'wan' — its head waters are not very far from those of the Yellow River. The latest maps of the Upper Yang-tsze show three small streams in the lofty valleys between the K'unlun and Tangla ranges (lat. 34° N., long. 90° E.). These three combine to form the River Drichu, which flows south-east through the country of the Darge tribes, past Bathang, into Yiin Nan. A thousand years ago the possession of all this western Yiin Nan region was being contested by the Shan empire on the one side, and the Tibetans on the other. At present it has no commercial, and very little political significance, and is one of the least known parts of the world ; the Indian Govern- ment, however, keeps its eyes wide open on behalf of Burma*, and has recently established a new commissionership in the Putao region (west of Yiin Nan), which effectively secures to us command of all the Irrawaddy sources. There yet remains a third great water system, that of the Si Kiang, or West River of the Two Kwang provinces. All its head waters are in eastern Yiin Nan, and for some distance it forms the boundary between Kwei Chou and Kwang Si. The trade of all its branches and tributaries concentrates at the new treaty port of Wu-chou on the borders of Kwang Tung and Kwang Si. In touching upon the above drainage systems, I wish first of all to illustrate how naturally the invading Chinese have in their expansion in- variably followed the lines of least resistance ; 14 GEOGRAPHY [chap, i and, secondly, to prepare the reader for certain important results affecting the course of modern trade, and more especially the enormous native salt trade, which is organised strictly in accord- ance with the facilities offered by rival water routes. Handled in a masterly fashion by Sir Richard Dane, the Salt Gabelle has now become one of China's best financial assets. I think it specially useful to insert here a sketch map of the Yang-tsze Valley, so as to bring vividly before the eye some points upon which I have touched. What little there is to be said about the geography of Tibet, Mongolia, and Manchuria will be introduced under those or other heads. It only remains now to mention one or two of those historical mountain ranges of the Eighteen Provinces which play a part in determining political or commercial divisions. The great natural barrier between the Chinese and the Tartars has always been, and to a great extent still is, the range known as Yin Shan, or " Sombre Mountains," which may be roughly stated to form a backing to the Great Wall all the way from the northern Ordos bend of the Yellow River to Corea. Then there are the Nan Shan, or " South Mountains," of Kan Suh, which divide off the Turko-Tartar from the Tibetan groups : it has always been the policy of China to keep these two groups apart. Another important range separates the valley of the Wei (tributary of the Yellow River) from that of the Han (tributary of the Yang-tsze) : it is called by various names in the maps, but I have never been able to satisfy myself what the proper Chinese name is. Then there is the Mei Ling, or " Plum Range," which separates the river systems of the Yang-tsze and the Chu Kiang (Pearl or West River). There are many other notable mountain ranges in China, mostly off- r A.D. 1900-1911] REPUBLICAN CHANGES 15 shoots of the great Central Asian Range usually- known as the K'unlun. Several of these ranges I have crossed myself ; but it would be of barren interest to enumerate them here, or to enter into wearisome details as to what this spur does, or how that system re-appears. I confine my- self therefore to naming the few chains which, in my own experience of history and travel, appear to play a prominent practical part. The best way for those readers who really take a close interest in the geographical features of the Eighteen Provinces to gratify their special propensities would be to study the map which I have always found the simplest and clearest for general purposes — that of Dr. Bretschneider (revised edition, 1900). It is wonderfully ac- curate, and sets out all topographical peculiari- ties in excellent proportion. Although the ju, chou, and fing cities are no longer, under the Republic, distinguished from the hien, it will be some time before even the Chinese themselves lose sight of the old '' ranks " of walled cities ; and in any case these distinctions of political size and quality must be kept in mind when we consult books on China published before the general hotch-pot rearrangements fitfully made since 1911. CHAPTER II HISTORY The human interest in Chinese history in the case of non-speciaUsts begins with foreign rela- tions. Just as early Roman history loses itself in an ill-defined mist of Etruscans, Volscians, Sabines, or other petty tribes, and makes the ordinary reader, who honestly desires to start from the beginning, anxious to get on to the livelier subjects of the Carthaginian and Gallic wars ; so do students of Chinese, wlio have em- barked on the voyage of discovery, dread the wearisome duty of wading through the insipid stories of early Chinese tim^es : how the great Yii cleft the mountains and guided the waters ; how the noble king A, of a new dynasty, got rid of the tyrant B of an old one, when he was feasting on mountains of flesh and rivers of wine, regardless of his people's poverty, surrounded by beautiful, if mischievous, houris. I have been through it all thrice in the original, and will there- fore be more merciful to those who do me the honour to read me than I have been even to myself : in making these irreverent remarks I must add that the true dated Chinese history only begins in 842 B.C., at which date a great revolution took place, not only in politics, but also in letters. I will not inflict any earlier or traditional " history " upon my readers- — not so much as a summary^ — I sweep it totally away. 16 ■ C/i/NESE EX PANS/ ON __I2I _ ^^^ \ J N0T\I; Twenty-five 827-255 Recognised as his- torical by Sz-ma Ts'ien. Chinese records are a few observations about the raids of the horse-riding nomads of the north, and the measures the Chinese took to repel them ; but it is only in the second century before Christ that we get any consecutive account of these movements. The Great " First " Emperor of the Ts'in dynasty, who unified the Chinese dominion in 222 B.C., and whose ancestors seem to have been, in part at least, of a race more or less foreign to the earliest lettered Chinese, ^ M. Chavannes unfortunately stopped at the 47th of the 115 chapters, his labours in the direction of Buddhism, the Turkish history, Sir Aurel Stein's discoveries, and other intensely interesting subjects having weaned his appetite for the milk of antiquity in favour of the strong meat of practical matter. B.C. 300-200] COMPARISON WITH EARLY ROME 19 broke away impatiently from all old traditions, and became sole master : hitherto his external influences had been chiefly exercised over Tibetan and Tartar tribes. Dr. Bretschneider's map, which gives in various tints a very good idea of the land levels, shows clearly what was the natural configuration that determined this great unifying movement. In the words of the late W. F. Mayers, who possessed in the highest degree the historical instinct, the new empire extended " from the plains of Yen and Chao (the modern Ho Nan and Chih Li) to the banks of the Yang-tsze and the hills of Yiieh (the modern Cheh Kiang), and from the Lake of Tung-t'ing to the Eastern Sea." The nomads, then called Hiung-nu, were for the first time driven beyond the northern bend of the Yellow River, and nearly the whole of what we call Southern China was officially annexed, if in a loose sort of way. All China and Indo-China was, and still is, peopled by a set of people who speak mono- syllabical languages, with tones for each separate word ; just as Aryans are inflective, and the Turanians agglutinative in their genius. The quality of these southerly annexations and the degree of human kinship existing between the Chinese and the peoples of the south may be compared with the northerly annexations of the Romans, and the degree of Aryan kinship existing between them and the Gauls and Germans. Similarly, though in the reverse direc- tion, the hereditary enemy Carthage may be compared with the ancient Hiung-nu foe. But despite the division of nearly the whole area of the Eighteen Provinces of to-day into thirty-six governments, this first truly imperial dynasty, called that of Ts'in from the principality of its origin (Shen Si), seems only to have ruled immediately and directly over the original 4 20 HISTORY [chap, ii Chinese plain. Like the earliest settled states of America, the oldest of these thirty-six divisions were conceived on a very small scale, v/hilst the newly conquered " territories "• — like early and half-Spanish Texas as compared with ancestral Massachusetts — each covered an area almost as great as that of all Old China. This powerful dynasty of Ts'in soon collapsed, apparently from a general incapacity to digest and assimilate all it had so hastily conquered. The Hiung-nu soon reappeared upon the frontiers. It was now that the first definite tidings of Japan (then only known as an agglomeration of the Wo or Wa tribes) began to arrive over the sea. Amongst the ambitious generals who con- tested the imperial succession was a self-made man of peasant origin named Liu Pang : he after three years of incessant fighting was proclaimed Prince of Han, and ultimately assumed the imperial title as Emperor of the Han dynasty. To this day, in memory of this glorious house, the Chinese (with the exception of the Can- tonese) call themselves " men of Han " when they wish to differentiate themselves from Tar- tars, Tibetans, or foreigners. This is, indeed, the nearest approach to a national designation. During his seven years of effective reign (202- 194 B.C.), and during the administration of his puppet son, subject to and followed by the usurpation of the widowed consort (194-179) (the first of the Chinese "Catherines," and in political character very like the Dowager- Empress who died in 1908), there occurred the first really authentic and properly recorded relations with the Hiung-nu, who were then quite able to assert their perfect equality with China, and even presumed to talk of marriage alliances. The Great Khan Mehteh (= Baghdur) even sent a flippant poem to the Dowager, proposing what B.C. 200-100] CHINA'S EXTENDED SWAY 21 he called a " swap." The whole history of the Hiung-nu wars of the Han dynasty is intensely vivid and interesting, yielding not one whit in any respect to the Greek accounts of the Scy- thians and Huns in the respective times of Alexander and Attila. There is excellent ground for believing that the Scythians, Huns, and Hiung-nu were practically reshuffles of one and the same assemblages of people' — the Turks and Mongols of later date. The ill-assimilated conquests of the short- lived Ts'in dynasty left to the Han house, in addition to Tartar troubles, a legacy of further wars Vv^ith Corea (then called Chaosien) and the southern coasts of China, It is possible that one of the motives for marching on Corea was the desire to turn the left flank of the Hiung-nu. Although in modern times the " Yiieh " of Canton is written at least (but not spoken) in a different way from the " Yiieh " of Cheh Kiang, there was no such difference then, and there is reason to believe that one race, m.ore akin to the Annamese than the Chinese, then occupied the whole of the coast regions south of the Yang-tsze, including the whole valleys of the Canton (Si Kiang) and Tonquin (Red and Black) rivers. It also seems that most, if not all, of the settled countries bordering on China were then ruled by Chinese adventurers ; or at all events by native princes acquainted more or less with the Chinese system of records, and having a Chinese blend in their blood derived from immigrants. Here, again, we must look for a parallel to the Romans, who, simply from the fact of their possessing business-like records and archives, soon spread out on all sides, and colonised the surrounding Italian or Gallic towns or states. The period of conquest extended from 138 to 110 B.C., and at the time when Wu Ti began his military career 22 HISTORY [chap, ii (128-108), the King of Ch'ang-sha (now still the capital of Hu Nan) was the only one of the vassal kings enjoying independent hereditary power, though really subject to the Emperor of China. The Canton state was called " South Ytieh," and the Foochow state " Min Yiieh " ; even the north part of the latter, with capital at the modern Wenchow, was called the " Eastern Seaboard of Yiieh." The princes of both the latter were descendants of one common King of Yiieh, in Confucian feudal times a powerful sovereign. Subsequently to 110 B.C. their populations were moved to the River Hwai region. The conquest of Corea led to the further discovery hy land of the Japanese, who then occupied (whether as immigrants or as aborigines is not yet settled) the tip of the Corean peninsula, as well as the southern half of the Japanese islands. The necessity of " turning the right flank " of the Hiung-nu, over whom the Chinese gained a decisive success in 119 B.C., led to alliances with other nomad races in modern Hi and the New Territory, and finally to the annexation of Khotan, the Pamirs, Kokand, and, in short, the whole modern Manchu Empire as it existed up to its fall. Although the Hiung-nu wxre not yet com.pletely subdued, yet their lines of communica- tion were pierced. Parthia, Mesopotamia, and even Syria wxre distinctly " located," if not officially visited, and there are numerous indica- tions pointing to an acquaintance with the Greek dynasties of Bactria and Affghanistan. Now first Buddhism was distinctly heard of, and India ; the attempt to reach India by way of Yiin Nan carried with it the discovery and partial annexa- tion of the various Shan, Miao, and Tibetan tribes. Hindoo missionaries began to find their way to China through Turkestan, and the Bur- mese (then called Tan) are first mentioned. A.D. 100-200] DIVISION INTO PROVINCES 23 King An-tun, of Great Ts'in, is said to have sent an expedition or mission by way of Tan in A.D. 166, and there seems good reason to suppose this word must be " Antoninus." Whoever the traders were who undoubtedly used to come from the West by sea, it is stated that they were called Ts'in (possibly -= Syr) on account of their comely appearance like the Chinese Ts'in people. The annexation of Nan-yiieh involved that of Hainan, Kwang Si, the Lei-chou peninsula, and at least half of Cochin-China, It is even thought by zealous believers that Christians and Jews found their way to China via Tartary during the After Han dynasty, which reigned for two centuries after Christ at modern Ho-nan Fu, as the Early Han had done for two centuries before Christ at Ch'ang-an (Si-an Fu).^ Instead of the thirty-six provinces of Ts'in, the After Han dynasty divided the modern Eighteen Provinces into only thirteen, of which eight represented Old China, which then as now extended up to modern Shanghai and the sea, whilst the whole of the south was divided into four, and the west was made one, proof that these parts were still but half opened to civi- lisation. The satrap system was in full vogue ; princes were given provinces " to eat," and not merely to govern as centralised officials. North of the Great Wall were the Hiung-nu (now broken up and partly driven west) and the Tungusic ^ As to Early Han, I append particulars of the dates of Wu Ti's conquests in tabulated form : — 127-125 B.C. Ordos, both corners of the northern bend of the Yellow River. 115-111 B.C. Modern Kan Suh (Suh-chou, Liang-chou, Kan- chou), up to Tun-hwang (Purun-ki River). Ill B.C. Modern Canton, Tonquin, Hainan, Kwang Si, and part of Kwei Chou. 1 10-109 B.C. Western Yiin Nan and Sz Ch'wan. Eastern ditto. 108 B.C. Corea (northern half only). 24 HISTORY [chap, ii hunter-nomads (aiming at the decrepit empire of their former masters the Hiung-nu). Then came the pastoral Tibetan tribes of the Kokonor region and the Upper Yang-tsze, gradually merging into the Shan peoples of Ylin Nan, the unorganised Miao of Kwang Si, and the slowly- retreating Yiieh tribes, originally extending from modern Ningpo to Canton. These last seem to CHINESE DYNASTIES WITH- A CONTINUOUS INTELLIGIBLE HISTORY Name of Period or Dynasty. Duration. Number of Kulers. Kemarks. Ts'in 255-206 Five The fourth declared himself "First Emperor" in 221. From 206 to 202 there was general anarchy. Han 202 B.O.- Twenty-seven From A.D. 25 the eastern A.D, 220 branch moved its capital from modern Si-an Fu to modern Ho-nan Fu. Three Empires 220-265 Average of three The northern one (Wei) is in each the one chiefly in evidence. Tsin 265-420 Seventeen From A.D. 317 the eastern branch moved its capital to modern Nanking. From 309 to 439 there was a bewildering succession of Hiung-nu, Bastard Hiung-nu, Tungusic, Tibetan, Tibeto-Tungusic, Migrated Tungusic, and rebel Chinese " dynasties," ruling in various parts of the north, from Corea to Kokonor ; in addition to, and in competition with, first the Tsin Empire, and later the Northern Empire of the Tobas and the contemporaneous Chinese Empires at Nanking. It must be remembered that the old /« cities are now abolished under the Republic, but for many years the habit of using the term must continue, if only in order to make use of existing maps. have very soon lost their separate identity, and to have either permanently retired into Annam proper (Tonquin) or to have been merged into the Chinese. From A.D. 220 to about 265 China was split up into three empires : a branch of the old Liu family of Han in Sz Ch'wan (Shuh), the Sun family south of the Yang-tsze (Wu), and the usurping Ts'ao family in the north (Wei). This A.D. 255-420] GRADUAL TRANSFORMATION 25 state of affairs is very similar to the partition of the Roman Empire into the East and West monarchies at Constantinople and Ravenna, or Rome. The continuity of imperial history is now broken, for the southern dynasty has noth- ing to do with the long struggles between Tun- guses, Hiung-nu, and Tibetans for predominance in the north ; whilst the northern dynasty lost all touch with the Syrians, Hindoos, Javans, an^ other mercantile people coming in trading vessels to Canton and other marts on the coast. In A.D. 222 the Emperor of Wu divided the old realm of Kiao-chi (South Yiieh) into two man- ageable halves. The name Kwang-chou, later Kwang-nan, was given to what is now the double Canton province, and Tonquin was called Kiao- chou. Corea slipped away, and Chinese influence disappeared from the Far West. In a word, the whole Weltpolitik of the great Han dynasty crumbled to pieces. This period of division is by no means uninteresting, but events are not sufficiently connected to admit of pourtraying the situation with a few strokes in a brief sketch like this. From A.D. 265 the Sz-ma family (distantly related to the famous historian) were for a time nominally sole rulers of China, under the style of the Tsin dynasty. This word must not be con- fused with the older Ts'in, which, by retrospective philological processes peculiar to China, means that Sein must not be confused with Ziin. The imperial house was distinctly literary and peace- ful, rather than warlike and ambitious ;— in fact, it developed those qualities which we now con- sider peculiarly Chinese. It was the great age of calligraphy, belles lettres, fans, chess-playing, wine-bibbing, and poetry-making ; of strategy rather than hard fighting, and of political timidity. From this time dates the rule that no one should 26 HISTORY [chap, ii set foot in China, at least to remain, without bringing tribute. Moreover, a succession of Tartar dynasties of very short duration kept the whole of the extreme north in a perpetual fer- ment. One curious and permanent result of all this was that the Chinese centre of gravity was entirely changed. At the present day, if we wish for etymological accuracies, we find them most perfect in Canton and Corea ; that is, the best representative of the language spoken under the two divisions of the Han dynasties is now to be found in the descendants of emigrants to the south ; whilst the Coreans, cut off for many centuries by Tartars from intercourse with literary China, have rigidly preserved, in or according to their ancient form, the early Han pronunciation of the Chinese words they borrowed 2,000 years ago. The rough nomads who swarmed into North China not only mixed their blood with that of the Chinese, but debased the language ; hence we find that the " mandarin " forms of speech, in their relation to old theo- retical Chinese, bear much the same relation to the coast dialects that French does to Spanish, Portuguese, or Italian, which, though not so fashionable, are all of them nearer old Latin than the French can claim to be. The rival Tartar dynasties in the north were finally dispossessed by a Tungusic family called Toba, which ruled for 200 years with great vigour over North China, whilst the pure Chinese governed the southern half. This was the period known as the " North and South Dynasties" ; and ever since that time it has been as much the rule as the exception for Tartars of some kind to divide the empire on equal terms with native dynasties. Here, again, we find a close parallel in Roman history. The Stihchos, Ricimers, Alarics, and Theodorics all made way A.D. 265-618] SEMI-' for the permanent Charlemagne. But the southern half ruled : instead of confused narrative the result of which him in as thick a fo BARBARIAN ' DYNASTIES '27 northern Frankish empire of neither the northern nor of China was continuously puzzling the reader with a of how this was arranged, would probably be to leave ig as before, I draw up a short Dynasty. Family Kame. Capital (modern name). Duration (A.D.). Remarks. (West) Tsin . (East) Tsin . Sung Ts'i Liang . Ch'en . Sui Sz-ma . do. . { Liu Siao do. . Ch'en . Yang . Ho-nanFu . Nanking \ Si-an Fu J Nanking do. do. do. Si-an Fu 265-317 317-419 420-478 479-502 502-556 557-588 581-618 Pure Chinese. do. do. do. do. do. do. Han . Chao . Yen . Ts'in . (After) Ts'in . (West) Ts'in . Hia Wei . (West) Wei . (East) Wei . (North) Ts'i . Chou . Sui Liu . { Shih . Mu-yung < P'u (or Fu) . Yao . K'i-fuh He-lien Toba . / Yii-wen \ \Toba . / Kao . { do. . Yii-wen Yang . Ho-nan Fu "\ Si-an Fu / Ho-nan Fu . Lin-chang \ Ting-chou J Si-an Fu do. near Kokonor Ning-hia Ho-nan Fu . Yung-p'ing Fu Ho-nan Fu | Lin-chang / do. Si-an Fu do. 304-329 319-352 334-399 352-395 384-417 385-428 407-428 386-534 535-557 534-550 550-577 557-581 581-618 THiimg-nu ; des- j cended from Han [ by marriage. /"Wether" tribe \ of Hiung-nu. A Tungusic family. A Tibetan family, do. A Tungusic family. Hiung-nu. Tungusic. do. do. do. do. Pure Chinese. table showing the succession of Tartar and Chinese houses, one to the other. I must men- tion that capitals were often temporarily shifted ; also that the list of northern dynasties here given is by no means exhaustive. It will be noticed that the intermarriages between Han and the Hiung-nu produced dangerous results, for one barbarian based his claim to found a Chinese 28 HISTORY [chap, ii dynasty on the pretext that he was the only true direct descendant of the first Han emperor. It will also be seen that the Tibetans never had more than one short innings ; never again did they assume imperial airs, although they made many conquests in later times. But the Hiung- nu (Turks) and Tunguses (Kitans, Nuchens, Manchus) will often reappear ; as to the Mongols, they seem to have been Turkified Tunguses. At last Yang Kien, an energetic general of distinguished descent in the service of the Chou dynasty, succeeded in unifying China once more under one sceptre. He was murdered by his son, who, though a madman of the Caligula type, ruled for a few years with extraordinary vigour, and carried his arms or his prestige to the uttermost ends of the empire. It is recorded of this monarch that he wished to communicate with Fulin, or " the Franks." Some argue from this that their name could not have been known so early, and that " Fulin " must mean some other people. But it must be remembered that this allusion is made retrospectively by his- torians of the T'ang dynasty after it was known who the Franks were. Exactly the same thing occurs in the Ming History, which explained all about the Franks of 1520, under the events of that date, but after Ricci, in 1600, had for the first time made it clear that the Franks, Fulin, and Ta Ts'in were all one. To revert to the Toba Tunguses of North China, who for 200 years had managed things pretty much in their own way. During this period (386-582) another nomadic power called the Juju, or Jeujen (Gibbon's Geougen), had become formidable in the Desert region, and had also succeeded in subduing most of the Hiung-nu remnants in Southern Siberia and elsewhere. One of their subject Hiung-nu hordes was that A.D. 500-600] TARTAR AND FOREIGN STATES 29 of " Tiirk," so called from an alleged native word meaning " helmet," having reference to the helmet-shaped mountain over- shadowing one of their chief valleys (lat. 40° N., long. 102° E., or thereabouts). These Turks were mostly smiths by profession, and were employed by their Jeu-jen masters to forge weapons and armour ; but as the power of the Tobas declined, the Turks found an opportunity to measure their strength with the Jeujen. Not only did they destroy this nomad power and take its place, but they began to domineer over the last two Tungusic dynasties of North China, and to demand marriage alliances. The Sui dynasty (581-618) succeeded in repelling the pretensions of the Turks, and also overran Corea as a punish- ment for her diplomatic coquetting with their Khan. At that time the modern Mukden was the Corean capital, and the old name of Chaosien had been abandoned in favour of Kaoli (locally pronounced exactly like our word " Corea "). Relations with Annam were reopened ; that country was divided into thirteen provinces in Chinese style, and tribute was exacted for the first time. The attempted conquest of Corea brought a mission in a.d. 608 from Japan, which now for the first time took the name of Ji-pan, or " Sun's-rise," and claimed an imperial status. In the same way the closer relations with Annam had the result that Chinese envoys were des- patched to Red Earth State. By this appears to be meant the modern Siam, but the Tai or Shan race had not yet been given that name, which is simply the Burmese word Sham, written by the Portuguese Sciam, and corrupted by us into a dissyllable. For the first time Loochoo was heard of, and by that name (Liu-k'iu) ; the Chinese even sent a quasi-piratical expedition in order to exact tribute. Strange to say, 30 HISTORY [chap, ii nothing whatever is yet known even of the bare existence of Formosa, though later tradition mentions it as a dependency of Loochoo, at first under the apparently Sanskrit name of P'i-she-ja (some such sound as Vichana or Vaisadja). The Western Turks were an impenetrable barrier between China, Persia, and India ; and the Tibetans had not yet become an aggressive power. Such was China under the Sui dynasty, which collapsed before the T'ang house as quickly as, 800 years earlier, the house of Ts'in had fallen before Han ; and for the same reasons : it was too revolutionary, and it was unable to digest all that it had swallowed. The Great T'ang dynasty (618-907) ranks with the Han as one of the two " world-powers " of Chinese history. To this day the only Can- tonese word for " Chinaman " is " man of T'ang," which fact tends to show that the south had been isolated ever since the Han lost their prestige there, and that none of the short-lived Nanking dynasties had left any permanent im- pression on the popular mind. Li Shi-min, the real founder of the T'ang dynasty, son of the nominal founder, Li Yiian, is perhaps the only instance in the whole course of Chinese history of a sovereign who was, from a European point of view, at once a gentleman, and a brave, shrewd, compassionate man, free from priggishness and cant. He personally subdued the Turks and Tunguses in such a way that for half a century the Tartars were under direct Chinese rule from Corea up to the frontiers of Persia, the fugitive sovereign of which latter country actually came to China for protection. For the first time in Chinese history the Emperor effectively conquered the three kingdoms of the Corean peninsula, which was also for a few generations governed directly as a set of pro- A.D. 600-700] MUSSULMANS AND TIBETANS 31 vinces. During the reigns of his successors (one of them was a concubine, Chinese "Catherine" No. 2, who became rather irregularly the Empress of his son, and Regent over his grandson) the Turkish power, after a period of revival, was finally broken, and passed into the hands of a kindred race known as the Ouigours. Within the past generation numerous Turkish and Ouigour monuments have been discovered, chiefly by Russians. Not only has it been possible to re- construct the old Turkish language by the light of these inscriptions, sometimes bilingual or trilingual, but the main points in Turko-Chinese history are sufficiently confirmed by them. The Turks clearly were, and are definitely stated to have been, the old southerly Hiung-nu ; and the petty Ouigour sub-division of the Baikal group of Hiung-nu, which of course had no cause for appropriating the equally petty tribal name of " Turk," did, when it became the ruling tribe over kindred tribes, exactly what the Osmanli, Mongols, Manchus, Russians, English, French, and other dynastic families have done all over the world, — it applied to the whole dominion the generalising name of a tribal part of it. The Mahometans, in their struggles with the Turks of the Bokhara region, were soon brought into contact with China, and relations with the Caliphs became fairly regular and intimate. The Tibetan gialbos of Lhassa also first became a power contemporaneously with the T'ang dynasty : bilingual inscriptions of this date, in Chinese and a modified form of Sanskrit, are still to be seen at the Tibetan capital, and, in- deed, were found still in situ when we entered it in 1904. A third great power, which seems to have been practically Siamese, contested supremacy with the Tibetans in the Yiin Nan-Sz Ch'wan region, and we find both Ouigours and 32 HISTORY [chap, ii Abbasside Arabs taking part with the Chinese in these struggles round and about the Upper Yang-tsze. Both the Tibetans and the " Chao confederation " (chao is still Siamese for " prince " and " principality ") came within an ace of securing the imperial throne under the weaker T'ang emperors ; and as it was, the Tibetans for some decades held possession of Chinese Turkes- tan, During this dynasty an able Corean general in Chinese employ, whose footsteps have just been dogged by Sir Aurel Stein, carried the Chinese arms into the region of Kashmir and Balti, and Nepaul is also heard of for the first time ; the various princes of India then opened up diplomatic relations with China. Annam remiained a Chinese prefecture, but had to be defended against the ambitions of the Siamese confederation and of Ciampa. Since a.d. 940 Annam has been ruled by native dynasties tribu- tary to China, but now of course it is manipu- lated by the French. The relations with the South Seas seem to have had leisure to develop themselves peacefully during these severe struggles all along the line of the land frontiers. The Hindoo trading colonies of Sumatra, Java, Borneo, and Sulu were gradually displaced by those of the Arabs, whose merchants also ac- quired a firm footing in Canton, Zaitun (Ts'iian- chou), Canfu (Kanp'u near Hangchow), and other places on the Chinese coast. Europeans now begin to be vaguely heard of as Fulin, Folang, or "Franks" (a name which is almost certain to have been introduced by the Arabs overland by way of Persia, for even in India the English were known to the overland Manchus as the " P'i-ling ' ' ). The Fulin are identified by the Chinese of the eighth century with the old Ta-ts'in ; and, as all the world knows, the celebrated Nestorian Stone of the eighth century discovered by European A.D. 700-1100] THE TARTAR MENACE 33 missionaries at the T'ang capital of Si-an Fu 300 years ago, describes in Syriac and Chinese the Christian rehgion of Ta-ts'in. At this time the Cliinese do not seem to have quite under- stood that the sea and land routes to Arabia both led to the same place ; nor is there yet any trace of " Franks " coming by sea. Just as the destruction of the Hiung-nu power by the house of Han paved the way for Tungusic dynasties in North China, so the destruction of the Turkish power by the house of T'ang paved the way for the Kitans, Nuchens, Mongols, and Manchus. Moreover, just as a few Hiung-nu dynasties enjoyed short leases of power before the Tobas obtained a firm seat, so a few Turkish dynasties reigned in the north before the Kitans (the name origin of Marco Polo's Cathay ans) secured a real hold. The T'ang power finally collapsed in 907, and of the five dynasties that rapidly succeeded one another, until the house of Sung once more reunited the greater part of China in 960, three were of Turkish extraction. It was during this period of anarchy that Annam finally slipped away from China's direct rule. The Sung dynasty (960-1260), like the Tsin, was never able to get quite rid of unpleasant northern intruders ; and, also like the Tsin, it was peaceful, literary, and strategical in its inclinations rather than warlike, bold, and ambitious. The Sung era is undoubtedly the Augustan era of China in all these senses. The Kitans formed a powerful empire (with a capital for the first time at modern Peking) which lasted for 200 years (915-1115). They were re- placed by their eastern subjects the Nuchens, the southern branch of whom had already (700-900) formed an influential and civilised buffer state (Puh-hai) on the north frontier of Corea. The Nuchens governed their empire with success for 34 HISTORY [chap, ii over a century (1115-1232), until they in turn were overthrown by the Mongols. Roughly speaking, both Kitans and Niichens ruled only over Old China, i.e. the four provinces of Chili Li, Shan Si, Shan Tung, and part of Ho Nan ; but also over what we now call Mongolia and Manchuria : — in other words, over the trade area now fed from Tientsin. Turkestan and Tibet lay entirely outside their spheres, and a semi- Tibetan, semi-Toba state called Hia (Marco Polo's " Tangut ") formed in the region of Ordos and the Yellow River Loop a barrier (895-1237) between them and the West. During all this time the Sung dynasty, with capitals at various towns in modern Ho Nan province, and finally at Nanking and Hangchow, had a complete monopoly of southern affairs and the ocean trade ; whilst Corea, Hia, and the Ouigours kept up a trimming policy, first with one, then with the other, often with both of the Chinese powers. It is curious to observe that the true Chinese were not now to be found in Old China, but in all those parts which, as emigrants, their ances- tors from Old China had populated. It is like Scotland being repopulated at the expense of the Picts and Scots coming from Ireland. At the beginning of the thirteenth century there arose the mighty Genghiz Khan, whose vast empire had its origin in a petty squabble between himself and an envoy sent by his Niichen suzerain to enforce from him more respect. The Mongols soon made short work of not only both the Chinas, but also of their tributary states, such as Hia and the Ouigours ; they moreover swept over Turkestan, Persia, and the steppes beyond ; annexed Russia ; ravaged Hungary ; and even threatened the existence of Western Europe. In the south, Kublai for the first time effectively conquered Yiin Nan, A.D. 1200-1400] MARCO POLO'S PATRON 35 and even Burma, Annam, and several of the Shan states lying between them. It must here be mentioned that so far back as 330 B.C. the feudatory King of Ch'u (Hu Nan) had conquered Yiin Nan ; but owing to wars with revolutionary Ts'in the conquering general could not get back, and he had therefore founded a kingdom there. To resume, — Corea was made a subservient dependency, and Mongol influence was extended all over the southern seas, at least as far as Ceylon. But Kublai came to signal grief in his attempt to subdue Java ; still more so in his persistent and presum.ptuous expeditions against Japan, not one inch of whose soil has ever been sullied by foreign conquest. Kublai Khan per- haps came nearer being Emperor of the World than any monarch, Eastern or Western, has ever been before or after him ; and, though the Chinese affect to despise the " frowsy Tartars " {sao ta-tsz), their historians frankly admit that " Hu-pilie " (as they call him) ruled over a vaster empire than any other Chinese sovereign had ever done before. But the Mongols soon became quarrelsom^e and degenerate after Kublai' s death. A young bonze named Chu Yiian-chang, from an obscure village not very far from the Han founder's birthplace, raised a patriotic force of " Boxers," and drove the Mongols back to their pristine deserts. He speedily established friendly relations with Corea, united the whole of the Eighteen Provinces once more under a native Chinese dynasty, sent a Frank messenger back to Europe to notify the change, and summoned all the petty powers of the southern seas to their " duty." Never was there such m.arine activity in China as during the early reigns of the Ming dynasty (1368-1424). Chinese junks, under the command of a very distinguished eunuch, amply supplied with funds, 5 36 HISTORY [chap, ii ammunition, and fighting men, went as far as the Arabian and African coasts ; the Red Sea was first vaguely heard of, and tribute was for some time regularly sent from Arabia, Ma'abar or Malabar, Ceylon, Sumatra, the Malay states, Siam, Java, Sulu, Loochoo, and Borneo, besides innumerable other petty island rulers too insig- nificant to enumerate here. Towards the end of the sixteenth century the armies of the great Japanese Napoleon, Hideyoshi, overran Corea, his ultimate aim being to conquer China. The Ming dynasty, though already decrepit, rendered signal aid to Corea in driving the Japanese out. During the two preceding centuries the Japanese pirates had actively harassed the Chinese coasts, and in 1609 they temporarily carried off China's tributary, the King of Loochoo. Manchuria is scarcely even mentioned during the 280 years this house of Ming occupied the throne. There were frequent wars with the Mongols, and it was in the course of this isolated period that the obscure power of the Western Mongols or Eleuths had time to grow. One Chinese emperor was taken captive by their ruler Essen at a place (still so called) just outside the Great Wall styled T'umu, and was detained by that chief for some years. Bell of Antermony gives us the best account of the Eleuth doings with Russia. Luzon (Manila) is first mentioned in 1410 as sending tribute to China ; but nothing more is heard of the place until 1576, when the sea-borne Franks (Fulangki) begin to attract serious atten- tion. At first this term was applied indiffer- ently to the Portuguese, Spaniards, and French ; but the Dutch (Ho-lan), and afterwards the English, were specially known as " Red-hairs." Chinese influence had almost disappeared from the South Seas before Europeans put in an appear- A.D. 1400-1600] AN UNHONOURED DYNASTY 37 ance, and after the settlement of Malacca by the Portuguese, the whole political field was practi- cally abandoned ; the Chinese traders there willingly submitted to the government of natives and Europeans without attempting to secure the protection of either the Ming or the Manchu power- — in fact, the latter was always disposed to view trading emigrants in the light of pirates or traitors. In one case, however, the Manchus put their foot firmly down : they secured pos- session of Formosa, whence the Dutch were ignominiously driven. Since the "Boxer" affair of 1900 the Manchu and Republican governments in turn have shown more solicitude for the welfare and dignity of their subjects abroad. The Ming dynasty waged a long war with Burma and the Shan states under the latter's protection ; on the whole successfully. It also maintained a preponderating influence in Annam, Siam, Ciampa, and Cambodgia. Tribute was occasionally sent from Arabia, Samarcand, the Pamir states, and various parts of Turkestan ; but in the main Chinese influence in Tibet and all places west of it and of the Yellow River was fitful and feeble. In spite of the vigour of the founder of the Ming dynasty and of his warlike son, who in 1421 finally transferred the capital from Nanking to his own appanage Peking, on the whole no impression of affection or respect has been left upon the Chinese mind by this ruling house, the emperors of which soon dropped into the hands of eunuchs and favourites ; and it perhaps ended as pitifully and contemptibly as any Chinese dynasty ever did. The way the Manchu dynasty came into being was this. During the Mongol times (1260-1368) the warlike spirit of the Tungusic hunting tribes had been kept up to the mark by employment 88 HISTORY [chap, il on a large scale in the expeditions against Quel- paert and Japan. As we have seen, the Ming dynasty left the whole region of what we now call Manchuria very much to itself ; as it bore the Mongol name Uriangkha, it seems likely that when the Mongols were driven out of China CHINESE DYNASTIES WHOSE GENERAL RULING PRINCIPLES CORRESPOND WITH THOSE NOW IN VOGUE Name of Dynasty or Period. Duration. Number of Rulers. Eemarks. Sui 580-618 Four Two effective nilers only. A wonderfully active dynasty. T'ang 618-907 Twenty-two ^ Five Dynasties 907-960 Average two Three of the five were of Turkish each origin. The Kitans ruled to the north of them all. South and West China was nearly inde- pendent of them aU, and under separate rulers known as the " Sixteen States," Sung 960-1260 Eighteen r There is no such name at this date as " North and South Djmas- Kitans, ^v ties," but there ought to be. 912-1117 ^ The Chinese affect to regard Niichens, 1 1117-1232 r 960-1260 Twenty- " two ^ Sung alone as historical Chma ; but from 1127 the Simg had to Mongols, abandon aU China north of the 1229-1260 >' Yang-tsze, and for 300 years the , Peking plain was inTartar hands. Yiian 1260-1368 Nine Kublai and liis successors first occupied the Peking throne. Ming 1368-1644 Seventeen The first native dynasty to rule the north since 450 years. Ta'ing 1644-1911 Ten As with the Mongol Khans pre- vious to Kublai, so with the Manchu Khans previous to 1 644 — they do not count as " Sons of Heaven." they, and more especially the Uriangkha tribe, retained political influence in Prince Nayen's old appanage, which had in Kublai's time been practically modern Manchuria. The name of the celebrated Mongol general, Uriangkhadai, simply means " man of Uriangkha." The only occasions on which the people in these parts A.D. 1650-1750] FACILE MANCHU CONQUEST 89 seem to have had friendly intercourse with the Ming power was when they took advantage of frontier fairs to bring down horses, furs, and skins for sale or barter to the Chinese. During this obscure period of imperial inaction, the tribes now grouped together as the Manchu race must have had ample opportunity to develop ; but the Manchus themselves are not able to tell us much of their own origin and doings previous to the time when their chief Nurhachi conceived and carried out the bold idea of welding all the Tunguses into one nation. Some of the southern chiefs, tinged with Mongol blood, objected to this fusion, and either took refuge in or intrigued with China. This led to frontier wars and recriminations, and finally to the conquest of the Chinese borderlands by Nurhachi's son, Abkhai. Meanwhile a great rebellion broke out in degenerate China, and the Ming general, Wu San-kwei, who had been sent against the Manchus, was recalled to quell it. Peking fell into rebel hands, and Manchu assistance was foolishly sought by Wu San-kwei. The Chinese Emperor having meanwhile committed suicide, and there being no proper heirs, the Manchus saw their opportunity, and promptly took it. Abkhai' s son and successor became the first Manchu Emperor of China in 1644. Previous to this Corea and Eastern Mongolia had been reduced to submission, and special measures were now taken to draft the capable Mongol troops into the Manchu military organisation. The Coreans were allowed to govern themselves on the tacit condition of furnishing troops when called for. China was soon conquered, and then came the turn of the overweening Wu San- kwei and other revolted Chinese satraps, the Western Mongols, the Kalkhas and Eleuths, Kokonor, and Tibet. By the time of the 40 HISTORY [chap, ii Emperor K'ien-lung (1736-1795) the Chinese Empire had reached its cHmax. The necessity of completely subduing the Eleuths and Dzun- garian Kalmucks led to the conquest of Hi and Kashgaria. The wars with Tibet similarly led up to the conquest or pacification of Nepaul. There were also long wars with Annam and Burma, in which the Manchus often came off second best, but which resulted in a more or less genuine recognition of Chinese suzerainty ; an authoritative tone was assumed even over Siam when that country became involved in the peninsular question. Of course these southern nations knew next to nothing of Manchu-Chinese distinctions. The Manchus have always left Japan severely alone, but in Loochoo they found a faithful vassal (equally complaisant to Japan) until about forty years ago, when Japan, in consequence of Formosa disputes, uncere- moniously gave the Chinese notice to quit. The Sultans of Sulu have also been respectfully dis- posed towards the Manchus, and the tomb of one of them who visited Peking and died in Shan Tung has been kept up at the public charge down to our own times. With these exceptions the Manchu dynasty, which had no real aptitude for the ocean, always, following the example of its kinsmen the Kitans and Niichens, cut itself off entirely from political relations with the Southern Seas. It was only after the Japanese and " Boxer " wars of 1894 and 1900 that China's pride began to be touched on the subject of " bullying " her emigrants in the South Seas and America. As a land power, however, the Manchus have been even more solidly estab- lished than the Mongols were ; for although the immediate successors of Genghiz commanded the personal attendance before their desert throne of Russian, Armenian, and Persian princes, the A.D. 1250-1850] MONGOL AND MANCHU 41 most powerful Mongol Emperor, Kublai, really ruled in an efiective sense over the Eighteen Provinces alone, and was at perpetual logger- heads with his vassal relatives of Persia, Mon- golia, and Manchuria ; moreover, the Mongols were not the intellectual or literary equals of the Manchus, and never had either the same prudence or the same financial grasp of the country's resources. As to the relations of Europe with the Manchu Empire, that subject requires a special chapter. It only needs to be remembered at this point that Chinese struggles with the nomads and Tartars begin with the dawn of history, and are carried down to our own day, when the " Boxers " and reformers have succeeded between them in securing what the Taipings just missed — the regaining of China for the Chinese. The Taiping rebellion began at a place called Kin-t'ien (Siin-chou Fu) in Kwang Si, and is considered by the Chinese to have been owing, like the earlier " Boxer " revolt of 1808-16, to the influence of foreign religion. CHAPTER III EARLY TRADE NOTIONS The history of Chinese trade, hke their general history, only becomes really interesting to most of us in its relation to foreign countries. From the very first the trader seems to have taken rank with our conventional usurer, and to have been regarded as a small-minded person whose main object in life was, not to increase the public wealth, but to corner supplies ; nor does the abstract idea of more legitimate trade appear ever to have been conceived in the sense of " mutual exchange for the furtherance of com- fort and luxury," but rather in that of " steps to keep the needy from starving, and the armies supplied with food and weapons." The Book of History says : "Do not overvalue strange commodities, and then foreigners will be only too glad to bring them." In purely mythical and semi-historical times there are traditions of islanders bringing tribute from the south, and of tattooed tribes from part of Yiieh (modern Wenchow) carrying swords, shields, and fish- skin boxes for sale or barter. The so-called " tribute " of ancient times seems to have practi- cally meant " trade," for each province was sup- posed to bring to the metropolis the superfluity of that which it produced easiest and best, receiving bounties or presents in return. Swords, gold and|silver, piece-goods, tortoise-shells, and, 42 B.C. 800-200] MONEY-MAKING DEVICES 48 later, copper coins were used as currency, the chief preoccupation of the Government appar- ently being to keep the people supplied with a sufficiency of this primitive money. The swords seem to have become gradually symbolical in the shape of " knife coins." To this very day the majority of the Burmese are as indifferent to private wealth as we are led to believe the Chinese once were. It was well before Confucius' time — the period of the Rival (princely) States under the nominal hegemony of the Emperors or Kings — that the idea of accumulating profit seems to have energeticallypossessed men's minds. One statesman (Kwan Chung, died 643 B.C.) is said to have invented a kind of Iwpanar where trading visitors from neighbouring states were encouraged by " Babylonian women " to leave their gains behind them ; thus this enterprising (Ts'i) state sold its goods at a profit, and got the money back in part. As the historian says : " Roguery and violence now began to take precedence of right and justice : greed for the possession of riches replaced modesty and humility in men's minds : huge fortunes were made by some callous ones, whilst others were starving before their eyes." In 522 B.C. customs barriers and duties are mentioned in consider- able detail. When the great Ts'in conqueror, the self- styled " First " Emperor (221-209 B.C.), united the empire into one whole, the currency is stated to have consisted in pounds of unminted gold, and half-ounces of some kind of copper coinage. Silver, pewter, jcAvels, cowries, and tortoise- shell all had their fluctuating market values, but were not legal currency. The long-continued efforts made to repel the northern nomads had greatly exhausted the Empire ; and when, in addition to all this, the struggle of competing 44 EARLY TRADE NOTIONS [chap, m generals for the succession had ended in the triumph of the Han house, the price of grain and of horses had become fabulously high. The founder of this active dynasty may have been a great man, but he was certainly not a refined one. In order to show his contempt as a sovereign for " writing fellows," he more than once deliberately used the hat of a literary man for the basest of purposes ; and to evince his hatred as a legislator for huckstering, he " for- bade merchants to wear silk or ride in carriages, piling upon them taxes and charges of all kinds, in order to humiliate and make them miser- able." His wife and son after his death some- what alleviated these burdens as the Empire gradually settled down into a better financial condition ; but the sons of " merchants were still unable to occupy any official post,"- — an inci- dental statement of the historian which leads us to infer that traders were under a social tabu. The chief subject for commercial speculation was grain for the armies, and the trader of the period appears to have been the same objection- able kind of person as the ubiquitous army pur- veyor and commissary so detested by Napoleon during his Italian campaigns. Other fortunes were made by " melting iron and evaporating salt " ; the rich so manipulated their wealth that, like Orgetorix, they got the poor into their power as serfs. Later on, provincial satraps and wily officials exploited " copper mountains " for their own profit ; clandestine coinage reduced the value of the standard currency ; and so on. The famous Emperor Wu Ti, of the early Han dynasty (141-87 B.C.), whose military activity first opened the West to China, and in whose time the prestige of China was at its climax, adopted the arbitrary methods of some of our English kings : he sent commissioners round to B.C. 100] " WAR-BREAD " FOR EARLY CHINA 45 levy fines and benevolences upon the rich, even to confiscate fortunes which were shamefully large. An officer was established at the capital whose functions were, like those of a Baron Potocki, to " prevent traders and shopkeepers from making huge profits, to take charge of all transport and delivery, to place artisans under official control, and to keep all prices of com- modities steady." These are only a few of the devices employed by the early Chinese legislators to evince their suspicion of and contempt for traders, and it is evident from even the meagre details which go to make up the above account that merchants in those days were viewed much as Jews were regarded by King Edward I. It does not give us much insight into the methods of early trade, nor is there a word said about organised foreign commerce. But, as hundredweights of grain and pieces of silk goods are counted by the five or six million in prosperous years, we may assume that the backbone of revenue and also of internal trade consisted in grain for armies and poor districts ; salt to make the grain palatable as food ; iron to make pans for boiling the brine, and to manufacture weapons for the soldiers ; horses, provender, and carts for mili- tary transport ; silk for clothing and wadding (no cotton in those days) ; and copper for common currency. Gems of all kinds were purely articles of luxury, used then, as now, for hoarding purposes. There is nothing extra- ordinary in all this. Even now the only wealth in many prosperous Chinese villages consists in a woman, a " water buffalo," a pig, and a few fowls ; iron pans for cooking, a rough spinning machine, a few strings of cash, and suits of silk or cotton clothes ; with lumps of salt or (at all events until the recent prohibition of smoking 46 EARLY TRADE NOTIONS [chap, iii and poppy growing) ounces of opium for barter. The up-to-date novelties are cotton, kerosene, cigarettes, spirits, fancy soap, perfumes, and beer. This being the condition of Chinese wealth as I have myself (1869-1894) seen it in a dozen different provinces, it may be easily ima- gined what the degrees of poverty m^ust be, even allowing for ultra-modern republican progress. So soon as ever foreign nations are mentioned in Chinese history, we hear first of exchange presents between equals, or tribute from inferiors, both of which are merely trade in its earliest form. In offering his hand and heart to the Chinese Empress-Dowager, the poetical if not Rabelaisian Hiung-nu Khan Mehteh (209-173 B.C.) said : " I should like to exchange what I have for what I have not." He probably hinted at trade, though the Empress, woman- like, construing the offer in a more personal sense, protested that her bodily charms- — more especially her hair and her teeth — were inade- quate ; probably she knew of the Tartar custom of " taking over " a deceased father's wives ; at any rate, a " girl of the blood " was sent to him for his immediate needs. He himself sent camels, horses, and carts, receiving as an equal in return wadded and silk clothes, buckles, hair- pins, embroidery, etc. Sonietimes the Hiung-nu were able to insist on regular subsidies of grain and yeast besides these complimentary presents ; for even then the Tartars were drunkards, and loved to vary their native kumiss with Chinese samshu. But frontier " fairs " and even clan- destine trade are also specifically mentioned as early as 140 B.C. The nomads used to bring horses and beasts for sale ; more especially the " 300 mile a day " or " blood-sweating " horses of Kokand were highly prized. Horses, pearls, sables, and excellent wood for making arms are B.c.500-200] INDO-SCYTHIANS AND PARTHIANS 47 mentioned amongst the earliest products of North Corca, which then extended far into Manchuria ; the same thing, plus flax or hemp, of the Tunguses bordering thereon ; the buck- thorn arrows with petrified resin or lapis-lazuli tips brought by the latter were known by report even in Confucius' time (550-480 B.C.). In the eastern part of the Corean peninsula iron was the sole currency : both the Japanese and the other Corean states used to purchase their iron there. When the Emperor of China was en- gaged in turning the flank of the Hiung-nu, he sent the now celebrated traveller Chang K'ien (160-110 B.C.) on a mission to some of their enemies whom they had driven to modern Hi. Before the envoy got there, these nomads had been driven by the occupiers of Hi to Grseco- Bactria, and after driving over the Oxus the Aryan people of that state, already enfeebled by Parthian attacks, had possessed themselves of the country ; thence they crossed the Oxus, and subsequently formed (150 B.C. to a.d. 50) the Indo-Scythian empire, one of the kings of which, Vasudeva, actually accepted a Chinese title a century or two later (a.d! 229). The last Greek seems to have been Hermaios, con- quered in A.D. 50 by Kadphises; but Gondophares of Parthia a few years later still had a few minor Greek kinglets under his sway. Chang K'ien, taken prisoner by the Hiung-nu, escaped after ten years' captivity to modern Kokand, whence he found his way into Grseco-Bactria. On his return to China he brought a report upon West Asia from Mesopotamia to the Pamirs. He narrated his having seen Chinese goods in Bactria, and having ascertained that they came through India. This led to his being sent on a second mission to Hi and Kokand, which country was at last conquered and forced to 48 EARLY TRADE NOTIONS [chap, in accept suzerainty. Attention was also given to Yiin Nan and Canton, the first because it was expected to lead to India, the second because it was found that Yiin Nan produce came to Canton by river : this led by degrees to the conquest of both regions, and to the better knowledge of several new trade routes ; but to this day the hoped-for southern line of posts extending from Canton to Bactria has never been achieved. In the negotiations which pre- ceded the conquest of Canton (110 B.C.), the King of South Yiieh complained that he was not allowed to import iron, agricultural imple- ments, or female animals. His return presents include such things as rhinoceros horns and peacocks, which probably came northwards to Canton by sea in the way of trade. From all this we may gather a tolerably accurate notion of what the ancient land commerce of China must have been. For clearness' sake I use the modern names of some places. The Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and Syrians were already old hands at conducting sea trade when China under the Han dynasty first found herself with an unbroken line of coast, and it is abundantly clear from the works of Pliny and Ptolemy that an active trade between Alexan- dria and the Far East had already been in exist- ence for some centuries before our era. Katti- gara was the extreme point known to the Red Sea navigators, and of course each specialist has his own theory as to whether Rangoon, Singapore, Canton, or some other modern mart is meant. It is also a knotty point to decide whether " King Antun's " messengers already mentioned reached China in a.d. 166 by way of Rangoon or by way of " Faifo " in Annam : I have wandered on foot over and examined both these places, and also inspected nearly every business B.C. 200-A.D. 100] INDIAN OCEAN TRADE 49 port of importance on the coasts of Burma, Siam, the Malay Peninsula, and Indo-China, besides reading up the special ancient lore of each place. Conditions of tide, sandbanks, cur- rent, alluvion, etc., change with each generation, just as do the vicissitudes of government. All trade ports become so because the embouchure of some great river facilitates distribution, be- cause the anchorage is spacious and safe, or for other similar reasons ; and the num-ber of such desirable sites must then, as now, have been limited to a narrow choice. I am disposed to think that trade went on between the Syrian merchants and the natives exactly as it does now, and probably at most of the same places, between Canton and the coasts of India ; but as the Burmese, Annamese, and Siamese as we now know them had not then reached the countries in which we at present find them ; the Arabs had not yet displaced the Hindoos, nor the Europeans the Arabs ; as, moreover, the Chinese, notwithstanding the " First Em- peror's " forced migrations, had not yet mioved outwards or down to the south on a wholesale scale as far as the sea coasts, it is futile to waste labour over unessential discussions as to detail ; and better to content ourselves, at least in an outline work of this kind, with what we know for a certainty. It is quite incontestable that the Roman Empire is stated by Pliny to have obtained from China silk, iron, and furs or skins : it is also distinctly stated by native historians that the Chinese obtained from Ta-ts'in glass- ware of all kinds, asbestos, v>^oven fabrics, and embroideries, drugs, dyes, metals, and gems. So far as the northern parts of China, and there- fore the Government and the historians, were concerned, this important trade was chiefly known of as a land trade by way of Parthia 50 £ARLY trade notions [chap, m (which, it is interesting to note, the Chinese always call Arsac, from the generic name of the Parthian kings) ; and if small stress is laid upon the part which came by sea, this is easily to be explained by the special circumstances I have already touched upon : (1) the lateness of China's appearance on the coast ; (2) the fact that during half of her historical existence China has been divided into two empires ; and (3) the failure in even modern times to realise the true position of the West, and to identify persons coming from the south-west by sea with the same persons coming from the north-west by land. In the year a.d. 94 special facilities were given to hawkers, as distinguished from great traders, throughout the empire. In A.D. 98 a Chinese agent, sent by a general in the field on a voyage of exploration in order to learn more about the mysterious Ta-ts'in, arrived on the western confines of the Parthian Empire, and endeavoured to take passage to the countries beyond in a local ship, — the only possible direction in which this ship could have sailed was down the Persian Gulf or westwards from Gujerat to Aden ; — but the skippers at the port, which was either Basra or other port of ancient Babylon, or some landing-place contigu- ous to it up to which the sea is then known to have reached, successfully endeavoured to dis- suade him. The key to their motives is found in the same history that narrates the above incident : " The Ta-ts'in merchants traffic by sea with Parthia and India : their kings always desired to send missions to China, but the Par- thians wished to carry on the trade with them in Chinese silks, and it is for this reason that they were cut off from communication. This went on until the King Antun," etc. All this is perfectly plain ; in the first century of our Friar Odonc's roufe r A.D. 200-400] THE PEACEFUL SOUTH SEAS 51 era, at least, a brisk trade in silk had already grown up between China and Rome. The Parthians tried to monopolise it, and the Romans, in order to escape Parthian cupidity, had recourse to the sea route, with which official China had no opportunity of acquainting herself before the second century. The one link, and that an important one, between the land and the sea routes was subsequently forged by such travellers as the Buddhist priest Fah-hien, who, beginning with the fifth century, reached Turkes- tan by way of the Pamirs, and groped their way home through India, and thence by sea along the Java, Cambodgia, and Malay coasts. Ac- cording to Gibbon, a Chinese envoy appeared in Aurelian's triumphal procession after the Par- thians had been replaced by the Persians. Shortly after this, it will be remembered from our slight historical sketch, North China was politically cut off from the southern coasts for four centuries. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that the northern Tobas have nothing new to say about the South Seas, whilst the southern dynasties at Nanking are correspond- ingly ignorant of events along the desert routes. But these southern dynasties kept up their relations with Ceylon, India, and Indo-China, and there is every reason to believe that a brisk trade went on without interruption as before. Up to the time of Mahomet, it seems that colonies sent out from India had managed or financed the entire ocean trade with the Far East, if they did not also in most cases directly rule the coast peoples of Java, the Malay Penin- sula, and Indo-China. Profound international peace appears to have reigned, so far as Chinese trade was concerned. There were no very violent attempts made by junk-masters to con- quer the natives, nor by dark-skinned rulers to 6 52 EARLY TRADE NOTIONS [chap, iii harass or practise extortion upon the traders. There is one specific but not very well authenti- cated mention in a.d. 226 of a Ta-ts'in merchant coming to the court of the Emperor of Wu (at Nanking, but later at Wu-ch'ang opposite Han- kow), who gave him some black dwarfs to take back as curiosities ; otherwise nothing new is said of that country except in connection with the trade of India. The history of the Toba dynasty, in adding a few new details about Ta- ts'in, says that the capital is called Antu (Antioch). The early histories, in describing the capital, do not give it this name. Curiously enough, this northern account goes on to describe " another way to Ta-ts'in by water via Yung- ch'ang " ; this (practically the head waters of the Irrawaddy) evidently has reference to the old story about An-tun, for it is almost certain that nothing fresh had occurred in connection with the Roman Empire. These various his- torical accounts, however, though manifestly often copies from one another, or from one common original document stowed away in the imperial archives, are often important as supple- menting details omitted by other copyists as being unessential. The single important point, and that upon which to lay stress, is this : both Roman and Chinese accounts make it perfectly clear that land and sea trade in silk, iron, glass, textile fabrics, and many other articles existed between the Red Sea ports (Petra, etc.) and the Indo-Chinese ports (Rangoon, etc.), and also between Mesopotamia and Si-an Fu, during the first five or six centuries of the Christian era ; but so far it does not appear that the foreign question of customs duties, transit charges, or tonnage dues ever came to the front promi- nently, if at all, in China, though customs barriers are mentioned in the year 483 as being A.D. 600-700] NATIONAL NOMENCLATURES 58 relaxed in sulTering places, — apparently affect- ing trade between the Northern and Southern Empires. The Arabs are first heard of by the Chinese in A.D. 628, under the name of Tajik, or Tazi, and in connection with a revolt of Persia against her overbearing task-masters the Western Turks. As Mahomet was not yet dead, and means of com- munication were not more rapid then than they had been 600 years earlier, we have here a good instance of the speed at which news of political changes in Europe might reach China. The name Fu-lin now also appears for the first time, and the people of that country (which I take to be Fereng, or " Frank ") are baldly stated to be " also called Ta-ts'in." The energetic but crazy Emperor of the Sui dynasty, whom I have already characterised as a sort of Caligula, is stated to have unsuccessfully attempted to open communications with Fu-lin. As this monarch sent an envoy by sea to Siam, per- sonally visited the Turkish Khan in his own tent, and was present at the capture of the then Corean capital (now called Mukden), it is evident that he had both energy and curiosity enough to solve the European mystery if he could ; at the same time, even in his day artisans and traders were forbidden to enter officialdom. There have been interminable learned discussions as to what Tazi and Fu-lin really mean etymolo- gically, but there is scarcely any doubt that the Arabs of Bagdad and the Nestorian Christians of Syria are at least sometimes intended. We have much the same anachronism, confusion, or extension of ideas in the Far East in connection with the Russian word Kitat (Mongol plural Kitan), still applied by them to all C'hinese, though only a small portion of Cliina was ever governed by Kitans, and none of them were so 54 EARLY TRADE NOTIONS [chap, iii governed when the Russians first picked up the word. It needs not to be told again how Arab traders and missionaries spread themselves along the African and Arabian coasts, boldly navigated the Indian Ocean, established factories on the Gujerat and Malabar coasts, in Ceylon, Sumatra, and Java, and then in Canton and other Chinese ports. In 658 the Chinese established a mathe- matical college. In the middle of the seventh century we also first hear of tithes being levied in kind, upon imports of spices, camphor, and precious woods, by an officer appointed specially to oversee the foreign trade : one of these functionaries is stated to have been on duty at Canton in a.d. 763, just five years after the Arabs and Persians had made a filibustering attack upon and then pillaged and burnt some warehouses in that city, as recounted in the history of the T'ang dynasty. The reports of the Arab merchant Suleiman upon the con- dition of trade in the Far East during the ninth century, and the comments of the Arab geo- grapher Abu Seid, who wrote about one century after this again, confirm what the Chinese say, and make it quite certain that a lively inter- national traffic then pervaded the whole of the Indian Ocean. Even the Chinese accounts speak of foreign ships at Canton having a capacity of 1,000 bkarams, — an Indian word having the meaning of " a quarter of a ton." Towards the end of the fifth century the Turks appear on the Chinese frontiers, in order to purchase silk and wadding in exchange for articles of their own production. The Turks were workers in iron, and the district of Liang- chou, in or near which they are first heard of, was, as we have seen, precisely the most ancient iron-producing place mentioned in Chinese A.D. 750-1000] FOREIGNERS AND TEA TRADE 55 history. Tea now appears for the first time as an article of commerce, and from that day to this Tm-kestan, Siberia, Tibet, and finally Europe, have regarded this as the main staple of their trade with China. The Nestorian Stone with Syriac and Chinese inscriptions, dated A.D. 781, to which allusion has also been made in other chapters, gratefully acknowledges the toleration shown to Christian travellers by the monarchs of the T'ang dynasty. At this time there were over 4,000 foreign families in Si-an Fu, and owing to the Tibetans having just then occupied Turkestan, most of them were obliged to settle in China for good. Foreign traders from the West were taxed at Bukur on the Tarim River, the fund going to defray the expense of keeping the high road open. During the period of anarchy which inter- vened between the collapse of the T'ang dynasty and the rise of the Sung — that is, during the greater part of the tenth centmy — Canton seems to have lost its place as the main centre of foreign trade. In 985 the sea traders were prohibited from exercising their calling. The explanation probably is that petty local dynas- ties ruled all over South China, at Canton amongst other places ; and until the Sung dynasty had settled the question of respective political spheres with the Kitans in the north, it could not give attention to such remote dis- tricts as Canton. Hence there are more frequent allusions to the land trade between Tangut and Corea than to the junk-borne commerce of the South Seas. The result was a partial transfer of sea trade to Hangchow and (modern) Ningpo, to which places customs inspectors were, at the request of the foreign spokesmen, appointed in A.D. 1000 ; efforts were also made to obtain a similar appointment for Ts'iian-chow (Marco 56 EARLY TRADE NOTIONS [chap, iii Polo's Zaitun), and this was granted in a.d. 1087 ; but I observe in the Sung history a statement in the year 1114 to the efiect that the Hoppo of Canton was then still obliged to send to Court annual presents of pearls and ivory. The Bava- rian sinologist Dr. Frederick Hirth, succeeded about twenty years ago in obtaining a very rare Chinese work, Upon Foreigners, composed by an imperial scion of the ruling Sung house, who actuall}^ occupied this last-named post towards the end of the twelfth century ; he and the late Mr. W. W. Rockhill (then U.S. Ambassador at Constantinople) about four years ago published in their joint names a painstaking review and development of the whole subject of ocean trade. As piracies at Swatow, off Fuh Kien, Canton, and the Lei-chou peninsvila are frequently noticed in the standard Chinese histories, it is probable that the whole coast was in a dis- turbed state at that timiC ; but in the year 1141 it is recorded that " rules governing sea-going junks " were drawn up. In 1182 the Fuh Kien customxS officer was abolished. In 1156 the taxing stations in all the provinces were closed up, in order to facilitate trade. In 1157 the Hoppo of Canton was directed to scrutinise the doings of foreign traders pretending to bring tribute. In 1166 the two maritime custor/is stations of Cheh Kiang were closed. In 1173 and 1182 foreign traders were restricted in their dealings with bullion ; and in 1199 Japanese and Corean traders were limited in some way in their copper " cash " operations ; it is remark- able that similar suspicious copper cash opera- tions were exciting grave attention at the moment I wrote these lines in 1916. In 1204 Canfu was first garrisoned with marines ; and in 1205 eighty-one Cantonese sub-stations (? likin) were abolished. In 1211 Kwang Si cattle taxes were stopped. And A.D. 1100-1200] JEALOUS TRADING RULES 57 so on. The space at our disposal only permits of it being stated here that the Chinese had then acquired a knowledge of the African coast down to Zanzibar, the Red Sea, and even (to a limited hearsay extent) of Egypt and Sicily. The great centre of Arab trade in the Far East was Sar- b^iza, or the modern Palembang in Sumatra, between which place and the coasts of Fuh Kien Chinese junks plied regularly with the two monsoons, carrying their cargoes of porcelain, silk, camphor, rhubarb, iron, sugar, black dwarf slaves, and precious metals to barter at Palem- bang for scents, gems, ivory, coral, fine swords, prints, textile fabrics, and other objects from Syria, Arabia, and India. Cochin-China- — prob- ably "Faifo," near the modern Tourane- — joined in this trade as a sort of half-way house, but levied the heavy charge of 20 per cent, upon all imports. It is specifically stated that there was no foreign trade with the northern part of the peninsula, i.e. w^hat we now call Tonquin. After Palembang the most important trade centres were Lamibri (Acheen), and ports in Java, Borneo, and perhaps Manila. That there was an active trade with North China is also evident, for in 1130, when the Niichen Tartars had driven the native Chinese Sung dynasty across the Yang-tsze, " Fuh Kien, Canton, and Cheh Kiang trading junks were forbidden to go to Shan Tung lest the Niichens might make use of them as guides." In 1173 the export of silver and silk " to the north " was forbidden, and in 1178 it was made a capital offence to export tea thither " on ox or horse back." In 1192 tlie Ya-chou (Sz Ch'wan) custom-house was abolished —evidently referring to Tibetan teas. The accounts given by Marco Polo of this same ocean trade, as it existed when he visited the South Seas, were at first received in Europe 58 EARLY TRADE NOTIONS [chap, m with incredulity, but almost every place named by him, whether it be in Africa, Arabia, India, Sumatra, or Java, can be identified with trade marts mentioned either in Mongol history or in the above-cited work of the Sung dynasty, or else in the history of the Ming dynasty which succeeded the Mongols. The late Colonel Yule has treated this subject so exhaustively in his immortal work on Ser Marco Polo ^ that it is quite superfluous to cite further evidence, unless it be to demonstrate the accuracy or inaccuracy of insignificant points in detail. Full accounts have also been published, by various gentlemen competent to examine the Chinese originals, of the voyages of Cheng Ho and other Chinese eunuchs, despatched early in the fifteenth cen- tury by the Ming emperors reigning at Nanking and Peking upon various diplomatic and com- mercial missions to most of the countries in the Indian Ocean between the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and Singapore. The above historical sketch of early trade, imperfect and superficial though it necessarily is, T^411 perhaps suffice, when read in connection with the preceding chapters, to prepare the way for an account of the great turning point in the annals of the Far Eastern trade — the arrival of Europeans in the China seas. ^ Revised and enlarged in 1903 by Henri Cordier. CHAPTER IV TRADE ROUTES After the first land discoveries of Han Wu Ti's generals, the Chinese laid it down quite clearly that there were two main roads to the West, and to this day they are still known by their old names of North and South roalds — i.e. of the T'ien Shan (Celestial Mountains) which divide off the two. In the Han times the " six states north of the mountains " were nomad, and the " thirty-six town-states " were settled in their habits. The North, or Sungaria Road, or Great Road, is the one which leads from Si-an Fu, north of Kokonor, past Kan-chou, Suh-chou, and the Purun-ki River at Ansi Chou to Hami, Barkul, Manas, Urumtsi, and Hi. The T'ien Shan " must be crossed " at either Hami or Turfan, which last place, under various names, has always been a pivot of Chinese power — i.e. whenever it reached so far. In other words, on leaving Barkul for Urumtsi you can go by Turfan if you like. The South, or Kashgaria Road, or Short Road, branches off from the North Road, either at Turfan for Harashar, or at the Purun-ki River for Lob Nor ; there it again divides into two : — you can either go past Korla north of the Gobi steppe and of the Tarim or Yarkand River ; or you can go south of the Gobi steppe past Khotan and Yarkand, passing to the north of the Karakoram Pass which leads into Kashmir, 69 60 TRADE ROUTES [chap, iv and of the watershed of the K'unlun Range which shuts off both Tibet and Kashmir. This Karakoram Pass must not be confused with Karakoram city in MongoHa ; nor must it be forgotten that names of places frequently change, and that I ignore many of these changes in order not to crowd my book with ungainly sounds. From Kashgar it is clear the earliest Chinese travellers passed over the Pamirs to Badakshan and Kandahar or Kabul. As I prepare this new edition, Sir Aurel Stein sends me an account of his miost recent travels in the Wakhan region, in the course of which he tramps over and personally identifies the old landm.arks of 2,000 years ago. There is an old Chinese legend about foreign envoys having been sent back to Annam in " south-pointing carriages," from which story some persons have rashly inferred that in 110 B.C. the use of the magnetic compass was known. What we may fairly conclude is that in those times there was already an overland commerce with the South. When, in or about 134 B.C., a Chinese agent was visiting the modern Canton, he noticed som.e strange produce which was stated to have come from modern Yiin Nan. On his way back to the im.perial capital the agent questioned some traders in modern Sz Ch'wan about this produce, and discovered that there was a regular junk trade between Yiin Nan, Kwei Chou, and Canton ; this is the identical trade, now developed by steam- launches, that Hosie and Ainscough have fully described to us within the past decades. When in 112 B.C. the generals of the Emperor marched upon Southern Yueh in several columns by way of Hu Nan and Kiang Si, they took advantage of these discoveries to ship troops also from^ Sz Ch'wan and Kwei Chou, in both cases by m.eans B.C. 200-A.D. 500] PARTHIAN TRADE 61 of the divergent headwaters of the Western River, which will be further referred to in the chapter on " Salt." In 196 B.C. the King of South Yiieh had already complained to the Emperor that his trade in cattle, iron, and utensils was being interfered with by the Em- peror's kinsman the King of Ch'ang-sha (Hu Nan) ; so that it is evident the trade route by the Canton North River and the (Hu Nan) Siang River had also been used long before this. The Chinese record that the Parthians carried on a land trade in waggons and a sea trade in boats. The distances along the road are given in such a way that it seems plain a Persian farsang (ten miles) was used as the measure of stages. The Chinese pilgrims some centuries later measured by Indian yodjanas^ which are perhaps the same thing. This matter of Par- thian distances has been worked out by Frederick Hirth, who shows that from the Parthian capital (at first on the Oxus, but later much farther west) a road led for 1,600 English miles east- wards to the frontier at Antiochia Margiana (near Margilan or Kokand), which place the Chinese historians of that period called Mulu — con- jectured to be the Muru of the Zend-Avesta. Westwards from the Parthian capital a second road ran 1,200 miles across the Zagros chain to Ktesiphon, whence 320 more to Hira (port of Babylon). We need not trouble ourselves much about this western part of the trade, which was monopolised by Parthians and Persians, and in which in any case no Chinese trading caravans ever engaged ; but it is evident that Margiana brings us back to some place very near the Chinese frontier, or at least to the region under Chinese influence, visited first 2,000 years ago by Chang K'ien, and last contested sixty-five years ago by the Manchus. There is another 62 TRADE ROUTES [chap, iv point to be remembered : even some of the river routes to Canton had only been discovered a century before our era ; so that no silk could have been sent abroad from North or West China by sea, nor had the imperial Chinese any properly controlled territory or any accumula- tions of silk south of the Yang-tsze. Pliny (23-79) mentions iron as one of the commodities coming from China ; and at the time (200 B.C.) when, as explained above, no silk could possibly have gone direct from China to Rome by sea, the Chinese specially mention a people enriched by commerce in salt and iron in the region of modern Liang-chou, and a heavy excise was laid upon iron by the First Emperor, who himself came from Shen Si. Thus it seems plain that all silk and iron went by land, until the Parthian cupidity, two centuries later, drove it to the sea route. The Chinese enumerate over fifty kinds of produce imported by them from Ta Ts'in. Ptolemy and Arrian (second century) speak of Sina, Thin, the Seres, and the " Stone Tower " (some such place as Tashkend or Tashkurgan, i.e. " Stone City " or " Stone Fort," near Yark- and). Sir Aurel Stein, bringing to bear the evidence of Marinus of Tyre and Maes the Mace- donian, places the Stone Tower at Daraut- Kurgan, now a Russian frontier post in the Kara- tegin valley. In the chapter on " Early Trade Notions " I have already shown how the over- land route from Rangoon and one of the three Burma roads to China by the Irrawaddy, Mekong, or Salween {via Bhamo, Esmok, Kiang-hung, or the Kunlon Ferry), was open to the " tribute " of Antoninus. The routes followed by the Chinese Buddhist pilgrims are not to be ignored when we attempt to decide what the ancient sea and land trade routes were. At the beginning of the fifth A.D. 400-550] CHRISTIANITY AND PILGRIMS 68 century of our era the most celebrated monk of all (Fah-hien), starting from modern Si-an Fu, passed through modern Liang-chou (near the iron region of 200 B.C.), the modern Kan-chou (long the Ouigour capital), Tun-hwang (still so called), the modern Lob Nor, the modern Harashar, Khotan (still so called), the modern Kugiar, and Tashkurgan ; then from the left bank to the right of the Indus by a circuitous road it is impossible to identify, but which was probably the same route as that followed by Chinese and Hindoo merchants at this day, not to mention our own travellers, sportsmen, and explorers — i.e. via Shahidula, the Karakoram Pass, Srinagar, over the Indus to Dir : here again Sir Aurel Stein has dogged the pilgrim's steps with affec- tionate interest. Thence Fah-hien went to modern Peshawur and Kabul, recrossed the Indus at Bannu, whence he travelled straight across India, down the Ganges Valley, to a place near modern Calcutta ; took ship for Ceylon, Java, and on to Kiao Chou in Shan Tung,' — notorious since 1897 for its violent seizure by the Germans, and since 1914 for their ejection by the Japanese. It appears the pilgrim's junkmen first tried to make Canton, but were carried by the wind much farther up north : thence he returned to Si-an Fu (a.d. 414). It is stated that Alexander Cosmas, himself a trader in Arabia and India (530-50), says in his Topography that there was a maritime trade thence with Tzinistan, a place bordered by the Eastern Ocean. He also mentions Christianity as having existed in Merv and Samarcand a century earlier, and as having spread to the Bactrians and Huns : I myself ventured to adduce evidence upon this point a few years ago in a paper entitled the Early Christian Road to China. 64 TRADE ROUTES [chap, iv The next Chinese pilgrim in date and impor- tance was Hiian-chwang. Starting also from modern Si-an Fu in a.d. 629, he reached (pre- sumably by the same route as Fah-hien) the region of modern Turfan and Harashar, which he found then in the hands of the Tiirgas branch of Western Turks ; thence past Kuche (still so called) along the southern or Aksu road over one of the passes of the T'ien Shan Range to modern Issyk Kul and Tokmak. Near the " Thousand Springs " he met the Western Turkish Jabgu Khan, who gave him an inter- preter to take him to Kapisa. As had happened only a generation earlier with the Greek envoy Zemarchus, no idea of the distinction between Western Turks and Original Central Turks seems to have entered the pilgrim's head. Thence he went on to Talas (modern Aulie-ata), White- water City (Ak-su, or " white water," near Tchimkend), to modern Nudjkend and Tash- kend, Samarcand, Kesch, the Iron Gates (Der- bend), Tokhara, Balkh, Bamian, and on to Kapisa. Here he not only brings us to the region discovered by Chang K'ien in his search for the Yiieh-chi or Indo-Scythian nomads driven away by the Hiung-nu, and which is also near the old Greek and Parthian frontier of Margiana, but he tells us stories of Kanishka, King of Gandhara, a.d. 40, who was himself one of the Kushan or Indo-Scythian monarchs ; their appearance, as judged from the coins of their ruler Kadphises, is distinctly Turkish. When he passed through, the old Tokhara or " Haia- thala " empire of the Oxus had already been shattered by the Turks. He gives us quite a long account of his travels and experiences in both North and South India, whence, after innumerable interesting experiences, he returns, via Taxila, Kapisa, the Hindu Kush, and Andrab, A.D. 700] CHINESE PRIEST PILGRIMS 65 to the Oxus ; whence again through Shignan and the Pamirs, past Lake Victoria, over the mountains to Khavanda, an old state which cannot be far from modern Kashgar : the Emperor himself went out to the city gate to witness his triumphant return. This voyage occupied seventeen years, and it is interesting to note that about ten years after that (655-60) the capital of Tokhara was made by the Chinese Emperor, Yiieh-chi Fu, or "the city of the Yiieh-chi" nomads, who had been driven thither 800 years earlier. The King of Tokhara, as friend of the Nestorians and head of the anti- Arab party, about this time sent a map to China, with a request that the Arab conquests between Khotan and Persia might be taken under Chinese protection. These two are by no means the only priests who made important journeys. A work by the bonze I-tsing (643-713), who had himself wan- dered to Sumatra, " Malayu," the Nicobars, the mouths of the Hoogly, and modern Behar, returned the same way to Canton, and thence to Ho-nan Fu where the Court then was. My excellent friend Edouard Chavannes has trans- lated the whole of this work, which, however, touches only casually on geographical points, and aims chiefly at the encouragement of Buddh- ism. It gives a list of sixty priests who made the grand tour, some by land and others by sea, all moved by a purely literary and charitable enthusiasm in the shape of an eager desire to learn at the fountain head all about the Buddhist rites : at that time these ruled supreme, and had a strong civilising influence all the way from Affghanistan to Japan : they had not yet felt the shock of competing Islam, either along the seaboard or along the land chain of states. The fact that hundreds of 66 TRADE ROUTES [chap, iv Nestorian, Hindoo, and Chinese priests and bonzes were able to move freely, by land and by sea, all over Asia proves, though it may not throw specific light upon commerce, that trade routes were frequented then along exactly the same lines as they had been before, and as they are now. So far as I can see, the Mongol generals of the thirteenth century, who generally used the northernmost road, past Issyk Kul, as being in a most suitable climate for their men and beasts, never travelled by any of the more southerly roads, except on one or two occasions over parts of those traversed by Fah-hien and Hiian-chwang. The reason is plain : there was no pasture for the animals, and no sufficient space for their huge waggons. It must not be forgotten, however, that irrigation on a large scale was introduced, or at least improved, under Chinese auspices. The road followed in 569 by the Byzantine return mission, under Zemarchus and Maniach the Sogdian, sent by Justin II. to the Turks, as mentioned above, actually passed through Tokhara or Sogdiana, where the first Turks were encountered, offering or selling iron. The Khan was found in the *' Ektag " or '' Ektel " (Turkish Ak-tagh or "White Mountains"), whence Zemarchus, who had meanwhile been presented with a Kirghis concubine, accom- panied him to Persia, stopping on the way at a place called Talas : the Kirghis at this time used to pay tribute of iron to the Turks. I am disposed to think that the Khan " Bizabul " was not the Great Turk at all, but the Western Khan, whose ordo was somewhere between Issyk Kul and Lake Balkash. On his way back Zemarchus crossed the " Oech " (Oxus), and, after a long journey, reached a large lake, which he skirted for twelve days. Then he crossed A.D. 600-900] HISTORICAL CONFIRMATIONS 07 four rivers, all running into the north side of the Caspian, traversed the Alan country and the Caucasus, and took ship at Trebizond for Constantinople. A few years previous to this the Turks had allowed Maniach, as a Sogdian subject of theirs, to go to Persia in order to arrange for a less obstructed silk trade with China ; but an I ndo- Scythian envoy there named Catulphus thwarted the project, and therefore Persia, fearing Turkish resentment, sent envoys to North China. Consequently the Turks sent Maniach by way of the Caucasus to Constantinople, and the envoy was able to state that the Indo-Scythians ("Haiathala," Eph- thalites, or Chinese Eptat) had been annexed. It was now that Justin sent him back with Zemarchus to act as guide as above related. All this gives us a wonderfully clear confirmation upon numer- ous points, such as the ancient iron and silk trade, the West Turk encampment at Talas, the road later followed by Rubruquis, and so on. In the early part of the T'ang dynasty (seventh century) large numbers of Persian traders are stated to have come by sea and spread them- selves over the Empire. Owing to the anarchy which ushered out the ruhng house (end of the ninth century), they and other foreigners at last confined their trading operations to Canton. Besides the accounts already mentioned in the chapter on " Early Trade Notions," there are the often-quoted narratives of the Arabs Wahab and Abu Seid (850-79), which testify once more to an active sea trade all along the Indian Ocean, the Persians being apparently ahead of the Arabs in numbers and energy. It is Abu Seid who describes the great massacre of Canton, when (879), apart from natives, 120,000 Mussul- mans, Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians are stated to have perished. 7 es TRADE ROUTES [chap, iv It has already been mentioned that in a.d. 628, after a century of tyranny, the Persians threw oil the Turkish yoke. Pirouz, the son of Yezdedgerd, escaped from their vengeance to Tokhara, and appealed to the Emperor of China, who sent a mission to expostulate with the Arabs in 651. The Persian King Yezded- gerd had been killed by the Arabs as he was flying to Tokhara, and the victory of Kadesieh, in 636, put an end to the Sassanides altogether. When in 661 China took over the administration of all the states between Khotan and Persia, Pirouz was appointed Chinese Viceroy. Again attacked by the Arabs, he fled in 670 to Si-an Fu, where he died. The Chinese Mussulmans have in some way confused the victorious Arab general Sadi Wakas with the first Arabs who came by sea to Canton, and have always had a legend that the famous Arab pagoda built in 751, which still stands there, is his tomb. In other Mussulman temples at Canton there are yet to be found trilingual inscriptions in Arabic, Persian, and Chinese. It appears from Arab sources that their General Kotaiba between 705 and 707 subdued Balkh, Merv, and Bokhara, on his return from which last-named place he was attacked by the Turks, Sogds (Tokhara), and Ferghana people (Kokand). They defeated the Turks in 709, and set up a King of Sogd in 710. No mention is made of any Ephthalite dominion, the very shadow of which must now have totally disappeared. All this is in accord with Chinese history. The Greek authors, in mentioning these " Abdeli " or Ephthalites, also allude to the " Taugas," a name stated by the Chinese themselves in the form Tau-hwa-sh to be applied by the people of High Asia to the Chinese. During the eighth century several Arab missions came to China by way of Tokhara, the A.D. 900-1000] ARABS AND CHINA 69 north branch of the South Road, the Purun-ki River, Si-ning, and Liang-chou. The Chinese men- tion Arab traders at Ansi on the Purun-ki River, and only last year [1916] the vivacious American traveller Rodney Gilbert gave us his charming sketches of Arab reminiscences and survivals in these parts. The early Arabs mention tea (ch''a-ye, the Russian chai) under the name of sakh. At that time the Chinese employed large numbers of foreigners in the army, and both Arabs and Ouigours (who therefore must have some of them already become Mussulmans) assisted China in recovering Si-an Fu and Ho-nan Fu from the rebels. These or other Arabs would seem to have worked their way from Si-ning down to the head waters of the Yang-tsze, for in 801 both they and the Samarcandians or Tokharans (K'ang state) were found taking part in the struggle between the Tibetans and Siamese (Chao confederacy) on the head waters of the Kin-sha (Yang-tsze) River. It is interesting to note in this connection that, during the Nepaul war of 1788, a Manchu general made a very bold march from Si-ning across the Murui-usu and Tibet direct to Nepaul. Probably it will be found that both he and the Arabs took the same route as far as Charing Nor (near the Yellow River's source), where the road branches. There is no mention of the Arabs during the Five Dynasty anarchy, between the fall of the house of T'ang and the rise of Sung (say 900- 960) ; but there is evidence of friendliness between Khotan and the Ouigours, and of a brisk trade along the southern branch of the South Road. During the whole period of the Tungusic, Kitan, and Niichen reigns in North China (900- 1200), the Arabs only found their way once or twice to the north. In 924 the founder of the Kitan dynasty was on the Orkhon, trying to persuade 70 TRADE ROUTES [chap, iv the Kan-chou Ouigours to come back to their old habitat there. An Arab mission promptly turned up on the Orkhon, and appHed to him for a marriage alliance. It is not likely that it arrived from the north-west by the Uliassutai Road ; probably it came by way of the Great High Road to the West from Si-an Fu, which then ran through Ouigour territory. In 1120 another Arab mission, bent on a similar quest, actually obtained a Kitan princess. On the other hand, nearly thirty Arab missions are mentioned between 968 and 1116 as arriving by sea, and we find Chinese history discussing the advantages of the sea route over that of the land. Previously to all this, in 966, a priest who had made a tour through the West by land, had taken presents to and " summoned " the King to do homage to China. In one case the King is called K'o-li-foh (Caliph), and in another the envoy comes along in company with a mission from Pin-t'ung (Binhthuan) in Cochin China. In 1017 half the duties " charged on foreign trades" were specially remitted as a favour to the Arabs, and these people are afterwards spoken of at Canton as belonging to a country over 40 days' sail north-west of Ts'iian-chou to Lan-li (Lambri), " whence the next year 60 more days." Later on we shall see that this wintering of Chinese junks in the South Seas was quite habitual. During the northern Sung dynasty (from 960 to its flight south in 1127) there was a " barbarian hotel " or caravanserai at Si-an Fu, inside of the south gate of the city. Nothing whatever of the Nestorians is heard during this period ; but there are still existing some records at K'ai-feng Fu of the Jews there, who, in the opinion of Father Tobar, S.J., used most probably to come to China as merchants. A.D. 1000] SEA-TRADE ACTIVITY 71 The best authorities on the sea trade during the Sung dynasty are Frederick Hirth and W. W. Rockhill, who have succeeded in discovering and translating several very valuable and rare Chinese works on the subject. As we have seen, Canton lost its monopoly in a.d. 999, when customs officers were appointed to modern Ningpo and Hangchow : Kan-p'u, Marco Polo's Canfu, was made a military or naval station in 1205, and lay opposite, between the two. The Ming history specially states that in Mongol times Canfu was a great trading centre, and that it had for that reason been walled in and created a municipal town : the place still exists under the old name of Kan-p'u, but is now quite insignificant and almost forgotten. However, in 1087, long before Kan-p'u became a famous port, the merchants of Zaitun (Ts'iian-chou) had obtained the coveted official recognition. Trade between Loochoo and Japan clearly went on, and there are full de- scriptions of Sumatra, Java, and Borneo, which places the Zaitun junks reached with the north- east monsoon in six weeks. But I see no evi- dence that Manila had yet been discovered, as suggested by Hirth. The junks usually waited until the following spring for a favourable breeze to take them on to Ceylon, the Malabar coast, and the Arabian and African ports, amongst which Berbera, Shehr or Shaher, and Djafar can be specifically identified from the Chinese char- acters used. There is ample evidence from standard Chinese history, as well as from Mr. Rockhill's and Dr. Hirth's rare books, that Zanzi- bar was included in the usual voyages, and there are also descriptions of Cambay, Gujerat, Malwa, Bagdad, Basra, and other places in the Persian Gulf. It is to be noticed that one Chinese author (a.d. 1000) identifies the " sea-trading barbarians at Canton with the " Uien sectarians " of the Ta- 72 TRADE ROUTES [chap, iv ts'in monastery at Si-an Fu. At one time it was thought that Nestorians were referred to when these two words were used ; but twenty years ago the late Gabriel Deveria proved them to have been Persian Mazdeans and Manichseans. As an instance of the slowness of the Chinese in identifying members of groups of the same nation coming by land or sea, I may mention once more that during the Nepaul war of a hundred and twenty years ago certain diplomatic representations were made by Nepaul with a view to assisting China in her action against the " Franks " of Calcutta trading " at Canton." It was only when, during the Yarkand War, the Manchu Resident there sent some mysterious information to Peking about the " Franks " having taken the Panjab, that the Emperor awoke to the startling fact that in both cases these feringhi or pHling were simply his old and very objectionable friends the Ingkili (English) ; the point is of importance in connection with the Fulin question. The conquests of Genghiz Khan once more opened freely the great trade routes of the West. The immediate cause of the conqueror's first bellicose rage was the treacherous behaviour of the frontier officials at Otrar, on or near the Jaxartes, near the Fort Perovsky of our day. He left his native place on the Onon near the close of 1218, and made straight for the Irtish ; then he was joined by various allies, and pro- ceeded by the road north of Issyk Kul to Otrar, which was captured and looted towards the end of 1219. He then marched across the Jaxartes upon Samarcand and Bokhara. Whilst at Samar- cand he took it into his head to send post-haste back to Shan Tung for an old Chinese Taoist philosopher, who at once set off with his Mongol guide, vid Peking and Kalgan, to the Kerulon A.D. 1200-1300] THE MONGOL DESERT COURT 78 River ; whence along the banks of the Tola, past Karakoram, to Urumtsi ; then through the Ouigour country to Almalik (Hi), by the road north of Issyk Kul to Sairam, Khodjand, and Samarcand. There some messengers from Gen- ghiz Khan met him, and escorted him through Kesch, Derbend, over the Oxus, to Balkh. This most northerly road must not be mistaken for the " North (Celestial Mountain) Road " above first described, which runs from Hami and Urumtsi to Hi, and thence over the passes to Kashgar. In 1254-5 the King of Little Armenia sent his brother to Gayuk Khan with presents. This prince first of all visited Batu and Sartak, as Rubruquis did ; then he passed through the steppe country, and travelled to the north of Issyk Kul by way of modern Cobdo and Ulias- sutai to Karakoram : Batu's brother, Barca, was the first prominent Mongol to adopt Islam. In returning, the Armenian took the most southerly road by way of modern Urumtsi and the south side of Issyk Kul ; whence, through Tashkend and Otrar, to Samarcand, Bokhara, Tehran, and Tabriz. Rubruquis took nearly two months to get from the Volga to Talas ; thence along the road running south of Lake Balkash, from which place he reached Karakoram in a month. In the first edition I mentioned Ogdai Khan's great Kitan minister in the (now obsolete) discussion upon the Chinese Calendar. This minister's great-grandson Yelii Hiliang subse- quently travelled on foot from Tun-hwang to Urumtsi, Manas, and Emil (near Tarbagatai). On the whole, therefore, the Great Northern High Road, which may be called the main road, manifestly seems preferable to those running both n6rth and south of it, for waggons, cattle, and foot travellers alike. Marco Polo himself seems to have followed 74 TRADE ROUTES [chap.it the usual main road from Balkh through Dogana (Tokhara), Kunduz, Talecan, Badakshan, Shig- nan, Tagarma or Tashkurgan, Kashgar, Yarkand (perhaps Khotan), Harashar, Lob Nor, Sha-chou (Tun-hwang), Cam^ul (Hami, orHamil), the Tolas or " plain " of Chikin (the Chikin Ouigours, not the same as the Talas, near Lake Balkash), Suk- chur (Suh-chou), Campichu (Kan-chou), Etzina, and Karakoram. I should mention that the Mongol history makes specific mention of the Etzina road and of many other High Asian branch roads which Kublai either improved or opened. All places I name appear upon one or the other of the accompanying sketch maps. Marco Polo's description of Ylin Nan and Burma is simply that of the chief trading road of to-day by way of Momein and Bhamo (the Irrawaddy). He never went to the more southerly Shan states, nor to Siam ; and consequently he does not mention the only two other peninsular trade routes, one by way of the Kunlon Ferry (Sal- ween), and the other via Keng-hung (Mekong). Nothing has essentially changed from that day to this, and as many as 5,000 Chinese mules from Yiin Nan may be seen any day during the autumn trading season picketed amongst their burdens in the vacant fields around Bhamo. The other two routes are also in full vogue for the Maulmein and Siamese trade ; and of course the French railway through Tonquin to the Yiin Nan capital has given a great fillip to the sea trade with Hongkong. There is no doubt that Marco Polo's Zaitun was to all intents one of the places immediately north or south of Amoy, and it almost certainly included, in a trader's sense, both Chang-chou and Ts'iian-chou. These are still the great emigration and trade ports for the southejn ocean, and both of them lie near the European A.D. 1200-1300] MARCO POLO'S ROUTE 73 *' open port " in Amoy Bay. Learned men have long disputed what " Zaitun " specifically means, but I think it almost certainly stands for the coast town of Haiteng, which, though not made an official " city " until 1564, must have long borne that name ; just as Shanghai was not made an official city till 1291, Kan-p'u not until the Ming dynasty, and Hankow not until 1899. Kan-p'u was one of the grain stores when the great Mongol general Bayen established his sea routes in 1283. Marco Polo describes the voyage from Zaitun to Ciampa (Faifo), Java, Lochac (Siam), Pentam (Bantam, or Batavia) ; Little Java, Ferlech, Basman, Samara, Dagroian, Lambri, Fansur (all in Sumatra Island) ; Necuveran (Nicobar), Anda- man, Seilan, Maabar, Masulipatam (? Chinese " Soli "), Madras, Lar, Cail, Coilon, Comari, Delly, Melibar, Gozurat, Tana (near Bombay), Cambaia, Semenat, Scotra, " Madagascar " (Magadoxa), Zanghibar, Abascia (Abyssinia), Escier (Shaher), Dufar (Djafar), Calatu (Kalhat), and Cormos (Hormuz). Almost every single one of these names is mentioned either in the Chinese history of Kublai's relations with the Indian Ocean, or in the Ming history of the eunuchs' voyages to the West two centuries later. Where the names are not specifically mentioned by the Chinese, it is generally because they had appar- ently changed, or for other sufficient reasons ; in most cases discrepancies are satisfactorily explained. These eunuch travels, coming as they did half way between Ibn Batuta's and Vasco de Gama's times, form a good connecting- link between the Arabs and the Portuguese. Now, the Arab traveller Ibn Batuta sailed from Aden to Magadoxa in 1339, just between the Mongol and the Ming times. He went to Zanuj (Zanzibar), thence to " Zafar " (Djafar), Hormuz, 76 TRADE ROUTES [chap, iv Lar, Bengal, Java (Sumatra), " Mul Java " (Java), and El Zaitun in China ; whence again to El Khansa (Marco Polo's Kinsai, i.e. Hang- chow). Here he heard of the Mongol dynasty being on the point of collapse, and he returned to Zaitun, where he took a Sumatra junk for Java and Sumatra, sailed thence to Kawlam (Quilon) and Kalikut, and got home to Zafar and other places in Arabia in 1347. The celebrated Si-an Fu tablet discovered by a Chinese Christian, and reported on by Father Semedo in 1625, is further testimony to the fact that Syrians, if not also Europeans, had for many centuries followed the great road from Mesopo- tamia to China. This inscription was the work in 781 of a bonze of the Ta-ts'in monastery, and gives a full account of Christianity : the Japanese Buddhophile M. Takakusu some years ago made ingenious discoveries as to the precise identity of this learned bonze, and the difficulty found in pairing off a competent knowledge of Pali and Chinese in one man. There are many evidences that the Chinese confused Nestorians with Mazdeans and with Persians generally. That brilliant Jesuit priest the late Father Havret, even expressed his conviction that we might yet discover on the banks of the River Wei (Si-an Fu) proofs of a Christian mission contemporary with the apostolic era ; but this hope I cannot help thinking too sanguine. The Nestorian stone, inscribed with perfectly legible Chinese and Syriac characters, mentions an imperial edict, dated a.d. 638, according tolera- tion to the Christian religion, and specifically to the priest Olopen of Ta Ts'in. The original edict was long unsuccessfully searchedf or by sinologists, and was at last unearthed in 1855 by the inde- fatigable Alexander Wylie, the only difference in the wording of his copy being that Olopen is MAP TO SHEW CHINESE KNOWLEDGE OF AFRICA •TV OCEAJ^ (CHINESE SOVTUERN SEA^) 76] A.D. 800-1800] FOREIGN RELIGIONS IN CHINA 77 described as a Persian instead of a Ta-ts'in man. The reason for this discrepancy has already twice been explained. In the trilingual stone inscription (Ouigour, Turkish, Chinese) dis- covered a few years ago by Russian travellers at the old Ouigour capital on the River Orkhon, and dating from about a.d. 830, mention is made of a western religion, either Manichaeism or Nestorianism, which fact again tends to connect Syria and Persia once more, through Tokhara, with China and Mongolia. Nor must I omit to mention the eminent services of MM. Ed. Cha- vannes and Paul Pelliot, who, availing themselves of the great cache of ancient literature discovered by Stein, Tachibana, and others in the Thousand Buddha Grotto near Tun-hwang, have been able to set our knowledge of Chinese Manichseism upon a firm footing. Then we have the mission of John of Piano Carpini, sent by Innocent IV. to Gayuk Khan in 1245-7 (he passed through the country of the Naimans and Kara-Kitans ; thence along the Sungarian lakes to near the Orkhon) ; Rubru- quis' mission of 1254 already mentioned, also through the Kara-Kitan country, near Lake Balkash ; letters from Nicholas III. to Kublai Khan, sent by Franciscan friars in 1277-80 ; and the arrival at Peking in 1293 in order to found churches there of John of Monte-Corvino, be- longing to the society of the Friars Minor. The account of his journey says the Florentine trade route lay through Azov, Astrakhan, Khiva, Otrar, Almalik (Ili), and Kanchou. In 1286- 1331 Friar Odoric in his own person travelled over parts of both the land and the sea roads to China ; Trebizond, Tabriz, Shiraz, Bagdad, Hormuz, India (Tana), Malabar, Quilon, Ceylon, Mailapur (Madras) ; thence by Chinese junk to Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Ciampa, Canton, Zaitun, 78 TRADE ROUTES [chap, iv over the mountains to *' Cansay " (Hangchow). This last stretch of country I have been over twice myself, crossing two sets of passes. In 1336 the last Mongol emperor sent letters by a " Frank " named Andrea to Benedict XII., who replied in the following year to the Khan's message. In 1340 the Franciscan priest John of Marignoli built a new church at Jagatai's capital of Almalik (Hi), where in 1339 Pascal's Spanish mission had been massacred. In 1342 this fresh mission was once more destroyed ; and in that same year Nicolas de Bonnet arrived in Peking as successor to Monte-Corvino. We have already seen in the chapter on " History " how a " Fulang " man brought a wonderful horse to China in 1342, and how the founder of the Ming dynasty in 1371 sent a message to Europe by one " Niekulun," a " Fulin " man, who had come to trade at Peking in 1367. In 1375 another Fulin man came with the Sumatra mission to China. Both Marignoli and Pegoletti bear witness to the fact that " Franks " had nothing to do with France, but meant all the Christian peoples west of '' Romania " ( ? Greece) ; even now the modern Greeks use the word " Franks " in this sense. The Ming envoy sent to demand tribute from Tamerlane in 1395 travelled via the Kia-yiih Pass, Hami, Turfan, Hi, and Samarcand, whence he was taken on to Shiraz and Ispahan, staying some years in the country. Owing to a dispute, probably about tribute, in 1401, the envoy was forcibly detained ; and in 1405 Tam.erlane, for reasons not given, but evidently incensed at the demand for tribute, crossed the Jaxartes with an immense host in order to invade China. As he died at Otrar, he evidently followed so far, and intended to follow farther, but in a reverse direction, the footsteps of Genghiz Khan. The Castilian envoy, Clavijo, who was then at Samar- A.D. U00-1450J OLD WORDS FOR "CHINA" 71) cand, has left it on record that a caravan of 800 camels, laden with silk, musk, rhubarb, and gems, came from " Cambalu in Cathay " in 1404. The son of Tamerlane sent numerous missions to China, as recorded in the Ming annals, and amongst the many return Chinese envoys there was one who visited Hami, Turfan, Sairam, Otrar, Tashkend, Samarcand, Kesch, Bokhara, Herat, Termed, and Badakshan. A Persian trader in a work cited by Dr. Bret- schneider upon Tchin or Khata trading, and dated about 1500, mentions a mission to China sent by Tamerlane's grandson about the year 1449, but the Turkish translation of this Persian work does not enable us to identify the names of places along his route. The Ming history says that missions came from Samarcand in 1430, 1437, 1445, 1446, and 1449. It is interesting to note how long the word Kitan (Khata) and Cambalu (Peking) survive, together with the older word Thin, Tzin, or Tchin. It was reserved for Bene- dict Goes (1602-7), who travelled from Kabul, Yarkand, and the Upper Oxus to Suh-chou, first to prove that " Cathay " and " China " were one and the same place. Lieutenant Wood in 1838 was the next European to follow the route of Polo and Goes. The sea trade routes followed by the eunuchs of the Ming dynasty are perfectly clear. And after all it is only in petty matters of shifting banks, shifting bars, and consequently shifting emporia, that we can possibly go wrong ; for a junk which leaves its anchorage must either go back or go on, in either of which cases it calls at fixed places. The chief one of these leaders was the Chinese Narses named Cheng Ho. In 1405 he took sixty-two junks and 27,800 men from Shanghai to Amoy, Faifo, Binh-thuan, Pulo- Condor (island), and Kampot (Cambodgia), to 80 TRADE ROUTES [chap, iv all which places I went myself in 1888, and in the same order, so that I can personally vouch for the reasonableness of the eunuch's stages. Either on this or the next occasion he took Kilung (Formosa) on his way, but failed to induce the savages of those parts to bring tribute ; but he left presents, and describes them, and also mentions the origin of the name Tamsui (Fresh Water), which is still that of a treaty port. In 1407-9 the same eunuch went to Palembang, Lambri, Malacca, Siam, Cail, and Ceylon, fighting several considerable battles near Acheen and Kandy, and asserting China's over- sovereignty in a very decided way. In 1412-16 he visited Pahang, Lambri, Aru, Kelantan, the Andaman Islands, Cochin, Quilon, Calicut, Hormuz, Aden, Magadoxa, Jubb, and Brava. In 1430-1 he found it necessary to go the round of most of the above places again. He himself never actually went up the Persian Gulf, nor up the Red Sea ; but he sent lieutenants, who seem to have pene- trated to Jeddah, as they brought back detailed accounts of the land of Mahomet. Nor does he seem to have ever gone personally to Java or Borneo, which islands, however, were both re- peatedly visited by other eunuchs ; as also were Madras, Bengal, and (by land) Nepaul and Tibet. The present Manchu dynasty had to begin afresh and feel its way overland along new or forgotten ground, just as its predecessors had done. The first distant discoveries were made towards the end of the seventeenth century, when the Emperor K'ang-hi found it advisable to march as far as the Kerulon and the Tola in order to drive back a Kalmuck invasion ; his historian truly boasts that no previous emperor occupying the Chinese throne and no Chinese army ever went so far west, or numbered so many as 30,000 men conveyed across the desert. The A.D. 1700-1800] SIR AUREL STEIN'S ROAD 81 son and grandson of this excellent monarch saw that it was indispensable to crush the Kalmuck power : they proceeded to attack them first at Kokonor and Lob Nor ; then to advance along the North Road to the Purun-ki river and the Tsaidam ; as a sequel utterly to annihilate the whole Kalmuck state, to annex Cobdo, Sungaria, and in the end even the Mahometan states of Little Bokhara (i.e. Kashgaria). The Kalmucks retreated on one occasion from Kokonor by a road running west of the Kia-yiih Pass to Hami, and not marked on most maps. They "^ were granted trade privileges with China in 1739, and also had the privilege of going to Tibet to " boil tea " ; but of course that was before their power was broken. At present there seems to be no long-distance caravan trade along the direct roads between Tibet and Lob Nor across the K'unlun Mountains. During all these conquests the Chinese armies always kept either to the northernmost road by Uliassutai, or to the North (Sungaria) Road, or the two branches of the South (Kashgaria) Road, i.e. to the main roads ; and the same thing may be said of Tso Tsung-t'ang's reconquest from Yakub Beg in 1877, except that he never used the Uliassutai road at all : by-roads and cuts across the desert were only occasionally made use of for military surprises. The southern branch of the South Road has always been used for the Khotan jade-stone import trade, which is a very ancient one. After the subjection of Kashgaria, the Manchus for a few years extended their influence over Kokand, Bokhara, Shignan, and Badak- shan ; but their armies never penetrated even temporarily far beyond the Pamirs. There were continuous disputes with Kokand as to the right of the latter to tax the Kashmir trade crossing the Sarikol region ; but China supplied 82 TRADE ROUTES [chap, iv Kokand with tea and drugs, and was thus always able to put pressure upon the Usbeg power by stopping this important trade. The ordinary Tibetan tribute route, over which thousands of men and animals habitually travelled to and from Peking in huge caravans, was that taken by the Abbe Hue in 1834-5. He followed the high-road from Dolon Nor to Chagan Kuren, near Baotu ; cut across the Yellow River and a corner of the Ordos Desert ; and recrossed it at Karahoto. Thence he fol- lowed the left bank and the Great Wall to Sayang, Nien-po, and the Kumbum Monastery, near Si-ning. From that resting-place he started once more along the road running south of Kokonor to the sources of the Yellow River ; crossed the Shuga and Bayen-kara ranges, then the Murui-Usu, and on to Lhassa, apparently by the same road the Manchu Nepaul army took, as already related. The Nepaul " tribute " (trading) mission, which still periodically visits China, invariably takes the post road, via Shigatsz and Lhassa, to Ta-tsien Lu. The road from Yiin Nan to Tibet, though practicable, is too rough for troops, and is therefore deliberately abandoned by the Manchus, as it was 2,000 years ago by Han Wu Ti : still, Prince Henry of Orleans some twenty years ago managed to cross the extreme head waters of the Irrawaddy, the ultimate sources of which have since been accurately placed by Jacques Bacot and others. Westward from Lhassa to Lari there is a post road ; but the Chinese Resident had for long been practically a political prisoner at Lhassa ; d fortiori no Chinese trader can do much in the way of exploration farther west. Since the British expedition to Lhassa of 1904, the Chinese reconquest of Tibet, and the disorganisation of frontier affairs con- A.D. 1850-1900] CHINA TO MECCA ROUTES 83 sequent upon the fall of the Manchu dynasty, the precise status of Tibet has been in a state of " suspended animation." It is interesting to notice what route is usually followed by modern Chinese ^lussulmans on their way to Mecca. In 1893 I met one of these pilgrims at Bhamo ; he had come all the way from Ho Nan province, and was going by steamer to Rangoon. In 1841 a Yiin Nan Mussulman, who afterwards became prominent in the Pan- thay rebellion as " Old Papa," went by way of Esmok to Kiang Tung, Legya, and Ava (Man- dalay) ; thence in a junk laden with Yiin Nan copper to Rangoon. From this port he travelled by steamer to Calcutta, Ceylon, Malabar, Socotra, Aden, and Mocha ; thence to Jeddah. The route he took back by sailing vessel was ultimately by way of Acheen ; but he was wrecked on the way, and most of the places he called at are not at all identifiable by the un- initiated. Then he went to Penang, Malacca, Singapore, Canton (where he stayed in the old mosque), up the West River to Nan-ning and Peh-seh. Peh-seh is now the great trading centre for the foot traffic between Pakhoi, Kwei Chou, and Yiin Nan. But he also gives us a land route, which is exactly that of 2,000 years ago, and is evidently so described by him with the intention of encouraging the Kan Suh Mussulmans to do their religious duty ; to wit, the Kia-yiih Pass to Hami, Turfan, Aksu, Ush, Kashgar, Andijan, Kokand, Khodjand, Samar- cand, Bokhara, Bagdad, Aintab, Aleppo, Damascus, Jerusalem, Cairo ; or, as an alter- native, Aintab, Antioch, Jaffa. Instead of going from Bokhara to Bagdad (he names eight stations), you can go from Bokhara to Balkh, Kabul, Kandahar, Kelat, and Bejda, taking ship at Beyla. The late Gabriel Deveria has collected 8 84 TRADE ROUTES [chap, iv these and many other interesting details con- cerning the Chinese Mussulmans. If we now pass on to Mongolia, we shall find that the trade of north-west concentrates at or near Baotu, at the north-east corner of the Yellow River bend, whence the ancient high-road through Kwei-hwa Ch'eng (Tenduc) permits of easy travel to Dolonor (Lama Miao) and Kalgan. From Kwei-hwa runs also the high-road to Uliassutai and the northernmost route to the Far West. These roads (soon to be railways) are of great commercial importance to the foreign trade of Tientsin, and the best first-hand authority on the subject is Rodney Gilbert, who has " roughed it " by boat, cart, and camel. As to the roads into Manchuria, recent re- searches prove absolutely that the mediaeval Chinese envoys to the Niichens followed the present high-road round from Peking, through Shan-hai Kwan, Mukden, Kirin or Ch'angch'un, to Alchuk and Sansing. So with the modern Corean road from Soul, or P'ing-yang, by way of I-chou, whence either via Mukden and the Manchu road, or via the Feng-hwang road and Kin-chou, where the latter joins the former : these were the roads of ancient times. The Kitan roads I have been over, for the most part, myself ; they are simply the high-roads from Peking through the various passes of the Great Wall, and to this day the caravans of laden camels or mules, the droves of horses, the herds and flocks driven in for sale may be seen coming through in the winter season exactly as they came 2,000 years ago. Of course the Peking- Mukden and Peking-Kalgan railways have revo- lutionised part at least of the traffic, and no doubt before long the Kalgan railway will be carried on to Urga and Kiachta. The present Kalgan and Kiachta road used by the Russians B.C.100-A.D.1900] ROADS THROUGH TONQUIX 85 was not the one preferred by them in the seven- teenth century. They used to go from Tsuru- haitu on the lliver Argun, across the River Hailar and the Hingan Range, down the Yall Valley to the Nonni ; whence south-west through the steppes and mountainous borderland of south- east Mongolia to the Hi-feng K'ou (pass) in the Great Wall. Between Tsitsihar on the Nonni and Peking, travellers crossed Cholin-u-yc and Mokhoi to the rivers Toro and Shara Muren, with its tributary the Loha. The same thing may be said of the Tonquin frontier ; the roads have always been the present ones ; the only novelty being that the Red River route from Yun Nan past Lao-kai to Hanoi never existed in practice, even if known in theory, as a continuous road, until twenty- five years ago, when Jean Dupuis effectively discovered it. Even Haiphong had no existence as a port. Now we have a continuous railway from the port, via Hanoi and Lao-kai to Yiin Nan city. The Annamese formerly discouraged trade with China, when and for the same reasons the Japanese did : first, on account of pirate complications ; secondly, from the dread of opium importations. The total result of these laborious inquiries into trade routes is, after all, a simple conclusion. With one or two exceptions, the beaten tracks are exactly the same now as they were 2,000 years ago, both by land and by sea. The marts, with similar rare exceptions, are either the old marts, or are near them, or have a special traceable reason for their modified existence. Even the peoples are the same peoples, mixed or displaced here and there by conquests, famines, or other cataclysms. Tea, known, as we have seen, to the earliest Arab visitors, became a new export when cotton became a new import : 86 TRADE ROUTES [chap, iv it was first taxed in the eighth century. Cheap freights for heavy commodities in huge ships have displaced certain exchanges ; as, for instance, iron, which from being an export is now an import : thousands of tons of old horse- shoes twenty years ago did, and possibly still do go out as ballast, at low freights. The great novelty and the great economic curse to China has been opium, which now • happily ceases in great measure to work its evil course ; but it is not fair to charge upon ourselves the whole blam.e for this, nor do the Chinese historians attempt to do so : on the other hand, we have not been ungenerous in our efforts to aid China in suppressing the evil within the past decade. The way a man walks from one village to another is a road ; if the walk extends to fifty villages, and a pack-mule accompanies the man, it becomes a great road ; if supplied with post- stations for man and caravan, it is a high-road. People follow their noses by land, the compass by sea (or headlands if they do not understand the compass), and bones in the desert ; all this now in 1917 exactly as they did 200 B.C. In other words, commercial history shows us nothing more than that with the same old materials we adapt ourselves to fortuitous cir- cumstances exactly as our ancestors did before us. During the past sixty years these modifying circumstances have been of unusual gravity, and for that reason have caused unusual com- motion^ — they are steam, electricity, coal, petro- leum ; and now last of all wireless talk, aerial and submarine locomotion ; in a word, " pro- gress." It appears to me doubtful if we Euro- peans are a whit happier for " progress " ; it has certainly not had cheerful results so far for the Chinese i — two dozen words originally written in 1900, truer than ever now in 1917. CHAPTER V ARRIVAL OF EUROPEANS The first European missionary who attempted to reach China by sea was St. Francis Xavier, and the first great city the Portuguese had definitely heard of was Canton ; but St. Francis died, in 1552, on his way thither, at the port of a small island called Shang-ch'uan, lying to the south-west of Macao. The name was soon cor- rupted into Sanciano, or Saint John, which it now bears : the Macao Portuguese still make an annual pilgrimage to this place. Macao was founded shortly afterwards, but it was not until 1582 that the Jesuits Ruggieri and Pasio actually succeeded in reaching Canton itself ; and they subsequently Avent on to the then provincial capital of Chao-k'ing, locally pro- nounced Shiu-heng. Here they were joined in the following year by the Italian, Matthew Ricci, who after various vicissitudes reached Peking with one or two companions in 1601. Now it was that the Chinese had the opportunity for the first time of com.paring notes upon the subject of the mysterious Franks and the semi- mythical country of Ta-ts'in, which up to that date had been as much a puzzle to them as Serica and the Seres had been to the denizens of the West. The condition of their own prac- tical knowledge when Ricci arrived was as follows :■ — 87 88 ARRIVAL OF EUROPEANS [chap, v In 1517 a " Fulangki " fleet had appeared at St. John's Island, which was then the entrepot of trade between Canton and Malacca. Why the Portuguese^ — for they it was, under Peres de Andrade's command^ — were introduced into China by this name we can only guess ; prob- ably because, as with the old Fulin, the already established Arabs had to explain to the Chinese who they were. They sent apparently to Canton or Chao-k'ing a Ka-pi-tan Mo (Capitao do Mar) with tribute in 1518, and then first was their name of " Frank " officially recorded : the word " Portugal " was afterwards used, but it never seems to have quite " caught on," though the " Po-tu-ki man " of Macao is now familiar to us all. Naturally the appearance of these strangers at Canton, to which place Andrade shortly afterwards forced his way, created great commotion in official circles, especially as other Portuguese ships had meanwhile visited Ts'uan- chow, and had exhibited considerable violence and asperity in their dealings with the various trading people along the coasts. However, a Portuguese mission, it is not quite clear under whom, got to Peking in 1520, and an attempt was then made by the Chinese Government to force the Envoy to restore Malacca to its rightful king, who was nominally a tributary of China. At least one of the members of the mission was executed at Peking, and the Envoy himself is supposed to have perished in prison at Canton, back to which place he was ignominiously escorted. This fiasco naturally led to hostilities, during which the large Portuguese cannon used in the sea-fights attracted considerable attention, and soon acquired the name of " Franks " too, which in some parts of China is still the case even to this day. The Chinese seem to have subsequently availed themselves of the assist- A.D. 1500-1700] EARLY PORTUGUESE DOINGS 89 ance of the Portuguese, and of these wonderful guns, to punish their own pirates : trade had meanwhile been temporarily transferred to the coast town of Tien-peh (Tin-pak), west of St. John's, but now (1534-7) the Portuguese were allowed by some official who had been judiciously bribed to occupy Macao as a commercial depot ; and from that day to this they have never been ousted from it, though their right to possess it was never put on a legal footing until some thirty years ago (1887). But they had also for a time other settlements at Ningpo and Ts'iian- chow, the former of which was destroyed in 1549, probably at the time the piratical Mendez Pinto was there. Pinto had just escaped from captivity in Mongolia, and had returned to Ningpo from a visit to Japan, which country he was the first white man to see. There was also some fighting at and near Ts'iian-chow, but both the Chinese and the Portuguese accounts leave confused impressions, and it is probable that the Portuguese never had so much to do with that port as the Spaniards. For some years after this the severest possible restrictions were placed upon Chinese leaving their country for purposes of trade, but in 1567 the Governor of Fuh Kien obtained their removal : in any case trade at Macao went on without a break. In the main it appears the Chinese were unable or unwilling to prevent the fortification of Macao : moreover the Dutch and the Japanese were beginning to give serious trouble, and it was therefore thought prudent to conciliate the Portuguese. Their trade was limited to twenty-five ships a year. In 1667 a mission was sent from Goa to complain about obstructions to trade, and in 1710-27 the King of Portugal took prominent part in the Emperor's academic dispute with the Popes ; but since 90 ARRIVAL OF EUROPEANS [chap, v the last mission to Peking in 1753 the Portuguese have until our own days had very little inter- course with official China. Up to the time of Ricci's arrival it was not quite understood what country Portugal really was ; the very name was not heard in China till 1564 ; and even now the vague name of " Western Ocean " men is usually employed by old popular habit to spe- cially designate the Portuguese, — except, as ex- plained, in " pidjin English " conversation. The physique as well as the moral of the mixed race now in occupation of Macao is considerably below that of pure Portuguese, and even below that of the pure Chinese. The trade of the place has dwindled into insignificance. From the Portuguese we pass to the Spaniards. In the year 1576 the Chinese, in their pursuit of certain Japanese and Chinese pirates who had been hovering about Formosa, came across some more Franks in Manila, where there had already been large settlements of Fuh Kien traders long before the Spaniards ever appeared in those seas. A Mexican priest who had lived there, writing in 1638, said their junks came from Ocho (Foo- chow), Chincheo (Ts'iian-chow), and Amoy, and always went back in ballast, carrying only silver. They paid a duty of 3 per cent, upon all imports, and there were no exports : the group was nominally annexed in 1565. In 1575 two Spanish Augustines had visited Foochow and Canton on a political mission from Manila. The Chinese may well be excused for having confused the Portuguese with the Spaniards during the negotiations which took place at Manila relative to the treatment of Fuh Kien merchants there, for in 1580 Philip II. annexed Portugal, which remained for over half a century one realm with Spain. Manila, so called from a river in Luzon, was taken in 1571, and the A.D. lGOO-1900] THE FIRST SPANIARDS 91 whole group of islands was styled " The Philip- pines " in honour of the Spanish king. The Chinese then used no other word than the old native name of Luzon ; nor do they now. It appears that some of the speculative Chinese, evidently misled by the enormous importation of silver from Mexico, and the fact that the Spaniards never gave anything but silver in ex- change for the* multifarious Chinese produce at last imported, got into their heads a notion that gold and silver might be obtained in Manila for the mere picking of it up. Official personages were despatched at their instigation from China to make inquiry : the Spaniards grew suspicions that ideas of conquest were being entertained, and considerable ill-feeling was thus engendered, which culminated in a fearful unreasoning massacre. This seems to have been in 1603 ; nearly the whole of the Chinese were put to the sword, and even those who escaped death were sent to the galleys. Both Chinese and Spanish accounts agree, however, in stating that junks and traders soon began to arrive again as if nothing had happened. But a limit was thereafter placed upon their numbers by the Spaniards, and each man had to pay a poll-tax of eight dollars. Another massacre took place in 1662, when the Chinese pirate Koxinga, who had just ejected the Dutch from Formosa, threatened to come over and also take ^Manila. Since then the Chinese Government, until quite recent years, seems to have almost entirely ignored the place ; and their subjects, chiefly from the AmxOy region, have thriven fairly well under the strict but narrow Spanish rule. The total population of the whole group does not fall far short of 8,000,000, and, as everyone knows, the Americans are now (since 1899) in possession. The main exports are sugar, tobacco, and hemp. 92 ARRIVAL OF EUROPEANS [chap, v It should perhaps be mentioned that in 1762 Manila was occupied by the English, but soon surrendered on payment of a ransom. The Dutch first opened commercial relations with the Spice Islands, Bantam (near Batavia) and Acheen in 1598-1600. Coffee was first brought into Europe from Arabia in 1580, and was soon in great demand, so the Dutch sent an agent to Mocha with a view to cultivating coffee in Java. In 1610 they extended their trading relations to Hirado, in Japan : but in 1640 they were compelled to retire, and were confined to the tiny island of Decima — a mere quay — in Nagasaki Bay. It was about this period that the Chinese first heard of the existence of the Dutch : " Sailing in great ships and carrying huge guns, they went straight for Luzon (1601), but the Luzon men repelled them, on which they turned for Macao." Just after the Japanese and Chinese pirates had been driven out of Kilung (whence the latter fled to Borneo), some Chinese fishing boats drifted to Formosa, and then traders began to settle there. The Dutch were not long in discovering this promising commerce. In 1603-4 they succeeded, with the connivance of certain Chinese traders, in effect- ing a landing in the Pescadore group of islands, whence they were ejected in 1624 : a number of them were carried captive to Peking. In consequence of these events, the Chinese Govern- ment encouraged their people to emigrate to Formosa, and the Dutch, in 1634, also went on to found settlements in T'ai-wan (South For- mosa). The oldest name for the island seems to be " Mount Kilung," from a headland on the north promontory, and Kilung is still the name of a port in the extreme north ; but no serious attention appears to have been paid to it by junkmasters until the fifteenth century, when A.D. 1660-1900] VICISSITUDES OF FORMOSA 93 Chinese traders began to establish their stations at various suitable spots in the island. Shortly- after their exploit with the King of Loochoo, as narrated on page 40, the Japanese endeavoured to form a colony in Formosa, and had to contest possession with the Dutch ; but the Dutch were ultimately driven out in 1662 by Koxinga, who was himself half a Japanese : his father, a baptized Christian named Nicholas, had visited both Manila and Japan, where he had married a native woman, Koxinga's mother. It may be explained .that Koxinga is merely the Portu- guese form of the Chinese words Kwok-sing-ya, or " the gentleman with the reigning surname," because a Chinese prince, then a fugitive in the south from the triumphant arms of the Manchus, had caused to be conferred on him, in considera- tion of his heroic patriotism, the family name of the Ming dynasty. In 1665 a Dutch mission under Van Hoorn visited Peking, and the local govern- ment of Full Kien seems to have sought Dutch assistance about this time in connection with Formosa ai'iairs. It was not until 1683 that the Manchus succeeded in obtaining from the Koxinga family, with Dutch assistance, a renun- ciation of their hereditary rights in Formosa ; and subsequent to that date (until its cession to Japan in 1895) the island was incorporated in the Manchu empire as part of Fuh Kien. Chinese history gives a fairly intelligible and accurate account of the struggle between Japanese, Franks, and Red Hairs, but after their expulsion from Formosa the Dutch are not so much heard of in the China seas as other Euro- pean nations. According to the arrangement which the Chinese say was made by a Dutch mission to Peking in 1656, Flolland had to send tribute to the Manchu court once every eight years. A mission under Titsingh and Van 94 ARRIVAL OF EUROPEANS [chap, v Braam visited the Chinese capital in 1793, and since then Holland appears to have gone quietly about her own business in the Southern Archi- pelago, without troubling herself with Manchu official relations at all ; Chinese traders mean- while managed to thrive under the strict and discriminating rule of the Hollanders. And so things went on, their Canton factory of course in full swing, until the Dutch treaty of 1863 was concluded : this was after the second Chinese war, and the occupation of Peking by the English and French. But even after this the Dutch held aloof, and probably they would never have sent a minister to Peking at all, had they not desired to obtain a liberal supply of coolies for Sumatra. The Chinese in Java and other Dutch colonies have not quite so much freedom as in Hongkong or Singapore ; but they are treated with sagacity as well as firmness, and the Dutch, who watch them carefully, and nip any nascent rising or independent action in the early bud, know well how to utilise to their own advantage the capacity of the Chinese for self-government and commercial organisation. This fact began to touch Chinese pride after the " Boxer " war, and, following many years of patient negotiation, China at last gained her main point, which was to place her nationals in the Dutch islands under the " observation " at least of Chinese consuls. All this, however, relates to the Dutch of to-day, from whom we must now turn to pick up the thread of our narrative of the earlier arrivals in China. Pacci died in 1610, and was therefore not called on to explain to the Chinese the concrete existence of any European nations except the Franks, the Italians, and the Dutch. But there is a chapter in the Ming history w^hich states that, according to the Western men who A.D. 1530-1687] THE JESUITS AT PEKING 95 arrived between 1573 and 1617, their " Lord of Heaven " was born in Judaea, or the ancient Ta-ts'in. Ricci is also specifically said to have made for the Chinese a map of Europe, and to have explained to them the division of the world into five great continents. His statements were received with considerable incredulity, but he was, notwithstanding, kindly treated by the Emperor. After Ricci's death, Pantoja, Rho, Schaal (or Schall), and other distinguished Jesuits succeeded to his influence ; they rendered considerable service to the Chinese in the manufacture of guns, the calculations of eclipses, and matters of science generally. Adam Schaal was in Peking shortly after the Manchus took possession ; his appeal to their clemency was well received, and he was appointed President of the Astronomical Board by the prudent Manchus, who were only too anxious to avail themselves of talent, wherever found. His successor, Verbiest, assisted the Manchu commanders during the Chinese satrap rebellions to make large cannon for use in the field, and the Emperor K'ang-hi even showed himself personally very well disposed towards Christianity. Unfortunately, religious intrigues with his own sons, and disputes between rival missionary societies led to an untimely difference of opinion upon the subject of ancestor worship between the Emperor and the Pope, since which time politics have been inextricably mixed up with Western religion in China, and persecutions never entirely ceased so long as the Manchu dynasty existed. The first English arrivals came shortly after the Dutch. According to one account cited by Chinese writers. Queen Elizabeth of England sent a letter and presents to China in 1596, but the ships of the mission were wrecked in a storm. In 1637 five English ships are stated to have 96 ARRIVAL OF EUROPEANS [chap, v come from Sumatra to Canton, and to have com- menced hostilities there, owing to the Portu- guese having intrigued so as indirectly to force the local authorities to obstruct the new-comers' trade ; but, it is added, they surrendered the fort they had taken, on being allowed to dispose of their cargoes. However, in both cases the strangers were, if they really did come, mistaken for Dutchmen, whose own origin again was only imperfectly understood at that period. In Koxinga's time the English are believed to have had dealings at Amoy ; this is not unlikely, for they were certainly there in 1730, when their trade was stopped ; at all events, the East India Company established, and for a few years kept up a factory at the Chusan Islands near Ningpo somewhere towards the end of the seventeenth century.^ It is certain that already some time before that, in 1684, a foothold had been obtained at Canton ; indeed, the Chinese state that in 1685 foreign commerce had been officially authorised at Macao, Chang-chou (Zaitun), Ningpo, and some place near Shanghai. There were several other attempts made during the eighteenth century to trade at Ningpo and Tientsin ; but practically all legitimate foreign commerce, English and otherwise, w^as confined to Canton, until the first war with England broke out in 1840, in consequence of a misunder- standing in connection with the opium trade, and about the price to be paid for opium sur- rendered by us. Up to the year 1765 the import of opium, which was at first regarded in the light of a medicinal drug, had never exceeded 200 chests ; but in 1796 it was entirely pro- hibited, on account of the rapidly increasing ^ The correspondence of Catchpoole, who was there in 1701—2, was about twenty years ago published by M. Henri Cordier in the Revue de V Extreme-Orient. A.D. 1795-1906] SO-CALLED " OPIUM WAR " 97 number of smokers. In 1793 Lord Macartney had audiences with the Emperor at Jeliol, but opium was apparently not one of the sub- jects specially discussed/ It seems the British Superintendent in 1795 ofi'ered China some assistance against revolted Nepaul.^ By 1820 the import of opium had steadily risen to 4,000 chests, and the Chinese Government began to feel justly alarmed, both at the enormous drain of silver from the country, and at the prospect of debauching the population. In 1821 the opium hulks were driven away to the Ling-ting Islands, and in 1838 severely repressive measures were begun. The whole melancholy story of the so-called " Opium War " has been frequently told, and I have myself published a precis trans- lation of the best connected Chinese account of it. It is distinctly admitted that it was the stoppage of trade, and not the destruction of opium, that caused the war ; also that the Emperor when the war was over voluntarily conceded the right of all but officials to smoke the drug. It is unquestionable that the smoking of opium does a great deal of physical harm, and causes a vast waste of money and energy ; but even the Chinese admit that the initial responsibility for its use by smokers was as much theirs as ours ; and in any case they had during a whole generation deliberately extended the evil by allowing the undisguised cultivation of the poppy on a wholesale scale in China itself. Indian opium in 1900 did not represent one quarter of the total consumption ; since 1906, however, energetic steps have been taken to rid the country of the curse. ^ I published the Emperor's amusing letters to King George III. in the Nineteenth Century for July, 1896. ^ An official account of Lord Amherst's abortive mission in 1816 appears in the Chinese Recorder for 1898. 98 ARRIVAL OF EUROPEANS [chap, v After the first war, which secured, in addition to Canton, the further opening to trade of Shanghai, Ningpo, Foochow, and Amoy as treaty ports to all the world, besides the cession of Hongkong to Great Britain, the chief points of international friction were usually found to be in connection with the contested claim of British traders to reside within the walls of Canton. In 1846 a fine junk was smuggled out of the river, taken by Captain Kellet, R.N., round the Cape to America and England, and exhibited in the East India Dock two years later. In 1856 the Viceroy Yeh categorically refused to admit the English into the city, on the pretext that Governor Bonham had formally abandoned the claim in 1849. These strained relations led gradually and indirectly up to the burning of the " Thirteen Hongs," and to the second war, in which the French also took part, and which culminated in the destruction of the Emperor's Summer Palace some miles beyond the metro- polis, and the opening of Peking itself to the diplomatic representatives of European powers generally. The Treaty of Tientsin and the Peking Convention which followed it opened a number of new coast ports (Newchwang, Tient- sin, Chefoo, Swatow) to foreign trade, besides certain places on the River Yang-tsze (Hankow, Kewkiang, Chinkiang), two markets in the islands of Formosa (T'aiwan, Tamsui), and Hainan (Hoihow) : this last, however, was not actually utilised until 1876. Russia took advan- tage of the occasion to extend her Ussuri terri- tory at the expense of Manchuria, and most of the other European powers hastened to secure to themselves by separate treaty the same com- mercial and religious advantages as those obtained by England and France, as will be recorded in detail under separate heads. Mis- A.D. 1860-1875] TREATIES WITH CHINA 99 sionary enterprise was placed by these treaties upon an entirely new footing, and instead of being a dangerous occupation, in which the un- protected priest carried his life in his hands as a guarantee for his own prudence and moderation, it became a comparatively comfortable and safe distraction, combining the charm of agreeable travel in new lands with a reasonable certainty of consular protection. It is only fair, however, to add that some societies, as, for instance, the Jesuits and the China Inland Mission, have con- sistently done their best to avoid the doubtful advantage of consular interference. We shall towards the end of the chapter take up in turn each nation as affected by modern treaties. Meantime we may remark that from 1860 to 1870 England was unmistakably the sole influential power at Peking, — perhaps with Russia, on account of her land frontiers and her consequentproximity, as a good second; but after- wards Japan began to work her way ominously to the front ; whilst, after the Franco-German War, the inoffensive Prussia blossomed into a threat- ening state called " Te-i-ch'i " (Deutsch, or Ger- many) and proportionately increased the scale and pretensions of her commercial and diplo- matic representation in the Far East, culminating in her military direction of the Great Powers in the " Boxer " war of 1900. On the other hand, the defeat of France deprived her of the opportunity of avenging in an adequate manner the massacre of French officials and other subjects at Tientsin in 1870 ; and thus the influence of France fell almost to zero for some years. Then came the suspicious m.urder of Mr. Margary, a British consular officer conducting an Anglo-Indian expedition over the Burmese frontier into Yiin Nan ; the futile mission of inquiry under Mr. Grosvenor ; and the prolonged diplomatic dis- 9 loo ARRIVAL OF EUROPEANS [chap, v cussion which led to the Chefoo Convention of 1876. The immediate results were the opening to trade of more ports (Wenchow, Pakhoi) on the coast, and more places on the Yang-tsze (Ich'ang, Wuhu), together with certain stipula- tions concerning the opium trade, and the establishment of permanent Chinese Legations in Europe, America, and Japan. In 1886 these stipulations ripened into what is called the Opium Convention, practically arranging, on the one hand, for the checking of a further increase in the Indian import, and on the other for the assistance of the Hongkong Government in securing to China, under cheap conditions, an enhanced import duty on that article ; but on the understanding that there was to be no further charge of any kind in the interior of China. Another open clause in the Chefoo Convention took the ultimate form of the Chungking Agreement of 1890, by which foreign com- merce obtained direct admission into the heart of Sz Ch'wan. The Sikkim Convention of the same year recognised in principle the right of British India to trade with Tibet, provided for by a separate article in the Chefoo Con- vention. When Upper Burma was taken, the British Government in its haste to get rid of Chinese objections had, or rather its representative had, somewhat weakly accepted a stipulation about a mission from Burma being sent with presents at fixed intervals under British supervision ; this was by way of recognition of China's de jure suzerainty. The stipulation was contained in Article I. of the Convention of July, 1886 ; and, as at the same time some preliminary steps had already been taken toAvards opening up trade from British India with Tibet, by Article IV. it was agreed to stay further action in this A.D. 1894-1904] THE BURMESE QUESTION 101 sense, and not " press the matter unduly " ;■ — in other words, to drop it, as another sop to China for holding her tongue about Burma. The Convention of March, 1894, " gave effect " to the third article of this Convention of 1886 by dealing with the Burma frontier and its trade questions alone, but of course it omitted all allusion to Tibet. The Chinese, meanwhile, having made an imprudent treaty with France touching the cession to her of certain Shan states, which had been quite as much Burmese as Chinese, were compelled by Great Britain further to modify the Convention of 1894 by another one dated February, 1897, which recti- fied the frontier in other directions less clearly savouring of Burmese " rights," and therefore much to the advantage of Burma : it further provided for the establishment of British consuls at Esmok and Momein. By a special additional article, the coveted West River above Canton was at last opened to trade, together with the ports of Wu-chou and Sam-shui. Thus, after an interval of 2,000 years, we obtained the rights forcibly taken by China from the King of South Yiieh.^ Finally, by the Kowloong Extension and the Wei-hai Wei Agreements of 1898, we enlarged our hold over the mainland opposite Hongkong, and acquired the " ele- ments " of a new naval base in Shan Tung, which was situated right between the " spheres " of Russia and Germany. Naggings with China about Tibetan trade went on at intervals till they culminated (1904) in our occupation of Lhassa : on the Burmese frontier we have secured command of the whole Irrawaddy valley. In view of all this no one will say- — however much in matters of detail we may have erred in judgment* — that Great Britain has failed to 1 Pp. 48, 61. 102 ' ARRIVAL OF EUROPEANS [chap, v secure for herself, on the whole, a considerable number of miscellaneous commercial and political advantages from the jdcheuse situation arising out of an attitude on the part of China so hostile to " progress." The Russians were the first Europeans to hold relations on a national scale with China, though it is highly improbable that at first the Chinese had the faintest idea of connecting them either with the ancient Ta-ts'in people, or with any other hazily conceived " tribes " of the West Ocean, or Europe. They were rather grouped, in the Chinese mind, with the Kirghis and Kipchaks as a Western Asiatic race of hyper- boreans. The story of the Mongol conquests of 1240 and onwards has often been told, but it is not so generally known that Russian imperial guards are frequently mentioned at the Mongol Court of Peking at intervals up to a century later than that date, and this at a time when the Mongol dynasty at Peking was tottering to its fall, and had no more political hold of any kind upon Russia. Not one single word touching Russia appears in Chinese history during the whole interval between the disappearance of the Mongols (1368) and the rise of the Manchus (1644) ; but, according to Russian accounts, an unsuccessful attempt to induce the Chinese Emperor to open relations was made in 1567. It seems to be certain that there were some Russians found in Shan Si twenty years before this, but it does not appear very clearly what they were doing there : they seem to have been ultimately rescued from danger by some friendly Mongols. The chief authority for this strange incident, when I first discussed it, was the ad- venturous Portuguese traveller Mendez Pinto, already mentioned, who was taken prisoner by the Chinese, and put to work on the Great A.D. 1620-1860] EARLY RUSSIAN RELATIONS 103 Wall repairs.^ Two Cossacks were sent, via Kalgan, on a mission to Peking by the Governor of Tobolsk in 1619, but with like unsatisfactory results. In 1652 there began a long struggle between the Manchus and the Russians for the possession of Yaksa, or Albazin, on the Anuir. Baikofi' was sent on a mission in 1653. By the Treaty of Nerchinsk of August, 1689, the Russians agreed to abandon Albazin, and a number of them were removed as prisoners to Peking, where they were incorporated in the " banner " system. Provision was made for their religious instruction, and this is really the germ of the Russian Orthodox Mission at Peking. Aigun, opposite Blagoveschtschensk, where the fighting occurred in August, 1900, was made the local Manchu capital in 1684. The history of Russian relations with the Manchus is a long one. It embraces the questions of the Turgut Mongols' or Kalmucks' migration to the Volga, the Manchu envoy Tulishen's missions to them in 1715-30, and their subsequent return in a dis- gusted frame of mind to China in 1770 ; Russia's missions to China in 1719-27 ; the Kalmuck wars, and the surrender by Russia of fugitives ; frontier disputes in 1848-9 ; the occupation by Russia of the Lower Amur in 1855 ; Poutiatin's mission ; and the Treaty of Aigun in 1858. Their commercial relations Math China had been confined to the tea trade of Kiachta, and to a trifling barter near Tarbagatai. In 1860 Count Ignatieff, by the Treaty of Peking, took advan- tage of the situation created by the Anglo-French attack upon China to secure the annexation to Russia of the whole Ussuri region. In 1862 there was concluded a convention regulating the land ^ I have since dealt willi the whole subject in detail. See Mongolia before ihe Manchus, Shanghai As. Soc. Vol. xliv., and The Russians and Mongolia, University Press, 1917. 104 ARRIVAL OF EUROPEANS [chap, v trade via Kalgan, but this was subsequently superseded by another dated 15th April, 1869. When China was in the throes of the Mussulman revolt, Russia temporarily occupied the province of Hi ; but, after Yakub Beg's power had been broken in 1876, energetic steps were taken by China to recover from Russia this important region, and these efforts proved successful in 1880-1. At one time the Manchvi envoy Ch'unghou had nearly been persuaded, amid the Capuan delights of Livadia, into abandoning the territory, and it was largely owing to the patriotic denvmciations of (the later Viceroy) Chang Chi-tung that his timorous action was repudiated by China. During all this long period of time the Russians had been carefully kept by the Chinese as far away as possible from Manchuria, the whole of which region it had always, since the Albazin affair, been Manchu policy to maintain as nearly as might be practicable in the condition of an unoccupied desert. It was only in 1888, after British con- sular and military officers had visited and reported on that fertile region, that China awoke to the fallacy of this timid policy. Since then the three Manchurian provinces have been civilly organised, cviltivated, and populated as quickly as possible, and were thus being pre- pared to resist the advance of Russian power by the development of their own economic strength. Bvit the utter collapse of the Chinese and Manchu military efficiency during the Japanese war gave Russia another opportunity, which she was not slow to take, in the way now well known to us all. Moreover, the Russian idea, first conceived at the time of the Crimean VV^ar, of constructing a Siberian railway, had come to sudden ripeness in March, 1891, when the Czar Alexander III., differing from his A.D. 1900, A.n. 1300] RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR 105 ministers, took a peremptory resolution in favour of one uninterrupted line ; and the time was now thought favourable for diverting this line, as originally planned under Alexander's ukase, from Nerchinsk, through Manchuria ; since then, however, the Russians have seen the wisdom of continuing their " all-Russian " line to Vladivostock by way of Khabarovka. The Cassini Convention of September, 189G, secured railway powers that gave to Russia an over- whelming predominancy in the north of the Chinese Empire, as far down as the Liao Tung peninsula. As a direct consequence of the un- expected seizure of Kiao Chou by Germany, towards the end of 1897, the Russians actually occupied Port Arthur and Ta-lien Wan, as the Cassini Convention seems to have loosely stipu- lated, — under certain undefined conditions. Invents subsequently so shaped themselves that Russia was now in quasi-possession of all Man- churia until the " Boxers " began to move. Following shortly upon that came the Russo- Japanese war, the result of which was to divide the railway administration of Manchuria be- tween Russia and Japan ; and now (1917) the chivalrous attitude towards each other of these former rivals has led to a treaty extending Japanese " rights " up to Harbin, and giving them in addition sailing privileges on the Sungari river. The French until very recently did not make much history in China. Lewis IX. sent the Franciscan friar Ruysbroek (Rubruquis) to Mangu Khan in 1254, but the name of France does not appear in the numerous Mongol allu- sions to Christians. Between 1289 and 1305 there was some correspondence between the Mongol khans of Persia and Philip the Fair, and in 1342 a native of " Fulang " State is recorded in Mongol history to have brought a present to 106 ARRIVAL OF EUROPEANS [chap, v Peking of a very fine black liorse with white " stockings." The same history had already recorded the death, in about 1312, of a " Fuhn " man from the West who had served Gayuk and Kublai Khans as physician, astronomer, and historian. Amongst this man Aisle's (? Isaiah's) sons were Elias, Georgius, and Luke ; so that he was probably at least a Syrian, if not a Frank. In 1367 and 1375 Fuhn men are heard of at the Court of the new Ming dynasty. But the name of France never appears for certain in Chinese history until the year 1718, when, in enumerat- ing the Holan (Butch) and other strange Western nations, the Manchu Emperor observes the " unusual ferocity " of the Holansi, who are " of the same race as the Macanese." True, Lewis XIV. had sent a letter to the Chinese Emperor in 1688, recommending to him some French Jesuits ; but no mention whatever is made of this event in the Manchu history. There was, apparently, a certain amount of French trade at Canton, as is evident from the fact that the United States received French assistance there in 1785 ; but French interests in China up to the date of the Second War were almost exclusively religious, and her missionaries during all this long period of self-effacement suffered great persecution. In spite of the noble services done by Bouvet, Regis, Jartoux, and other Jesuits in mapping out the empire, Christianity was prohibited, and many missionaries were martyred in the provinces. But the limited toleration of Christianity secured by the Treaty of Nanking encouraged Louis Philippe to obtain in 1847 a similar treaty (Whampoa) for France, whose missionaries were thenceforward allowed to settle in the five treaty ports. The great Taiping rebellion of 1850, to which I recur in a later chapter, had for one of its A.D. 1855-1875] FRENCH MISSIONARIES 107 ostensible objects the establishment of Chris- tianity in China. This incongruous mixture of rebellion and religion naturally led to fresh persecutions, for the rebel leader claimed a kind of personal relationship with Jesus Christ. The torture and judicial murder of Father Chappede- laine in 1856 gave Napoleon III. a welcome justi- fication for joining the British in the Second War, as a result of which further advantages were secured (in a rather underhand way) to the missionaries, and the old cathedral at Peking was solemnly' re-opened. On their way back from China, the commanders of the French fleet, in conjunction with the Spaniards, who also had unredressed grievances against Annam, con- quered part of Cochin China, and by the treaty of 1862 Saigon and the surrounding province was made over to the French. This led to further conquests and cessions in 1867, partly as a sequel to the explorations of Gamier and others in the Shan states and Ylin Nan. Whilst the Chinese were engaged about this time in quelling the Mussulman revolt in Yiin Nan, a sjDcculative Frenchman named Dupuis con- ceived the idea of supplying them with arms by way of Tonquin, where the French began to make " arrangements " in 1870. This led again to further activity on the part of Garnier, who had now been to Peking and visited the Yang- tsze ports ; his career, however, was cut short by the border bandit Lao Vinh-phuc ' and his "Black Flags" in 1873. The same thing happened ten years later to the adventurous Riviere, and almost on the same spot. A rebellion in Tonquin, led by a discontented Chinese general named Li Yang-ts'ai, placed China in rather a false position with the Black Flag leader, and also with the Annamese, who ^ Died, honoured, Jan. 1917. 108 ARRIVAL OF EUROPEANS [chap, v were thus uncomfortably placed between three fires. But meanwhile the French had been steadily tightening their hold upon Annam and Tonquin, and all this naturally made the Chinese authorities in the Two Kwang provinces feel very uneasy, not only because Annam was a tributary, but because their own frontier was placed in danger. Finally hostilities broke out ; the Chinese fleet was destroyed at Pagoda Anchorage ; an attempt was made by the French to occupy parts of the Pescadores and Formosa ; and at last, by the Fournier Treaty of May, 1884, and its sequel of June, 1885, China agreed to recognise the validity of the treaties entered into between France and Annam, secur- ing to the former the protectorate of Tonquin. Haiphong now became an important centre of trade, and economical development quickly followed all over Tonquin. A delimitation of land frontiers Avas arranged, and one of the political results has been that several new treaty " ports " have opened to the French the inland trade of Kwang Si and Yiin Nan. Lung- chow (now connected with Langson, in Tonquin, by railway) was opened to trade on the 1st June, 1889 ; Mengtsz was also thrown open in August of the same year ; and Hokow (opposite Lao- kai on the Franco-Chinese frontier) in June, 1895. The new through railway, opened in 1910, enhances the commercial importance of all these places, and places the Yiin Nan capital in direct communication with the sea. Of course France alone of Treaty Powers is the one that nominally benefits by all this ; but although it was in- tended primarily to serve the interests of Franco- Annamese traders, as a matter of fact the trade, — so far as it is not throttled by short-sighted fiscal measures, — is chiefly between the Chinese of Yiin Nan and the merchants of Hongkong, A.D. 1860-1805] FRENCH AND GERMAN DOINGS 100 By the Gerard Convention of 1895 Esmok was opened to Tonquin trade, and a like privilege was secured to the British-proteeted Shan states by the Burma Convention of 1896. Thus this last place (Esmok) is the spot where British and French interests unite. The French availed themselves of the novel situation created in the first instance by Germany at Kiao Chou to claim " compensation " in the shape of the old pirate haunt of Kwang-chou Wan (Bay) opposite the island of Hainan, and proceeded to add to it in petto an undefined Hinterland : a dispute as to boundaries soon provoked hostilities, and it was in consequence of this that the French pushed their way up to and established a political influence at Yiin-nan Fu, whence, however, they had to retire precipitately on the breaking out of " Boxer " troubles. As we have seen, things have righted themselves once more, and for many years both sides have shown tact in con- serving neighbourly relations. Germany was not even known to China by name previous to the Second War, although in 1752 Frederick the Great had founded an Asiatic Company and sent two ships to Canton ; even in Ricci's time some of the Jesuits were known to hail from " Germania," but where that place was no one either knew or cared. After the British and French had got their treaties finally settled in 1860, " various smaller states," amongst which Prussia, applied for similar privileges. The Prussian treaty was signed at Tientsin in September, 1861, but for five years after that no Prussian envoy was allowed to reside at Peking. For some time after their arrival the Germans occupied a rather humble position in an insignificant tenement, which now forms a small part of the British Legation precincts ; and, politically speaking, they were 110 ARRIVAL OF EUROPEANS [chap, v simply makeAveiglits to Great Britain's general policy. But after the successful Franco-German War they began to assume a considerably higher tone, which sometimes became aggressively haughty when the Chinese local officials ven- tured to question the justice of their claims. On one occasion at Swatow (I think in 1882) they landed marines and took forcible possession of a contested piece of ground ; but this violent action was at once sensibly repudiated by Prince Bismarck. Notwithstanding all this, even so late as 1890 the Viceroy at Canton publicly announced that the Germans were more sub- missive than the English, and therefore prefer- able as military instructors. In consequence of these views, the military education of the Chinese has often been largely in the hands of Germans, who have also very naturally taken the opportunity to " unload " arms and ammuni- tion. The Germans, who engineered the job, obtained some credit as joint-deliverers with France and Russia when the Chinese were help- less at the feet of Japan. But the culminating point in Germany's diplomatic influence was reached when, in piping times of peace, Kiao Chou and the surrounding territories were taken by force in ostensible satisfaction for some injuries done to missionaries, but manifestly also because China had not showed sufficiently tangible gratitude for favours received. This act, unprecedented in the annals of diplomacy and international comity, undoubtedly set the evil ball a-rolling which led to the occupation of Port Arthur and Ta-lien Wan by Russia, Wei-hai Wei by England, and Kwang-chou Wan by France : but in all three cases these Powers at least went through the form of asking before taking, and exhibited some small consideration for China's " face." In the long run, perhaps A.D. 1785-1900J POOR CHINA! Ill this aggressiveness may redound to the advan- tage of the Chinese people ; but there is rather an unsavoury smell about it all, and possibly we should have done better for our descendants if we had agreed to put things back upon their former holiest basis. In any case, the propin- quity of the Germans to Confucius' sacred district proved maddening to the Chinese literary mind, and was of itself enough to account for at least one of the massacres at Peking, and, unfortun- ately, elsewhere : at the best this aggressiveness looked like hitting a weak man when he was down. Meanwhile Japan in self-defence had to re-establish herself at the cost of a war in the Liao Tung peninsula, and to eject Germany from Kiao Chou on the first good opportunity. Great Britain's hold on Wei-hai Wei has been " benevolent," savouring, in fact, of a " watching " brief : it remains for France to decide what course of action her historical chivalry will call for in the early future. The United States sent their pioneer trading ship to China in 1785 ; they were first intro- duced by the French into the mysteries of the co-hong or " joint-stock " system at Canton ; but in those days foreign traders were only allowed to reside there during the trading season. For some reason this rule was not enforced so strictly with the Americans, probably because they had just emerged from a war with the aggressive English, and were regarded in the light of possible allies. The Chinese at first styled them " New People," not being able at once to differentiate them from the English. Then the name " Flowery-Flag " was invented, and this national name continues in popular use to our own day. In 1821 the honour of " Old Glory " was somewhat com.promised by 112 ARRIVAL OF EUROPEANS [chap, v the surrender to the Chinese for execution of one Terranuova, a European who had been inscribed on the articles of an American ship. By the treaties of Wang-hia of July, 1844, and Whampoa of October in the same year, the United States secured the privileges obtained by England for her subjects after the first Chinese war. During the progress of the Second War, the Chinese neglected no effort to use the United States as a catspaw ; and indeed the Americans, who perhaps assisted us by putting moral pressure upon China, had a considerable amount of influence in arranging the final settle- ment at Tientsin : consequently they obtained their treaty in 1858 a week earlier than did either the British or the French, who had done all the fighting. There is, however, a tradition that a small American force gave us active assistance at Taku, when the celebrated " blood is thicker than water " episode took place. A real ground for hostilities furnished by the Chinese to the otherwise friendly Americans was the firing into two of their vessels by the forts of the Bogue on the 17th November, 1856. By the Treaty of Washington of 1868 the United States disclaimed all desire to interfere in Chinese affairs, and arranged for the admission of immigrants into the United States. The hostile feeling engendered in the western terri- tories and states by the overflow of undesirable Chinese led to a compromise in the shape of the Commercial Treaty of 1880, and finally to the Immigration Prohibition Treaty of 1894, which in 1904 the Chinese envoy at Washington was instructed to oppose vigorously. The United States have always been somewhat prone to pose as the good and disinterested friend of China, who does not sell opium or exercise any undue political influence. These claims to the A.D. 1865-1900] HONEST AMERICAN BROKER 113 exceptional status of an honest broker have sometimes been shaken by the sharp treatment of Chinese in the United States, Honolulu, and Manila ; but perhaps the Central Government at Washington has not always the po\^^^ to make its just wishes prevail over the biased decisions of state legislatures, and is not there- fore to be blamed too severely. The somewhat loudly advertised return of "part of" the " Boxer " indemnity (in any case subject to conditions) simply means that America had asked for more meat than she could decently swallow. American policy in Corea, having been in missionary hands, was very creditable, and also had a decidedly favourable effect at Peking, where for many years the United States' influence was otherwise weak. However, America's ab- stract virtues in Corea availed her nothing against the Japanese legions. On the other hand, the earlier Chinese policy in Manila was for some time both ungenerous and suicidal : no Chinese except those who left during the war were allowed to immigrate, although Chinese labour alone had developed and can develop the resources of the islands. At present the Americans themselves do not seem quite to know what is the best thing to do with Manila. Mr. Morse is the writer who gives us the most temperate and just account of his countrymen's policy in China. Belgium appeared amongst the minor claim- ants for a treaty after the second war, and one was finally concluded in 1865. She had not been much heard of in China until 1898, when her name has come prominently forward in connection with railway and other concessions. In 1900 M. Joostens pressed for Belgium's right to an envoy for herself alone, and this was acceded to in 1905. In 1862 the Portuguese, with the assistance of 114 ARRIVAL OF EUROPEANS [chap, v the French, endeavoured, but unsuccessfully, to obtain a formal treaty with China, but it was not until 1887 that they were officially recog- nised as possessors of Macao. From 1582 to 1849 they had regularly paid a rental of 510 taels a year, and the Manchu Government natur- ally declined to recognise the declaration of independence which followed upon the assassina- tion, on the 22nd August, 1849, of Governor do Amaral. I possess a Chinese copy of a draft treaty dated 1862, but I do not think it was ever signed : certainly it was never ratified, nor was any Portuguese treaty right conceded. It was to the interest of both parties that this hap- hazard state of affairs should be rectified. China required the co-operation of Macao in order to obtain the full advantages conceded in 1886 by Great Britain in connection with the opium revenue ; and in view of what had happened in Formosa during the 1884 hostilities with France, both China and Portugal felt nervous lest any other power- — especially France- — should appropriate Macao. Portugal therefore under- took never to alienate it without China's con- sent, and on these conditions she drags out a comparatively uneventful existence there. Be- tween 1901 and 1905 the Minister at Peking, Senhor Branco, exhibited considerable activity ; more than one treaty was elaborated, besides subsidiary agreements ; the knotty points were Macao's food supply, nationality and naturalisa- tion, harbour boundaries, smuggling, railway to Canton, ownership of neighbouring islands, etc. Disputes were still going on when the Manchus fell, and so far neither of the two republics seems to have " ratified." The Japanese, who are now fairly entitled alike by right in moral principle and might of conquest to equal rank amongst the greatest of A.D. 1853-1883] JAPAN'S RISE 115 Powers, had always been utterly ignored by the Manchus up to the date of the second war with Great Britain, and this feeling of proud aloofness was heartily reciprocated. In 1853 the United States expedition, under Commodore Perry, led to the circumscribed Treaty of Kana- gawa in 1854. Similar treaties were concluded with Great Britain and Russia in 1855 ; and, after the Anglo-French War of 1858, Lord Elgin, by the Treaty of Yeddo, obtained the opening of Japan to British commerce. In 1868-9 took place the great Japanese revolu- tion, the abolition of the second king, or Shogun, with the whole superstructure of feudalism, and the restoration to real power of the Mikado, or true Emperor. The Japanese now lost no time in preparing themselves as quickly as possible for a suitable place in the world's councils, and never in the history of the universe has a national transformation been so rapid or complete. In 1871 they succeeded in concluding their first treaty with China, w4iich was signed by Li Hung-chang in the autumn of that year. The Chinese did not at first take the Japanese very seriously, feeling rather a contempt for a nation, of small physique withal, which so readily threw off its veneer of Chinese civilisation in favour of new-fangled European notions ; but the Formosa dispute of 1874 soon awoke them to the fact that the despised islanders were not to be trifled with. That same year Japan, by a stroke of the pen, placed China's old tributary Loochoo under the control of the Tokyo Home Office, and all China's expostula- tions were ignored, as well as the piteous en- treaties of Loochoo itself. When, in 1883, the Powers began to conclude treaties with Corea, it was found that Japan had ancient vested rights of an unmistakably historical nature at 10 116 ARRIVAL OF EUROPEANS [chap, v Fusan, and it was soon evident to all and sundry therein concerned that she was bent on developing them in other parts of Corea too. China, as Corea' s suzerain, was somewhat puzzled what to do when Japan in 1876 signed a treaty with the "independent sovereign state" of Chosen ; the matter became more compli- cated when the United States and England did the same thing in 1882-3. The negotiators of the American treaty kindly admitted to a share of privileges thus directly obtained China also, who thus proceeded to conclude a treaty with her own vassal, and then immediately set to work to intrigue with a view to substituting her own active influence in lieu of that of Japan. This led to sundry revolutions, murders, kid- nappings, and hostilities, which lasted over a period of ten years, and finally culminated in the war of 1894-5, when China received a thorough thrashing, and lost both Corea and Formosa : after that for a decade her interests in Corea were semi-officially looked after by the British. In December, 1899, China concluded another treaty with the " Great Emperor " of Corea, foolishly neglecting, however, to insert a most-favoured-nation clause.- — To return to Japan ; the Shimonoseki Treaty and Liao Tung Convention of 1895 had at once raised Japan to the status of a Weltmacht, and brought her into diplomatic collision with European powers as above described. The Commercial Treaty of 1896 somewhat unexpectedly placed in the hands of Europeans many of the advantages Japan had hoped to secure for herself, and the new ports of Soochow and Hangchow were as a sequel opened to the world. Sic vos, non vohis is the motto applicable to Japan's action ; but she took her " dishing " with great dignity, and when in 1900 the declaration by China of A.D.18G3-1900] THE JAPANESE. THE DANES 117 hostilities against the whole world gave Japan her next great opportunity, we could only expect that she would not allow herself to be relegated to a " back seat " again. The Mikado of Japan took absolutely equal rank with the Czar of Russia and the Queen of England in settling up by telegraph the dreadful mess created by the " Boxer " fiasco. Four years after that came the unfortunate Russo-Japanese conflict, which, however, despite the intrigues of a reptile foe, has left them both mutually respecting friends of each other and allies of Great Britain. Corea is now a Japanese province, and doing well at that. Whatever Japanese past faults may have been, a courageous fighting race will always appeal to the sporting sense of fairness which has in most circumstances our national sympathies. The Danes had a " hong " in the old factory days at Canton : they, the French, and the Swedes depended for their profits largely upon their success in smuggling tea about the English coasts. The Danes, through the good offices of Sir Thomas (then Mr.) Wade, concluded a treaty with China in 1863, and until 1893 their interests were usually looked after at the ports by the British consular authorities : in that year they were placed in Russian hands. Danish interests lie chiefly in the direction of Telegraph Conventions, and they have a large staff at Shanghai in connection with the Great Northern and Eastern Extension Companies. It need hardly be said that without the countenance and support of Russia and Great Britain Den- mark would not count for much in the Far East. The Spaniards concluded a treaty with China in 1864, but it does not appear to have been ratified until 1867. In 1877 there were nego- tiations about coolies for Cuba, but until 1881 118 ARRIVAL OF EUROPEANS [chap, v the Spaniards do not seem to have had any permanent minister in China. The Chinese traders who went to Manila were always kept under in rather an uncompromising way, and it was manifestly the policy of Spain, subsequent to the events described at the beginning of this chapter, to have as little to do with official China as possible. But in 1874 the new question of the ill-treatment of Chinese in Cuba came under discussion, and a Chinese mission was sent to Cuba to inquire ; the result was the treaty of December, 1878. When a permanent Chinese minister was sent to the United States in 1879, Spain and Cuba were included in his mission ; and so it came about that the Spaniards had to despatch to China an envoy in return. His influence at Peking was never very great, though Senor Cologan, as Doyen during the " Boxer " settlement, acquitted liimself with distinction. Since the loss of the Philippines to America, Spanish influence in Peking may be said to have disappeared altogether, except in an academic sense. Italy is recorded to have sent tribute in 1670, and the Pope in 1723 ; but both these alleged events are connected with the Jesuit-Dominican dispute, the stormy conference at Macao, and the unsuccessful missions of Tournon and Mezzo- barba. The Italians, not having come to trade, arc stated by Chinese authors to be the most cultured and respectable of the barbarians, who would never have " rebelled " but for the evil example of England and France. The words of the Chinese historian are almost prophetic, in view of "Boxer "-time Italian action in Cheh Kiang: " Even Italy, the most famous and civilised of European countries, was moved by the same prospect of greed, and in 1861 an application was made by the Italian Consul for a share in trade A.D.1866-96] ITALY, AUSTRIA. SWITZERLAND 119 privileges." The first Italian treaty was con- cluded in 1866, but the Itahans did not put in an official appearance until 1877, when a man- of-war visited the coasts of Corea. The Italian minister has usually resided in Shanghai, in order the better to push the commercial interests of his countrymen, as, for instance, the Peking Syndicate agreement, signed in 1898. It was not till 1899, in connection with the expected concessions on the Cheh Kiang coasts, that Sr. Salvago Raggi on behalf of Italy first showed signs of a spirited forward policy. Her expec- tations were, however, nipped in the bud by an unexpected display of energy on the part of the Chinese. It was success which followed this last gasping effort of resistance that probably inspired the vacillating Manchu rulers with a part of the courage necessary in order to brace themselves up for the crazy " Boxer " outburst. In 1902 Sr. Gallina insisted that Italy should receive a special Chinese minister, and not a mere " double-barrelled " man. The Austrians did not draw up a treaty until 1869, and for many years they left their interests in British hands. Their minister until 1901 ordinarily resided in Japan, to which country he was also accredited, but in 1902 Baron Czikann, following the example of his Italian colleague, demanded as a quid pro quo for his presence at Peking a " single-barrelled " man for Vienna. From this date Austria was a (not very) " brilliant second " to Germany in China. The Swiss have no treaty, and their interests are commonly entrusted to French hands. This absence of diplomatic contact had its inconveniences in 1896 in connection with the Postal Conference, and again in 1904 when Red Cross matters were under discussion. Peru drew up a treaty with China in 1875, 120 ARRIVAL OF EUROPEANS [chap, v the interests of the latter country having special reference to the alleged ill-treatment of coolies, whilst the former's interest lay in procuring them as cheaply, and with as few restrictions as possible. The war with Chili practically snufted out Peru, at all events so far as any influence in China was concerned, and she may be regarded for the present as non-existent in Peking councils. Brazil (1880), Mexico (1900), and the Congo State (1898) have treaties with China, but, so far, nothing has occurred to bring any of these states prominently forward ; in each case coolies were wanted by the one party, and it was desired by the other to secure for them decent treatment. Difficulties arose after Presi- dent Diaz ceased his long firm rule, on account of Chinese traders receiving ill-usage at the hands of rival aspirants or their followers ; but these appear to have been reasonably met on both sides. The Swedes established an East India Com- pany in 1627, but their nationals who visited China came on board vessels belonging to other countries. A Swedish vessel reached Canton in 1731, and fifty years later others are men- tioned. There is a Swedo-Norwegian treaty with China, and Mr. Carl Bock was resident in Peking for a time (1897-1898) ; but since the separation of 1905 the Scandinavian interests, chiefly shipping, are sufficiently watched over by consuls-general at Shangliai ; there has never been a Norwegian minister at Peking so far as I am aware ; but Count Wallenberg seems to have been there for many years (off and on) as minister for Sweden. There was some flutter when in 1889 the Sultan decided to send a frigate and a mission to Japan. The reappearance on the high seas A.D. 1882-1915] THE BALKAN POWERS 121 and in Chinese waters of the Turks so dreaded of old was a highly interesting development. They put in at Pagoda I. for refreshments, and there I endeavoured to prove to the gallant com- mander that he was a Hiung-nu in disguise ; but the luckless Ertogrul came to grief on the rocks in the Inland Sea, and the fierce Turks had to be sent home as " distressed mariners." To add local colour to an amusing denoument, the Japanese man-of-war which took the men home was refused free admittance through the Dar- danelles, and had to " get ready for action." In 1882 the Serbian King Milan begged the Chinese Minister in France to hand in a letter to his august master announcing Serbia's pro- motion to kingly rank. Rumania had already set Balkan examples in 1881, when two separate missions were either sent (or perhaps locally commissioned) to announce (1) the accession of King Charles, and (2) his promotion to royal status. In 1915 the death of King Charles and the succession of King Ferdinand were " an- nounced." In 1902 "Great Han" (i.e. "Imperial" Corea) sent resident envoys to China, and exchanged certain consuls; but of course these amenities ceased after the Japanese had ousted all foreign political influence from Corea- — as a result of the Russo-Japanese conflict. In 1915 the newly elected President of Uruguay announced his accession. I o c S i CO C ^ M CO c '3 T3 a! a to Si -5 ID &< O -IC 3 o .S o P? .2 IS OJ 5 3 O ^ to 2 o s * PI 24^o £ ° ft o o g § X ^2 03 CI XrC ■*^ "^ "^ (h S >>s -op's © 2 fl •« '-^^ 'o 05 O ^3 CO O O ffi ^-^ ® SI'S -2 (J) OJ tn -•-' c8 • (D 2 a « ^ §^ -p 3.2 .S "£ > ft 02 .Tl ^ ^ s rij <^' ^ ^ ^ ■ :ii||ii|||ii||i|i||||||iiigi| be t- P (D O O n C^l OC ^'irfirf >4/^' ^'-^ rtf ;^_^^ ' « «? 3o^?2§^^^'^^;|^00|2;|^fe<1»^«O^Og^-<|'5^^ '^ ■* lO l2 <0 CO X to t> ■*■<*< >0 TfH O M eo O «0 ^ 00 lO 5 «o .Soon TJ c3 Ti 03 s ® (S e3 J3 2^^ .O •* CS c pj ® w S fl 0) fi ® 03 O 03 i-S-Sl^^aip-^li^a^goS^^ Ph PllfP^MpH fi S fi c3 C 2 cS CO p g C IB cS 03 O .2 -— d CO HPhPh iS p S s 5 « . § S -I • T3o3?^3IS s=i- S" So cSTS 03^ cS ^ C r'3-rt'^ fl c5 o! .S;a M S 1^ o ^ P^ 3at3t«2 3 p o * * g o3 p . 03 «»T3 s.i ^ • C M) .2 o£ o.Sa-S O p 03-t5-S c3 ^^00 MM 33 O ® O ji « rj ' - >J l-H U ;hoo •2 -S :S J^ &('0 ^ 13 :« , 0" E-i«2i ' ' ■ ■ ■ o ■ • • • ^ P g^O d« S 0% OS'S PM«5Jt»^^S§S!^fe^^ r3 fl (M <1 oo 00 & 00 « 3 « O ph iM -< H oo a •00 oc •> '^ M ,» Qqo 25 S i> rt 00 M M 05;^;' OB -a CS o.S eS c8^ CO « O _• ^ "S d IS r-^ fl C 03 t3 c3 * S S3 o3 b 02 ffl G ?* 01 X t-l O oo n30 T3 n1 Tt a ri 03 .5 cS 05 * S S § S 2 fl * 03 S , T! . § gM A^0 O 60 .o G !h -« *ffl -S ° .2 •§ o (^ ^ o CO ^ (]J M ■S'b 55 G M- :o ,1^ vu ir-i 4) 03 O Ph =^. fin 2^3 -■- -G 020 O 3 a O CO , "^jp 2c>2^.2^ o He-- H h^ T) G G* o d'5 d 123 be to G G . O ^I PlH (>. ^ >> m 4j tiD c ;3 H p o §^'^ » * S rH -5 '-' C vf, tn " o3 03 ^P® 4) ^ ® S o ® a wane® (D ft ® ^ o ® o3 . s 05 « fc! 5 ® • •-< 03 S "J G ® o S 1 ^ -fi-a ® tH 03 H ft* pui ® 03 5S O O " ft'-IS ^^ © "^ O O O cS ^ OHO ® > 4) PI C !3 TO R te 2 2 "«^ fl 00 :3 to o 03 O 03 ® c3 O ® C c-TS '^ S S-S g o o 3 ft S d -^ S ft h, J S CO aj bc ® oj 0) <1 AhUO CO ® ffi O OO s ft S .-D u ® C ® O '2 o CO o 2 OtiJ^B o - .a3 -SiS-ftS P5 3 « SI " CO as 2^ pR <-5 J3 in '^ '-^ £ ^ « rt 2 § °^ <*'* * fe _r^^^ ^^ fl ^' d ^J^+i <^ '^: -S - ^2 r-, ^- ^-^ Sr OO ^ CO X ® A9 -:75::5 ' tH ft (2^ f- ^^ ' ft-^^l 3 ^ P •< ,^ ^ '-s 1-5 i-s lO GO I >• !N (M 05 — 4 t- 1-5 T3S S 3 <. 00 05 m 05 OJ CO 3 "^ (X o o 05 C hn C tl (-1 ft W M (3 • 60 1 TS China China China d Franc Rvissia China lo. . China 03 n o 6 13 c 03 t; rt "3 o3 ^ ^ y 1 03 13 c8 -. ® ^ (^ ^ rt c8 fl « fl 03 fi fl .S ® 03 (3 eg 7". 03 o3 .CO fl n ^ ftS ft^OftftO 2 03 Ui w t-5 piH 1-5 K 1-5 i-s pq \^ S c8 cS - S'^ bio £ c« !3 S S HOP? eg as CO « C "m P IS O ;a gP^O'^ Op5-c-e *P? ^- i3 0) u ® ^ (3 fl o S * <* S If?' c -^ cS i3 •s! 03 to ^ (3 02 OO o Ph ^3 .uq 13 >< ® fl C8 & * COM O O a o C O in O X ® mP-i o • 0:0 !=! X n .o-§ ^ . PM O O O O ■ -I — I -^ ^ ^ -^ H^ Ph 124 Ph Ph ft an ec 13 05 Xi on rn (-H C8 "o i^ © • rs ^ > © ^ ri tffl C8 C --tS ^LS §^-^ S o - I' i^J •S M ® 5" SP P "•^-'.2 £; fl ^ S ot|.2 5 =+-! ^ 03 o +^ © ? cd O lO O 2 -p .3 t5 O cB . C! © 5 -^ ^ * C O gll IH ... 03 ^ © ^ 3 .2 ^ -tJ 2 "S '^.o o g o o c *^ O M 5 <^ OM to c o ^ e8 to •— CO ®M -H too g M c a .2 c 3 H .t> e8 O © tM ^ © ~ ^ * -ti « "='2 o -ti © fl o !=! ? * ^ g « § g coo s * ©.5 'ft 02 ©r en t- S a ^ S :« «> . § g g ^J J2 -»J 4J B p^ C3 3 ?iP .Xi CO C5 I— I OC Oil ^W e8 1—1 ~ O r" «i3 c-1 S 2 l> -H CO ' I-H 05 2 a "O so c o OS O ^H © o © sP g.S o.S - t>c s © o © a§ ©^ .1^ s a © ; oj j2 _ 08 a to O :: 03 2 03 © a •3 wjM ® 5r! © © • ^ ^ o -^ O •s .S -^ '^ r.. S t^ P > © « ^s w © • -S • rt CO CO .3 ©T5 S *'® ^ y c >.< s ci F^ o to E "^ © fM 1-5 fl 3 :,- OS ■ © © =2 ►^ o8 tn © J© i^^ S 5 -2 -3 I 08 < © ^ ' ^ 3 M © c C S 3 cS " O 0! a 2 • -P^ © TJOIj © * ^1 c3 60 3 03 H 3 03 3 . 03 © 4^ CO S © o 'S i 125 73.5 O <0 CHAPTER VI SIBERIA, ETC. A HISTORY of China's foreign relations of the most sketchy description would not be com- plete without some separate and connected account of the Tartars who have always harassed her from the north. Just as the hyperborean regions of Europe have only become a cognate part of El Rum, or the Roman Empire system (for that is really in a civilising sense what modern Europe still is) since Russia took them vigorously in hand, so the hyperborean regions of Asia have only become a cognate part of Hwa-hia, or the Chinese Empire system, since Russia gave them their bearings. But Russia is in possession of the whole, and straddles both systems by what Roman lawyers called occupatio, or the right of first occupant. If we omit the tropics and South Seas, we may say the old northern hemisphere consists of two groups of 400,000,000 souls each, the one being Chinese or Yellow Man civilisation, the other European or White Man civilisation. Russia now caps and overawes the pair, and is the first great instance in the world's history of a powerful empire north of the temperate zone. In fact, the Asiatic conceptions of White Czar and (so to speak) " Yellow " Czar, or of Chagan Khan and Bogdo (Holy) Khan, express the same misty idea in Tartar minds ; all the rest is Feringiii, or 126 B.C. 200] FRANKS AND SCYTHIANS 127 " Frank," somewhere beyond the White Czar's domain. The Arabs call Europeans Afranghi, or Beni Asfar,' — " Sons of Yellow," i.e. " not dark," and the island Greeks still have an adjective cfipdyKLKo^, meaning, in effect, " con- tinental." Europe, previously to the blossom- ing forth of Russia, knew practically nothing north of the menacing hordes which emerged from the east along beaten lines, and gradually became her rulers,' — in parts at least. China, previously to the same event, knew practically nothing north of the hordes which moved rest- lessly east and west along beaten lines, and also gradually became her rulers, — in parts at least. The historical analogy betw^een the Chinese and Roman Empires is nearly complete throughout the whole gamut of history. First in date there was on the Chinese side the Empire of the Hiung-nu, which bounded and menaced all of the modern realm of China, from Corea to the Pamir, except Tibet and the Eighteen Provinces. No doubt these Hiung-nu nomads knew something of the petty hunting tribes in occupation of what we now' call Siberia ; but the Chinese knew nothing whatever of them ; unless in a very vague way, and by name only, some- thing of the Kirghis to the west and the coast Tunguses and Ainos to the east. On the Western side we know nothing of anyone but " Scythians," and in the East the Chinese kncAV nothing of anyone but Hiung-nu. It is very unlikely that we shall ever know more of either than w^e do now, namely, that the manners of the two, as described to us by the Greeks and Chinese re- spectively, were nearly identical. The Hiung-nu seem to have swept to and fro then, just as the roads run now, by the northern route from Tsitsihar, Urga, Uliassutai, Hi, and Tashkend ; or from the Yellow River bend north and north- 128 SIBERIA, ETC. [chap, vi west to Urga and Uliassutai. They were driven away by the Chinese from the southern group of roads, from Hami to the Tarim valley and the Pamirs, at a comparatively early date ; but, during the greater part of the time— to use the words of Chinese historians — " the Han dynasty had the sagacity to keep them in good temper by permitting a regular border trade." The total duration of their empire, whether in a united or divided condition, Avas, roughly speak- ing, 400 years, from 200 B.C. to a.d. 200 ; but although the greater part of the ruling caste and the fighting men went permanently West, where some of them were to reappear as Avars, Huns, etc., in Europe, they did not expire in China without a final struggle ; indeed, they ruled as Chinese " Emperors " of limited por- tions of China, after most of their race had gone West ; and in any case they founded princi- palities in western parts subject to Chinese influence, thus enabling us to connect their ruling families with the Turks without a serious break. Professor Hirth of Columbia Univer- sity even thought and perhaps still thinks he had unearthed Attila's son Hernax from the Chinese records of Sogd : — but I am not in the least convinced. Then comes the empire of the more westerly Tunguses, who were only known to China previously to a.d. 45 as vassals of the Hiung-nu. As the power of the latter was broken up by China, so were the opportunities for separate development improved by these vassals of the declining Khans. The new empire of the Tun- guses thus formed was at its zenith just as the last of the genuine uncivilised Hiung-nu dis- appeared (in an independent political sense) for ever. This disappearance from China is coin- cident (allowing them time to travel) with the A.D. L>00-1200] NOMAD AND SEDENTARY 129 sudden appearance of the Avars and Huns in Europe ; it is only reasonable to conclude, there- fore, that the (Hiung-nu) strangers, who pushed on Goths, Vandals, and other tribes before them, were the identical people who, as we know for a certainty, had gone from China somewhere West. But the later group of Tungusic Tartars, although their domination occasionally extended as far as Hi, never had, like the Hiung-nu, any real hold on the Tarim valley or Turkestan ; they are specially remarkable for having settled a number of Japanese prisoners in Eastern Mon- golia, where their power was most in evidence. The Hiung-nu had probably never heard of the Japanese. On the other hand, the Toba clan of the Tunguses was more successful than the Hiung-nu had ever been as a sedentary and a civilised ruling house, and its princes adminis- tered North China as emperors, on a footing of perfect equality with the . genuine Chinese emperors of the south, for 200 years (380-580). But this preoccupation with Chinese affairs left the other and wilder Tartars time to counter- develop once more ; and although the Toba dynasty of North China conducted several successful campaigns against both their now less civilised kinsmen and against the remains of the Hiung-nu tribes', they were never able to assert themselves as an effective nomad horse- back power, and at the same time to sit com- fortably on an imperial throne. The Mongols previous to Kublai (Genghiz, Ogdai, Kayuk, and Mangu) were the only ones that ever suc- ceeded in this double task ; and so, even with the powerful Mongols, a double role did not last very long, for Kublai was, after his return from Yiin Nan and his accession to the throne, simply the sedentary and personally unwarlike Emperor of China ; the Tartars, if not inde- 180 SIBERIA, ETC. [chap, vi pendent, were all more or less rebellious vassals under disloyal relatives of his. It is not sur- prising, therefore, that when the Toba Tunguses eight centuries before Kublai took to the comforts of civilisation, a mixed nomad empire developed itself once more out of the leavings of the Hiung-nu and Tungusic " horseback dominations." The very name of this third great ruling caste of nomads is exceedingly unsatisfactory ; the words Juju, J we- j we, or Jeujen convey to us no hint whatever such as we can gain, or at least imagine, from the earlier words Hiung-nu (Huns, or "Hiin slaves") andTung-hu (Tunguz, or "East Tartars " ). Following a Chinese practice which prevails to this day, the Toba Emperor, no doubt advised by Chinese pedants, thought he would improve this apparently native word into the bastard sound J wan- j wan, which is stated to have meant " wrigglers." There is no evi- dence to show that the units of their fighting power were more Hiung-nu than Tunguz, and such evidence as there is of a ruling caste is decidedly in favour of a Hiung-nu rather than a Tungusic origin ; there are even very faint indications that they might have been Suomi, or Finns. At any rate, there seems to be no justification whatever for concluding, as Euro- pean writers have done, that the Jeujen were the Avars : it is almost impossible that they can have been so. What is quite certain is that they had amongst their vassals, quite close to the Chinese frontier, in or near the region where money was made from the iron trade in 220 B.C., a Hiung-nu tribe called " Turk." These Turks worked as ironmasters for the Jeujen, and subsequently, when they had generated strength sufficient to assist them- selves, rose against and annihilated the power A.D. 550-650] THE TURKS AND SIBERIA 131 of their suzerains. There is nothing to show that the dominion of these Jeujen ever extended west even so far as IH, then occupied by a race called " Yiieban," who, indeed (if we accept the evidence of etymology at all), may well be the " Eban," or " Evar," — in other words, a branch of the Ephthalites, as the Chinese seem to make out/ The chief struggles of the Jeujen were with the " High Carts," or the later Ouigours, of the Lake Baikal region. After the crushing of the Jeujen came the empire of the Turks, touching which we not only have the most precise Chinese accounts, but also a number of important Turkish and Ouigour inscriptions, discovered within the past generation in the Irtish, Orkhon, and Tola valleys, and confirming the Chinese accounts. The first stage of Turkish rule lasted from about the year 560 to 630, when the Chinese, after incessant warring, succeeded in taking the Supreme Khan captive. For fifty years after that event, Chinese political influence was dominant all the way from Corea to the frontiers of Persia ; but still there is not in the whole of Chinese history one trace of a single definite name to show that they had any definite know- ledge of what we call Siberia. There are vague indications in the far north of savage tribes using snow-shoes, deer-carts, dog-carts, and of ^ It would be well for students who take a scientific interest in etymology to note that in an expanded Chinese dictionary partly based upon Dr. S. W. Williams' earlier work, and published a quarter of a century ago by my former colleague, Professor H. A. Giles of Cambridge, I have given the actual sounds in eight dialects of every important word in the language : besides their Corean, Annamese, and Japanese sounds. I have also con- tributed thereto, by way of extended preface, a philological essay explaining the " Grimm's Law " of the Far East, and the construction of Chinese. This knowledge is indispensable to anyone who ventures an opinion upon points connected with Chinese etymology ; but of course it may be acquired by separate study independently of my pioneer effort. 11 132 SIBERIA, ETC. [chap, vi other matters connected with them, suggestive of Samoyedes, Ostiaks, and Chukchis ; but if the Turks then under more or less direct Chinese rule had any knowledge of insignificant peoples north of what are at this day the boundaries of the Chinese Dominion, they kept that know- ledge to themselves, or never told the Chinese enough to make it worth while recording any- thing. In connection with the western branch of the Turks, and especially the Tiirgas, the Chinese histories make numerous allusions to Persians, Syrians, Ephthalites, Kirghis, and other Western peoples, about whom they had very scant information ; but there is never anything to show that organised states existed in Siberia beyond the Amur, Baikal, or Balkash. Probably the Chinese never pushed up thither because the length of the nights was so alarming and it was so cold : several times the Chinese mention with astonishment the long days of a northern summer. The accounts given of the second (main or eastern) Turkish Empire, founded by Kutlug Khan, are even more inter- esting and precise than those of the first. It endured from about 680 to 743, when it was replaced by the domination of a kindred race called the Ouigours. These people, however, never exercised anything like the same effective dominion that their kinsmen the Hiung-nu and the Turks had done before them, and they decidedly showed more settled inclinations, and more of a taste for science, art, and religion : by degrees they seem to have voluntarily aban- doned the Urga region north of the Desert alto- gether, and to have settled in what are now the western parts of Kan Suh province. Chavannes and Pelliot, in their illuminating little work on the Manichaeans already alluded to, have thrown much new light upon Ouigour civilisation. A.D. 800-1200] TUNGUSIC DEVELOPMENTS 13.3 Meanwhile the Tunguses, corresponding to the ancient Toba rulers, and also perhaps to the later Mongols (before they became imbued with a strong Turkish admixture), or to the modern Solons, found opportunity to develop a great political power in the Far East. There is reason to believe that their rule included, at least for tribute purposes, a great many tribes beyond the Amur, as also all the Fish-skin Tartars, Goldi, Manchus, and other unmistakable peoples of Tungusic race, right up to the Pacific Ocean and the mountains of Corea : but we cannot yet identify some, if any, of the tribal names by the light of any ethnological indications now sur- viving. We are therefore, so far as our inquiry is concerned, still left in the same historical posi- tion : by the light of anything that can be dis- covered in Chinese history, the Ouigours ruled the west whilst the Cathayans or Kitans ruled the east of what is now Chinese Mongolia ; the first never pushing their knowledge, not to say their influence, beyond the Kirghis, the second never hearing of much beyond the Amur and Lake Baikal. Then come the Niichens, or genuine eastern Tunguses totally unaffected by Mongol or Turkish admixtures. They are prob- ably much the same people as those who for 200 years governed the little-known kingdom of Puh-hai (720-920), which had political relations with Japan as well as with China. They also co-existed as a political power along with the Ouigours, and with the so-called Kara-Kitans who fled west when the Niichens broke up the original Cathayan power. And so on until we come to Genghiz Khan, no part of whose tribal habitat was much farther north than the River Shilka, if indeed so far. Genghiz, as we know, swept the whole zone between Siberia (as we now understand the word), Tibet, and China, 134 SIBERIA, ETC. [chap, vi It is in the tliirteenth century that we hear for the first time in the Chinese records inteUigible accounts of Kipchaks, Alans or Azes, Bulgars, and Russians. A great deal of interest attaches, in connection with the Mongol inroads, to the Hungarians, who belong to the same souche as the Finns : so, at least, Professor Nordenskjold told me when he visited Canton in 1879, and so I have since satisfied myself more precisely. The Bulgars of Genghiz' time were also partly Finnish, at least so Bretschneider thought ; but they have adopted the Slav tongue. One extensive race, called the Wusun, disappeared utterly from the Hi region shortly after the Yiieh-chi, driven west by the Hiung-nu, gave way before these same Wusun, and, turning south to Bactria, founded the " Indo-Scythian " or Ephthalite dominions in the Pan jab and Persian regions, as already explained. Some modern Chinese writers have endeavoured to identify these missing Wusun with the Russians ; but this is not likely, for the Russian language appears to be pure Aryan ; that I can see for myself. There is no evidence to connect the Wusun with the Hungarians ; but the possi- bility of it must not be ignored ; — in fact, Csoma the Hungarian, about ninety years ago, went on a hunt all over High Asia in search of the original Madjar language ; and the late M. Kossuth gave encouragement to my Hungarian friend Nemati Kalman, who bespoke my co- operation on the same quest : the Chinese men- tion the Madjars quite plainly (Ma-cha) in Genghiz' time. I cannot recall any other instance of the utter disappearance of a con- siderable nation from Chinese ken, unless it be that of the Yiieban (also from Hi). The dominion of the Mongols over Russia, and to a certain extent Hungary, seems to be the first connect- A.D. 1200-1400] NORTH SIBERIA KNOWN 135 ing link forged in the chain which was ulti- mately to join Western Europe with Kanichatka. The hold of the Mongols over Europe and over Asia weakened simultaneously. In the West the Novgorod Republic liad opportunity to develop, and in the East China was able to shake herself free. The Ostiak tribes of the Obi (Beresof and Tobolsk) had paid tribute to Nov- gorod before Novgorod paid it to the Mongols ; but if the Mongols ever heard of the Ostiaks, they do not seem to have thought it worth while to interfere in a question of such jejune importance to themselves. The brother of Haithon of Armenia, besides Rubruquis and some of the other European pilgrims to the Mongol Court, would seem to have first sug- gested to Europeans the existence of a farther or Northern Siberia. The Mongols of China kept up relations with the Kipchaks, Russians, and Azes almost until their fall (1368) ; but the Ming dynasty had little to do, in a friendly co-operative way, even with Manchuria or Mongolia so near, let alone with the tribes of the remote western steppes. The Eleuth or Kal- muck power accordingly now developed ; and Chinese history totally ceases to be authoritative on northern nations from that day to this. The Manchus knew of no people farther north than the Kazaks, or Turkified Kirghis, half of whom are now Russian and half Chinese in a political sense. The former Mongol influence over the Kipchaks ^ in Ming times, therefore, passed from China to Tamerlane, who was treating with Kipchak envoys at Otrar, and even contemplating an attack upon China, when he died there in 1406. The word " Sibir "is about this time mentioned for the first time as part of the realm of Toctamish the Kipchak. Dr. Albert Wirth, who collected and sixteen years 136 SIBERIA, ETC. [chap, vi ago spontaneously sent to me many valuable data touching this period, says that a Bavarian named Schiltberger, who was there as a prisoner amongst the Tartars at the time Tamerlane died, speaks of " Issibur, where carts and sledges are harnessed to large dogs." In 1465-9 Ivan the Great annexed Novgorod, and threw off the Kipchak yoke ; so that the country of Sibir, practically the modern Tobolsk, became almost independent. But by the time of Ivan the Terrible (1557) the Sibir people, or " Yugurs," had been compelled to send him their usual tribute of minivers and sables. Modern Chinese, in referring to these events, say (but do not explain at what date or on what authority) that the Russians had four great provinces — Ki-yu (Kiev), the "old tribe"; Moskwa, the " new tribe " ; K'a-shan (Kazan) ; and Si-pi-r (Siberia), which last was subdivided into four. At present, according to Russian official documents, there are 2,000 or so of " Turalinians " between the Tobol and the Irtish, and there are 26,000 Ostiaks in Tobolsk, Tomsk, and the Yenissei. There are also Chuvashes and Voguls in Tobolsk, but which of these tribes represents the " Yugurs " of their sixteenth-century " Sibir " I cannot say. Any- way, Ivan and his son Theodore went on with their eastern advance until they had conquered the Bashkirs and Tobol-Tartars. The Chinese record that between 1522 and 1567 the Russians conquered the Khan of " K'u-ch'eng," and re- moved him to the north of the Altai Mountains, thus bringing themselves into contact with the Tata (Mongols) and Wala (Eleuth). It was just at this time (1579) that the " Stro- gonoff," or half -Tartar m.erchant guilds of East Russia, engaged the services of Yarmak and 7,000 of his Cossacks to further their interests A.D. 1580-1620] K'U-CH'ENG OR KOZUM KAN 137 in Tartar regions ; but after three or four years of skirmishing and scuffling with the troops of " Koziim Kan," Yarmak perished by drowning, either in the River Irtish or in one of its tribu- taries (1584). In 1591 " Koziim Kan " was defeated, and again in 1598, when he fled for refuge to the Kabnucks' camp near Lake Dzaisang (north of the Altai); but the Kal- mucks in turn chased him away to the Kirghis. Here, manifestly, the Chinese and Russian accounts agree fairly well in the main facts. The doings described thus brought the Russians into contact with that branch of the Mongols called the Kalmucks' — styled by the Chinese Eleuths' — who had meanwhile had time to gather strength and found a dominion in the region of Uliassutai, Hi, and Tarbagatai, which dominion included many Kirghis and Turkish tribes. The pre- datory Cossacks sent missions to the ruler of this powerful state in the name of the Russian Czar, who, like a wise man, secured all he could get for nothing but the taking, and ran no risks. It so happens that there is a hiatus in Chinese history at this time, and the Manchu Emperor K'ienlung himself admits that between 1450 and 1650 the Chinese knew little m.ore of the Eleuths than that they often joined other Mongols in raiding the frontiers : they do not even know the names of the khans. However, in 1616 the Ataman Wassili relates what happened to his mission sent in the name of the Czar to the Altyn-Kan (Golden Khan), at w^iose Court he met also an envoy from the Yellow Czar (Em- peror of China)' — probably the chief of as " bogus " a mission as his own. The Khan was then encamped on the Kem-chik, or " Little Kem," i.e. on the present Russo-Chinese frontier, due north of Cobdo. The Russians say that the Altyn Khan promised to get their trading 138 SIBERIA, ETC. [chap, vi missions through to China, and that the Chinese even sent a mission to them in 1619 ; but, if so, the Chinese are quite unaware of it, and the very name of Russia was to all appearances totally unknown in Peking at that time. The Russians or Cossacks pushed on to Lake Baikal, and received in 1638 their first tea through the agency of this Altyn Khan, the history of whose successors, until they were destroyed by the Chinese, I have already published from Manchu history.' By 1643 the Russians had already reached the Sea of Okhotsk. After all, they had only to follow the compass, so far as North Siberia was concerned ; for there was not, and there is scarcely even now, a genuine native town in the place ; nor had the scant population of trappers, fishers, and hunters any desire or motive to resist their advance, which therefore required little courage. The true interest lies in the story of their pushing their way down the Shilka and the Amur. These adventures have been related over and over again, and there is very little new for me to say here. In 1654 they attempted to explore the Sungari, but the Cossack Stepanhoff was killed by the Manchu troops in 1658 ; and this event is also recorded by the Chinese. Then there was a long conflict for the possession of Yaksa, or Albazin ; but in 1689 the Russians, by the Treaty of Nerchinsk, agreed to abandon it, and also both banks of the Amur. From that time to 1855, when Mura- vieff " Amurski " obtained the Czar's permis- sion to annex the Amur, the Russians remained on very quiet and inoffensive terms with China, trading only at Kiachta and Tarbagatai. In 1858 the Aigun Treaty, necessitated by these ^ " Tlie Kalmucks," China Review, vol. xxiii. " The Eleuths," China Review, vols, xv, xvi. See also previous references on pages 36-40. A.D. 700-1860] TIBET, NEPAUL, MANIPUR 139 new acquisitions, loosely defined the Ussuri boundaries ; but in 1860, by the Peking Treaty, Ignatieff secured the doubtful part east of the Ussuri ; and now Russia, biding her time, has improved her opportunities, slipped quietly in, and dominates North Manchuria. The early history of Tibet (700-900) is bound up with that of the early Siamese empire of Nan-chao. For a time the Gialbos threatened the existence of China, and, as it was, asserted their equality, obtained princesses, and made treaties of reciprocity ; they also forcibly occu- pied Kan Suh and Chinese Turkestan for a num- ber of years, right up to Lake Balkash. During the Five Dynasty, or Anarchy Period (904-960), there were a few missions to China, but practi- cally Tibet was an unknown quantity ; and throughout the Sung dynasty (960-1260) the diplomatic relations were only fitful. During Mongol and Ming times Tibet was under military supervision, but enjoyed internal independence. After the Manchus came to power and overawed the Lamas, their Resident, except on one or two occasions when China had to assert herself, for a century and a half occupied a position in Tibet as modest and retiring, but as influential, as that of our Resident in Nepaul. Nepaul, which was forced by China to live on friendly terms with Tibet, is still tributary to China, and sends trading missions ; but she prudently avoids raising political questions, and meanwhile supplies us with some of our best mercenary troops, at the same time enjoying complete independence. Manipur, or Kase as the Chinese call it, was only known to the Manchus for a short time during the wars with the Burmese king Alompra's successors : there is no mention of such a place in the records of any previous dynasty. China has never in modern times 140 SIBERIA, ETC. [chap, vi had the faintest pohtical influence in India, though all five kings of the Hindoo states sent missions to China about 1,000 years ago. True, in the middle of the seventh century the warlike founder of the T'ang dynasty, with the assist- ance of Nepaul, carried punitive war success- fully upon a king of North India, but there the matter dropped : the Ming dynasty 800 years later had shipping relations with the Indian coasts ; but none the less India has never fallen within China's political sphere. The Mongols, Mings, and Manchus have each in turn sent expeditions to Burma, but China's political influence has never continued for long there either. Siam has never been invaded either by land or sea, but from the date of her moving down definitely to Ayuthia* — say a.d. 1200 — from the Shan states (Old Thai ^), south of Yiin Nan, until 1853, she always recognised China as a nominal suzerain, for reasons of trade policy. The Shan states — those not belonging to Burma — and also Annam, have at irregular intervals been either ruled indirectly by the Chinese or have been nominally tributary to them. The same thing may be said of Corea, but with less irregularity. Japan has never been in any way conquered by either Chinese or Tartars, nor forced to do anything ; she has occasionally sent polite missions, but it is only the Chinese who call them " tributary " ones. I just men- tion these points in order to complete the circuit of the Eighteen Provinces, and to bring the reader back to the other side of Siberia. 1 See p. 29. The Old and New Tai or Thai (= free) races differ in using or in omitting the aspirate, as I ascertained on the spot in 1888, from Mr. Gushing and other Shan scholars. The History of Nan-chao makes use of this national word Tai, and explains quite clearly how the Early Siamese were under the religious influence of Magadha. CHAPTER VII MODERN TRADE It is not necessary to dwell upon the old co-hong trade at Canton. The former Factory site of the " Thirteen Hongs " is now principally occu- pied by a large foreign " hong " about two fur- longs below the island settlement of Shamien. Trade with the East India Company nominally began in 1680, and all privileges continued until 1783, when there were certain modifications. In 1834 exclusive rights entirely ceased. Life and trade at Canton a century and a quarter ago have been vividly described ^ by Dr. S. W. Williams, who resided there before the Factory was destroyed in 1856, and was frequently U.S. Charge d' Affaires at Peking after the second or Anglo-French war. The merchants passed a confined, ceremonious, and reserved existence, entirely in the hands of their fiadors and com- pradores on the one hand, and of the Chinese co- hong on the other. No wives were allowed, and even burials had to take place at Whampoa, twelve miles down the river. It was only in 1828 that the British Superintendent first suc- ceeded in getting his wife up : it will be remem- bered that this misogynist policy had already been followed 2,000 years before in the case of " fem.ale animals," the idea in both cases evi- dently being against increase and multiplica- 1 China Review, 1876-7. 141 142 MODERN TRADE [chap, vii tioii. British trade was, of course, the largest of all ; lead (for packing tea) and woollens were the chief imports (no specie, no cotton fabrics) from England, opium from India, and the usual " Straits " produce picked up from the Dutch colonies visited by our ships en route. Tea and silk were the main exports then as (largely) now. The British tea consum.ption in 1795 was 14,000,000 lbs. a year, more than one half of which total wa.s smuggled by foreign ships from Canton, operating in the English Channel. The Treaty of Nanking (1842) opened four new ports, and abrogated all these restrictive rules about residence. Afterwards, as has been ex- plained under the heading of " Europeans," by the Tientsin treaties nine, and by the Chefoo Convention again four additional ports Avere thrown open to foreign trade. The various wars and complications that have harassed China up to date have led to the total number of ports being increased to forty-seven, so far as the Foreign Customs is concerned. In the year 1864 the British or direct trade had already reached 101,000,000 taels, or ounces of silver, and the total, including other countries and coast trade, was 260,000,000 taels : at that date the whole trade of Japan, America, and other foreign countries only amounted in all to 10 per cent, of the British trade, including, of course, British colonies. I proposed in the 1901 edition of this book to take the year 1880, as a central point, between the period when legations were first established at Peking in 1861 and the year 1900 (that is, the trade of 1899), in order to survey rapidly the condition of foreign commerce in China. I now propose to compare these totals with the trade of 1913, that is, the trade before the great war queered the pitch. As the gold value of- the silver tael is still only about half A.D. 1880-1913] STATISTICS FOR PERIODS 143 what it was in 1880, and subject to violent aber- rations at that, I think it better to give the totals in silver, as nearly as I can; for, although this plan may suggest to us a false idea of the gold cost of produce to England and Europe, it is the only true way to form a notion of the actual wealth, measured by the standards of silver and copper, which is taken out of China, for the unit of " Exchange " in Shanghai is the rate for tele- graphic transfer on London. DIRECT TRADE, EXCLUDING COAST TRADE AND FOREIGN TRADE IN CHINESE JUNKS ; ALSO EXCLUDING RE- EXPORTS ABROAD Nineteen Ports. Thirty-two Ports. ; rorty-seven Ports. 1880. I 1899. 1913. British Empire . : 122,600,000 ; 286,200,000 402,000,000 Japanese Empire . 5,700,000 53,100,000 185,000,000 other countries . i 30,000,000 ' 113,000,000 403,000,000 158,300,000 452,300,000 i 990,000,000 From the above summary it w411 be seen that if between 1880 and 1899 the total direct trade nearly trebled itself, between 1900 and 1913 the same direct trade about doubled itself; and the Japanese share, magnified nearly ten times during its pioneer development, has more than tripled itself again during its riper development. Look at it which way we Avill, there is no reason to fear that Great Britain is going to the wall, for we are still equal to the rest of the world, barring Japan. It must be remembered that England no longer takes the larger half of China tea, as she did in 1880, which deficit is more than compensated for by much greater cargoes of tea brought from India, the paid value of which remains in our own empire instead of going to that of China. It must also be remembered that the Russian and Japanese land trade by way of Manchuria 144 MODERN TRADE [chap, vii has introduced quite new elements, and that the loss of Kiao Chou to Germany in 1914 must again seriously modify the position of affairs as existing in 1913. Out of the above trade, and of the home or coast trade in foreign or Chinese steamers, which is equal in volume to over once and a half the total of the foreign trade, the Chinese Government in 1880 derived a revenue of 14,250,000 taels, against 26,660,000 taels in 1899, and 43,900,000 taels in 1913. It will be noticed that, whilst direct trade has trebled and again doubled, the revenue on the whole trade has not kept pace : the reason is not very obvious ; but as, owing to fluctuation in exchange rates and market values, the charges on imports have for many years only averaged 3 per cent., instead of the 5 per cent, average usually sup- posed to be levied, that fact (which of course in itself requires further specialist explanation) may partly account for it. Then, again, we must consider the British bankers, careful definition of what are called " invisible imports " and "invisible exports," both of which or neither of which must be counted. Probably a further reason is that the specific duties on compara- tively high-paying articles such as tea have for many years steadily declined with the trade in those staples ; whilst the specific duties on various cheap export commodities (formerly neglected, but now aggregating huge totals) are very low, and therefore do not advance pace by pace with the volume of the trade. Rice, for instance (though not exportable from China except under diplomatically arranged special conditions), is sometimes " exported " by the million hundredweight from one port to the other at a very low likin charge, or even free altogether. However, in 1902 the Mackay A.D. 1880-1913] COTTON AND YARN TRADE 145 treaty, which aimed amongst other desirable financial reforms at the abolition of likin in exchange for a substantial increase in import duties, did attempt to grapple with this ques- tion, and, as I write, I observe that the atten- tion of President Li has once more been called, by his Chinese advisers this time, to the extreme desirability of effecting that important "swap." The trade in cotton goods is the one which most interests the Englishman at home, and the Board of Trade has at last shown its good sense in establishing an Advisory Committee, with a special commissioner properly trained in the Chinese language and the cotton business alike, to deal with the textile question by study- ing it "on the tramp " in China. In 1880 the trade in cottongoods amounted to 23,400,000 taels, in 1899 to 103,500,000 taels, and in 1913 to 182,500,000 taels (being 38,000,000 taels over 1912). As to the yarn trade, the displace- ment noticed in the earlier editions of this work has now become accentuated to such a degree that Japan and India practically divide the whole foreign import in equal shares ; both these, however, are now threatened in turn by the activities of Chinese mills, where docile labour is obtainable at rates defying competi- tion anywhere abroad. There is an immense import of native raw cotton, native yarn, and native coarse cloth into Sz Ch'wan, and much cotton also comes into Yiin Nan from the Shan states and Burma ; of course in 1880 nothing was known of all this last, because Upper Burma was not yet under our control. Opium, so prominent a feature in foreign trade when " China " was first published, has now happily ceased to interest us except in so far that arrangements are still incomplete for 146 MODERN TRADE . [chap, vii working off- stocks in hand under the terms stipulated with the late Manchu Government. President Li, as did President Ylian, shows great determination in the matter. In 1880 over two-thirds of Chinese exports (value 81,600,000 taels) were represented by 2,100,000 cwt. of tea, valued at 35,700,000 taels'; and 114,700 cwt. of silk, valued at 29,800,000 taels. It is as sad to find that in 1899 and 1913 the exports of tea only amounted to 1,631,000 and 1,500,000 cwt., valued at about 30,000,000 and 34,000,000 taels, as it is agreeable to notice the totals 281,000 and 350,000 cwt. of silk, valued at 90,000,000 and 105,000,000 taels. Thus tea is better and dearer, whilst silk is more plentiful and cheaper, no doubt owing to im- provements in tea assorting and to filature developments in silk factories. India and Ceylon have done irreparable damage to the tea trade of China with Great Britain, who now ranks positively after Russia, instead of being six or eight times ahead of her. At present, however, Russia is beginning to appreciate Indian and Ceylon teas in ever-increasing quan- tities. It will thus be seen that the main staples of trade remain very much what they were before what may be called the Treaty-port period. But it must be noted that an enormous business is now done in many new commodities of which scarcely aily thing was heard in 1880, still less in the pre-legation times anterior to the Second War of 1858 ; for instance, a gigantic and ever- increasing importation of kerosene oil from America, Russia, and Sumatra, which in 1897 had already exceeded 100,000,000 gallons, whilst in 1913 we have 185,000,000, including about 24,000,000 from a new rival — Borneo. Then there is cheap flour for South China from A.D. 1900-1917] "NOT IN THESE TROWSERS" 117 America. These two imports alone, witli a joint value of over 3.5,000,000 taels, have created as great a social revolution in China as did the advent of tea and the introduction of gas into England. Whiles may be seen by the thousand in distant Bhamo carrying kerosene oil through the passes into Yun Nan ; peasants may be met every evening in Arcadian Hainan carrying home a neat pound-bag of beautiful white flour, together with the farthing's-worth of peri- winkles their ancestors have always brought home in the evening as a relish for the rice. Since 1899 quite a new import trade in cigarettes has gained a firm footing, encouraged, no doubt, by the ban upon opium : the value for 1913 was 12,500,000 taels. Foreign clothing is in demand on account of the slump in pigtails and petticoats for men : happily women have not imitated the restless and often hideous changes beloved of their Western sisters, but have con- fined their democratic yearnings to the tighten- ing of the once baggy sleeves and trousers ; if a mere man may venture an opinion, they looked more modest in the good old " bags." Aniline dyes and artificial indigo have had a fine time of late years, to the profit of Germany, who in 1913 pocketed a trifle of 10,000,000 taels. The importation of miscellaneous articles of luxury has of late years increased to such an extent as to vie in aggregate amount with the totals of " regulation " staples. Thus all China- men who can afford it now like to have tumblers and bottles, foreign stockings, soap, lamps, cigars, preserved milk, sweets, and umbrellas ; not to mention watches, musical-boxes, bicycles, motors, and toys. The women are fond of American and European scents, good mirrors, fine white sugar for powdering the face, needles, 12 148 MODERN TRADE [chap, vii and finger-rings. Then there is a curious though weighty import which is also an export. It actualh^ pays better to export enormous quan- tities of coarse Chinese sugar to the " foreign country " of Hongkong, and re-import it thence, after refinement, as " foreign sugar," paying one export, one import, and one half or coast duty, plus two freights, than to refine it in China where labour is cheapest, or to import real foreign sugar. No more eloquent comment on the suicidal and imbecile financial policy of the provincial authorities could be made. In 1913 China spent 35,000,000 taels on this " imported " sugar. But besides new-fangled imports, properly so called, and this hermaphrodite sugar, many new exports have either shifted bearings, or have started into prominence since the year 1880. In that year, after deducting the values of tea and silk, the total exports from China in foreign bottoms were only 12,300,000 taels, against 75,000,000 in 1899 and 260,000,000 in 1913. Thus, the beancake (manure) which used to go from Chefoo and Newchwang to South China for sugar cultivation in 1880, now mostly goes to Japan, and no longer exclusively to Amoy, Swatow, and such places. The beans from which the beancake was made (after the extraction of oil) were almost unknown as an export ten years ago, but now the beans and the cake each count for about half of a total of 50,000,000 taels, and besides about 4,000,000 taels' worth of oil goes to Belgium and Japan. The Dutch, Danes, Belgians, and Germans import great quantities of beans (and various crushed oils) for the manu- facture of margarine and other foodstuffs. The Brazilians and the Italians are now growing Soya hispida of their own in rivalry. Tlie export of straw-braid from Chefoo and Tientsin has doubled, A.D. 1880-1917] GERMAN " SLIMNESS " 149 though in 1880, when it first began to attract serious notice, it had ah-eady nearly trebled itself in five years ; it was never heard of in the five-port days : there was a tremendous fall in 1913 to 5,000,000 taels from 10,000,000 in 1911, no doubt in consequence of fraudulent and careless behaviour on the part of producers and dealers. Feathers of all kinds may be described as an entirely new export, which is now assuming really great and alarming dimen- sions owing to the organised hunt for birds other than domestic fowl. The albumen and egg export is also quite new. Both these for Belgium and Germany. The quantity of hides and skins exported had in 1898 trebled itself during six years — in 1880 the export was hardly worth special mention : in 1913 the total value was about 25,000,000 taels ; here the Germans have been as active as in the notorious Calcutta hide monopoly, so dangerous to India. The trade in mats and matting, hemp, jute, ramie, leather, native spirit, wine, and oils has been ad- vancing in a most extraordinary rapid fashion ; in matting, however, there has been a recent slump, owing to some hitch in American arrange- ments. Still, as we get to understand better some more of the unfamiliar, ingenious uses to which the long-experienced Chinese put their numerous oils, barks, and fibres, we shall un- doubtedly before long create similar large ex- ports in other directions. There are many openings in China for the mercantile man with ideas, and whatever we may think of Kultur, there is no denying that the Germans are the most fertile in this thinking-out department. Caveant consules, therefore. In the above remarks no account has been taken of coast trade (730,000,000 taels), which, added to the foreign trade, amounted in 1899 to 150 MODERN TRADE [chap, vii 1,210,500,000 taels, and in 1913 to 1,353,500,000 taels, of which the ships of Great Britain account for 013,000,000 taels in 1899 and rather less in 1913 ; that is to say, the coast trade has not increased in proportion to the foreign trade, and the Chinese and Japanese steamers have taken much more of the coast trade than formerly. As to foreign shipping, in 1880 there were 22,970 entrances and clearances of 15,874,352 tons, 60 per cent, being British ; in 1899 the figm-es were 56,957 entrances and clearances of 38,863,902 tons, of which, again, 60 per cent, were British— at least so far as tonnage goes ; in 1913 the figures were 190,738 and 93,334,830, Britain's share being 32,186 vessels of 38,120,300 tons ; but in 1899 25,350 British ships, averag- ing over 900 tons each, carried 23,338,230 tons, whilst it took 22,548 Chinese ships, averaging over 400 tons each, to carry 8,944,819 tons ; in 1913 it took 121,768 Chinese ships to carry 19,903,944 tons. Thus the British ships average about 1,200 tons to the Chinese average of 150 tons ; the explanation is that steam-launches and the comparatively recent inland navigation rules have revolutionised local shipping, four- fifths of the registered " inland " vessels being Chinese. Japanese shipping has advanced with giant strides, totalling 22,716 ships of 23,422,487 tons, being more than quintuple the figures for 1899 ; and it will be noticed that the average is over 100 tons per ship. Other countries are still so far behind that I need not mention them ; the only one to make any show at all was Ger- many, and even she had in 1913 fallen seriously off since 1903 : of course, now, she has dis- appeared altogether as the baseless fabric of a dream. The comparative number of foreign firms doing business in China (including now, of A.u. 1880-iyi7j i OREIGNERS IN CHINA 151 course, Manchuria) is thus given for the three years 1880, 1899, and 1913 :— Nationality, British German American French Russian Japanese . Portuguese Dutch Danish Spanish . Swedish, etc. 1880. 21 1899. 47 1913. 236 401 ! 690 65 115 1 296 31 70 1 131 16 76 ' 106 16 19 1,229 195 1,269 10 46 138 Foreign Firms in China 385 933 3,805 The Germans and Americans, it will be ob- served, have increased, at first nearly, and later more than proportionately with the British. The Russians made no attempt to go beyond the bounds of their old tea trade, and their firms were all at Hankow, Foochow, and Tien- tsin, until the Cassini Convention presented them with Manchuria. The French increase in num- bers does not bulk largely in reference to the volume of trade done ; but they are especially active in silk filatures. The Japanese made a big jump after their v/ar of 1894-5, and a still more tremendous jump when in 1904-5 they took half Russia's interest in Manchuria. The Portuguese pricked up their ears when Senhor Branco " made the fur fly " in 1904 ; and the etcetera now includes 39 Italians, 24 Austro- Hungarians, and 13 Belgians who had not found grace previous to " Boxer " eye-opening ; also 7 Norwegians, who only separated from Sweden in 1905. In 1880 the total number of foreigners in China, including missionaries and other non- traders, was just over 4,000 ; in 1899 it had gone 152 MODERN TRADE [chap, vii up to about 17,000, and in 1913 (including Manchuria) to 164,000. Of course all this has nothing to do with Hongkong, which is no longer a political part of " China." Let us now take the ports one by one, glance comparatively at the years 1880, 1899, and 1913, and see what prospects they give for the enterprising trader of the future. (1) Pakhoi is the Ultima Thule of coast ports, as viewed from a Chinese standpoint. In 1880 the boycotting of steamers by native junk owners and monopolists had only just recently been broken up ; opium was the chief import ; cassia and aniseed the leading exports. In 1899 Indian cotton yarn alone represented three-sevenths in value of all imports ; opium was quite insignifi- cant. Aniseed stands for one quarter of the exports ; cassia is not even mentioned. Sugar, hides, and indigo stand for over half the remain- ing exports. In 1913 the total trade had dwindled to a third of its 1899 value. Indian yarn stood for one-fifth of all imports, and kerosene for one-tenth ; opium was extinct. Neither aniseed nor cassia is separately men- tioned ; sugar falls to insignificance ; hides stand firm, and liquid indigo defies German dyes. Pigs and fish are now the chief stand-by of moribund Pakhoi trade. (2) Hoihow (Kiungchow) in 1880 sent nothing abroad, and chiefly imported foreign opium, but in 1913 the import of opium was only one- twelfth in value of the total imports. Cottons, principally Indian yarn, were in 1899 far ahead of opium, and kerosene had shot up to nearly half the value of that driig. Cottons, still half Indian yarn, and kerosene now stand for half the value of the remaining total imports after the deduction of opium, and kerosene alone is four- fifths the value of opium. Pigs and sugar A.D. 1880-1916] CANTON AND ROBERTSON 153 have always been and still are the chief exports, amounting in 1913 to considerably more than half the total value. The export of " pine- apple " hemp and its grass-cloth continues to be considerable ; the Kew authorities possess full details (from myself) concerning this im- portant fibre. (3) Sam-shui (including the subsidiary ports of Kongmun and Kumchuk) was only opened in 1897 : cotton goods stand for over half the total imports ; sugar and tobacco are the most promising exports. Andad con Dios! for little is ever reported of you ; in fact nothing, this century, by any consul. (4) Lappa (round Macao) and (5) Kowloong (round Hongkong). These stations were opened in order to check salt smuggling and to facilitate the working of the Opium Agreement of 1886. Their position is peculiar, as Maritime Customs officers are, practically speaking, in charge of a purely Chinese junk trade, which does not concern foreigners directly. The effects of the Kowloong extension of 1898, apart from the railway to Canton, concern the colony of Hongkong, which, possessing no statistics, is never very illuminating on the subject of trade. (6) Canton; a strong German shipping and general trade centre before the war. In 1880 the imports were only one-fifth of the exports ; most of the opium was (and was still in 1899) imported in native junks. There had been singular neglect on the part of foreigners for twenty-five years past to insist on transit-pass privileges for imports into Kwang Si and be- yond. This was chiefly owing to the personal policy of my former respected chief. Sir Brooke Robertson, the British Consul, v/ho took a sym- pathetic view of China's financial straits. The chief exports wxre silk, tea, sugar, tobacco, and 154 MODERN TRADE [chap, vii iiuitting. In 1899 the foreign imports alone were worth more than half the exports, of which silk (filature) was then practically the sole important one. Matting only stood for one-twentieth part of the value of silk, although compared with 1880 there was twice as much of it in 1899 ; sugar had by no means disap- peared, and glass bangles were worth as nmch as tea and tobacco put together. Owing, however, to matting, tea, and other produce for Europe at that time all going to Hongkong largely "by junk, it was quite fallacious to take the Foreign Customs returns for Canton as a criterion of the prosperity in export business. Li Hung-chang took a very important decision in this province before leaving for Shanghai in connection with the " Boxer " difficulties of the summer of 1900. He abolished all likin through- out Kwang Tung in consideration of 4,000,000 dollars a year to be paid by the seventy-two leading trades. Were this new plan to succeed permanently, it might revolutionise the com- merce of the province or trading " hongs." Be that as it may. Canton trade is already gal- vanised into new life, and 1910 was its "record." Since then wars and revolutions have reduced it, and must have further reduced it since 1913, when its total reached 114,000,000 taels; yet its revenue for that year is a record. Opium has disappeared, but of course some must be smuggled. The exports now balance the im- ports (if we include the bullion on both sides). The Hoppo, with his nefarious native customs, is abolished. The chief imports are cotton goods, sugar, and kerosene. The chief exports remain as before, that of sugar being one-third of the im- port, for reasons already explained (pp. 148, 155) ; and matting having fallen off (p. 149). (7) Wu-chou (40,000 inhabitants), the gate to A.D. 1880-191GJ KWANG SI AND SWATOW 155 Kwang Si, had no existence as a foreign port in 1880. After two and a half years of hfe, by the end of 1899 it was found that practically the whole trade was with Hongkong. More than half the imports were cotton goods — as they still are. It is purely a transhipping centre, and the surrounding district possesses no impor- tant products of its own ; motor-boats carry up country, and bring back, respectively, the imports from and exports to Hongkong and Canton by large steamers, which cannot get beyond this point. In 1907 the " port " of Nan-ning, 500 miles farther up the river, was opened, and the motor- boats could even ascend another 500 miles to Peh-ngai, on the Yiin Nan frontier. After the revolution of 1912, Nan-ning was made the capital of the province in place of Kwei-lin ; but in 1915 the Civil Governor went back to the old capital, the Military Governor remainingat Nan-ning. The whole trade of Wu-ehou and Nan-ning combined is negligible in bulk and value, and in any case does not seriously concern foreigners at present. (8) At Swatow in 1880 more than half the value of imports stood for opium, and sugar was the chief export. In 1889 opium repre- sented only one-tenth, and cotton goods one- sixth ; these two together just equal the value of the opium alone in 1880, and beancake (in- cluding beans) stood for nearly a quarter of the imports. Sugar remained the chief export ; the value of the sugar exported about counter- balancing that of imported opium and cotton goods combined. In 1918 opium disappears, and fine Java sugars are imported in increasing quaji- tities to the detriment of local exports, the beancake going to fertilise better-paying crops. Formosa has now been lost to Cliina for over twenty years, and there is no more justification for continuing to discuss its condition under 156 MODERN TRADE [chap, vii Japan than there would be for discussing the trade of Hongkong and Macao under Great Britain and Portugal. (9) Amoy still carries on the old native " Zaitun " trade with the " Straits," the Indo- Chinese peninsula, Formosa (now Japanese), the Dutch archipelago, and the Spanish (now American) Islands, to which places large num- bers of emigrants proceed annually, equal num- bers returning with fortunes made. Opium and cottons in exchange for tea and sugar were the chief items in the foreign trade of 1880. Opium and cottons in 1899 still represent half the value of the foreign imports, but in 1913 opium is extinct and moreover the local culti- vation of the poppy is eradicated. Amoy has long been and still is a declining port; besides, its trade has little interest for any foreigners except (as with Swatow) those trading from Hongkong and the Straits of Java. In no part of China was government more rotten than in the Fuh Kien province, to which Swatow really belongs ethnologically ; possibly the reason is, in part, because all dialects spoken there are totally unintelligible to the northern officials ; since the revolution of 1911, Fuh Kien has been almost a forgotten region. (10) The North Fuh Kien port of San-tu Ao (Samsah Inlet) was voluntarily opened in May, 1899, entirely as a political move. I visited it and the alum mountain to the north of it in 1884, and travelled throughout the Hinterland. I am, therefore, in a position to suggest that tea and alum are likely to be the chief exports ; the tea at present all goes via Foochow. No foreign business has, however, yet been reported ; no foreigner is there or goes there ; it is simply a question of naval harbour interest. (11) Foochow lies midway between the last A.D. 1154-1916] CHEH KIANG PORTS 157 two places. In 1880 it still possessed the largest tea export, and the memory of glorious old clipper days was yet green there. Tea in 1913 still stands for four-fifths of the total exports, as it did in 1899, but the quantity is only half of that shipped in 1880. The other noticeable exports are poles, bamboo-made paper, oranges, and edible bamboo shoots. In 1880 the imports were only one-quarter of the exports, in value, but now, as in 1899, more than equal the latter. It is at this port that, as regards shipping, both the Chinese and the Japanese flags have made the greatest inroads upon British tonnage since 1899. Opium in 1899 was still, as it was in 1880, one of the chief imports, but on a much reduced scale ; the same may be said of 1913, but the suppression of the trade made it clear that by 1914 all but the illicit imports will have vanished. (12) Wenchow has never been much of a port in our days, though it was once so in the olden times, and a good tea trade was expected from it when we went there in 1878. It is so insigni- ficant now that the British consuls have ceased even to report upon it. There is a considerable and very ancient export of bitter oranges, des- tined entirely for the Mongol market by way of Tientsin ; these oranges are mentioned at the " Manzi " or Sung dynasty's court of Hangchow in the year 1154. (13) Ningpo had degenerated from 1880 to 1899 into a mere sleepy branch of Shanghai, to which place it shipped its tea, mats, fans, and rush or straw hats by the daily British or Chinese steamer, taking chiefly opium, metals, and cotton goods in return. This is still the case so far as the steamers are concerned, except that the Chinese tonnage is now far ahead of the British. The old raw cotton export continues, 158 MODERN TRADE [chap, vii but with great fluctuations. The Shanghai rail- way to Hangchow, and thence to Ningpo, may infuse new Hfe into the port, but pohtical condi- tions and interminable railway squabbles have seriously compromised its success. (14) Hangchow was only opened in 1896, and has already far exceeded the expectations formed of it, though it is a mere canal appendage of Shanghai, as Ningpo is a sea appendage. In 1899 its gross trade had already nearly reached 12,000,000 taels ; in 1913 17,300,000 taels. The chief imports were opium, tobacco, kerosene, beans, and beancake — but opium has been dis- placed by cigarettes ; the exports consist prin- cipally of tea and silk. The Shanghai railw^ay has disturbed and will further disturb the direction of trade communications, but in 1913 the railway directors had to announce a serious deficit, and both rolling stock and permanent way need renewal. I have now w^orked all the way up to Shanghai from the south ; but, before touching upon that great centre, I will bring down the river trade and the northern trade each to the same focus, and then collect our consideration of the whole three groups into one purview, together with that of the great depot for them all. (15) Chungking was opened in 1891, but I resided there for a twelvemonth ten years earlier than that. The foreign-managed trade had already in 1899 reached 26,000,000 taels, imports and exports being equally divided ; in 1913, despite revolutions, rebellions, and local squab- bles, which greatly hampered trade, the total exceeded 30,000,000 taels, or only 8 per cent, below the " record " of 1909 : of course this total does not cover the vast commerce of the feeding rivers, nor that portion of the Yang-tsze trade which ignores the Foreign Customs. Here the A.D. 1880-1915] FAR UP-RIVER PORTS 150 tables are tui-ned, and the conditions new ; there has never been an import of Indian opium, but more tlian a tliird of the total exports used to consist of the native drug — now oj^ium is not even mentioned. White wax and silk between them make up another third, and efforts are being made so to improve the silk trade as to make it fill the place vacated by opium. There is a very large export of musk from Tibet, which takes in exchange 10,000 tons of coarse tea, by way of Ya-chou. All the trade, import and export, used to be done in chartered native junks, but during the past fcAv years small steamers and gunboats have found a way over the rapids and through the gorges, and thus may be said to have revolutionised transport, at least for six months in the year. The imports have all to pass the gauntlet of either Shanghai, Hankow, or Ichang,^ — sometimes of all three. The chief part consists of cotton goods, or raw cotton and cotton yarn (native as well as foreign) to be locally spun or woven into yarn and cloth. In June 1915 the important city of Wan Men below Chungking was opened as a branch (Foreign Customs) of the Chungking office. Though Chungking exports raw silk, it imports silk piece- goods, skilled local handiwork not yet being quite up to the mark, and silk being much worn by all classes. Chungking, representing also Tibet, is the drug-exporting place par excellence of China ; but it is impossible in this rapid sketch even to name the many new features of trade that have recently given this vast mart exceptional import- ance ; what is really wanted is a body of Chinese- speaking British agents, each agent representing firms in one particular line ; more especially in machinery, engineering, and electricity, in which the Germans have been showing great activity. (16) Ich'ang, at the mouth of the gorges, made 160 MODERN TRADE [chap, vii a " port " in 1877, was considered a failure already in 1880, but the opening of Chungking, with its native opium trade, in 1891 somewhat changed the face of things, and the total amount of the trade for 1899 was about fourteen times as great as that for 1880 ; but only a small part of it is local, the bulk is all mere transhipment to or from Chungking. The neighbourhood is too mountainous and badly supplied with roads for local trade to develop rapidly ; the total of all kinds for 1913 was only about 5,000,000 taels net. As to shipping, the Chinese, and still more the Japanese are rapidly gaining ground upon the British. The Hankow-Ich'ang-Sz Ch'wan railway has not got much beyond the talking stage. (17) Shashi is, so to speak, the port of King- chou, which was in very ancient times an an- cient royal capital, and has always been a great political centre in the past : it was still up to 1911 the residence of a Tartar garrison. Its port was opened in 1896, and is so far a failure that the British consulate has been withdrawn since 1899. There are great hopes of develop- ment when the Shashi- Hi ngi railway to Hu Nan, etc., is started. The total trade at present is less even than that of Ich'ang, the Chinese mer- chants preferring junks to steamers, liki7i to Foreign Customs, and the Back River to the Yang-tsze. But there is an enormous native cotton trade Avith Sz Ch'wan. I ought to say here, once for all, in connection with inter-port trade generally, that a total for all China of nearly 1,000,000,000 taels would have to be added to each 500,000,000 taels of foreign trade, if the coast trade of each port (only that managed by the Foreign Customs) were in each case included : it is difficult to guess what the /*Hn-managed trade would amount to beyond that. (18) Yochou, the key to Hu Nan, was opened A.D. 1900-1914] CENTRAL CHINA'S PORT 161 in November, 1899, but it did not properly " take down its shutters " for business until 1900. It had a fitful career of ups and downs until, in 1904, the opening of the Hu Nan capital, Ch'ang-sha, took the wind out of its flapping sails entirely. Ch'ang-sha, a great mining centre, especially in antimony, has been a great success from the beginning, and a vast lake trade has grown up with the great marts of Hu Nan, in which the Japanese take a prominent part ; in fact, their shipping and that of the Chinese quite equal that of Great Britain. In spite of general and local political scares, the trade has risen steadily without a single break from 6,000,000 taels in 1905 to 24,000,000 in 1913 : opium and the poppy cultivation are effectually scotched. " Chinese shipping " of course means steam craft under the Foreign Customs, quite apart from junk trade. (19) The great entrepot of Hankow occupies one of the finest trade positions in the world. It is the only place in China proper, as distinct from Manchuria, where the Russians are in really strong force : the largest ocean steamers from Odessa and London can anchor opposite the Consulate doors. After taking source near the same spot, and flying off from each other thou- sands of miles, the one towards the desert and the other towards the south, the Yang-tsze and the Yellow River approach once more to within a distance of 300 miles : one of the Hankow rivers, the Han, taps the whole of the intervening space, and after a partly navigable course of 1,250 miles joins the Yang-tsze at Hankow, which is also exactly half-way between gates or keys of the two lake systems of Hu Nan and Kiang Si. Situated as it is in the centre of China, with cheap water communications in every possible direc- tion, it naturally trades in almost everything, 162 MODERN TRADE [chap, vii and the Germans have been as enterprising, since the " Boxer " wars, as the British have been supine, in estabhshing vigorous new export trades h^nce. The trade of Hankow must be studied in con- nection with that of the ports above and below it, otherwise the grand total of 67,000,000 taels for 1899 and 154,000,000 for 1913 (or 85,000,000 taels and 175,000,000 if viewed from another standpoint) would be misleading ; even the tea, which is of course a bond fide original cargo shipped direct for Europe, includes Kewkiang tea. It is found more paying to bring the leaf up river this way in native boats than to ship it on board chance steamers calling at Kewkiang, simply to fill up there if they have space. The export of tea was in 1899 fifty percent, greater than that of Foochow ; in 1913 the export was three times the value, and the import (for blend- ing purposes) into Hankow of Ceylon, Assam, and Java dust was more than half the Foochow export, the Hankow export of teas thus blended alone far exceeding the total export from Foochow. The import of kerosene is enormous, and two 5,000-ton tanks were destroyed during the revolution of 1911. The recklessness in the use of oil-lamps had already in previous years been the cause of some very destructive fires in Hankow, which finally received its coup de grace when imperialist conflagrations, during the 1911 revolt, practically annihilated the whole city, the rebuilding of which in improved style becomes more difficult the longer time is wasted. Yet, what with railways, cloth and paper mills, en- gineering and cement works, needle and nail factory, mints, waterworks, electric installations, arsenals, mining, etc., the whole place buzzes with " unkempt " activity, and there is no space to say more here. A.D. 1880-1913] LAKE AND RIVER PORTS 163 (20) Kewkiang was already a decadent port, and had been reduced to a British vice-consulate long before 1880, there being little in the way of either import or export, beyond sugar, shipping agencies, and tea, to interest foreigners. On the whole, though there was a great fall in 1913, tea is not now dechning, and the Russians in that year did well in green brick tea, sent via Manchuria to Mongolia. There is a large native trade in porcelain from the Kiang Si potteries, but not much of it is exported to foreign countries ; no wonder, for eighteen likin " squeezes " must be paid before it can reach Shanghai ; the Re- publican Government is taking steps to reor- ganise and improve the industry. VVith cheap and comfortable daily, almost hourly, steamers up and down the river, native merchants naturally prefer to go to Shanghai or Hankow to make large purchases and contracts. The great summer resort of Kuling has sprung into existence since the first editions of this book appeared : the " estate " has now attained the dimensions of a Homburg or a Pdstyen, and is largely patronised by missionaries : it is five hours to the cool mountain by " chair " from sweltering Kewkiang. There was in 1899 some prospect of a valuable trade in the grass-cloth plant (Boehmeria nivea), which had just then at- tracted attention both in England and Germany : in 1913 the export had reached 116,000 cwts. Since the Inland Water Navigation rules were promulgated in 1898, an active steam-launch traffic for passengers has sprung up on the Poyang Lake : the commercial activity on this lake now bids fair to rival that of its rival Tung- t'ing; but, so far, the Kiang Si capital Nan-ch'ang has not been " opened." Even the railway to connect it with Kewkiang progresses slowly— the Japanese have a strong interest in it, and 18 164 MODERN TRADE [chap, vii also in the lake shipping. There is " talk " of a new railway, direct, to join the two lake capitals Ch'ang-sha and Nan-ch'ang. (21) Wuhu, like all the ports opened under the Chefoo Convention, was in 1880 considered to be a comparative failure, and for a long time no foreigners went there. The fact is, China- men are conservative, and do not want more points of contact than they are accustomed to use, or are gradually brought up to appreciate. But, after all, 1899 proved its best year, more than doubling the average total annual trade for the ten previous years, and passing 20,000,000 taels : after gradually reaching nearly 30,000,000 in 1912, it resumed in 1913 the 1899 figure, the revolt of that summer having disorganised com- merce, whilst the rebellious Military Governor had to flee. The gigantic export of rice (4,000,000 cwt.), largely to Canton and Swatow, was the chief cause for the unlooked-for increase of 1899 ; in 1913 the export was only 3,000,000 cwt., but this is always an uncertain staple, for rice can scarcely ever be sent abroad, and very special likin arrangements have to be made whenever shortage in other provinces renders it urgently necessary to send cheap rice to other parts of China. Rice, moreover, is quite an uncertain commodity in itself, and depends entirely upon the weather.^ (22) Nanking, though nominally available under the earlier treaties, was not really made an open port until May, 1899, and by 1913 it had worked its Vv^ay up to 14,000,000 taels. In spite of the sacking and destruction of the city during the 1913 troubles, that was a " record " year^ — so kindly does the Chinese eel take to skinning. Nanking now has its University, and is a railway centre of the first magnitude ; four British firms do a large business there already, and its prospects are unbounded. 1 cf. p. 144. A.D.1600-1916] NEWCHWANG'S VICISSITUDES 165 (23) Chinkiang was in so poor a way in 1880 that it had only three years previously earned its right to be restored to its position as an independent consulate ; for some years the officer-in-charge had to submit matters involving important changes to the Consul at Shanghai. It is sickening, now that opium is practically a hideous dream of the past, to look back to the statistics of 1899, and see what a prominent part the drug then took in the trade of Chinkiang — and of most other ports. The Czar's abolition of drink in 1914 was not a more beneficial act of autocracy than the Emperor's (or rather the old Dowager's) smashing edict of September 1906 ; and fortunately the Republic sticks to its guns now that her Majesty's ten-year period of grace is over. In spite of the 1913 rebellion and the loss of opium revenue, Chinkiang has a hopeful future, especially when the new port of P'u-k'ou opposite Nanking springs into organised exist- ence. As to shipping, Great Britain still has 50 per cent, of it. But at present it is rather startling to see it rank in trade volume below Chefoo, which only serves the trade require- ments of one tiny corner of Shan Tung. Having now exhausted, I am afraid in a very sketchy way, the riverine line of ports, I pass to the extreme north. (24) Newchwang is the most northerly port of all. Although it is said to be in " Manchuria," the province of Sheng King had really no civilised Manchu population to speak of before A.D. 1600 ; the inhabitants are a mixed Chinese- Tungusic race, who have been as often governed by Corea and by Tunguses of various kinds as by Chinese. In 1880 all the foreign imports from abroad came via Shanghai or direct from Hongkong. Russia and Japan had not yet put in an appearance, nor had a pound of yarn been 166 MODERN TRADE [chap, vil imported. In 1899 the trade was double that of 1898, and then having gradually attained its maximum of 74,250,000 taels in the year of the revolution, 1911, it had fallen off 25 per cent, of that figure in 1913 and resumed the lower total of 1908. Having undergone Russian and Japanese occupations, the evil effects of Mon- golian troubles, plague, the reflex action of the Yang-tsze revolts, and other political disloca- tions ; having, moreover, suffered from inflated paper money and general currency chaos, in- justice in settling native mercantile claims, drought, and unsatisfactory Liao River condi- tions, etc., etc., the foreign merchant at New- chwang has indeed been a sorely tried person for a whole decade. At present the Japanese shipping still equals and even exceeds the British, which in turn is more than that of all other nations put together. Japan, moreover, still takes half the total exports. Russia had thirteen steamers in 1899, but only three in 1913. The sole export of first-class importance in 1880 was beancake (and beans) ; now the Soya hispida export is one of the great features of Chinese trade. The port has to suffer severe competition from Dairen or Dalny, but latterly the Japanese have begun to interest themselves in the New- chwang trade too. The formerly flourishing American trade in cotton goods has received a blow, owing to the successive, and now joint policies of Russia and Japan. America looks askance at the latest position, and naturally tries to " get in " once more. Port Arthur in 1899 was a great trading place for many nationalities, but of course in purely Russian interests. The Japanese, who now use it chiefly as a naval port, took it from China in 1894, and again from Russia in 1904 ; in 1910 the western harbour was thrown open, but it is A.D. 1880-1913] GULF OF CHIH LI PORTS 167 not a " port " under the Foreign Customs — in fact it is a failure in trade. (25) Ta-lien Wan (Japanese Dairen), or Dalny as the Russians called it in 1898, is an open port in territory " leased " first to Russia and then to Japan. Before the Japanese took it the Russians had carried out stupendous public works there with a view to a great future trade, especially in coal and beans. Express trains carry you hence direct to Europe, and rapid steamers convey passengers to and from Shanghai in connection therewith. The trade for 1913 was considerable, but 85 per cent, of it was Japanese. The Chinese Maritime Customs takes cognisance of it, and the question of duties payable is a matter of arrange- ment based upon the plan accepted by Germany at Kiao Chou. (26) Tientsin exported large quantities of camels' wool and straw-braid in 1880 ; cotton goods and opium were the leading imports, but she ranked fairly low down in the comparative scale,' — far below such ports as Hankow or Foo- chow. " Syndicates," bent on " concessions " of all kinds, then began to arrive ; there was great activity in connection with China's new navy and naval stations ; the opening of Corea brought fresh steamers to the port, and its development continued through the time of the Japanese war in 1894-5, and the subsequent extraordinary energy displayed by the Chinese in raising new armies (1896-1900). After the " Boxer " peace settlement of 1901, the Viceroy Yiian Shi-k'ai completely reformed and rehabilitated the place. The trade had nearly trebled itself during the ten years preceding his arrival, and now ranks next to that of Hankow in value ; even above it in revenue collection. Wool and raw cotton are the chief exports. The wool is chiefly sheep's, which comes in enormous quantities from distant 168 MODERN TRADE [chap, vii Mongolia; just as Tibetan wool, starting from near the same tracts, goes to Chungking ; but there is a fair amount of camels' wool too. The value of hides, skins, and hair is about half that of the wool. Cotton goods are the leading im- ports, Japanese yarn being specially prominent. Others worth special mention are kerosene and munitions of war. The former immense im.por- tation of foreign and native opium is a thing of the past. It will assist us in forming an idea of the topographical laws which explain the most ancient Chinese migrations and settlements, if we accept the dictum that the trade area of Tientsin embraces all between the sea and the left bank of the Yellow River up to Mongolia, including both banks of the northernmost River Bend down to Ning-hia, the ancient capital of Marco Polo's Tangut, and to the outposts of Tibet. In fact, there are three drainage areas in China for trade, and the sea outlets are Tien- tsin, Shanghai, and Canton. (27) Ts'in-wang Tao, nine miles north of the new sanatorium Pei-tai Ho (near the Shan-hai Kwan), had since 1898 been much talked of as a " voluntary port," like San-tu Ao ; but the trouble with the " Boxers " postponed the completion of that arrangement until 1903. The advantage of this port is that it is always free from ice, and therefore affords a better and nearer channel for the K'ai-Lan (Anglo-Chinese) Company's coal export than Taku. Kalgan, at the Great Wall, is perhaps entitled to a cursory mention, although, in spite of its excellent new Peking railway, it is not exactly a *' port," even in the same limited sense as the inland and railway connected towns of Meng-tsz and Lungchow, for it is not under the Foreign Customs. About 40,000 tons of tea used to go overland through this place to Mongolia, A.D. 1870-1914.] RUSSIAN TEA TRADE 169 employing for conveyance about 200,000 camels. These, it appears, are largely the same animals that bring sheep's wool to Tientsin from the region of Kokonor — that is, from the entrepot of Baotu, on the Yellow River, which has already been twice mentioned in the chapter upon " Trade Routes." About the year 1870 I paid three visits to Kalgan, and even then there was a consider- able Russian settlement, which in 1900 was des- troyed by the " Boxers." The Kalgan tea trade is not so important to Russia now that direct steamers of the largest size run from Hankow to Odessa, and even to Cronstadt ; such as it is, the Russians bemoan its decadence, and the de- cline of Kiachta energy. In 1913 the export by Chinese of green brick tea from Kewkiang to Mongolia was forbidden for a time, and this gave the Russians a short opportunity as related on p. 163. In the. year 1872 I went up the Yang- tsze with the captain of the very first Russian steamer destined for the ocean trade, and towards 1899 there were about six of them clearing for the Black Sea or the Baltic every year. The Russian entries and clearances for 1914 were 55 ships of 55,000 tons, which would give an average of 2,000 tons a steamer. But these remarks belong strictly to Hankow. Kia-yiih Kwan (lat. 40° N., long. 98° E.) pos- sessed a " foreign " custom-house, supported by the Hankow office, but there was no European there. Since 1885 there had been a full staff, with scarcely any work to do. The idea was to accommodate the Russians who had begun to take tea in increasing quantities up the Han River, navigable for small steamers 300 miles, and for junks 600 more ; but a natural death seems to have practically put an end to both causes and effects. (28) Chefoo, like Tientsin, was an exporter of 170 MODERN TRADE [chap, vii straw-braid and beancake in 1880 ; her pongee silks, the product of the " oak-worm " hke those of Newchwang, were also coming to the front. They are now well known in Great Britain under the name of " Shantungs." The total trade for 1899 was in tael value more than three times that of 1880. The energy of the Germans at Kiao Chou soon reduced the Chefoo trade to stagnancy, for in 1913 Chefoo had dropped to 9,000,000 taels, whilst Kiao Chou had gone up to 65,000,000. Of course the opening of Corea had considerable effect on Chefoo's external development up to 1899, for internally the port only deals with its immediate neighbourhood, and to this day there is no railway. In cotton goods America still rules the roost. The cattle and straw-braid exports, once so prominent, are now dead. There is an immense annual " export " of coolies to Vladivostock, and as a port of call Chefoo shows shipping activity besides being a summer health resort. (29) Kiao Chou, or Ts'ing-tao, is another " free port " of the rather suspicious " leasehold " type ; but, unlike Ta-lien Wan, it fell almost from the beginning (since 1st July, 1899) under the ken of the Foreign or Maritime Customs ; it was offici- ally opened in May, 1899, during which year the total trade amounted to 2,200,000 taels. But it was not " free " to inter-port trade at all ; and the custom-house was only for the mainland commerce. However, in 1906 fresh arrangements were made, its " free " status was abolished, full import and export duties were levied, and Germany received 20 per cent, of them for her trouble as middle-man. Since the Japanese took it in 1914 it has been standing by in a more or less limp condition, v\^aiting imtil the war clouds roll away. Tsi-nan, the capital of Shan Tung province, A.D. 1882-1916] THE LION AND THE LAMB 171 became a " port " in 1906, and is connected with Kiao Chou by railway, now also run by the Japanese. When the " voluntary settlement " was opened, it was officially stated that there would be " no hurry " about a custom-house. Meanwhile the Germans established themselves in force, and hustled in their own way until the Japanese gave them walking orders. Wei-hai Wei has a status as a " port " even vaguer than that of its Russian and German colleagues, and it is not in any way affiliated to the Foreign Customs. Under the benign rule of Sir James Stewart Lockhart, the British lion here lies peaceably with the Chinese lamb, and as a "naval port" this place alone (since 1916) enjoys the blessings of a penny postage in Chinese waters. Corea, which, as a vassal state, was opened to foreign ships only in 1882, passed to the status of an independent " empire " ; but after being buffeted about between Russia and Japan, and enduring for a generpvtion the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, she has by a facilis descensus settled down to prosperous obscurity as a Japanese province under a Governor- General — Requiescat in pace ! (30) We now come to Shanghai, the great heart from the pulsations of which nearly all the above derive their arterial not to say artificial nutriment, and to the invigorating action of which they drive their venous not to say venal blood for further treatment and distribution. In 1880 this great emporium had a direct trade of over 92,000,000 taels, two-fifths exports and three-fifths imports. The foreign complications with Russia and France helped to depress busi- ness for some years, but in 1886 trade recovered, and by 1891 it had totalled 165,000,000 taels. It must be borne in mind, however, that these 172 MODERN TRADE [chap, vii are gross figures, for a large part of the Shanghai trade reappears in the form of Tientsin, Hankow, or even Swatow trade. The true trade of Shang- hai, less re-exports, for the year 1899 is only 125,000,000 taels, and for 1913, 207,250,000 taels. On the other hand, the gross trade of Shanghai (including everything from or to any- where under all conditions) was in 1899 nearly 308,000,000 taels (roughly, £40,000,000), and in 1913, 533,500,000 taels (roughly, £80,500,000). To understand the complicated distinctions between gross and net totals, viewed from various standpoints, it is necessary for those particularly interested to study the published returns, customs as well as consular ; and it must also be borne in mind that the sterling value of the tael fluctuates widely : at present (1917) silver is extraordinarily high, partly on account of Hongkong prohibitions. (34-46) There are still a number of ports or quasi-ports which ought to be casually noticed. The trade of Indo-China for 1899 amounted to nearly £10,000,000 (say 70,000,000 taels), of which Tonquin took over £2,500,000 (say 17,500,000 taels). Reports are irregular and unsatisfactory, but I take it £20,000,000 and £5,000,000 would be nearer the mark for 1913. The trade with Mengtsz ( Yiin Nan) via Haiphong, the Red River, and Hokow on the French frontier, was opened in 1889, and amounted in 1899 to 5,250,000 taels, all conducted by Chinese merchants, and mostly carried on, in mere transit, through Tonquin, with Hongkong ; the figure for 1913 was 19,750,000 taels, and would have been much larger but for the cessation of. the opium traffic. As early as 1140 the new Li dynasty of Tonquin had opened a port, corre- sponding with the modern Haiphong, to the trade of Siam and Burma, but there is no specific A.D. 1140-1913] REMOTE " PORTS " 178 mention of it in Chinese history. Trade seems to have then centred at Tourane, or rather at " Faifo," about 20 miles up the river. The *' port " of Lungchow (Kwang Si) was also opened in 1889 : the trade in 1899 was not only contemptible in amount, but was abso- lutely declining — the total was under 86,000 taels. After the extension of the Langson railway, in 1902, it rose gradually to 900,000 taels in 1908 : reports are scarce, but as its customs revenue for 1913 only barely reached 5,000 taels, and as in any case the French only are concerned, we may ignore the place. Sz-mao (Yiin Nan) promises better. It was opened to the French in 1895, and to the British in 1896, as already stated under the head " Arrival of Europeans." The average annual trade in 1899 had been about 225,000 taels — so far, chiefly cotton from the British Shan states ; but both in total trade and in revenue it is little better off than Lungchow, and consuls no longer report upon it. Of Kwang-chou Wan, the new French station in the Lei-chou Peninsula, leased in 1898, it is difficult to say anything, except that there is a good native trade with Macao and Kongmun ; however, it is a free port, and in no way falls under the Chinese (Foreign or Maritime) Customs. Kongmun and Kumchuk have both been mentioned as being under Sam-shui (p. 153) ; but in the Foreign Customs revenue lists avail- able to me Kongmun ranks (separately) higher than its parent port, whilst Kumchuk is not enumerated at all. Ch'ang-sha has been treated of under the head of its parent and guardian Yochou (p. 161), whose revenue it more than doubles. Nan-ning, which was declared an open " port " in 1907, has already been discussed under Wu-chou (p. 155), though it has separate 174 MODERN TRADE [chap, vii customs mention as one of the forty-seven. Man- chouli, Aigun, Hunchun, and Suifenho on or near the Russian frontiers ; Lungchingtsun in Kirin ; Antung and Tatungkow on or near the Japanese (Corean) frontiers ; and Harbin where Russian and Japanese interests meet, are all in the list of forty-seven revenue ports managed by the Inspector-General at Peking ; but there are special arrangements with both Russia and Japan as to the nationality of the officials in charge, and other matters ; besides which British interests are only remotely concerned in Man- churian regions except in so far as preferential freights and duties are on the tapis. Finally there is Momein or T'eng-yiieh (pp. 74, 101) which was opened in 1902 and achieved its humble " record " of 475,000 taels in 1913 with a customs revenue of 65,000 taels ; but de minimis non curat lex : when the railway from Bhamo joins up with it, no doubt the world will discover its potentialities. Then there are Kiang-tsz, Gnatong or Yatung (Darjiling), and Gartok (source of the Indus), which (Tibet being independent) the Foreign Customs has ceased to mention. Also Ta-chien-lu (Darchendo), the trade for 1913 in which place Mr. Assistant King (presumably from the Ch'eng-tu Consulate-General) surprises us by describing this very year (1916) ; as the Tibetans every now and again eject the Chinese, and as the Chinese soldiers themselves periodically sack the town in order to recover their pay, it must be a parlous spot for capitalists just now. Then there is Yiin-nan Fu (the word/?^ now abolished), which was opened as a " voluntary " port in 1905 ; P'u-k'ou, opposite Nanking (pp. 164-5), sanctioned in 1915 because Nanking's shore port Hia-kwan is not convenient for transhipments ; two high officers have been appointed to supervise the building arrange- OWING THE POSITION OF ALL PORTS RTS OPEN TO FOREIGN TRADE UNDER ?EIGN CUSTOMS BUT EXCLUDING THE ! RUSSO-JAPANESE LAND "PORTS" \CHURIA r A.D. 1896-1916] ODDS AND ENDS 175 ments. Lung-k'ou on the north side of the Shan Tung promontory was made a subordinate office of the Chefoo customs in 1915 : the Japanese for some years before the war had been making use of this place, and they made it a sort of land base in 1914 for taking the Germans in the rear. In 1905 the great marts of Chou-ts'un and Wei Men in Shan Tung were made sub- sidiary to the Tsi-nan customs when established (p. 170). Ch'ih-feng in North Chih Li (well north of Jehol) was declared a trading mart by mandate of January last (1916). In 1905 quite a number of " voluntary " places for trade were opened in different parts of Manchuria — to wit, Feng-hwang, Liao-yang, Sin-min-t'un, T'iehling, T'ung-kiang-tsz, Fak'umen, K'wan-ch'eng-tsz (that is, Ch'ang-ch'un), Kirin, Ninguta, Sansing, Tsitsihar, etc. Kin Men (Kin-chou Fu) was " voluntarily " opened in February 1916, and Mukden would seem to be another voluntary mart. In enumerating these odds and ends of " ports " over and above the orthodox 47, I must appeal for consideration in the matter of spelling. First there is the old-fashioned customary spelling ; then there is Sir Thomas Wade's Pekingese (as modified by myself) ; then there is the irregular Chinese official Post- Office spelling ; and finally the spelling adopted by the Foreign Customs. It is almost impossible so to decide in each case as to please everybody. (47) Soochow has not often been included in the special trade reports issued by the Foreign Office, and is really a mere appendage of Shang- hai. Still, in 1896 it acquired the dignity of being an " open port " on its own basis (see p. 116), and its separate trade under the Foreign Customs had in 1899 already reached 1,500,000 taels a year ; for many years subsequent to that 176 MODERN TRADE [chap, vii it oscillated above and below 5,000,000 taels ; but besides this there is the trade which pays the likin offices rather than the Foreign Customs, which cannot be " squared." Foreign influence is, however, more specially concerned there in developing spinning mills and silk filatures. The Shanghai-Nanking railway brings it within easy reach. There is a University, and there are a few foreigners in the Customs, Post-office, etc. CHAPTER VIII THE GOVERNMENT At first sight it might appear that, in describing the Government of China, we should begin with the Emperor, or at least, now that a Republic has been established, with the Central Admini- stration at Peking. But as a matter of fact the Manchu power was a mere absorptive machine, whose very existence (as recent events have shown) was a matter of comparative unconcern to the provinces, each of which is even now sufficient unto itself; and exists, tries to exist, or can exist as an independent unit. Hence, just as, for the moment, we have in the first chapter eliminated Tibet, Mongolia, Manchuria, etc., from the field, and have confined our preliminary geographical view of the Empire to the Eighteen Provinces, so do we for the present dismiss the President and his Ministry, as we formerly did the Emperor and his Court, from consideration, and limit our survey to what is really the living and active administration — to wit, the general constitution of China Proper, a confederation. of more or less homogeneous provinces. It will be noticed from the list given in the first chapter that nearly every one of these provinces has an ancient and purely territorial name, in addition to its present practical or descriptive appellation ; this ancient or literary name is, notwithstanding political changes, still used in 177 Its THE GOVERNMENT [chap, viii official documents quite as often as the modern one. Thus the Canton Military Governor, who in effect replaces the former Viceroy, says : " Your despatch has reached Yiieh " ; and the Shan Si Civil Governor, in discussing likin, in the usual terse literary style, talks of '" Tsin Zi." It is just as though the modern French departmental prefects were to use the old pro- vincial terms Gascony and Burgundy more freely than they do ; or as though we English should, for elegant purposes, retain the official use of such words as Mercia and Wessex. Now, subject to qualifications which will hereinafter be made, the main idea which runs throughout the republican provincial organisa- tion is as follows : Each province has both a Military and a Civil Governor, who report on all formal matters to the Board at Peking, and of late have shown a tendency to " wire " their sentiments direct to the President : affairs on this point have not yet consolidated themselves. About 320 years ago pairs or triplets of provinces began to have a temporary Viceroy or Governor- General in addition to the governors ; and when the Marichus came to consolidate their power, in 1640-50, such viceroys became permanent; until, after various re-shufflings, they settled down to a definite distribution, very nmch as they were until 1911. The original motive in appointing a viceroy was not unlike our idea in appointing Sir Bartle Frere or Sir Hercules Robinson as High Commissioner for South Africa ; that is, military or other urgent con- siderations rendered it expedient for one strong man to deal with some wide question, involving more than one gubernatorial or divisional interest. But now one very radical change has taken place in China, and shows every sign of permanency ; each province is free from the joint rule or part A.D. 1905-1911] PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT 179 superintendence of any other province. True, the precise relative duties of the Mihtary Governor and Civil Governor are not yet permanently fixed, but at all events they do not " move " for each other's consent and signature any longer, and the Penlow-Jorkins farce that used to characterise the joint powers of the Viceroy and the Governor in Manchu times has entirely ceased. The rendering of both officials' titles has changed three or four times since the provinces " pronounced " in 1911, but now it seems de- finitely settled that Tuh-kiln (Army Director) and Sheng-chang (Province Senior) are most in accord with democratic needs. It is still "good form " to avoid using personal (" Christian ") names; but the old appellations of "great man" (excellency), "old grandfather" (your honour), etc., have gone by the board, and now every man, from the President downwards, is plain Sien-sheng, or " Mister " ; that is, " former born," or Senor. It happens occasionally that the Military Governor acts also for the Civil, or vice versa, and no special qualifications are (as yet) required for either ; but no doubt, as the Republic " finds its helm," these matters will gradually be righted. Those picturesque functionaries the Treasurer and the Judge, whose joint or several recom- mendations used to " move " the Viceroy and Governor (jointly or separately) to " act," still in a measure exist (after many shiftings) under the names of Finance Senior and Interior Affairs Senior; but they are both now in a more sub- ordinate position, and moreover both take orders direct from the Peking Boards. More or less successful attempts had been made by the Manchus since 1905 to separate the Executive from the Judicial powers, and these efforts have been continued under the Republic. 14 180 THE GOVERNMENT [chap, viii Thus we have three grades of Judges and Justices in each province, appointed by the Peking Ministry of Justice, and (as I understand it) in no way responsible to the Mihtary or Civil Governor, or to their subordinates the Finance and Interior Elders or Seniors. Nominally, at least, each of the " Eighteen Provinces " (that is, twenty -two) is equal to the others, but naturally a rich or important province still continues to be coveted by the avaricious or ambitious man. Yet there are a few further irregularities in detail which some- what upset the perfect symmetry of this com- paratively simple arrangement as a whole. In order to deal adequately with the Mongols, Tibetans, Turki, and other non-Chinese peoples, it has been found necessary to keep up certain military proconsulships on the basis of indepen- dent provinces. Thus the extramural part of Chih Li remains under the tu-fung of Jehol, and the extramural part of Shan Si under the tu-fung of Kukukhoto, undemocratic titles included. Evidently it would not do to shock the Mongol princes, dukes, etc. (who still carry Manchu titles), by placing them under a mere citoyen. In the same way there are special arrangements for the Kokonor, Hi, Altai, and Tibetan frontiers, at all which places, however, it has been found possible to abolish the old Manchu titles in favour of miore democratic appellations ; still, when the Boards send circular orders to the provinces, the " scratch " governors of these more or less foreign-infected regions are treated quite on the basis of " real men." As to Outer Mongolia, after declaring its independence under the Urga "Saint" and ac- cepting Russian protection in a certain measure, it has come back to the Chinese fold under conditions regulated by treaty between Russia A.D. 1912] THE EJECTED MANCHUS 181 and China ; the only unsettled question (as I write) is whether his Holiness should send members to the Chinese Parliament. The ejected Manchus give no trouble at all. The princes and nobles enjoy their pensions and private estates under the liberal arrange- ments solemnly made by President Yiian Shi- k'ai in 1912, and no doubt he was wise in thus purchasing their innocuousness. A few able Manchus are still employed as high republican officials, but the bulk of the mixed Pekingese and the purer provincial garrison Manchus seem to have quietly " relapsed " into Chinese, just as Bosnians, Greeks, Serbians, Bulgarians, etc., with facility relapse into " Turks " when occa- sion required. The "wild" Manchus, Tungusic hunters, etc., remain as they were, and are probably unaware that any important change has taken place at all ; they are of no more political importance than our gipsies. Now, each of these Eighteen Provinces is, as already suggested, a complete state in itself, whose corporate existence is in no way dependent upon any other state, except in so far that the poor ones dun the rich ones for the money which the Central Government still in theory " appro- priates to them,". — when, indeed, it has even itself any money to work upon at all. Each province had its own army, navy, system of taxation, and its own social customs ; but, as regards the army and navy, things are still in a state of flux, though the tendency is, of course, to gather power as much as possible into central hands : so it is better not to attempt any closer definitions at present. The Salt Gabelle has been com- pletely revolutionised and improved under the able direction of Sir Richard Dane, and this source of revenue is now almost as important as the Maritime Customs. Still, as regards 182 THE GOVERNMENT [chap, vm provincial " rights," it is too early to make any satisfying statement. Many new taxes have been introduced, both under the Manchus and the Republic, since war indemnities and loans practically absorbed the whole "regular" revenues of China. This did not matter so much to Peking, for the existence or non-existence of a central bureaucracy was never essential to the corporate life of China ; but the democratic "King's Government" in the provinces had to be carried on, and therefore innumerable new levies in the shape of wine, tobacco, and house duties; stamp, licence, and various other excise duties ; transfer fees, gam- bling farms, and other " special " charges and monopolies have one after the other been in- troduced or developed by way of " raising the wind " for the sailing of the provincial barque. Nor is the provincial government more essen- tial to popular life than the central, from which it only differs in this' — ^that it can get at the people directly. China can get on very well' — so long as bandits do not disturb order- — without any government at all ; it is like a vast india- rubber ball, which immediately rights itself after each squeeze. Amid all this welter, one thing is now certain. Peking can no longer " sell " each province to the highest bidder or present it to the first favourite. Corruption seems to be as bad as ever ; but at least the Chinese stew in their own juice, and are not dished up for the sole delectation of idle Manchus ; moreover, the huge first charge on all provincial revenues for " Peking Contingent " no longer exists except in the moderated shape of pensions granted to the former ruling classes in consideration of their retiring from the empire trade, and this sum (if paid) is not " appropriated " from the provinces. In justice to Peking, however, it must be con- A.D. 1917] BARBERS AND BARBARIANS 183 fessed that it does and has done much for justice, education, means of communication (railways, telegraphs, etc.), postal facilities, encourage- ment of industries, improvement of water- courses, some sanitary matters, and a thousand and one minor things in many instances totally ignored by the Manchus ; in spite of the dismal tale of revolutions, China has marched, but she still remains the " free and easy " country she always was. There are no passports, no restraints on liberty, no frontiers, no caste prejudices, no food scruples, no finnikin sanitary measures, no moral laws except popular customs and criminal statutes. China is in many senses one vast republic, in which personal restraints have no existence; — in a word, Kip- ling's ideal place " east of Suez." The Manchus, as the ruling race, had certainly a few privileges, but, on the other hand, they suffered just as many disabilities. Barbers, play-actors, and policemen in Manchu times were under a mild tabu — more theoretical than real ; but now the barber has partly disappeared with the pigtail ; male play-actors are not given to the vices of Manchu fashion so much, w^iilst real women now act, and very often the modern policemen are quite exemxplary individuals. On the other hand, aboriginal " barbarians " always could and still can easily become Chinese by reading books and putting on breeches — or " some veskits," as Artemus Ward used to say : in fact several of the most prominent Military Governors of the moment are by descent of the Shan or the Miao-tsz race. This being the happy-go-lucky condition of high office in China, there is (apart from accidental or special causes) no jealousy or class feeling in the country ; it is simply a question of big fish feeding on little fish, unless and untiHthe little fish can keep out of the way, 184 THE GOVERNMENT [chap, viii eat their way up, and become big fish them- selves ; and, so far, things under the Republic seem too much as they were under the Empire, private gain, as before, taking precedence of the public weal. The exceptions are rare. Each provincial government being thus a state in itself, how does it go to work ? It must be explained in ansv/er to this question that the true official unit of Chinese corporate life is the Men, or " city district," and for 2,000 years past there have been some 1,300 of them ; even allowing for the recent republican changes (shortly to be described), there cannot be much over 1,600. Each average province is divided into from 70 to over 100 hien, a term variously translated by Europeans " district," " depart- ment," " canton," or " prefecture." The half- barbarian province of Kwei Chou has only thirty-four ; but then it has numerous " autoch- thonous " districts besides; that is to say, dis- tricts ruled by " barbarian " magistrates, usually hereditary, but responsible to the nearest genuine Chinese magistrate in serious matters. Chih Li has nearly 140 ; but this total includes the Peking and Mongol districts of the Jehol com- manderie. A hien is in area about the size of an English county, or a French department, with the same uncertainty or irregularitj'' as to area and importance. It alinost always con- sists, in purely Chinese tracts, of a walled city and an area of, say, 500 or 1,000 square miles round the town. Very often an enormous city of lower rank forms an appendage to a sleepy old hien ; until recently this was the case with Hankow : it has a parallel in England, when big new towns (as, for instance, Liverpool in relation to Walton) " iDclong " to mere village parishes, until they receive their own chartered "rights." Every Chinaman is described first of all as A.D. 1911-1917] CHINESE MUNICIPALITIES 185 belonging to a given Men ; and so strong is the association that it follows him through life, if, he gains distinction, much as the territorial surroundings of a Scotch or French magnate easily attach to his family name. Thus Li Hung-chang is often currently described as the " Hoh-fei statesman," because he hails from the Men of Hoh-fei ; whilst his illustrious rival Chang Chi-tung is similarly called by newspaper men the " Nan-p'i viceroy," from a city of that name on the Grand Canal, south of Peking ; so the President Yiian Shi-k'ai on the day of his death was spoken of as Hiang-ch'eng (his birthplace) : it is like our " Thank ye, thank ye, Hawthornden." The Men magistrate is still, under the Republic, the very heart and soul of all official life and emolument, his dignity and attributes, in large centres such as Canton or Chungking, not falling far short in many respects of those of the Lord Mayor of London. His comparatively low rank places him in easy touch with the people, w^hilst his position as the lov/est of the yu-sz, or com.mis- sioned " executive," clothes him with a status which even a Military Governor must respect. He is so much identified with the soul of the State, that the Emperor or Government itself used to be elegantly styled Men-kwan, or " the district magistrate." He was before 1912 judge in the first instance in all matters whatsoever, civil or criminal, and also governor of the gaol, coroner, sheriff, mayor, head-surveyor, civil service ex- aminer, tax-collector, registrar, lord-lieutenant, aedile, chief bailiff, interceder with the gods ; and, in short, what the people always call him — " father and mother officer " ; but the new republican organisation has shorn him of many of these attributes ; indeed (as just said) in the last years of the Manchus the executive and legis- 186 THE GOVERNMENT [chap, viii lative functions were bv way of bein^ separated throughout the whole official body, whilst the new Gendarmerie Board at Peking has remodelled the police. The hien cuts a very different figure in a remote country district from that accepted by him in a provincial metropolis like Canton, where he is apt to be overshadov^^ed by innumer- able civil and military superiors ; just as in London the Lord Mayor is outshone in a sense, even at his grand " spreads," by the Court and the Cabinet Ministers. In his own remote city the hien is autocratic and everybody, though possibly now the new local councils and provin- cial parliaments may be beginning to assert themselves. He had no technical training what- ever in Manchu times, except in the Chinese equivalent for " Latin verse " ; if he had ob- tained his post by purchase he had not even that. Now, under the Republic, there have been sug- gested, if not established, training schools for ad- ministration, based on the Japanese system of education, which even in the last Manchu years was seriously proposed as a general educational model for China. The " value " of every hien in the empire is of course perfectly well known ; but although there are bribery and corruption at Peking as well as in the provinces, the solid basis of government is not really bad, and from my experience of Chinese officials I should say that the majority of them are men no worse than American " bosses,"' — ^that is, mere hacks or hirelings of a corrupt growth, with as m.uch "conscience" as their system vouchsafes. Purchase of official rank, and even of office, has been sadly on the increase ever since China began to get into trouble with rebels and Europeans ; even now, under the republic, though substantive office can no longer be bought, and the nine " button "- A.D. 1902-1917] MANDARINS GALORE 187 ranks no longer exist, it is impossible to deny that jobbery is more in evidence than competency. The serio-comic descriptions of office juggling I gave in the first editions of this work are amply borne out by the scathing denunciations of the " three good viceroys," who, after the " Boxer " war, drew up a thorough scheme of reform ; the men who saved China were Liu K'un-yih, Chang Chi-tung, and Yuan Shi-k'ai. The tentative re- forms of the last-named at Tientsin (1902-1907) really provided effective models for the whole of China. Although the essence of provincial government thus consists in the Men and the four (now two) big men at the top of the tree, there are certain intermediaries who, in spite of recent drastic changes, cannot be ignored. Each group of two or more Men used to be under a/w, or city of the first class, and each province had from five to ten fu. I will not confuse the reader"V/ith too much definition. Suffice it to say that a fu city had no real existence of its own, butwas always within the walls of one or more of its own Men. Thus Lii-chou Fu in An Hwei, which has under it five Men, was really the Lloh- fei Men city where Li Hung-chang was born. In a few cases, as for instance that of Kwang-chou Fu (Canton city), there were and are two head Men within one set of walls ; but the warrants of each are limited in their run by an imaginary dividing line ; — much to the comfort of local thieves. In one case, the enormous city of Su-chou Fu (Soochow), there were actually three head Men, i.e. three prcetoria or yamens ^ and three rulers, within one wall ; but of course only the triple head of the one body was there : the Hinter- lands, or territories subject to each one, spread out like three fans in different directions. It is ^ " Yamm" (standard-gate) is now almost abolished in favour of hung-shu or " public office." 188 THE GOVERNMENT [chap, viii necessary to mention this in 1917, because nearly all existing maps, despite republican changes, exhibit cities graded under the now extinct system. The duties of afu (usually called a " prefect ") were as unsolid and abstract as his territory. I have sat and talked with many a fu, but I never understood what they did (beyond re- hearing as judges in the second instance), except act as a conduit-pipe for several Men ; just as the archdeacon has been humorously defined as an ecclesiastical dignitary performing archi- diaconal functions, so was the fu a territorial dignitary performing prefectural functions. All routine orders from above came to the Men through the fu, and conversely with the routine reports. The " head " fu and the " head " Men, when in one city with the highest provincial au- thorities, had to melden gehorsamst, or " report," every morning. In a few cases the fu had some special and real business, custom, salt, mercan- tile, or other, confided to him in addition to his nebulous supervisory functions. The notori- ous reformer K'ang Yu-wei pointed out to the luckless young Emperor in 1898 that all officials except the Men were useless excrescences, and ought to be abolished. No wonder the " profi- teers" of the day hounded the man from Peking, — and thus indirectly the Emperor from his throne, and the dynasty from its " tripod." As a matter of fact the Republic has totally expunged all fu throughout the Dominion. Above the fu, again, there was a still more modern and still more indefinite division and official called the tao, who had not even the loan of a walled town to live in ; and there never was such a place as even a theoretical tao city. Like the/w, he was, and at this moment perhaps still is, a conduit ; but a much busier man, always A.D. 1917] NEBULOUS OFFICIALS 189 provided with special duties ; for instance at nearly all the treaty-ports the tao or taotai (with whom a consul ranks by treaty) manages foreign affairs. His yamen (now kung-shu) may be within the walls of a city or anywhere else. There were several grades of tao : there was the simple '* cir- cuit intendant " ; then there was the " intendant having a say in military matters," the " customs intendant," and so on. Besides these executive taOy there v/ere also others in charge of grain transport and salt gabelle ; but these formed no part of the regular administration. However, the Republic began by abolishing all tao (except those required under foreign treaty) ; then it reintroduced them under the literary name of kwan-cW ah ; then it changed the name to tao-yin ; and now, as I write, I witness the extraordinary spectacle of a tao-yin officially reporting that he (and all his kind) is a useless humbug, and ought to be abolished ; under these circum- stances I fail to see what honest President Li can do but knock the hydra on the head once for all. I do not touch upon the assistant administrative officials, outdoor and indoor, attached to each district. Like the Japanese artist who, with a few dashes of his brush, leaves, a general impression of landscape to be gathered from a few daubs, so do I, in my im- perfect way, select a few leading features in order to convey to non-specialist readers a picture which their minds may rapidly take in without undue fatigue. The provincial admini- stration system of China is still in a state of flux, doubt, and restless, not to say meddlesome change, and it would be unsafe to count upon permanency any farther than as above. 1^ .a b Cjj T3 2 e -t> «*H TS d ^ O .2 e8 P* :: .. « o o g" ^ 2^ CO O Ph ■^ ^ >> fl S .2 ® H H M 3 S s e C e e § •- s fl a fe O 03 r J TS rt I fl, „" ^ ,. CI o,2 ro in 03 a> 2 t8 03:; : ^ & fl 3 • . cS -M • ^ N— ' ■*>— ' a> 3 2 .2 1 -w^ 3 o O o © § o.a © 2^ -£3 «^1^^is -p d -g BJ ^ O 09 eg x ©'Ph ^ '3 '3 ^ o & > ti oO Pi 3 o w 3 W M © 43 05 P;< 3 o'3 o 3.S S © © tj «w g tH d o o S © 3 -^ 2 fe * S 3^ •3 -^ s~ ^ ^ fc . 05 © . 3 S • *> O -H — 1. Land-tax in ounces of silver. 2. Grain-tax in hundredweights of cereals. 3. Straw, grass, etc., in bundles. 4. Salt produced in " drafts " (quarters) for retailing. 5. Salt dues on above in taels (^ tael per draft). 6. Tea in " drafts " (quarters), apparently for export. 7. Cop23er cashcoined fromGovernmentcopper. At the beginning of the dynasty the total revenue receipts in money or bullion were under 15,000,000 taels, and in 1656 under 20,000,000. At the same time, the Emperor has left it on record that he was well aware enormous fortunes were made out of the provinces by his conquering generals. In spite of expensive wars, remissions A.D, 1740-1790] REVENUE RECEIPTS 207 of taxes, and imperial visits or costly tours of inspection, the average expenditure was so much below average receipts that for over half a century (1740-90) there was a balance of 60,000,000 or 70,000,000 taels always in hand. It must also be remembered that the inter- national gold value of the silver tael was then nearer eight shillings than the present average of three shillings, and its local purchasing power was also much greater than at present. If we regard one tael as equivalent in local power to one pound with ourselves, we shall not be far wrong. During this halcyon period, the eighteenth century, the regular receipts may be roughly put down at 40,000,000, and the regular expenditure at 30,000,000 taels ; the accumulated balance was only occasionally drawn upon when the annual surpluses were unequal to special demands ; but these annual surpluses usually covered the ex- ceptional expenses, just as the " free resources " of Russia under M. de Witte were always at hand (in theory at least) to defray unlooked-for charges. But every now and then, under special stress, the sale of titles or office was temporarily resorted to, in order to ease the money market. The following is a specimen of a genuine pre- Taiping budget in taels :- — Receipts Reformed land-tax .... 29,410,000 Profits on salt ..... 5,745,000 Customs [very little foreign] . 5,415,000 Sale of office ..... 3,000,000 Tea, fish, rushes, mining 322,000 Transfer fees ...... 190,000 Octroi and miscellaneous 858,000 44,940,000 Less sale of office (exceptional) 3,000,000 Total ordinary cash receipts (taels) . 41,940,000 Hundredweights of grain received (value from Tl. 1 to Tls. 2) . 4,841,000 Total receipts .... 46,781,000 208 REVENUE [chap, x All the above revenue seems to have gone either actually to Peking, or (indirectly thither) as pay to the central and provincial armies ; or to officials ; or to services connected with Peking and its armies, such as posts, grain-boats, or mints ; or to administrations of other matters associated with the Peking interests, such as repairs to the Canal, to the Peking rivers, the Hwai dykes, or the Yellow River. Now let us take the corresponding credit side. Out of a total expenditure of 31,000,000 taels, only one two-hundredth part goes in any way directly to the public, and even this trivial sum of 140,000 taels for " educational establish- ments " probably refers to Peking official colleges, or Manchu schools. The following is a condensed specimen, then, of a genuine pre-Taiping expenditure sheet : — Army and army interests Salaries, allowances Yellow River Posts and boats Palaces, princes, eunuchs, etc. 19,599,100 4,554,700 3,800,000 2,120,000 1,309,000 31,382,800 Education 140,000 Taels 31,522,800 As the number of soldiers included in the above pay total is 800,000, I presume that the 100,000 or so of bannermen at Peking would absorb be- tween 2,000,000 and 3,000,000 taels, whilst the 100,000 bannermen in the provinces, plus the 600,000 Chinese provincial troops, would require from 16,000,000 to 17,000,000 taels. The working revenue or expenditure of the provinces, which of course was never reported in detail, and never appeared even locally on paper in the shape of a budget, was in real fact A.D. 1900] MANY FINGERS IN THE PIE 209 somewhat as follows : — about 1,500 Men rulers would have to net on the average at least 10,000 taels a year, over and above all allowances, in order to make their own fortunes and those of their superiors. The " allowances and salaries " issued by the Emperor were really held back as security, and very often quietly peculated, by the Men's superiors. These Men would also have to spend on the average at least another 10,000 taels a year in order to entertain passing officials of rank, pay the cost of their own maintenance (including police), the salaries of secretaries, etc. Of course some Men secretaries would have their tens of thousands, whilst others would only have their hundreds of taels ; I only speak of averages. The various customs monopolists would also require 5,000,000 taels a year for their own fortunes, and to defray the cost of presents to the fisc at Peking ; scarcely any of the customs receipts went to the cerarium, whether local or central. In other words, the 45 or 46,000,000 of official revenue must be at least doubled if we are to get even approximately at the first instal- ment only of what was really extracted as actual working revenue from the popular bed-rock in a regular way. And all this, again, is quite apart from the irregular tyranny, bribery, peculation, and extortion by special inquisitors, military men, etc. ; and apart from the rapacity of tax- collectors, police, and so on. Anything done for the public good, such as road-making, bridge- repairing, sanitation, charitable establishments, municipal police, local schools, feasts, theatricals, lighting, police — in fact everything except what concerns the Emperor and his service — was, and is (sulDJect, however, to a few wholesome reforms introduced since the " Boxer " smash of 1900), defrayed by local subscriptions or popular rates, municipally or rurally imposed, over and above 210 REVENUE [chap. X the State and official taxes levied directly or indirectly, as above described, in the name of the central or local government. Having now taken a retrospective glance at the principles upon which revenues have been col- lected and spent in the immediate past, let us endeavour to gain an insight into the working of a contemporary budget as it was up to the date of post-Boxer reforms : — Towards the end of each year the Board of Revenue, like a distant embodiment of Themis, looks round upon pro- vincial mankind, takes up its files, and sees that the following items of expenditure, in which the Central Government has an immediate interest, are good, and must be defrayed : — 1. Pay and salaries at Peking 2. Palace needs 3. Russian and French frontier 4. Yang-tsze defence armies 6. Navies 6. Provincial armies 7. Yellow River 8. Getting grain to Peking Railways . Arsenals Foreign loans (repaid) New-fangled notions , armies Taels. 8,000,000 1,400,000 6,000,000 ^3,000,000 1,000,000 20,000,000 1,500,000 1,700,000 Total Taels 41,600,000 It will at once be seen that, even in the good old times of comparative solvency previous to the Japanese war of 1894, the expenditure on armies, navies, and things connected with them had risen within a century from 19,000,000 to 38,000,000 taels; but after 1898, again, both the central and the provincial armies were im- proved at great expense, and in spite of dis- bandings and retrenchments in 1900 probably cost much more than 40,000,000. Hence it then became urgently necessary at once to re- A.D, 1896-1900] EFFECT OF REFORMS 211 duce the 20,000,000 taels wasted upon utterly useless provincial troops ; hence, again, dis- content and disloyalty ; but none the less reforms took place at the persistent urging of the " three good viceroys " (p. 187). The Palace needs ceased to increase. The Yellow River cost less than it did ; not because its condition was better, but because times were worse, and the people must therefore suffer in the shape of extra floods and diminished public works ; in 1898 Li Hung-chang himself was set to work to effect a genuine amelioration on the spot if he could. When China was building her own rail- ways in a modest way, and at snail-like pace, the provinces had to send up between them about 500,000 taels a year for that purpose ; but when, in 1886, the new Admiralty was estab- lished in consequence of the shock caused by the French war, the railway fund was partly diverted to (the elder) Prince Ch'un, the Emperor Kwang- sii's father, as Lord High Admiral. Again, when the Japanese destroyed the fleets, and Prince Ch'un was dead, portions of both funds were devoted to "pressing needs"' — in this case to " building a new palace for the Dowager-Em- press " ; and in 1900 a beginning was being made with a new navy, whilst railways gradually got involved with foreign loans and syndicates. Arsenals had an up-and-down perfunctory and wasteful life too in their haste to complete mili- tary preparations. Finally, foreign loans, old and new, the repayment of which, and of interest thereon, in 1900 absorbed about 25,000,000 taels a year, were entirely a new charge on the revenue. New activities included concessions, speculations, mills, steamer companies, mints, foreign copper for modern coins, mines, telegraphs, telephones, electricity, etc., some of which soon began to pay, and some of which were worked at a loss ; in a 16 212 REVENUE [chap, x few cases the central or a provincial government found itself financially involved in one or more of these, as for instance in the Shanghai-Ningpo railway and the K'ai-Lan coal industry (p. 168). In their heart of hearts the Chinese, or at least those " in " with the Manchu Government, would have liked to pitch the whole lot into the sea, and go back to happy old times. And (here I repeat in 1916 with emphasis the exact words I used in 1900) I am not sure that they are not right ; " progress " does not seem to conduce to content at all ; and, personally, I think there is much to be said for the life of a so-called *' barbarian." It will be seen at a glance that, bad though things were before the Japanese war of 1894-5, matters were infinitely worse in 1900 after the Germans in 1897 had set the pace for " grab." The Board had to see that 60,000,000 or 70,000,000 taels were found annually for expenses, instead of the 40,000,000 of the happy old dolce far niente days : this meant a corresponding diminution in the "free resources" which used ultimately to find a way into various private pockets. It may well be imagined that the result was infinitely more serious when the " Boxer " affair came to be written off, in 1901, with its damage to foreign investments, compensation for foreign expenditures, and so on. Poor old Li Hung-chang's desperate bargaining with eleven implacable envoys at Peking is one of the most pathetic stories in the world's history. On the 28th September the Board announced the trifle of 982,238,150 taels. On the 1st November the tough old statesman was reported to be spitting blood ; on the 7th he was dead. The Board found that the receipts it could, at the time of Li's death, count on for the year were (roughly) :■ — A.D.1901] CRUSHING "BOXER" INDEMNITIES 218 Taeltf. 1. Land-tax, in money .... 26,000,000 2. Native Customs 4,260,000 3. Foreign Customs . 22,750,000 4. Profits on salt . 14,000,000 5. Likin 14,000,000 6. Profits on native opium 3,000,000 7. Miscellaneous 3,000,000 Loans and benevolences — Sale of office — Foreign loans (received) — Total Taels 87,000,000 This total represents the maximum probable receipts up to the time when the " Boxer " re- bellion broke out, and does not necessarily con- flict with any other tables given in this chapter. There is even here an excess over ordinary expenditure of 46,000,000 taels, which total still leaves 25,000,000 for the service of loans ; 3,000,000 for arsenals ; 2,000,000 for railways, palaces, and other novelties ; and 16,000,000 for provincial needs. Things would thus not have been so very bad, in spite of parlous times, if all the receipts had been paid, in one currency, into one central chest or account (as the Foreign Customs receipts are) ; and if all payments had been drawn in one cur- rency from this one chest, and remitted in one way ; but, in the first place, all provinces had and have two main currencies of pure silver (several " touches ") and copper cash (several qualities), the relation between which two differs in each town every day. Besides this, each province has its own " touch " and " weight " of a silver ounce ; and some provinces use dollars, chopped and unchopped, by weight or by piece, as well as pure silver ; and the dollar exchange varies daily locally and centrally in regard to both copper cash and silver. Even this difficulty, which involves an enormous waste of time and energy, and opens the door to innumerable and 214 REVENUE [chap, x inscrutable " squeezes," might be philosophic- ally ignored if receipts and disbursements were lumped in one account,— if the venous blood were allowed a free course to the heart, and the arterial blood a clean run back to the extremities. In spite of the multitudinous reforms introduced or at least favourably considered during the last years of the Empire and the five years of the Republic, most of these currency absurdities are as rampant as ever ; but, before we enter into the present financial situation, let us consider the — immensa moles of incompetence and corrup- tion with which men of the Sir Richard Dane type have to deal before they can make any secular im.pression upon, or give permanent shape to this jelly-fish mass of corruption. The Board, which was as corrupt and conservative as the provinces, went about its business in a very hand-to-mouth, rough-and-tumble sort of way. Instead of saying : " Your receipts are 5,000,000, and your disbursements 4,900,000 ; send 100,000 to the balance chest," it used to say :— " From your land-tax, eight-tenths nominal of which are this year only expected (after deduc- tion made for disasters), 500,000 will be sent for Peking salaries (original), 100,000 for the same (extra), 200,000 for the Palace, and 100,000 to make up for shortage in the remittances to Man- churia for 1896. It must arrive (with the usual extras for Board's fees) in part before the seventh and entirely before the tenth moon. As your salt likin is transferred to the Inspector-General of Foreign Customs for the service of loans, six-tenths of the ordinary likin which used to go to the Manchurian armies must replace the salt likin remittances on Peking account, whilst four- tenths will take the place of what used to be A.D. 1880-1900] HARLEQUIN FINANCE 215 repayments on Full Kien account, but wliich since 1886 have been transferred to the appro- priation for Yiin Nan copper (minus scale and waste). If this be insufficient, the saving of 7 per cent, on the scale for army payments accu- mulated since 1881 can be temporarily trans- ferred to the arsenal contribution (subject to discount). The province of Kwei Chou complains that your 6,000 taels a month for its frontier army have not been sent. Sz Ch'wan has been directed to advance the requisite sum ; and mean- while, as the Inspector-General has compounded with Sz Ch'wan and Hu Peh for a lump annual sum down instead of collecting their joint salt likin, you can direct the Salt Commissioner to send up quickly for the new Tientsin artillery the 200,000 taels a year formerly devoted to the Canton torpedo college." This picture of imperial Chinese finance is of course an artificial one, slightly exaggerated with an extra tinge of local colour so as to illustrate the hopeless confusion that reigns. Each viceroy or governor used to dispute every new demand, and it was quite understood that some appropria- tions were intended to be more serious than others. Some simpleton of an honest man from time to time threw everything out of gear by allowing a truth to escape : but the Board never let a " flat " of this sort score in fact, even though he might appear to do so in principle. A governor could not be expected to show zeal for Yiin Nan copper when he knew that the high officer in special charge was making a fortune out of it. On the other hand, the " Board's rice," though a matter of no public importance, was always promptly sent ; on the same general ground that a consul, in writing to the Foreign Office, is always very careful to docket his despatches neatly' — 216 REVENUE [chap, x to avoid a wigging. It does not do to quarrel with your bread and butter ; and underlings at headquarters can easily put a spoke into the wheel of the biggest man in the provinces if he gets nasty to them. There were many other absurd results of this rule-of-thumb system. Province A received subsidies from province B, but, itself owing others to province C, paid B on behalf of C. Thus there are two freights to pay, and two losses on exchange. Sometimes A might be directed even to pay a subsidy to a province B, which already pays one to province A. Funds which might easily be sent by draft were usually despatched in hollowed-out logs of wood, with a guard of soldiers as escort, accompanied by carts, fighting " bullies," and a commissioned officer. Even when sent by draft, there was a charge of 2 or 3 per cent, for remitting, and a commissioned officer was sent to carry the draft — (just as we send favoured officers to carry treaties or news of victory), so that he might gain " kudos " for his zeal. It was pathetic to read the accounts of hundreds of coolies trotting all the way to Shanghai from Shan Si with hollowed logs of wood containing silver wherewith to repay the interest on European loans. The extraordinary care and punctuality exacted in matters of form, duty, or national honour in Manchu times were only equalled by the shameless peculation and callous waste of time and money which prevailed in personal matters connected with the performance of the same public duty. Officers of high rank, who were known to make 30,000 or 40,000 taels a year out of their posts, gravely worked out their balances to the thousand-millionth part of an ounce, forgetting that (even if the clerk's salary were only sixpence a day) the time occupied in counting and subtracting each line of figures A.D. 1900] FARCICAL FINANCE 217 would cover, ten thousand times over, tlie clerk's salary rate per minute. In a word, the whole Chinese financial system was, and to a certain extent still is rotten to the core ; childish, and incompetent ; and should be swept away root and branch. I am no financier, but, so far as I can see, Peking is as hopeless as ever, whilst the republican provinces have cut the Gordian Knot by the simple process of not sending any revenue at all. Until there is a fixed currency, a Euro- pean accountancy in all departments, and a system of definite sufficient salaries, all reform is hopeless to look for, and it is astounding that the ministers do not act upon this view when they contemplate the results of Sir R. Hart's and Sir R. Dane's work. Table of possible Revenue Items in 1900 for Eighteen Provinces of China and Three Provinces of Manchuria.^ Taels. Money land tax 25,967,000 Grain tax, value in money, commuted or not 7,540,000 Native Customs 4,230,000 Taxes of all kinds on Salt, direct or indirect 13,050,000 Foreign Customs CoUectorate . . . 22,052,000 Likui, excluding that on salt and opium . 12,160,000 Taxes on native opium and opium licences 2,830,000 Miscellaneous undefined taxes, licences, fees, etc 2,165,000 Duties on reed flats .... 215,000 Rents on special tenures .... 690,000 Corvees and purveyances (roughly valued) 110,000 Sale of office and titles .... 266,000 Subsidies from other provinces . . 9,282,000 Tea taxes 900,000 Fuel and grain taxes .... 110,000 Total, Taels . 101,567,000 [Native loans and benevolences not included in the Grand Total, as being exceptional] [6,334,000] ^ For fuller particulars, see the reprint from Otia Mersiana alluded to in the chapter on " Population." 218 REVENUE Table of Total Revenues of each Province forming the Name of Taels (including Name of Province. subsidies). Province. An Hwei . . 4,033,000 Shan Si Cheh Kiang . . 5,786,000 Shan Tung . Chill Li . . 6,360,000 Shen Si Fuh Kien . . 6,035,000 Sz Ch'wan . Ho Nan . . 3,235,000 Yiin Nan . Hu Nan . . 2,765,000 Hu Peh . . 7,320,000 Total, Taels Kan Suh . . 5,946,000 Kiang Si . . 4,800,000 Sheng King . Kiang Su . . 21,450,000 Kirin . Kwang Si . . 1,730,000 Tsitsihar Kwang Tung . 7,525,000 Kwei Chou . . 1,107,000 Grand Total [Less subsidies from one province to the other] ...... [chap. X above total. Taels (including subsidies). . 4,040,000 . 4,530,000 . 2,380,000 . 6,050,000 . 1,985,000 . 97,077,000 . 3,340,000 470,000 680,000 . 101,567,000 9,282,000 Translation of official statement of expendi- tures for 1910 as telegraphed to each Province by the Board ; it will be seen that the expenditure in 1910 was double that of the revenue in 1900. Feng-t'ien (S. Manchuria) Kirin (Central Manchuria) Heh-lung Kiang (N. Manchuria) Chih Li . . . Jehol (military governor) Kiang Su (Soochow Division) Do (Nanking Division) An Hwei Kiang Si Shan Tung Shan Si Ho Nan Shen Si Kan Suh Sin Kiang ( = Fuh Kien Cheh Kiang Hu Peh Hu Nan Sz Ch'wan Kwang Tung Kwang Si Yiin Nan Kwei Chou (For further particulars, 10th April 1910.) New Territory) see Taels. 15,587,889 5,355,657 2,290,906 23,574,139 841,264 24,890,000 25,746,182 6,741,779 7,895,177 10,525,928 6,140,252 6,600,094 4,127,565 3,290,757 3,346,564 6,941,107 8,473,207 18,521,400 6,424,200 14,964,926 27,610,227 4,992,157 6,983,166 1,791,056 Economist for A.D. 1911-1913] EXTRAORDINARY BUDGETS 219 The Board's circular instructions for 1911, the last year of the Empire, were that in making estimates of expenditure for the Budget, items must be gathered under four main heads — to wit :- — 1. The requirements of the Peking yamens. 2. Tliosc of each province under the re- modelled system of official appointments. 3. The internal administrative expenditure of each province. 4. Garrisons, proconsulates, residents, etc., in Mongolia and Tibet. The deficit for 1911 was budgeted for 88,000,000 taels. The First Republican Budget showed a deficit of 280,520,000 taels, consisting of the following : — Taels. Deficit on the Manchu Budget . . . 88,000,000 „ "Annual" „ . . . 82,520,000 Provisional Expenditure . . . 110,000,000 In other words, enlightened democracy, taking Mr. Micawber as model, " gives an I.O.U. for total amxount," for the Income side has " nil " entries. The Budget for 1913 (the first complete year of President Yuan Shi-k'ai's government) was as follows V — Total expenditure, about . . . $903,000,000 consisting of Total ordinary expenditure, about . 410,000,000 „ extraordinary expenditure, about 163,000,000 „ reserve funds, about . . . 230,000,000 „ fund to encourage industries [our old friend Yiin Nan copper specially included] . , . 100,000,000 220 REVENUE [chap, x To meet the above expenditure, the available revenue is given as follows :- — Total revenue. about . . $726,733,208 consisting of 1. Land-tax „ . . 62,690,988 2. Salt-tax „ . . 49,954,250 3. Customs „ . . 63,696,465 4. Likin „ . . 18,292,002 5. Sundry taxes „ . . 6,342,217 6. Government Industries „ . . 12,549,627 8. Sundry (royalties, etc.) „ . . 28,674,615 (a) Ordinary 265,723,208 [but the total is only $222,100,064, and item No. 7 (which is omitted !) accounts presumably for the missing $33,623,144] (6) Extraordinary (foreign loans, etc.), about 70,000,000 (c) Revenue to be carried forward (internal loans, etc.) 400,000,000 I do not discuss this absurd "Budget" seri- ously ; there are numerous explanations given as to why the Customs is underestimated so many tenths, why salt so many tenths, etc., etc.' — the old thimble-rigging in a new form. In short, complete incapacity of the good old order is exhibited all round. It will be noted that the above " Budget " is on a silver dollar basis, and that a dollar was (roughly) two shillings — i.e. has 25 per cent, less silver than a tael; hence the sterling " receipts " of this precious " budgetastro " would be very roughly about £72,000,000, or 570,000,000 taels, and the ex- penditure £90,000,000 or 720,000,000 taels.^ China's really serious indebtedness only began after her foolish Japan war in 1894-1895, and ever since then she has plunged deeper and deeper ^ Silver has been unusually high this last Christmas, and £60 I remitted only fetched $390 in Shanghai. Two years ago the same amount of gold remitted brought me considerably over $600. Thus allowance must be made in all my scattered financial remarks for the period to which those remarks refer. A.D. 1894-1913] CHINA'S INDEBTEDNESS 221 into the treacherous mire. Her total owings cannot now fall far short of £200,000,000/ the interest on which (including amortisation) is much greater than her total revenue (liberal "squeezes" all round included) for 1894. When the Reorganisation or Five Power loan of 1913 was on the tapis, a complete list of all out- standing indebtednesses was published in the North China Herald for 15th February 1913, to which lovers of mammon are referred. ^ A Hongkong newspaper received as I correct proofs, says £150,000,000 ; but my estimate includes short loans, provincial loans, informal loans, irregular loans, etc. CHAPTER XI THE SALT GABELLE The salt industry contributes its share to illus- trate for us both the natural principles on which China is divided into pro\'inces, and the con- tinuity of her institutions. A statesman named Sang Hung-yang is stated to have been the first (in 90 B.C.) to establish an excise upon salt. It will be noticed from the accompanying map that the areas from which a revenue is derived from salt do not entirely correspond with the political subdivisions of the Empire into groups of provinces. We have the Valley of the Canton River, the Old Region of the Northern Yiieh kingdoms, the Old Kingdoms of Wu and Ch'u, all supplied with sea-salt, extracted and pre- pared in different ways, according to the natural facilities at hand in each producing place. Then we have the various kinds of well-salt, with or without fuel in the shape of gas, which supply the western and mountainous parts of China, broadly corresponding to the ancient Kingdoms of Shuh, Tien, and K'ien.^ The lake-salt of the desert competes with the pond-salt of Shan Si for the service of what may roughly be styled the mixed Tartar-Chinese regions. Finally, there are the primitive reed-flats of the north, ^ The ancient kingdoms, and their gradual absorption, do not fall within the scope of this book ; the question is analysed in Ancient China Simplified, published in 1908, 222 A.D. 400-1900] CANTON SEA-SALT AREAS 223 which serve the needs of the greater part of Old China. These administrative areas will be found to correspond in a general sense with the different stages of Chinese conquest, and with the spread of Chinese influence. A glance at the list of provinces given upon page 5 of the first chapter, and a reference to the remarks upon Han Wu Ti's annexations, in the chapter OH " History," will perhaps assist to make this clearer. A reference to the first chapter will show us that the vast tract called the Two Kwang — that is, West Kwang and East Kwang — being the northern half of the old state of South Yiieh, is simply the delta about Canton, including all the network of streams which in any v.ay contribute to it : the Swatow River system in the east is really by nature and ethno- graphy part of Full Kien. Accordingly we find that the sea-salt v.hich is prepared along the Canton coasts is, and since the fourth century always has been, all concentrated under one management. This was, and probably still is the modern administration of the First Class Salt Commissioner at Canton, aided by a Second Class Commissioner for Kwang Si, both in Manchu times subject to the supreme nominal direction of the Two Kwang Vicerov. There were seventeen subordinate mandarins on the staff, and 159 depots of all kinds, managed by six different ''chests'* or counting-houses, the ancient head centre of all being, as of old, at Tung-kwan, lower down than Canton, at the junction of the ''Great" and the "Lesser" rivers. Ovring to financial straits, efforts were made after the "Boxer" indemnity settlement to stretch the annual yield of excise as far as possible, say, to 1,000,000 taels : in the last year of the Empire, 1911, this figure was quadrupled. It will be noticed that the head waters of the 224 THE SALT GABELLE [chap, xi West River above Peh-seh rise in Kwang-nan Fu ( Yiin Nan) : accordingly this prefecture ^ alone uses Canton salt, and in return sends supplies of copper for the mint. One of the northern tribu- taries of this West River rises in the township of Ku-chou (in Kwei Chou province), and in the same way that department gets its salt supplies from Canton, instead of from Sz Ch'wan or the Hwai monopoly. It is not quite so obvious why three districts in the south of Hu Nan and three whole prefectures in the south of Kiang Si should make two more exceptions, though certainly part of the so-called " North " River rises in the first-named province, and part of the " Small " River in Kiang Si : no doubt there are special local conditions to consider ; and in any case the irregularity is nearly a century old, at the very least. For salt administrative purposes the Two Kwang, so far as they are drained into the delta, are divided into two distributions : that of the " Great River " (west of Canton), and that of the "Small River" (east of Canton). The Swatow River rises in T'ing-chou (in Fuh Kien province), and therefore that large prefectural area uses the Canton salt in vogue in the valley of the Swatow River, in preference to the less accessible coast salt of Hing-hwa (Fuh Kien). The island of Hainan is of course included in the Canton scheme, which thus rounds itself off by cutting corners from provinces politically and financially appertaining to rival salt industries. The salt industry of Fuh Kien, being smaller than that above described, is managed by a ^ Although fu prefectures (groups of Men) are now aboHshed, no new maps are yet pubUshed, and accordingly the old nomen- clature must be, partially at least, continued for the purposes of this chapter. A.D. 1000-1900] OLD YUEH COUNTRY SALT 225 Second Class Commissioner and seventeen sub- ordinate mandarins, who were in Manclm times under the supreme nominal control of the Viceroy at Foochow : this administration (like that of Canton just described, which latter dates from the organisers of the fourth century of our era) can only be traced historically back to times when a good political hold upon the land had been first obtained by advancing Chinese civili- sation (say A.D. 1000). I find that, when changes were made in 1157, the dues produced 80,000 " strings " a year. The number of sub- ordinate salt officers employed in each province depends upon the stage at which the salt leaves official hands to pass through middlemen to the consumers : hence in Fuh Kien it is unusually large. Since Formosa became Japanese terri- tory in 1895, the development of Fuh Kien salt productiveness has of course been further circum- scribed, at least officially ; but I have no doubt that, with so conservative a people, things would continue to run very much in their old channels, so long as Japanese excise and customs interests were not adversely affected. During the Taiping rebellion of 1855-1865 there was a period of spasmodic energy in Fuh Kien, owing to the transport service of the Yang-tsze or Hwai system having become disorganised ; but after- wards matters settled down to a dull uninterest- ing routine, and very little information of interest reached the general inquirer. The total nominal income raised from Fuh Kien salt in 1899 was about 500,000 taels a year ; in 1911 thrice that sum. As an instance of what '* hanky- panky" goes on behind the scenes in China, I may mention that I once went to the point where the head waters of three provinces meet, and, sailing down several hundred miles to Wenchow (Cheh Kiang), met enormous fleets of 226 THE SALT GABELLE [chap, xi Foochow salt boats actually working their way up from behind, as it were, to the northern and inland frontiers of Fuh Kien. From in- quiries made I found that a huge trade of 70,000 tons a year — that is, much more than the total official trade — was connived at by the sagacious likin officials of Cheh Kiang. French statistics place the salt consum.ption of all Indo-China in 1889 at 150,000 tons, so that my conjectural figures may not be far from the mark, having in view the comparative areas of Indo-China and the region served as explained. Following our way up the coast, we now reach the next province of Cheh Kiang, which, for the purposes of its salt administration, is still divided into East and West Cheh. This nomenclature takes us back to times when one of the Yang-tsze embouchures entered the sea at Hangchow, and a considerable part of the very modern province of Kiang Sti was included in the Cheh regions. In the year 1132, what was called the Hwai-Cheh salt system or systems was put on an Excise basis. From Shanghai, all down the coast-half of the province to the Fuh Kien frontier, was the division of Eastern Cheh; and the inner portion, including Chinkiang, Nanking, and Hangchow, was the division of Western Cheh, as already partly explained in the chapter on " Population." Just as in England our ancient dioceses overlap more modern administrative boundaries, so in China, for grain and salt purposes, the obsolete divisions of Kiang Nan and Two Cheh are still in use, though Kiang Nan has become two provinces, and the Two Cheh have become one. As the area of supply is large, there is a First Class Commis- sioner in charge of it, in Manchu times under the nominal supreme direction of the Governor at Hangchow; and there were thirty-nine sub- A.D. 1900-1910] SEA SALT OF CHEH KIANG 227 ordinates at the various distributing depots. As in the case of the two industries already described, the salt is nearly all, if not all, sea- salt, collected and treated under varying con- ditions and in different ways at certain centres along the coast. During the Taiping rebellion this salt also took advantage of the general disorganisation of transport to encroach upon the Hwai monopoly ; it went far up the Yang- tsze, and even down the Poyang Lake. But nearly a century back I find " Fychow " (Hwei- chou Fu in An Hwei) already consuming the West Cheh article ; this exceptional arrangement, which perhaps is an ancient one, is easily ex- plained by taking a glance on a good map at the river system, and reflecting that teas from the same region were driven in 1899-1900 by likin exactions from Kewkiang to Ningpo. There is another corner of An Hwei province (Kwang-teh), and also a wedge of Kiang Si (Kwang-sin) similarly included in the Two Cheh system, but without the justification in either case of a river source. All Kiang Su south of the Great River is included, except the extensive prefec- ture of Nanking. There are special arrange- ments for the two islands of Ting-hai and Ch'ungming (which latter produces salt of its own too), into which, however, I need not enter here, as my object is m.erely to sketch general principles. After the Japanese war and the conseqvient foreign loans, it was found necessary here and elsewhere to increase the consumers' price of salt, and of course this added something to the general feeling of discontent and unrest then already prevailing in China. For 1899 I estimated the Two Cheh salt revenue at 1,000,000 taels ; for 1911 it was nearer 3,500,000 taels. The great organisation known as the Two Hwai — that is, the Northern and Southern 17 228 THE SALT GABELLE [chap, xl divisions of the Hwai River (which, owing to Yellow River vagaries, now only exists in a truncated or mouthless condition) — is, as I stated in the earlier editions, well worthy the attention of a British syndicate, and, indeed, forms the basis of Sir Richard Dane's highly successful reforms now astonishing the world. The more the Yellow River (and fresh water generally) can be kept away, the better for the salt flats ; and the Chinese engineers of the Hwai are almost as expert as the Dutch manipu- lators of the Zuider Zee dykes in regulating the levels of competing waters. It will be seen from any tolerably good map that the whole of Kiang Su north of the Great River and east of the Canal is a dreary flat, and a great prtioon of this land is very lightly taxed, owing to its brackishness, and to its inability to grow other crops than rushes. Here lie all the celebrated salt flats of the Hwai, and the business distinc- tions of North and South, whatever they origin- ally meant, now refer chiefly to difference of origin, colour, and treatment in the trade article, together with capriciously demarcated respec- tive areas of consumption, which are apt to vary a little when one or the other kind of salt runs short in its own " preserve." The Niichen Tartars and the Sung dynasty, nearly 1,000 years ago, used to have a customs and salt station on the Hwai. Since the great Taiping rebellion, the whole system has been completely reorganised by a succession of very able viceroys ruling at Nanking. Their chief aim was how to regain for the Hwai interest the area lost during the wars and rebellions of 1855-65, and how to establish an Ausgleich, or modus Vivendi, with the immense salt-well expor- tation from Sz Ch'wan, so as to leave the latter a fair share of the consumers' ground which A.D. 1900-1910] SIR RICHARD DANE AGAIN 229 it rescued from the miseries of " insipid food " during the long Taiping anarchy ; and so as at the same time to arrange that the relative prices of the rival salts should not be too high for the indigent people, or too lightly taxed to admit of a substantial revenue ; and also that the general revenue systems of the three great Yang-tsze compound states- — Sz Ch'wan, the Two Hu, and the Two Kiang (half the area and half the population of all China Proper) — should be sufficiently elastic to provide the usual remittances for Peking, and for the support of their own several armies, navies, and arsenals. In accordance wdth this complicated arrange- ment, the Governors of the Hu Peh, Hu Nan (Two Hu) ; Kiang Su, Kiang Si, and An Hwei (" Two " Kiang) ; and Ho Nan had no say at all in " high policy " questions of salt ; the whole gabelle was under the administrative control of a First Class Commissary at Yang- chow, who again was in Manchu times under the supreme " diplomatic " and (in this case rather more than) nominal supervision of the Viceroy at Nanking; this latter was de facto, but not de jure, in regular consultation with the Viceroy at Wuch'ang (Hankow) in matters affecting the Ausgleich. Each of the above six provinces (except An Hwei which had none, and Kiang Su which had two) had a Second Class Commis- sary ; and there are thirty-four subordinates, but all attached to headquarters alone. Thus each province (except An Hwei, which is quite close to both Yangehow and Nanking) has an imperial accountant for purposes of local finance, but no control over distribution. The great central depot for stored salt is Icheng, between Chinkiang and Nanking. Of course all the above takes no account of Sir R. Dane's reforms, under the Republic, of which more anon. 230 THE SALT GABELLE [chap, xi It would weary the reader were I to state the names of each producing " yard " ; the pecuhar system of land taxation modified to suit the producing districts ; the way " warrants " are issued to speculators, salt is weighed out, gross and tare distinguished, order of precedence in sales arranged, dues, likin, and other charges apportioned, and so on. As the merchants who practically farm the industry " offered as bene- volences " 8,000,000 taels during the period 1880-1900, over and above the sums which the business was bound under regulation to yield- — in other words, as the Government has dared to " squeeze " an average of 400,000 taels a year besides its regular income of 5,000,000 or 6,000,000 taels (in 1911 nearer 10,000,000 taels) < — it may well be imagined that the wealthy owners of *' perpetual warrants " must have made a large profit. As many distinguished families used to invest in this syndicate, just as we Europeans invest in Consols or Rands, there was, of course, a universal conspiracy not to disclose to outsiders the real profits ; and, as the Viceroys at Nanking had to defend the interests of their provinces against Peking rapacity, such profits and revenues as were dis- closed to them by their subordinates beyond the regular figures never reached the Peking Board's ears officially. Therefore, of course, I could not in 1900 prove by documentary evidence what everyone knew, and what Sir R. Dane has proved, namely, that this great organisation is capable of great and beneficial developments in honest hands. Hwai salt, of two main kinds, is consumed in those very limited parts of Kiang Su south of the Yang-tsze not already described as appro- priated to the Two Cheh trade ; in all Kiang Su north of the Yang-tsze, except the wedge served A.D. 1132-1900] INTERESTING SALT WELLS 231 by Shan Tung ; in all An Hwei, except the two corners also above mentioned, and except also in one district (Suli-chou) in the extreme north not drained by the ITwai River, and served from Shan Tung ; in that south-east corner of Ho Nan which is drained by the head waters of the Hwai River ; in all Kiang Si, except the corners served by the Two Kwang and Two Cheh systems ; in all Hu Peh, except (a) the extreme south-west corner, where no navigable stream communicates with the Yang-tsze ; and (b) (to a limited extent, but not as a trade) even in those districts of the same corner which have such navigable communication ; also (c) only concurrently, since 1870, with Sz Ch'wan salt in the six prefectures west of the Han River ; and (d) subject to some tolerated encroach- ments of local well-salt in the extreme north- west. It is also consum.ed in all Hu Nan, except the parts appropriated to Canton salt ; and except in the extrem.e north, where, since 1870, it has run concurrently with Sz Ch'wan salt ; finally, in the four eastern prefectures of Kwei Chou, these being drained by the head waters of the Hu Nan rivers. In a word, Hwai salt serves nearly the whole Valley of the Yang- tsze, up to the gorges and the mountains. The great Sz Ch'wan salt industry, first organised in 1132, is totally different from all those described, and the brine is extracted from very deep Artesian wells, which also produce un- limited quantities of hydrogen gas, thus always gratuitously at hand as fuel for treating the salt ; in some cases speculators distribute this fuel, like our coal gas, in long bamboo pipes. ^ The ^ I have frequently described these wells at length, but perhaps the condensed account given in Chambers's Journal for 1896 is ^the most accessible to European readers, though since then several enterprising travellers have given further and perhaps more up-to-date descriptions. 232 THE SALT GABELLE [chap, xi interests involved are almost as great as in the case of the Two Ilwai, and the secrecy observed {i.e. beyond the stereotyped official point) is quite as impenetrable to those not " in the swim." Yet there is only a Second Class Com- missary in charge, with seven subordinates ; but in Manchu times the Viceroy, who had nominal supervision of the whole, exercised a much more direct controlling influence over the well-salt than did even his sea-salt colleague at Nanking, with whom, as with the Viceroy at Wu-ch'ang (Han- kow), he had to fight out his financial battles. In wandering over the provinces of Sz Ch'wan, Kwei Chou, and Hu Peh, I had good oppor- tunities for studying the working of this wonder- ful industry. In many places the salt, especi- ally when of the hard kind like blocks of stone, is practically small money, and its retail value varies unerringly so many fractions of a farthing per pound according to the freight rates of boats in demand, and the number of miles coolies have to walk. A lost traveller could almost grope his way about the country by simply asking the retail price of salt at each village and at the next one in any direction. The waste of fuel, of human and beast labour, of time, and of patience is of course gigantic, but it might have serious effects upon the popular economy of the province were machinery suddenly introduced, carriage cheapened, and strict honesty incon- tinently insisted upon.* The nominal yield in taxes to the Government was in 1899 about 2,000,000 taels a year on salt taken out of 5,000 Artesian wells actually working (over 8,000 in existence). Probably 10,000,000 taels would be nearer the mark for 1911, subject, of course, to damage done to trade by revolutions and rebel- ^ The Germans, I understand, recently obtained a contract for' an Electric Power Plant, but it was annulled. A.D. 1350-1890] TIBETAN SALT 233 lions. The reason there are so few officials in charge is that large stocks, which are ignored by the administration when they reach the middleman's hands, can only travel by water ; and the water-ways are few, shut in, uncon- nected by canals, and easily controlled. There is really, as I pointed out (p. 168) when I spoke of the three great trade drainage areas of China, only one great exit eastwards from Sz Ch'wan, as there is only one from Kwang Si. The salt service of course covers the whole of Sz Ch'wan province, and (concurrently with or indepen- dently of the Hwai salt) those parts of Hu Nan and Hu Peh above specified; all Kwei Chou province, except the eastern area reserved to the Hwai system of Hu Nan, and the corner appropriated to Canton as explained ; and the north wedge of Yiin Nan which communicates via Lao-wa T'an with the highest navigable part of the Yang-tsze. The Governors of Yiin Nan and Kwei Chou had (and perhaps have) each nominal supervisory control in their own provinces ; but there was no Kwei Chou staff at all, and no Yiin Nan staff for this particular salt ; the Yiin Nan officials were there for the management of quite another branch, now to be separately described. As to Tibet, which receives from Sz Ch'wan endless human caravans of tea by way of Ta- tsien-lu and Kwan Hien, I presume it must also take some of the Sz Ch'wan salt ; if it does, I cannot find trace of it, though I see that in 1180 trade with certain " Tibetoid " tribes was sanctioned. There are some very ancient wells close to Tibet in the extreme west near Ya-chou (the great entrepot of the tea trade with the Tibetan tribes) which were working 570 years ago ; but as Tibet is a brackish and nitrous country throughout, I expect it supplies itself, and needs no Chinese salt : in fact Tibet used to 234 THE SALT GABELLE [chap, xi supply Nepaul with salt and butter in exchange for grain, and no doubt does so still. In any case plentiful supplies for the northern frontier of Tibet can be obtained from Mien-chu city in Sz Ch'wan. In the days, over a thousand years ago, when a Shan empire ruled in Yiin Nan, there was already mention of the local Black Salt-wells, and in Kublai Khan's time (thirteenth century) there is frequent allusion to trouble with the " barbarians at the salt wells." At the com- mencemicnt of the Manchu dynasty, their hench- man, the Chinese satrap Wu San-kwei, was allowed to increase the salt dues for a time in order to pay his Yiin Nan troops; and in our own days (1864-1874) the Panthay Mussul- mans held profitable possession in their turn. Except in the north corner of the province, devoted to the Sz Ch'wan m.onopoly, Yiin Nan salt is free all over the province (with the further exception of the corner appropriated to Canton) after it has been purchased from the private proprietors of the wells and has paid Govern- ment dues ; unde^ the Manchus a Second Class Commissary and twelve subordinates used to manage the business, and the annual yield to government account was about 500,000 taels ; in 1911 nearer 1,000,000 taels. Towards the Burm.ese and French frontiers- — at Muang-u for instance— there are a few other unimportant wells, but the population there is too scant and " barbarian " for Chinese officials to make much out of that or any other industry, as we have seen under the heads of Momein and Sz-mao trade (pp. 173, 174). We have now nothing left to consider but Old China, all the salt systems above described dating subsequently to the beginning of our era, at least so far as any known official or- B.C. 200-A.D. 19C0] MONGOL SALT 235 ganisation of them is concerned. In the earher editions I left Manchuria out of consideration altogether, as the salt revenue collected there in the twelfth century by the Niichen officials (twelfth century) never amounted to much ; and the same could be said of Manchu times, previous to the reforms of the Viceroy of Manchuria, Ikotanga, twenty years ago : indeed, until 1887 salt was free altogether; but even in Niichen and Mongol times (1150-1350) there was some official control of the Liao-yang salt flats ; how- ever, I find that under pressure of "Boxer" legacies and exigencies a very large official con- sumption is now recognised, as to which more further on. It is still hardly necessary to do more than, as before in 1900, merely mention Mongolia, which produced in Manchu times no revenue to the Central Government of any kind, salt or otherwise; and, now that Outer Mongolia is partly "independent," cannot well fall under Sir Richard Dane's reforming hand. There is, however, a Mongol-owned salt lake, called Ghilen-tai, in the Desert to the west of the Alashan Mountains, which presumably still supplies the v/ants of what may be called the Great North Road, from the Yellow River at Baotu, or at Tokto, where it is discharged from boats and carried east right away to Kalgan and Siian-hwa north of Peking ; and also in the other direction north-west to Uliassutai. Som^e restraint had to be placed upon this Mongol salt, which was almost free in Kan Suh, so as to prevent encroachm.ent upon the Shan Si system. It is by no means improbable that this Lake Ghilen is the identical place men- tioned in 200 B.C., and stated to be near modern Lan-chou, where the inhabitants, as I have stated in the third chapter, throve famously in the salt and iron trade. The Piebald Horse 236 THE SALT GABELLE [chap, xi Pond salt (Hwa-ma Ch'i) from a place just south of the Great Wall, where the Kan Suh and Shen Si frontiers join, has the run of the greater part of Kan Suh, and also part of Shen Si, concurrently with Mongol salt ; but the entire revenues derived from both the above industries are exceedingly small ; so much so, that the management of them was left to two executive taotais in Kan Suh and Shen Si, of course in Manchu times subject to the Viceroy. There are also some wells in South Kan Suh, probably geologically connected with those of Sz Ch'wan : however, the whole of the salt service super- ficially described in this paragraph rather sur- rounds than belongs to Old China, which is thus hemmed in on all sides by areas supplied from wells or flats dating from some tim^e subse- quent to our era. It is well to note once more how every subject, be it trade, language, salt, or geography, tends to accentuate this one salient point^ — that the Yellow race or Chinese are essentially a Yellow River people, and that the disastrous irregularities of that stream are rightly termed " China's Sorrow " in a very special and literal sense. At the same time it must not be supposed that the term " Yellow " languages (first used, I believe, by myself), Yellow race. Yellow peril, and so on has any- thing to do with the Yellow River : it refers to the human complexion. The oldest salt industry of all is, as we might expect, that of Shan Tung : there is no salt to speak of on the peninsula itself ; it is all derived from coast places north and south of it, round about the present mouth of the Yellow River, and about the former German " sphere " of Kiao Chou, now in Japanese keeping. What with the Grand Canal, the River Wei (from Wei- hwei city, not to be confused with the Wei of A.D. 1180-1912] CHIH LI SALT FINANCE 237 Shen Si, pp. 14, 76), and the canals connecting the various Yellow River beds, Shan Tung has unrivalled facilities for distribution, and, as might be anticipated, consumes not one pound of any salt but its own. The trade is di- vided into two branches, called respectively the " warrant system " and the " north and south freights," the latter being half in official hands and half in mercantile, the two working to- gether. The warrants seem to run over the mountainous peninsula and its base down to the extreme south frontiers. The north freights evidently refer to Shan Tung itself, or the greater part of it ; the southern freights to the extraneous parts of Ho Nan, Kiang Su, and An Hwei. The whole administration is under a First Class Commissary and thirteen subordin- ates, of course under the nominal supervision in Manchu times of the Governor. Up to 1837 the centre of the Commissary's operations was Tientsin, which I suppose means that the Viceroy of Chih Li had until then general supervision over two commissaries ; but the distance was found inconvenient, and so in that year the Governor was made supreme responsible chief over his own commissary. I notice that the Mongol dynasty made several similar changes (1260-1338), and recast more than once the organisation established by the Sung house in 1181. I have no doubt the vagaries of the Yellow River often decided to which adminis- tration this or that part of the distribution service should belong. After the Japanese war of 1894-5 the retail price of salt was raised here, as elsewhere, and efforts were made to make the dues account contribute more money to the public chest. Perhaps the total credited to the Government would in 1899 have reached 400,000 taels : in 1911 nearer 4,000,000 taels' — if we 238 THE SALT GABELLE [chap, xi include the gains credited to all provinces in which Shan Tung salt circulated. In the chapter on " Early Trade Notions " it was mentioned how tradition says an ancient statesman once utilised the charms of woman as a lure to catch the gold of strangers. This man, usually known by his popular name Kwan Chung (700-645 B.C.), was premier of the state of Ts'i (Shan Tung), whose salt business we are now discussing ; he was also the first to conceive the notion of a Government monopoly in salt and iron, based upon an average annual mini- mum consumption per individual of 30 lbs. of salt, and upon the indispensability of plough- shares, axes, pans, knives, and needles. But the Sang Hung-yang mentioned at the head of this chapter, a man celebrated for his mental arithmetic, was the first to tax salt en route. Thus it is plain other people knew how to make money out of salt and iron besides, and maybe before, the men of the Ordos Desert. The wealth thus brought to one vassal state was shared by the feudatory powers in the vicinity, who soon took to imitating so lucrative a policy. It was evidently under this first stimulus that the Sz Ch'wan salt wells were discovered (330 B.C.), and possibly the Ghilen-tai industry also : a large export to the steppes of the Hiung-nu grew up, and to those states as well which were dependent upon Ts'i for their salt supply. By the time the First Emperor came into power (B.C. 220), the salt and iron revenues of China had increased twenty-fold. Ever since those days the Shan Tung salt admini- stration has had a steady history, but perhaps rather as an appendage of the one about to be described than as a separate organisation of its own. The "Ch'ang-lu," or Long Rush or Reed system, A.D. lSOO-1900] HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS 239 derives its name from the city Ts'ang Chou,' on the Grand Canal (south of Tientsin), once so called. In 1285 Kublai Khan " once more divided the Ho-kien (Chih Li) and Shan Tung interests," which, as above explained, are really one in working principle. Passing to our own days, we find in 1900 a First Class Commissary at Tientsin, with sixteen subordinates, and the Viceroy (who until about 1870 resided at the provincial capital of Pao-ting) had in Manchu times nominal supervision. The yield was about 500,000 taels a year ; but here again the mer- chants were viewed as a milch cow, being second only to the Hwai traders in point of yielding capacity, if we may judge by the " loyal benevo- lences " which were frequently exacted, and the fact that nearer 8,000,000 taels were extracted in 1911. One of the latest Manchu Govern- ment plans for raising money was to issue " manifest faith " bonds, repayable after a term of years, and bearing interest ; of course all loyal officials and salt merchants were expected to subscribe ; naturally their exuberant loyalty was too much for them, and most of them " begged not to receive interest," and even " pro- tested that they did not w^ant even the capital " ; a fortiori they did not expect ".recognition in the shape of rank." The price of salt had been thrice raised, one centime a kilo since 1895, and about 100,000 taels were added by the above benevolence to the 500,000 previously yielded. The service (speaking of sixteen years ago) in- cludes all Chih Li, except those parts north of the innermost Great Wall, which use Ghilen- tai salt ; and there are special arrangements for the city of Peking. It also covers the whole plain of Ho Nan, except the south wedge belonging to the Hwai system, i.e. the ^ Now that chou are abolished, Ts'ang Men, 240 THE SALT GABELLE [chap, xi level tract bounded on the west by the base of the mountainous triangle served by Shan Si salt, and on the east by An Hwei, Kiang Su, and the small Ho Nan wedge supplied by Shan Tung salt. Thus Ho Nan is rent by many rival salt masters, but in Manchu times had none the less a Second Class Commissary of her own to look after both her grain and salt interests, and to arrange accounts. The harassed people in the north of China, alternately under Tartar and Chinese rulers in the remote past, never took kindly to the taxation of salt, which was every now and then abolished, and anon re- established, for various reasons, by dynasty after dynasty; but there is specific mention of salt-works near Tientsin when North and South China became reunited in the seventh century ; and a century after that the great financier Liu Yen so developed the Government monopoly in salt that it produced half the total revenues of the empire. It may be men- tioned that the " Long Reeds " of the locality bearing that name are useful as fuel for boiling the salt. There now only remains to be examined the very ancient Shan Si salt organisation at present known as Ho-tung or " East of the (Yellow) River." The extreme west of China used to consume this lake salt until the Sz Ch'wan wells were discovered, and it remained a Government monopoly until a.d. 506, when the Tungusic dynasty then ruling North China threw open to free exploitation a number of the works. In 924 the Turkish reigning house representing Central China placed an official taxing superintendent over the official ponds of An-yih and Kiai city — names which exist to this day- — near what is known as the Lake of Kiai. After the expulsion of the Tartars, the Sung dynasty placed eighteen A.D. 1000-1900] MODERN REFORMS 241 of the marshes under Government control. In 1010 and 1116 the '' red salt " of this locality is spoken of officially. In 1178 the Sung dynasty, driven south, prohibited the import of Shan Si salt from the Niichen dominions into Ho Nan. Kublai Khan's villainous " Saracen " (Ouigour) adviser Achmac, mentioned by Marco Polo, increased the dues very heavily ; but still a few ponds were left free to the public. The Manchus merged the salt dues in some districts into the land-tax, so that wherever this took place the people became entitled to free salt. In 1846 the heavy cost of keeping the works in repair led the Government to consider once more the advisability of putting them up to public auction. The result of all this was that Shan Si salt had only a very limited circulation in that province ; but it supplied, and still doubtless supplies, all the western half of Ho Nan- — south of the Yellow River only- — and the valley of the River Wei in Shen Si : this arrangement bringing it near the head waters of the River Han, precautions have to be taken to keep it out of the Hwai preserves. There was a Second Class Com- missary for the province, who in Manchu times resided at P'u-chou in the extreme south, far away from his nominal superior, the Governor at T'^ai-yuan ; and he had eight subordinates. The revenue in 1900 was about half a million taels, and there are perhaps thirty districts pos- sessing salt ponds ; so that the whole region must be very sahne. For 1911 3,000,000 taels would be nearer the mark. In 1904 the pressure of indemnities became so great that the late Sir Robert Hart proposed a scheme for increasing the land-tax on a uniform scale throughout the length and breadth of China ; but this fell through, chiefly through the opposition of the viceroys Wei Kwang-t'ao and 242 THE SALT GABELLE [chap, xi Chang Chi-tung. Simultaneously the (now well- known mercantile) statesman Chang Kien sub- mitted a scheme for reorganising the Salt Gabelle. Year after year the " three good vice- roys," in drawing up their drastic schemes of general reform, gradually acceded to proposals for raising the price of salt throughout the Empire at the rate of so many copper cash the Chinese pound ; in such wise that, although no one has yet dared to touch the land-tax, by degrees everyone has come round to view with equanimity considerable additions to the price of salt, which, after all, is a fleeting form of Mr. Wemmick's "personal property" and not a fixture in the soil like the land-tax ; which last, moreover, the Emperor K'ang-hi had sworn by the nine gods, on behalf of the proud house then reigning, " never to tax no more." Accordingly we find the same Chang Kien called upon by Yiian Shi-k'ai (when summoned to Peking late in 1911 to save the dynasty) to serve as Minister of Trade and Agriculture ; and a little later, when the Republic was temporarily organised at Nanking, Chang Kien was chair- man of the first conventicle there ; he held many trusted posts during the first three years of Yiian's presidency ; but in 1915 (scenting danger) applied unsuccessfully during August to go to the so- called "Watercourse Conferences" in America. He was appointed one of the " Four Cronies " when Yiian declared himself Emperor, but was conveniently attacked by a serious diplomatic malady, disappeared into space, and has hidden himself away (officially) ever since. In 1913 he published his scheme of Salt Reform, which has also been translated and published in English ; this was the precursor to an invitation to Sir Richard Dane (form.erly Inspector-General of Excise and Salt in India) to take over the job, A.D. 1908-1916] KING STORK AND KING LOG 248 which has since been done with such marvellons success that the Salt Revenue in the short space of three years has ah-eady begun to rival the Foreign Maritime Customs Revenue in bulk and certainty. It may here be mentioned paren- thetically that, previous to the death of the Dowager and the Emperor in 1908, a Chinese mission had already been sent to India to inquire into the nature of the Salt Administration there. Sir Richard Dane, or the Chinese Administra- tion, will no doubt from time to time publish reports showing exactly how far he has dealt with each of the eleven systems, which are here illustrated more clearly by a map ; how far he has left the cadres (so to speak) of the 'personnel untouched in Chinese hands ; and so on. Meanwhile it may be stated that the official Chinese Government report for 1911, the last year of the Manchu Empire, published the fol- lowing list of the amounts consumed and taxed during that year : — The Two Kwang system 1,954,821 cwts. (of 133^ lb.) Fuh Kien system 772,000 „ Two Cheh system 1,700,620 „ „ Hwai system 4,896,888 „ Sz Ch'wan system 5,508,600 „ Yiin Nan system 512,300 „ Manchuria system 3,840,000 „ Mongol-Kan Suh system 22,781 Shan Tung system . 2,095,744 „ Ch'ang-lu (Chih Li) system . 3,974,000 „ Ho-tung (Shan Si) system 1,589,400 „ 26,867,154 Apart from corrupt and intentional juggling with figures, the above total does not mean very much in point of accuracy, for each place has (or had) its own special arrangements for taxes, allowances, perquisites, etc., which often meant that one cwt. nominal was in reality as 18 244 THE SALT GABELLE [chap, xi much as two at the outstart of its travels from the base to the depots. Still less do the estimates I have formed above of the increased revenues from salt between 1899 and 1911 (based on the supposition that the Government would extract an average of two taels the cwt.) correspond place by place with the irregular reality. Here, again, local custom varies, and it is hopeless to attempt the unravelling of exchanges, propor- tions, relation to land-tax, fees, etc., etc. The only thing is to wait until Sir Richard Dane gradually rakes in all hitherto untouched systems, introduces intelligible general rules, and straightens out the whole tangled web. Meanwhile we cannot be far wrong in cutting the Gordian knot as we have done at, say, 53,000,000 taels; for, as we have seen, the budget of 1913 drawn up by the Chinese Minister of Finance bejore King Stork in the shape of Sir Richard Dane had replaced King Log in the shape of " old custom," put down the esti- mated salt revenue at $550,000,000, one Mexican dollar and a half being (very roughly) estimated at one (government) tael for the purposes of this calculation. tHOW ^ the Throne had been advised to recast some of the laws in accordance with the spirit of the age, and how it had been resolved to abolish at once the cruel lingering punishment of hacking the body. It is apolo- getically explained that the Manchus, previously to their assuming control of the Chinese Empire 260 years previously, knew no punishment severer than simple death ; but that, " contrary to their own merciful inclinations," they had been induced to take over this and other exaggerated forms from the laws of the preceding dynasty. In future, therefore, decapitation and strangu- lation, either immediate or after a period of revision and delay, were to be the only death punishments ; the branding of criminals on the face, the exposure of decapitated heads, and the decapitating of dead bodies in the case of criminals not taken alive, were also abolished. A later decree foreshadowed the abolition of torture during trial ; and shortly afterwards one of the stipendiary magistrates at Peking was dismissed from his post by the Emperor for disobeying the new law in a civil case brought before him. However, even under the Republic, 22 307 308 LAW [chap. XVI it is unquestionable that, although nominally abolished, the practice occasionally survives. In pursuance of the 1905 decree, the Board of Punishments Throne at once set to work, and the laws of England, France, Germany, and Belgium were compared with the Chinese code laws which prevailed 500 and 1,000 years ago. The matter was still in a transition state Vv^hen the Dowager and the Emperor died in 1908. The fact that Chinese law is in need of prac- tical reform in no way involves the admission that China is devoid of a legal history and equitable principles ; nor must it be forgotten, Avhen v\^e criticise Cliinese severity, that until a hundred years ago Englishmen guilty of treason were cut down from the gallows whilst alive, and had their entrails taken out and burnt before their eyes : women were burnt alive for tr'eason until 1790 ; and even until 1870 men convicted of treason were supposed to be quartered after execution. Until William the Fourth's reign, highwaymen and other notorious criminals were gibbeted in chains and handed over to surgeons for dissection ; and the late Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, in his Digest of our Criminal Law, himself alludes to the atrocious severity of our former larceny laws : hanging for sheep-stealing, for instance, was common enough in Dr. Johnson's time. I believe I am correct in saying that up to the beginning of the late Queen Victoria's reign there were 200 offences for which a man might be hanged. We must therefore make reasonable allowances for other nations ; and in any case it must be con- ceded that a peaceful industrious civilisation, containing within it such enormous powers of passive resistance to foreign aggression as China does, necessarily possesses many an occult virtue. As a matter of fact China possesses a very B.C. 2000-A.D. 1900] CHINESE THEORY OF LAW 309 extensive and perfectly consecutive legal his- tory : throughout all the changes of dynasty appeal has been made unswervingly to the same ancient principles, and there has been almost no borrowing at all from foreign sources. Tlie foundations of existing legal principle are nearly all to be found in the old classical literature, — the same literature which suggested to Con- fucius, and to the other Chinese philosophers and legists, both before and after him, the various types of political religion : in fact, ritual, law, and religion are simply different expressions of the single all-pervading principle of imtria potestas or filial piety, which is the kernel or root-motive of all Chinese ethics. Even in our own time, the conception of the word Law as meaning nothing more than a series of sovereign commands is only gaining ground very slowly, after having been laboriously worked out by the great jurist Austin. This idea is clearly brought out from the very beginning of Chinese legal history, except that the automatic sanction and the command of nature seem to form at first one indivisible unit. Sir Henry Maine, in his Ancient Law, has pointed out that Austin fails to provide us with a motive for command ; but the Chinese view that all government must accord with the smooth work- ings of nature supplies the missing motive. " Punishment laws " rather than " laws and their punishments " is the idea as conceived by the Chinese mind, including the inseparable con- nection between making war and enforcing the law : under the head of the " greatest punish- ments " com.e making war and putting to death ; the " secondary punishments " included cas- tration, cutting off the feet, slicing off the knee- cap, and branding ; the " minor punishments " flogging and the bastinado. The object of law 310 LAW [chap. XVI was to keep the feudal states in order, to make officials do their duty, and to restrain the people from excess. Thus it will be seen that tlie Chinese conception of law is pre-eminently criminal law. The Emperor as sole lawgiver was the Vicegerent of Heaven, and it is his duty to govern directly and tlu'ough his agents in accordance with the harmonious order of nature : if he fails to do so, and persists, he is liable to be overthrown. Unjust judgments shock the smooth workings of nature, and call down various disasters. So far as man is concerned, his five natural rela- tions are those of subject, father, husband, brother and friend. But, so long as the Emperor governed with reasonable integrity, he was entitled to the absolute obedience of all his lieges. The Emperor was to • the State on a large Scale exactly what the paterfamilias is to the family on a small scale, the function in either case being that of maintaining order; as the ancient Chinese said : — " The lash may not be relaxed in the family, nor punishments in the State, nor arms in the Empire." The laws are like the stings used by insects for self-protec- tion ; beginning with war and ending with rules of propriety ; instruments for maintaining an even level ; and so on. The government in no way interferes with the management of the family ; on the contrary, the Avhole resources of the State are placed at tiie service of each family-head, on condition of his being politically responsible in return for the loyalty and order of his family. The whole Chinese administrative system is based on the doctrine of filial piety, in its most extended signification of duty to natural parents and also to political parents. China has thus always been one vast republic of innumerable private families, or petty imperiaf A.D. 1905] CUSTOMARY LAW 311 within one public family, or general imperium ; the organisation consists of a number of self- producing and ever-multiplying independent cells, each maintaining a complete administra- tive existence apart from the central power. Doubtless it is this fact that in a large mea- sure accounts for China's elastic indestructi- bility in the face of so many conquests and revolutions. The Chinese idea of law thus being castiga- tory, it is not to be wondered at that, apart from recent discussions and reforms, there is no science of civil jurisprudence in the European sense. Moreover the executive and the judicial powers have always been wielded by the sam.e hand, and the distinction between the two was not even clearly perceived or provided v/ith distinctive names until 1905. All matters of what we should call Family Law were left entirely to the family or clan ; the governm.ent in no way concerned itself — at least so far as taking the initiative goes — with births, marriages, deaths, burials, adoption, legitimacy, divorce, mourn- ing, testamentary dispositions, division and transfer of property, joint ownership, mortgages, sanitation, medicine, midwifery, sobriety, or morals. These were, and to a large extent still are, all questions for the family council, and it is only on the comparatively rare occasions when the council actively and spontaneously seeks the assistance of a court that the officials take cognisance : even a murder might be quietly ignored if the clan concerned decides not to complain. In the same way, commercial juris- prudence lay within the private ken of the different trading guilds ; banking questions were decided by the marvellously close and effective organisation of private bankers ; junkmen, fishermen, paAvnbrokers, post-offices, squatters, 812 LAW [chap. XVI money-lenders, doctors — in short, all industries — managed their own affairs and paid the fees with the minimum of government interference, if any ; and even then the official action was taken in the interests of public order rather than to assert a legal principle : and although a few laws concerning marriages, inheritance, land transfer, usury, brokerage, etc., were laid down in the codes, these rather expressed what was the universal custom than imposed any fresh " command." Many of these matters, how- ever, were already in the latest Manchu times being gradually brought under the cognisance of newly constituted Boards — Agriculture, Trade, Communications, etc., or Bureaus' — Customs, Fisheries, Post Office, and so on ; meanwhile the Republic has not yet found its feet sufficiently to enable us to declare finality on any given point. There is, strictly speaking, under the unreformed regime, no contract law at all except as touches the supreme contract of marriage. Thus, take the rate of interest that pawnbrokers might charge, and their licences ; or the permits to sail in and out of port : in the one case the needy classes are protected from extortion ; in the other travellers are protected from pirates. Should it happen that any family or any industry saw fit to claim the sanction of a court of justice, it did not at all follow that such court would announce, still less create, a law for itself : on the contrary, it would do exactly what our courts do, and what they did to a greater extent before statute law largely replaced common law^ — it would declare the law, or adopt the cus- tomary law, local or general, as ascertained on evidence. This is only another way of saying that in most matters China was and still largely is governed by the customs of ancestors, or common law ; that the common law was adminis- B.C. 2000-200] THE PHILOSOPHY OF LAW 313 tered by the people themselves ; and that the State (unless when specially invited) only stepped in to prevent a breach of the peace. According to cherished tradition — which, however, the best-informed Chinese do not take too seriously — the most ancient monarchs maintained order by inculcating the principles of propriety, only introducing punishments occasionally ; even then it was usually found sufficient to " imagine " the punishment, and to attire prisoners in a singular garb supposed to correspond with this or that penalty : thus those by way of being branded wore black hats ; those to be deprived of their noses, red trousers; those condemned to sliced knee-caps, black coats; those to be castrated, coloured shoes ; those to be decapitated, petticoats and no collar ; and so on. From the very earliest times banish- ment was resorted to. Under extenuating cir- cumstances the principle of ransomiing punish- ment for a money payment was admitted ; and up to our own day the same thing was allowed, at least in theory, though in practice it had a good deal fallen off. But even so far back as 230 B.C. the Chinese philosopher Siin-tsz, who took a pessimistic view of human nature, ex- posed in his chapter on Law the fallacy of this view of ancient leniency : he said :■ — " It is evident crime went on then as now, else there would have been no prisoners liable to these severe nominal punishments. The principle is a false one, moreover. If you are going to abolish death for murder, and mutilation for injuries done, how are you going to make the people dread ? The great thing is to prevent crime ; to condone it is to nourish wrong-doing. All this nonsense about pictorial or imaginary punishments is but a latter-day protest against 314 LAW [chap. XVI the cruel and capricious excesses of modern times. Rewards for good, punishments for evil — the principle is the same ; uncertainty and inconsistency are the only bane. Consequently a good government is always a strict one, and a bad government is always a lax one. The real meaning of the much-quoted ancient tradition about pictorial chastisements is that punish- ments were always figured or pictured after the tao or method of Heaven." Here we have a Chinese philosopher, whose works are still extant, laying down 2,200 years ago what is practically Jeremy Bentham's doctrine of pleasures and pains. He also alludes to the principles of justice recommended by the great democratic apostle liao-tsz who lived three centviries before him, and in such a way as to suggest that he must have been familiar with Lao-tsz' writings, or even with those of Kwan-tsz, from whom Lao-tsz seems to have copied, con- sciously or unconsciously. Although competent critics are agreed that precise dates in Chinese history cannot be ascer- tained further back than 841 B.C., there is no reason to doubt the main facts first handed down by oral tradition, and later recorded in their chronicles ; especially when these same facts are persistently cited in various connections, in works of different classes, and by each suc- cessive dynasty. Thus about 950 B.C., 150 years after the establishment of a new dynasty, but when times had become degenerate once more, the King or Emperor decided that law reform was necessary in order to maintain proper order amongst "the hundred families" • — as the Chinese people are still in 1917 col- lectively termed. Dr. Legge gives a full trans- lation of this ancient code in the fifth section B.C. 550-500] EARLY CHINESE CODES 315 of his Chinese Classics. As to the second historical code, during the lifetime of the rival philosophers Lao-tsz and Confucius, that is towards the end of the sixth century before Christ, at a time when imperial and vassal China was about to break up into a collection of warring independent states, the prime min- ister of one of these vassal states, who was a near relative of the reigning duke, and also an acquaintance of Confucius, for the first time in history had the laws cast in metal for the information of the people. The premier of a neighbouring state disapproved of this action as a dangerous innovation calculated to make the ignorant people look to the fixed letter of the law instead of abiding by the ancient prin- ciples of propriety, as declared on the merits of each case after each case had occurred ; in other words, instead of accepting the themisy dike, or inspired judgment of the magistrate. Even the radical philosopher Lao-tsz had always preached the doctrine of keeping the machinery or " implements " of State concealed from the vulgar eye ; and in this particular instance he was supported by Confucius, who argued that the standard of right and wrong would henceforth infallibly be transferred from the ruler's conscience to the written law. He was full of admiration for the innovator on other grounds, but not on this one ; and he outlived him seventeen years. This event of defining the law publicly was considered so important that dates were at that time occasionally calcu- lated from the " year of the casting of the laws " ; just as the Romans used to count juridically from the " year of the Twelve Tables," which were cast or engraved upon metal about eighty years later than their Chinese prototype. These laconic Western laws, the written foundation of 316 LAW [chap. XVI Roman jurisprudence, just as the Chinese tripod laws may be termed the remote basis of existing Eastern codes, exemphfy very plainly the two different casts of mind in East and West. The Roman laws dealt with proceedings in a civil suit ; action by wager ; slavery for debt ; the absolute power of fathers over children and slaves; inheritances, testaments, women's posi- tion, and tutorships ; ownership, prescription, and transfer ; easements ; crimes against person and property, the lex talionis, lampoons, the rate of interest, and false witness; appeal from the judge to the people ; cost of funerals ; caste marriages ; pledges for sacrificial debts, and so on. Nearly all these matters were either abandoned to the jurisdiction of the family, or were ignored by the earliest Chinese legislators, though several of them find a place in later codes. So far as we can judge by more modern categories of the quality of ancient Chinese offences, they seem to have been in the great majority of cases treason, robbery, theft, arson ; or official pilfering and bribery ; and the only questions for the judge were whether to execute, mutilate, or flog ; for the ruler how to secure justice, see that the punishment fit the crime, and stave off Nature's wrath by making it the interest of his judges to be just. In those days there was a popular saying that " coffin-makers always like a plague," meaning that "the police- man likes a good case " ; and in the same way it was argued that if the central government, in its anxiety for tranquillity, encouraged those local authorities who exhibited the greatest zeal in securing convictions, the inevitable result would be to discourage the upright men who worked honestly for the people's interest. As with our own law, no child under seven years of age could be held guilty of, or be punished for, a felony : B.C. 400-300] WHP:N lawyers disagreed 317 this merciful provision was extended by the ancient Chinese legislators to old persons of eighty and upwards. There were two other prime ministers of the fourth century before Christ who made fpr them- selves lasting reputations as legislators. One, Li-k'wei, instituted a new land system, very like that proposed for China by Sir Robert Hart a dozen years ago, under which every available acre was worked out for adequate but fair taxation. He also collected into six books or main heads all that was best in the laws of the different feudal states, and composed therefrom a work styled the " Legal Classic," which may be compared (very humbly) with the Roman Institutes of Gains. Most of these Chinese laws were connected with robbery; the lighter offences being roguery, getting over city walls, gambling, borrowing, dishonesty, lewdness and extravagance, transgressing the king's commands, etc. This work was car- ried to the powerful kingdom which 150 years later conquered the whole of China by a young man (Wei Yang) who reorganised, developed, and became premier in that kingdom, where it was adopted as a kind of code, but with considerable additions in the direction of cruelty. It is really this code which, in a modified form, is at the root of all later Chinese law of the positive kind. In spite of his great services to this rising state, the chancellor in question made enemies by his unrelenting thoroughness, and was in the end put to death on the accession of a new king he had offended whilst yet a mere prince or heir-apparent. The other man, Shen Puh-hai, is often called the " Chinese Draco," on account of the extreme severity of his laws ; in addition to which he was a philosopher of the Taoist school : and, indeed, at this time there can be 318 LAW [chap. XVI no doubt that such precise philosophical notions as the Chinese were beginning to have upon the political branch of law were drawn from the stern and radical Lao-tsz rather than from the courtly ^nd conservative Confucius : but that does not mean very much, for it was then the complaint of both these philosophers that men went on fighting for power and personal in- terest, totally oblivious of the prophets who were crying out in the wilderness for man's salvation through propriety and right. Yet another Taoist philosopher and severe lawyer (who has left some of his works behind him), Han Fei-tsz, sought office under the same powerful revolutionary state one century later than the above two events : this v/as just when the conquest of China was beginning ; but the jealousy of the then chancellor (Li Sz) of that rising kingdom, who poisoned his guest and rival, prevented the lawyer in question from having any permanent practical influence upon China's destinies. It is curious to notice, how- ever, that most prime ministers of minor king- doms were introduced from other states ; and this fact may possibly have something to do with the evolution of a comparatively modern rule (cf. p. 261) that no civilian can serve in his own province. All that has preceded refers to the period anterior to the great revolution of the third century before Christ, to the destruction of literature in 213 B.C., and to the founding of cen- tralised absolutism much as it existed until 1911. In those good old days, though the punishments were cruel, there were none of the more modern lingering tortures ; nor were relatives of a criminal punished with him, though it appears that in very ancient times at least a threat of this kind had been m.ade. Doubtful cases were tried B.C. 550] MAXIMS ON THE LAW'S MERCY 319 in public, and the benefit of doubt was conceded. Moreover, even mutilations were coupled with, or excused by, a kind of compassionate utility : thus {cf. p. 313) the branded were made gate-keepers ; those deprived of a nose sent to serve as frontier pickets ; those without feet, and therefore un- able to chase, looked after valuable wild game as park-keepers ; those v/hose virility was cut off tended the female apartments ; whilst the unmutilated convicts performed gang-work. It was one of Sir James F. Stephen's favourite say- ings that, as material civilisation advanced and we became " more comfortable," men grew less and less inclined to make their fellow-creatures, and even their animals, more miserable than was absolutely necessary. But there are abundant maxims and sayings, notwithstanding, that prove the existence of merciful feeling in the ancient rulers. One, quoted century by century to this day, was : " Rather let a rogue escape than risk killing an innocent man." Whilst moderate justice was considered appropriate for a normal political condition, it was held on the other hand a wise precaution to be exceptionally severe when the State showed signs of anarchy. Perhaps the oldest maxim of all is : " In punishment be intelligently compassionate." In hopelessly de- generate times the radical philosopher Lao-tsz was in favour of the fewest and simplest laws ; but he insisted on prompt, secret, and effective application of punishment by properly qualified officials. Confucius (a little later) has left several striking remarks on record. He says : "As to convicts, I go with the rest ; we must necessarily condemn, if only in order to avoid condemning still more of them later on." Again, " The ancients understood better than our- selves the art of preventing crime ; now the best 320 LAW [chap, xvi we can do is to avoid punishing crime unjustly. The ancient magistrates always lioped to save a prisoner's life : now we seek to prove it forfeit. Better let a real criminal go free, how- ever, than slay an innocent man." Once more : " I allow one generation to a new dynasty for the gradual introduction of benevolent rule, and I allow a hundred years to abolish killing and mutilation altogether." " A benevolent ruler must have courage too ; his rectitude manifests itself in preventing crime." " Unjust punishment damages the administration, and a bad administration touches each man's person." " Government must strictly execute its own terms." Kwan-tsz, however, had said nearly all this two centuries earlier. Two centuries later than Confucius, Mencius has a few re- marks to make : he allows considerable lati- tude, and even indulgence, to a ruler so long as that ruler keeps in sympathetic touch with the people ; but he says : " No truly benevolent ruler will slay an innocent man, even to make secure his own rule." The great Chinese conquest revolution of 2,150 years ago introduced several new crimes as well as many m^onstrous punishments. The chief intellectual agent in it was the chancellor, mentioned above, who poisoned his visitor. It was, at his recommendation, made an offence punishable with death to conceal books, or to own any except the few agricultural and scien- tific works which were not on the '' Index Prohibitory " ; fearful tortures were introduced, and three generations of relatives were involved in one man's political crime. The name for *' Emperor" (originally written "self-ruler," but later "white ruler"), up to 1911 still in use, was then first introduced, and a homogeneous system of administration in all important matters was B.C. 200] VOX POPULI LEX SUPREMA 321 effectively established all over China. But though this powerful innovator was an able man, his methods were altogether too tyrannical, and after his death in 210 B.C., and then after eight more years of very chivalrous and picturesque fighting, a new and permanent dynasty was founded on practically the same lines : ever since that things have remained very much in statu quo, even down to our own days. In accordance with one of the ancient politico- legal maxims just mentioned, the new dispen- sation began by abolishing the whole network of harassing law, and by enacting three simple rules for the orderly government of the Empire ; to wit, deatli for homicide ; compensation and imprisonment for wounds and robbery; all else being left to the people themselves. This was called the " Tripartite Bargain with the Elders of the People," and the "all else left to the people" still holds good, whether inten- tionally or no, in great measure to this day. The frank and tactful geniality of the new ruler's personality has probably more to do with the credit his memory still enjoys than the intrinsic wisdom of his summary legal methods ; but, however that may be, his " three short rules " have established a reputation in China little short of that achieved by King John's Magna Charta amongst ourselves. But the Chinese are and always have been very grateful to their rulers for small mercies, and they have always been found ready to idealise any gracious sovereign acts. The Emperor, under the guid- ance of an astute chancellor, rightly refrained from introducing new measures, and was prob- ably only giving fuller effect to ancient laws and customs v/hen he granted this short charter ; and this was apparently all that King John did, except that, unlike the Chinese ruler, the 322 LAW [chap, xvi English king had only the grace to do it under compulsion. The vicarious punishment of rela- tives was abolished, but official superiors and witnesses were obliged to denounce offenders. However, the much-vaunted three simple rules were soon found insufficient for practical use when things quieted down ; when the sword gave way to the ploughshare ; and when the new dynasty felt secure in its power. The next chancellor, who (as also his successor in office) professed the " masterly inactivity " principles preached 300 years before that by the philosopher Lao-tsz, found it necessary to reintroduce vi- carious punishment for treason, and to select as many of the general laws of the revolutionary and conquering dynasty but recently ousted as were suited to the people's old traditions, and also to their changed position ; he proceeded to construct therefrom a code in nine heads (being in effect the six heads of the " Legal Classic" plus three new ones), which code, sub- ject of course to extensive alterations, has from dynasty to dynasty always served as the basis of Chinese law ; just as the Corpus Juris of the Christian Emperor Justinian forms in a way the practical basis of European law as a whole, affecting indirectly even the English and Scotch statutory laws, and in some instances the decisions under our common law. We have already seen that revolutionary China had borrowed its Institutes of Law from an active legal author in one of the feudal states ; and thus we have an unbroken historical chain extending back from our own time for about 3,000 years, with no admixture whatever of foreign notions, or, at all events, of foreign law. The preceding dynasty's revolutionary law against concealing books was abolished by the new dynasty founder's son, and literature was soon restored B.C. 200-130] A CHINESE ANTONINUS 823 to its former influence, after a quarter of a century of extinction. jU Now we come to a very prominent turning- point in Chinese legal history. The founder, his usurping empress-widow, and his strictly legiti- mate son by her had all passed away; the obnoxious law against concealing books had, as we have said, been repealed, and another son, born in less honourable wedlock, sat on the imperial throne. On account of his calm, philosophic, and humane temperament, Han Wen Ti is occasionally styled by Europeans the Marcus Aurelius of China. His first act was to issue the following edict : " Enforcements of the law are executive acts, the object of which is to prevent violence and assist the well-disposed : to visit the sins of convicted criminals on inno- cent parents, spouses, brothers, sisters and children seems to me most unreasonable. I wish for a report." His counsellors, after due de- liberation, advised that it had hitherto been found good policy to make people feel uncom- fortable in anticipation by visiting upon them the sins of their kinsmen after crimes committed, and that it would be better not to make any change. A second decree ran : " When the law is meet, the people are honest ; when punish- ment is appropriate, the people accept it without murmur. Moreover, officials are supposed to act as guides : if, instead of guiding the people, they punish them irregularly, they become tyrants. I wish for a further report." On this the counsellors gave way : " Your Majesty's merciful will covers far more ground than we can presume to understand the necessity for." To illustrate the continuity of Chinese history, it may be mentioned that this edict of over 2,100 years ago is still on record ; is quite intel- ligible to modern ears ; and still forms part of 23 324 LAW [chap, xvi the stock legal diction, just as does the celebrated declaration of the English barons upon the sub- ject of legitimacy : " We will not change the laws of England which have hitherto been accepted and approved by our ancestors" {cf. p. 288). But, if we inquire closer into Chinese history, we find that this picturesque event is only another case of idealising ; not to mention his grandson and most illustrious successor, whose financial straits and palace intrigues led him to enact many hasty and cruel laws, that very "Marcus Aurelius" himself was, during a sub- sequent rebellion, unfortunately induced to de- part' from his own noble principles. There was, however, one other cause celebre during the reign of this hum.ane Emperor : it happened after he had been on the throne for nearly twenty-five years, and the anecdote is as well known in China as the story of Brutus and his condemned sons Titus and Tiberius is known in Europe. A Chinese physician and local official was sum- moned to court for peculation, a crime which rendered him liable, under the new code as under the older ones, to the penalty of mutila- tion : having five daughters, but no son, he bewailed the luckless fate which deprived him of a representative capable of sacrificing him- self upon the altar of filial duty in accordance with the maxim " A father's debt the son repays." The youngest daughter, stung by these reproaches, and knowing that her father was the victim of private spite, insisted on accompanying her parent to the imperial courts where she pleaded his case before the Emperor with such eloquence and effect that his Majesty at once decided to abolish as barbarous the punishment of mutilation. Hard labour at the Great Wall, shaving the head, wearing the heavy yoke, bastinado and flogging, ^ — these were sub- B.C. 150-A.D. 150] THE QUALITY OF MERCY 325 stituted for mutilation, and really form the nucleus of the modern system. The above and similar imperial orders were, it must be confessed, often rather symptoms of growing change than definite registrations of permanent radical improvements ; for, owing to China's enormous size, and to the apathy of local rulers, satraps, and magistrates, the imperial decrees, unless repeated and persisted with, seem often to have remained a dead letter, especially where only the interests of the masses were con- cerned, and where no povv^erful influence was at work to insist on following up the order. The first of Chinese true historians was him.self cruelly deprived of his manhood by the grandson just mentioned of this humane Emperor, and this for the purely technical offence of remon- strating with the monarch in favour of a defeated general ; and he leaves on record a pathetic letter to a friend bewailing in resigned terms his miserable fate, and characterising himself as " what's left from the knife and the saw." It was this Emperor who encouraged informers and delators, and developed the idea of forcing out confessions under torture, a process which I cannot find to have existed in more ancient times. Still, notwithstanding the caprice or weakness of this or that ruler, the progress in the direction of reason and mercy was now fairly steady : doubtful cases were reheard at the capital ; the local authorities were urged to use prompt dis- patch, and not to confine people too long upon mere suspicion ; steps were taken to check the bribery of officials and the corruption of clerks and police ; a growing disinclination to extort confessions under the lash or rack was mani- fested ; fasting and solemn formalities were enjoined when the time for carrying out death sentences approached ; the number of bastinado 326 LAW [chap, xvi strokes administered was more than once re- duced along the whole line of offences ; in spite of the evergrowing additions to the law cate- gories, earnest endeavours were made to simplify the law as much as possible : and generally, it may be stated that during the 400 years of Han dynasty rule (200 B.C. to a.d. 200) a steady advance took place in the direction of mildness. For many centuries after that the question of reintroducing the mutilation punishments came up for discussion ; dynasty after dynasty "secured the stag" (as the Chinese poets say when they refer to the contests for empire) ; and each reigning house naturally had its own special code, but always based on the samiC old general principles, modified to suit the exigencies of the times. There never were any surprises or rival doctrines in China, such as our Gavelkind in Kent, and Borough-English in other parts of England, which flatly contradict the ordinary laws of descent and inheritance.* Referring back now for light, we may be disposed to ignore the codes of the minor dynasties that only reigned for a generation, in favour of those of renowned houses which maintained the throne for centuries ; but that would be a mistake : each new dynasty of course assumed (and hoped) that it would continue, so to speak, for ever. Consequently we find that many of the most far-reaching and even best improvements were often introduced by short-lived reigning houses that only endured a lifetime or two. The general tendency of change ran in the direction of sparing life, facilitating appeals in doubtful cases, lightening the load of fetters, flogging on ^ Local rules of inheritance, etc., belong to private and patri- archal family customs, which very rarely come before the imperial jurisdiction. See the present writer's Comparative Chinese Family Law, 1878 (out of print), originally published in the China Review for 1878. A.D. 200-500] OLD LINES OF LAW FOLLOWED 327 parts of the body less susceptible of vital injury, and sparing the modesty of females. The principle was laid down, moreover, that women were only responsible for the crimes of the family into which they married, and not of that which they had quitted. In the middle of the third century of our era there were thirty-seven groups of punishment for ordinary offences ranged under the following heads : death three, shaving four, corporal without mutilation three, hard labour three, ransomable eleven, fines six, miscellaneous satisfaction seven ; and the chief heads under which offences were arranged were, as of old, robbery (not including terrorising or trafficking in human beings), thefts, cheating, defrauding, trespassing, falsifying royal acts of state, etc. Treason was still punished by cutting in two at the waist, but responsibility did not extend to grandparents and grandchildren ; for rebellion the whole three generations suffered ; their bodies were pickled for exposure in the market-place, and their dwellings rased to the ground. In homicides the principle was recog- nised that relatives might take vengeance, but not after an imperial amnesty had been granted to the murderer. In the whole history of China I have not come across a single case of civil jurisprudence in the strict sense, i.e. where any abstract rights between individuals have been threshed out with considerations touching rele- vancy of evidence, damage to character, equit- able set-off, nice definitions in contract, and so on. All cases brought before the Crown are, so to speak, brought up by special reference, because the official judge, or the family, or the commercial court below cannot settle them, and applies for assistance. For three centuries, 280-580, North China was under Tartar rule, and the native dynasties 328 LAW [chap, xvi for the first time had to cross the Great River (or Yang-tsze Kiang, as we usually call it) and fashion the best empire they could out of Chinese colonists and southern races only half Chinese. The march of law and order was about the same in both halves of China : for if the literary classes had carried part of their civilisation over the river with them, the Tartars remained in possession of the old civilised soil and docu- ments ; and thus both empires based their legal principles and humane improvements upon the same old classics and unshakable ideals. Strangling is now heard of for the first time as a death penalty ; less grave than decapita- tion, because the body remains undivided for reappearance in the next world ; the ancient punishment of tearing the body to pieces by means of horses is formally revived by both dynastic groups. No new legal principle of any kind is introduced by the Tartars, but one or two droll punishments certainly suggest foreign origin ; for instance, wizards were condemned to carry a ram on the back, embrace a dog, and jump into a pond. In China proper, though the laws against inciting the people with baseless talk are severe, I have never discovered any law against wizardry or religion. Both in the north and south the " grievance drum " was intro- duced, so that persons having a grievance could call forcible attention of the Emperor and his officers to an unredressed wrong. The native procedure of the Tartar dynasties was of course quite summary, the tribe chiefs disposing of causes in a rough-and-ready way in front of the Khan's or sub-Khan's tent ; as nomads they possessed no fetters or prisons, and being destitute of any native system of writing (un- less they kept a Chinese scribe), they made arrests and recorded judgments by means of A.D. 800-500] LATER CODIFICATION 329 wooden tallies : most homicides could be ran- somed with cattle and horses, as by our own weregild ; but all treasons were punished with pitiless extermination of the family. Yet just as the rude Goths at exactly the same date carved kingdoms and made excellent codes out of the debris of Roman civilisation and law, so did the Tartars rapidly acquire at least a veneer of Chinese refinement ; and some of their adapted Chinese codes are as much entitled to respect, when compared with the codes of the pure Chinese dynasties, as the Edict of Theodoric the Eastern Goth or the Breviary of Alaric the Western Goth, which did excellent duty in North Italy, France, and Spain. Curi- ously enough, a great Chinese statesman named Ts'ui Hao, who acted as premier and historian to the Tartars of the fifth century, was put to death with his three generations for telling the plain truth about the Tartar origin in his history. It is now that we first begin to hear of the characteristic Chinese punishment known to us as the cangue, or wooden collar, a kind of yoke or portable stocks. A good deal of the legisla- tion consists in defining the weight and size of this instrument, the thickness and smoothness of the whip and bastinado, ameliorating the lot of prisoners, arranging the rate of ransom in copper and silk, and so on. Flogging on the back was abolished because one Emperor had chanced to see a picture of the human anatomy, and had discovered that the bowels were peril- ously near the spine. There is even one solitary instance in which the Buddhist desire to save life is coupled with an appeal to old classical principles as a reason for extending the system of ransoming crimes. The second great turning period in Chinese legal history was the seventh century of our 880 LAW [chap, xvi era, when, after many centuries of interminable civil strife and foreign war, China was once more permanently reunited under a vigorous native dynasty. Even before the sixth century was out, China had been reconquered by a native house of great intelligence and energy ; but excessive ambition soon led to its premature supersession. Judgments had now (seventh century) to be written ; law students were for the first time trained ; the punishment of family members was abolished ; the triple recon- sideration of death sentences was introduced ; and, generally, some far-reaching reforms were ordered, if not actually made. The principles of Buddhism had by this time been thoroughly examined; and moreover Christianity, the Per- sian religions, the teaching of Mahomet, had all been introduced into China : therefore there was some opportunity to compare notes, and to soften away the asperities of the old punitory codes, though it must be confessed that none of the foreign systems is officially honoured by the least mention ; a little later the Manichean disciplines seem to have attracted attention. Amongst the distinguished officers who received a commission to reform the laws on the basis of the improvements introduced by the short dynasty (580-620) just mentioned, but minus its severities, was a strong supporter of Buddhism ; and yet curiously enough he was one of those who pleaded for the retention of mutilation as a merciful respite from death. But the Emperor was firm, and from this date the ancient Five Punishments, as they have been above ^ described, were theoretically re-established almost exactly as they now are ; that is to say, death (decapi- tation and strangling) ; three degrees of banish- ment with or without flogging and hard labour to remote provinces ; five degrees of penal servitude 1 p. 313. A.D. 600-700] THE MESHES OF THE LAW 831 with or without flogging to places in one's native province ; eight degrees of tlie greater bastinado, and five of the lesser bastinado ; twenty punish- ments in all — although even so late as 1078 the question of re-introducing literal nose and foot cutting was unsuccessfully mooted again. Per- mission to commit suicide at home now appears for the first time amongst the favoured official classes. Offences were grouped under twelve heads : statutory definitions, or qualifications of the ancient statutes ; protection of the Emperor ; questions of official duty ; marriages ; imperial mews and stores ; independent political action ; theft and robbery ; litigiousness ; cheating and falsifying ; miscellaneous statutory offences ; deserters and escaped prisoners ; trials. There were, as in ancient times, eight grounds upon which special privileges might be claimed after sentence, but not in the case of the " ten odious crimes," of which we now first hear. Nothing could be more unsatisfactory or indefinite from our juridical point of view than this clumsy classification, which with slight variation seems to have remained almost unchanged for 1,400 years : of course it can only be made even par- tially intelligible to us by examining one by one the specific crimes ranged under each head- ing ; but even on the face of it as it stands, it will be apparent, in spite of vagueness, that political offences occupy the chief place in the Chinese legislator's imagination; and perhaps that may be the reason why the Chinese, as a people, have always been obstinately inclined to leave politics to those whose business it is to run the machine of state, and have invariably managed their own private affairs with the minimum of application for state assistance : so far as I am aware, there has never been asserted a claim for popular rights beyond the mere 332 LAW [chap, xvi right of being left with a bare competence for wife and family. The people of China have never " cornered," still less executed their sovereigns. It is to the seventh century that belongs the definite establishment of another great principle which has possessed great vitality, and that is what we have called the triple ap- plications for a death-warrant. The Emperor having had reason to regret the fact that he had hastily ordered the execution of certain offending courtiers or statesmen, gave peremp- tory instructions that in future his commands were to be ignored until he had repeated them three times at decent intervals extending over at least two days ; so that, to use our English ex- pression, his Majesty could sleep upon his wrath ; moreover, warrants for execution were not to be forwarded any longer by express messenger, the idea being that the prisoner should enjoy every possible surviving chance of a reprieve. There are some grounds for supposing that in very ancient times this triple appeal to con- science existed in the form of a thrice-repeated pardon, the last cry of which was by a legal fiction supposed to be too late to overtake the prisoner. A few special instances of Crown Cases Re- served may be mentioned as illustrating the con- current effect of scriptural injunction and ever- changing legal precept in evolving the principle of a judgment, or what our lawyers call, in imitation of the Roman jurisconsults, the ratio decidendi. A youth deliberately murdered his father's enemy, and was, on the face of it, liable to 'execution. But, it was argued, the ancient Book of Rites says that a son cannot live under the same sky with his father's enemy ; whilst Confucius' s annotated history asserts in general A.D. 630] AVENGING ONE'S FATHER 333 terms the duty of a son to avenge his father's wrong. The law nowhere actually lays down that such homicide is specifically excusable ; if it did, it would appear to encourage murder and family feuds : still, the law is confessedly based on the general principles of the classics ; hence in this case there is apparent conflict between general legal principle and specific law. It was decided that each such case must be separately reported and judged upon its merits. Another case occurred of a youth kiUing a man whom he saw in the act of attacking his father, and then voluntarily giving himself up to justice. It was argued from Confucius' s history that the motive of an act should be taken into account in pro- portioning a sentence ; here the youth gave himself up, so that escape or concealment was not in question : he therefore received a reduced punishment. In one case the Emperor had not the heart to execute a corrupt official at Canton, who at an earlier stage in his career had done him good service. The Emperor said : " I am supposed to carry out impartially on behalf of Heaven the rewards and punishments that may be due. In this case I am afraid I am manipu- lating the law to the discredit of Heaven. Put up a matshed in the southern suburb for three days so that I may do penance at the Altar of Heaven there." (This singular compromise with Heaven recalls the expression colpo di stato di Domeniddio used apologetically by His Holiness Pope Pius IX to excuse his appointm.ent to Westminster of Archbishop Manning.) The same romantic Emperor once in a fit of generosity sent to their homes 390 prisoners whose names were down for execution, ordering them to come up for judgment after the autumn. Not a man failed, and so all vv^ere pardoned. In another instance the T'ang Emperor de- 384 LAW [chap, xvi clined to sanction the death of an elder brother serving at a distance when the younger brother was found guilty of rebellion : eleven hundred years later a Manchu Emperor took exactly the same step. Another Manchu Emperor had a father's enemy case on appeal brought before him, and reversed the decision of the T'ang dynasty. But in the later case the circumstances differed ; a son killed the son of the convicted murderer of his own father ; the murderer being in the hands of the law, the son had no vengeance to satisfy, for the murderer was legally dead : moreover, by killing the murderer's son, two lives were taken from one family in satisfaction of one life in the other. Hence the murdering son was sentenced to decapitation, subject to the chance of a general amnesty taking place before his name should be finally ticked off for execution. In the case of an escaped murderer, who delivered himself up on hearing that his father had been arrested, a conflict of opinions arose : it was argued that at no period of Chinese law had murderers been let off death ; however, the Manchu Emperor considered the man's behaviour " closely approaching nobleness," and respited the decapitation for banishment and a flogging. But to go back. After the wars and revolution which accompanied the fall of the great T'ang dynasty there was only one copy of the laws to be found ; but this was enough, and it formed the basis from which the next group of short-lived dynasties fashioned their codes. To this period belongs the abolition of confiscation of property and of the responsibility of relatives in all cases but treason ; the cleansing of prisons, medical treatment of prisoners, de- cent conduct towards mere witnesses, and regular tabulation of the rates of ransom : but the anarchy was too great for these important A.D. 970-1650] THE MANCHU LAWS 335 reforms to be properly consolidated ; however that may be, in any case they were symptoms of healthy progress. A law of the year 977 (native Chinese Sung dynasty) made the murder by a stepmother of her husband's earlier son punishable as an ordinary homicide. In 1729 the Manchu Em- peror made the offence punishable as before by strangulation if the murder deprived the hus- band of heirs. If the husband was dead, the stepmother must not have the privilege of ransom accorded to women, but her own favourite son, if any, must be strangled. If no son, then she must quit the family and go back to her own family, her husband's property being given to the murdered son's brothers and sons in equal shares. It is about 900 years ago that the linger- ing death punishm-cnt (abolished in 1905) first appears both in South China and amongst the Kitan Tartars ruling North China : it seems to have been reserved for the Mongols (1260-1368) in North China to introduce it on a regular scale. Instead of plodding on from this point with the somewhat monotonous history of Chinese legal changes, it may be more interesting to start back from the position of to-day, and to work our way in a reverse direction to the point where we have broken off. The present Manchu dynasty reigned without a break for over 267 years, and the very first thing the new Emperor did on his accession in 1644 was to ordain that the laws of the native Chinese Ming dynasty — which had governed China for nearly 300 years (1368-1643)- — should be modified so as to include Manchu customs, and should be reissued as the Laws of the Manchu Dynasty. In dealing with the question of general amnesties on joyful occasions, the responsible statesmen of the day 336 LAW [chap, xvi gave signal proof of the continuity of legal history by quoting the dictum of a codifier 1,050 years before them : he had asserted that " the states which find pardons unnecessary are the states vfhich have just laws " : he also cited a second codifier of 600 years back, who had quoted the classical saying that " appeal to principle Vv^as sufficient for the good, even though chastisement might be the sole effective appeal to the bad man." The Emperor, in justifying what may be styled "benefit of clergy," or special trials in favour of officials, and the exemp- tion of Manchus from certain punitory degrada- tions, referred back to the eight privileges intro- duced about 1200 B.C., i.e. the privileges of blood, friendship, virtue, abilitj^, service, rank, zeal, and hospitality (the last referring to am- bassadors). In another instance reference was made to the plea used by the girl who tramped after her father to the court of the Chinese Marcus Aurelius, namely, that " a man once judicially slain can never come to life again, however inno- cent he may be." The second Emperor, the famous K'ang-hi, likewise made many appeals to classical prin- ciples, and, like his successor, laid down very definite rules exempting women from the neces- sity of appearing before the courts : all female witnesses and persons concerned in a case (provided they were not themselves accused) were to be examined on commission in their own houses. The treason laws of the expelled dynasty, it must be confessed, are as ferocious as they have ever been in China at the worst of times : all the odious punishments abolished by the decree of April 1905 were in full swing when the Manchus took over their predecessors' code, and have remained so ; that is to say, slicing to pieces, and decapitating the dead ; A.D. 1000-1800] THE MANCHU LAWS 337 besides responsibility of relatives to the third generation both ways, slavery of the women and young boys, and so on. The fourth Emperor in 1740 issued a new edition of the Manchu Code, alluding in his preface to the supposed pictorial punishments of extreme antiquity, and to the first real code of 960 B.C., mentioned above as translated by Dr. Legge. In addition to justify- ing several of his specific decisions in Crown Cases Reserved by referring back to the classics, the Emperor cites two cases a thousand years old, specially named in the Chinese legal records, in order to amend two decisions connected Vv^ith the justifiable murder of a father's enemy by that father's son. These two cases have already been alluded to under the T'ang dynasty (p. 333). The same principle is repeatedly laid down by the Manchu Emperor that was asserted by one of the Roman Emperors, namely, that " though above the law, they considered themselves bound to live within the law." The punishing of mandarins ex i^ost jacto for not having foreseen, or for not having punished, a crime is also an extension of the responsibility theory which seem^s to have grown up under the Manchu dynasty. Legal activity at headquarters in China seem^s to have fallen off with the advent of Europeans : of course ordinary routine business was sub- mitted to the Throne and disposed of in the usual way ; and of course special legislation — as for instance in the matter of opium — has been sometimes found necessary. Curiously enough, the falling off in Manchu jurisprudence coincides in date with the translation of the Manchu Code by Sir George Staunton, v/ho was with the Lord Macartney mission of 1793. At present our knowledge of Chinese law, as presented to us in its most recent or Manchu form, must be in a 538 LAW [chap, xvi large measure gathered from that work, which is now quite out of print ; but it must be men- tioned that Staunton only translated the original kernel or ancient " statute " part of the law, much of which is obsolete ; he left entirely un- translated what may be termed the judge-made or case-law, which really forms the most impor- tant part of the work. The close corporation of law secretaries, who have had quite a monopoly of the law clerkships in all Chinese courts, were up to 1911 the real persons who manipulated the latest decrees, fashioned the judgments, and held a balance between the Emperor and his judicial officers. By them the judge-made law was really created and applied. It is another instance of a trade worked with the utmost secrecy. Even so far back as 800 years ago, it was complained that " all law now depended on the clerks' memories." The legal records of the purely native dynasty of Ming, which occupied the throne during the reigns of our Houses of Lancaster, York, Tudor, and Stuart, distinctly state that all jurisprudence to their date is based upon the Nine Chapters of 200 B.C. (Han dynasty), as subsequently expanded and codified in a.d. 630 (T'ang dynasty). In 1373 this Ming dynasty published its code, which is confessedly based on that of 630, and has exactly the same twelve divisions.^ The Mongol dynasty, which practically began, so far as China was concerned, with Kublai Khan in 1260, is much better spoken of by the historians than one would expect, considering that it was a completely foreign government ruling China by pure force. Kublai is spoken of as quite a benevolent prince from a juridical point of view, and even his less capable successors are charged rather with a certain slipshod care- lessness than with wanton injustice. Special 1 p. 331. A.D. 900-1200] UNDER THE TARTARS 839 features of this dynasty were the abolition of strangulation, and the creation of legislative privileges in favour of Buddhists, and at times of other priests. Christian included. The Chinese both in the north and south seem to have had nearly all the benefits of old Chinese law ; but the Mongols, mostly of course military men or officials, were under a special dispensation. For three centuries previous to the Mongol conquest, China was under two concurrent governments, that of first the Kitan and then the Niichen Tartars in the north, and that of the pure Chinese dynasty in the south : the space at our disposal will not permit of our saying more than this : the whole legal history is on record ; progress can be traced step by step ; and no considerable departure was at any time made from the accepted principles handed down from ancient times. On the whole it may be said, continuing our way backwards, that the southern dynasty was as shifty and as merciful in laws as it was literary and unusually weak in arms. But officials were now obliged to study the law, and scholars began for the first time to hold judicial posts. For fifty years previous to this north and south rule, China had been split up into innumerable contending local dynasties, and it need hardly be repeated that during this welter of anarchy no startling advance was made : yet each dynasty ' — at least each of the five successive central ones, which are the only ones usually recog- nised by standard historians — naturally took for granted the possibility that it might endure for ever ; and thus the very first step taken by each founder was to issue a code of his own, based, of course, upon the old codes already described {cf. p. 326). Previous to that the great T'ang dynasty, to 24 340 LAW [chap. XVI whiph we now return, ruled the whole of China with great glory for 300 years, these 300 years roughly covering the period of our Saxon kings : the legal history is very minute, and the special decisions are both amusing and interesting : as already stated, some of them are cited at this day, just as mediaeval authorities may be quoted in England. So great was the reputation of the T'ang dynasty, that in the south of China the Cantonese even now invariably describe them- selves in colloquial speech as " men of T'ang." On the other hand (c/. p. 30), the general name for Chinese in the north is " men of Han," " language or writing of Han," and so on, having reference to the glorious period described in the earlier part of this chapter, that is from 200 B.C. to a.d. 200, when three successive branches of the Han family sat upon the Chinese throne. During the 300 years between a.d. 280 and 580 China was ruled by Tartars in the north and native houses in the south : there is plenty to say^ about legal development in both, but this is not the place for saying it. To sum up, the two great law dynasties of China are the Han (200 B.C. to a.d. 200) and the T'ang (600 to 900), and they alone of all purely Chinese dynasties {i.e. not counting the Mongols and the Manchus) succeeded in extending Chinese influence to Persia and India : hence to this day the pure Chinese are proud to call them- selves " men of Han," and " men of T'ang." After the collapse of China that followed upon the Japanese and "Boxer" wars, the question of legal reform was seriously taken up, one of the chief motives being to imitate Japanese success and get rid of extraterritorial jurisdic- tions. The numerous memorials presented to the Emperor by the most distinguished Manchu and Chinese statesmen and viceroys, central A.D. 1905-16] MR. ' NG CHOY ' OF HONGKONG 341 or in the provinces, are all recorded in full, and amply prove the literary, logical, and even legal capacity of the writers, if only their col- leagues intrusted with the carrying out of excel- lent laws could honestly and fairly administer the laws so well understood and approved. The first point vv^as to expose clearly the differ- ence between executive and legislative functions, and to lay' stress upon the unwisdom of continu- ing these two separate functions in the hands of one and the sam.e man or group of men. The second reform of supreme importance was to secure the independence of judges and to estab- lish proper courts of first and second instance, appeal, and so on, both in the capital and in the provinces. The precise legislative and executive rights of Parliament on the one hand and the Boards and Supreme Law Courts on the other, were shrewdly discussed. This useful work began in 1905, and was proceeding apace when the Empress-Dowager and the Emperor died in 1908. Meanwhile Wu T'ing-fang, the present (end of 1916) Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, was commissioned to draw up a code. With him was associated one Shen Kia-pen, a native of the region that for centuries has had a monopoly of law-clerk business, and very learned in native law. 'Mr. Wu" himself is a British barrister, well known for his eminence as Minister to the United States. After some elaboration the Code was drawn up largely after Japanese model, and from a European point of view a very fair code it was, apart from the fact that it got rid of many anachronisms. But it met with serious viceregal opposition on account of the novelty, not to say coarseness of its style, its use of ill-understood semi-foreign definitions, and its failure to recognise the ethical principle of Chinese Law, based on hiao, or the natural family 342 LAW [chap, xvi rights, duties, and responsibilities as defined in the Confucian classics. Things are in such a state of flux under the Republic that it is hardly safe to say what law is actually followed by Chinese judges ; what is the juridical capacity of those judges ; and what is the ratio decidendi. So far as I can judge, whatever the law and the judge may theoreti- cally be, justice to the average claimant is as far off as in past times, and the Chinese courts are as unfitted to replace the extraterritorial consular courts as ever they were. CHAPTER XVII THE LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE As to the most ancient Chinese writings, within the past few years a mass of entirely new evidence has been discovered in the shape of numerous bone inscriptions, unearthed chiefly in the true " Central Kingdom " of Old China. The meaning of these bone inscriptions is plain in some instances ; in others it is as uncertain as their date ; but, whether connected with divination, dynastic successions, or fansily records, it seems clear that they exhibit little or nothing in the direction of sustained thought or connected history. A large number of the rude characters can be easily identified with the modern forms as evolved through the improve- ments of centuries. Tliose which have not been identified manifestly run " on the same lines " as modern characters ; but in the absence of inscriptions on old bronzes wherewith to compare them, we must fain leave such unsolved for the present. However that may be, this most ancient period of about a hundred pictographic signs, gradually reinforced by perhaps four hun- dred more ideographic characters, endured with- out much local variation down to the year 827 B.C. or thereabout ; and really we do not seem to possess a single trustworthy specimen of even the most primitive Chinese script older than, say, another 827 years before that. That 313 344 LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE [chap, xvii the 827 B.C. script reform was the "articulate" expression of genuine pubhc opinion budding for the first time seems evident from the fact that the interregnum period (841-828) was characterised as Kung-ho, or "together har- monising," a term freely used within the past five years to denote the " Republic." During the restoration reign of 827 to 782 B.C., a court annalist introduced a new phonetic system of writing, a great improvement upon the sprawling old hieroglyphs and pictographs, which were only called and considered as " names," with- out any suggestion of grouping similar sounding names, still less of splitting up such sounds into initials and finals, tones and rhymes. His " book " or vocabulary, consisting of fifteen bamboo or wooden " chapters," cannot have exceeded about one thousand characters in all, and this estimate is made from the number used in the actual or recorded documents that have come down to us written in that character, many specimens of which still survive in the shape of vases, drinking-vessels, sacrificial tripods, bricks, tiles, and commemorative bronze bowls, one especially fine instance of the last-named being at this moment visible to the public in the Victoria and Albert Museum, together with translation, history, and arguments as to its genuineness. It is now only that real history, accompanied by effective connected thoughts and expressive if limited writing, really begins, and with it the period of material progress and local autonomy. Writing was a laborious and clum.sy art even in its improved and tentatively phonetic form, and "books" were rare and heavy objects made up of strips strung together at one end like (and probably the indirect origin of) bamboo fans ; ordinary business was conducted by one or more B.C. 800-200] WRITING DEVELOPMENTS 345 wooden or bamboo slips like our tallies, each containing a dozen or so of characters, the form of which was apt to differ slightly in each semi- independent state. Confucius' s celebrated Annals (c. 480 B.C.), the first real definite history ever attempted in China, was a laconic record of events in his own state so far as they led him to observations on and relations with other states, including the decaying imperial state or extremely limited area under direct imperial rule. There is reason to believe that most if not all the other states kept similar annals, and portions of the same, in fact, have been dug up from graves at various comparatively modern times. Confucius and his contemporaries probably did not make use of 2,500 separate characters be- tween them. Confucius' s history, which covers a retrospective period of about 250 years, is scarcely literature, though the three largely amplified commentaries upon it (published several centuries later) which are usually meant when people speak of Confucius' s celebrated Annals, are decidedly interesting and readable. There can be no doubt that during the period 820-220 B.C. the total number of written char- acters had increased from 1,000 to over 3,000, for 3,300 were at the latter date collected in a vocabulary or book. Education was widely spread ; that is, the limited ruling classes had broadened their base, cultivated literary trea- sures, used to consult the oracles, a.nd saw to it that the mercantile, industrial, and agricultural commons possessed at least a knowledge of written character sufficient for the ordinary business purposes of Hfe, including the learning off by heart of moral maxims and principles of decency. If no current everyday specimens have come down to us as (only in very recent years) in the cases of the Egyptian papyri and Babylonian 346 LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE [chap, xvn clay, it must be largely because wood and bamboo are so perishable by fire and rot. After the uniting of the contending feudatories and imperial appanage into one centralised state in 213 B.C., the conqueror and his ministers naturally inclined to favour the use of their own variety of script when it became a question of deciding which variant had best claim to be the standard. Weights and measures, cart- wheel axles, and political ideas were all thence- forward to be organised and standardised. It is highly probable that (as with the Egyptian demotic writing) scribes, whose routine business led them to deal with numerous oracular, ad- ministrative, or mercantile matters, had for long quietly and empirically indulged in a kind of short-hand among themselves and their clerical colleagues of other states, which process would lead naturally to a general simplification of the more formal and laborious mode of writing dis- covered or codified in 827 B.C., in the elaboration of which simplification, we are told, two of the conqueror's ministers and a private scholar took independent parts : shortly after that an anony- mous individual unified these three collections in a single book of 3,300, as just stated. In his eagerness to begin things afresh, this imperial founder proceeded to call in and destroy not only so much of the ancient literature as he could lay his hands on, but also to summon and destroy the philosophers, scholars, and politicians who opposed his innovations on the, to him, most irritating ground that the sages of antiquity had taught wiser and better things. Thus it comes about that even those portions of genuine old classical writings rummaged for and patched up from memory several generations after the tyrant's death, and of course after the total collapse of his short-lived dynasty, are B.C. 200-A.D. 200] SIR A. STEIN ONCE MORE 347 open to suspicion as to their genuineness and accuracy, as few persons could after that interval even decipher, let alone explain, the old texts found, whilst a large number of the 827 B.C. characters had disappeared for ever. If this seem incredible, then how many of us can make out even Queen Elizabeth's writing in the British Museum ? The Han dynasty in its western and eastern divisions we have seen covered a period of 400 years, i.e., the first 200 years before and the second 200 years after the beginning of our Christian era' — exactly the same periods of time as those covered by the Hiung-nu dominators, who used Chinese just as (Caesar tells us) the Gauls and Germans used Greek script. These 400 years were exceedingly active in a military as well as in a literary sense. The first diction- ary (as distinct from mere vocabularies) was published about a.d. 220, and contained over 9,000 words. Not only was the written character further developed and made easier to write, but the hair ink-brush had come into general use instead of the scratcher or style and the rough bamboo paint-brush ; paper was invented ; various special guide-books and vocabularies were made; distant military posts were estab- lished, and expresses conveyed despatches rapidly from one end of the empire to the other — Dr. Aurel Stein has unearthed hundreds of them from the dry desert sand, and the original speci- mens may now be seen in the British Museum : the dominions of China were enlarged by dis- covery ; but at no period does the Chinese literary taste seem to have been in the remotest degree affected by foreign importations, nor have the Chinese writers ever given the smallest hint that the form of their script owed anything in the way of inception, change, or improvement to examples 348 LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE [chap, xvii or suggestions from abroad : in fact, they nev^r even heard of any rival writing system or con- ceived the possible existence of any except their own until they were brought into political con- tact with the Indo-Scythians (whence India) and the Syrians (whence Rome). Thus any sup- posed Babylonian effect, say, in 600 B.C. (even if it had existed at all) could only in any case be looked for now in connection with the forms that have largely perished, and not with the forms now in use. The Japanese (as admitted in the Times by Baron Kikuchi) had no letters of any kind previous to the seventh century a.d. But as to the specific point of invention, is there any real necessity for persisting in or even assuming that writing was in remote and "prehistoric" times the exclusive invention of any one nation or tribe ? Nay, further ; the attempts to prove that the Chinese derived their primitive pictographs from the Akkadians or Sumerians of Babylonia seem to defeat them- selves when we read in the British Museum guide-book that both these ruling peoples are " believed to have come from Central Asia, and to have belonged to the Turanian family of nations " ; i.e., of necessity either to the Chinese, or Tibetans, or the Hiung-nu and Scythians ; to wit, the Turks. What scientific ground is there for assuming that any nation or race is older than any other ? Every existing man and woman must have had a father and mother, and they also must have had parents ; and so on ad infinitum, or at any rate until at least pleis- tocene and even pleiocene times. In any case it seems rash to assume connection or borrow- ings on the ground that the primitive sounds uttered, or scratched on a tree, show some similarity. There are only one pair of legs and one pair of arms to clothe, whether we elect B.C. 250,000] A MAN'S A MAN FOR A' THAT 349 for petticoat, clout, or breeches ; and there is, and for, say, 250,000 years has been, only one kind of throat and nose to speak out of, whether, living remote from each other, we incline towards clicks, tones, grunts, sniffs, labials, sonants, nasals, surds, or gutturals. Not to speak of the Neanderthal man, the Heidelberg jaw, and the Ipswich skeleton, still more recent discoveries — and in point of time we must not overlook the fossil " fabulous " dragons found personally by a genuine British Consul in China only last year (1916), — the most recent human " finds " distinctly point to complete man, brain-power included, even in pleiocene times. History is nothing but events, and events dis- appear for ever unless they are recorded ; hence for untold generations man's doings are lost in oblivion, and leave not a wrack behind. Primitive man probably made one of his greatest discoveries when he began to conceive definite numbers. As to the mere act of think- ing, he must have been, for he still is, on the same plane as other animals, and it is quite manifest that thinking cannot possibly connote speech of necessity, inasmuch as those persons born deaf and dumb can not only think, but read, and "get along" in matters generally as well as ordinary folk. Man's next step would probably be the development of speech, which is merely a " short-distance " record of our thoughts. Primitive man, having at last grasped the idea that his own tree hole and his own wife were only one set of many similar, would be led to '' record " this and other simple facts more per- manently with his nails, with shells, or with sticks, on his wife's skin, or on a tree ; if there were no trees handy, he might make a shift with other suitable material ; for instance, clay ; and he would advance a step further when he found that 350 LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE [chap, xvii the sun, later fire, made the clay durable. The Chinese have plenty of loess. Possibly because it is too friable to convert into viscous mud, they never seem to have imagined the virtues of clay " paper," though numerous very hard-baked bricks and tiles, probably not made of loess^ contain valuable ancient "inscriptions" of a terse and limited kind. It was Chinese ill-luck to choose the most perishable of materials — wood, bamboos, silk, and paper — and (unless many more bone or tortoise-shell inscriptions and tomb treasures turn up) one of the conse- quences now is that we shall have few literary antiquities in China except in stone, brick, or bronze. But that circumstance is far from proving that the Chinese owed any culture to other nations, or that their mental capacity needed foreign stimulus. By the commencement of our era the Chinese had written two genuine " world " histories as they knew the world. Take, for instance, the chapters on the Hiung-nu in both these histories, about as long as the " Caesar " and " Tacitus " used in our schools. The Chinese descriptions of the Hiung-nu are in general grasp marvellously like the Roman descriptions of the Gauls and Germans. The language and flow of thought are not only as precise and intelligent, but each sentence may be translated almost word for word into good Latin of similar terseness and grip ; and conversely, the Latin will go quite com- fortably into Chinese of 90 B.C. and 90 a.d. style. Although the first dictionary of 9,000 words pub- lished about A.D. 220 contains fewer than half the character»used by first-class schoolmen after the perfect and refined polish of 1,000 years later, and only one quarter or one fifth of the characters given in the imperial dictionaries of to-day, the clear and simple style of 90 B.C. to B.C. 90-A.D. 90] CHINESE NOT DIFFICULT 351 A.D. 100 has never been excelled, and it is excellent reading even to-day, without greater need for a glossary than we ourselves require for, say, the Shakespearean plays. The Chinese have never shown any capacity for " applied history," but as recorders of bare facts and describers of definite events they are unequalled for trustworthiness. Have the Egyptians or the Babylonians ever written anything that one can sit down to read by the hour consecutively and conscientiously, and enjoy like a novel ? The thousands of clay and papyrus documents indirectly describing conquests, family dealings, and so on are of course when pieced together intensely interesting to our curiosity. But are they literature ? Is there any " style," or philosophic, logical thought about them ? Above all, have they any " art " or beauty to the imagination, as approached through the eye ? If a nation can struggle during a total period of 500 years out of its bald annals scratched on laconic slips, create an argumentative philo- sophy worth destroying, repair that destruction, rise " like a phoenix from the ashes," and achieve the highest degree of artistic calligraphic and literary taste, charming to the eye, unfettered by " grammar," and good for any spoken lan- guage, what need is there to charge upon its mental capacity an imaginary debt to the Egyptians and Babylonians ? From a general point of view no language can be postulated more difficult than another, for every language is the easiest expression by the native speaker thereof of his sentiments ; specifically, Chinese is provably as easy to speak as English, for any English child born in China, and given a free hand to grow up amongst native 352 LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE [chap, xvii servants and friends, speaks the local dialect with absolute perfection along with his mother's English. The difficulty of a language cannot therefore be inherent, but must lie in the differ- ence between the language already spoken and that which is to be learnt ; it is only the differ- ence between braying and neighing in another degree, the aims being identical. Chinese, ac- cordingly, is so different from English, that it becomes increasingly difficult in the ratio of the learner's established custom : hence — given equal natural intelligence — a youth of 18 in- variably progresses more rapidly than an adult of 40. These sententiosities apart, however, Chinese is, by reason of its seemingly grotesque differ- ences, apparently very hard to learn at all ; and, by reason of its innumerable and confusing dialects, really very hard to learn correctly, unless you study it in a place where everybody speaks in the same way ; for in China, except in one's own place, no one does speak the same way ; and in Peking, where officials from every city and village in China do congregate, no one but a born native speaks absolutely *' right." It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that amongst a group of native officials forming a government committee of any mixed-interests kind, no one can be guaranteed clear in his expositions unless he " yells at " you, and you at him, occasionally ; or unless he indulges in pi-Van ( = pencil chat), i.e. jotting down, or merely indicating by flour- ishes of his forefinger, the written character intended to express the particular sound he is *' mouthing," for the special benefit of his col- league's provincial ear. In Manchu times it was execrably bad form to misunderstand what the Emperor — and still more the peppery old Dowager — was talking about ; and as the racy A.D. 1900] VOWEL DISTINCTIONS 353 brogue of Peking is precisely the same in a mule- cabman's mouth and in the mouth of the " all- highest," most local men admitted to audience were glad to slur over the formal conversation prescribed and shuffle out as quickly as possible from the imperial presence : some viceroys were so incapable of disguising their broad " Doric " that they received a pretty broad hint to give as much of their room and as little of their company at the metropolis as rigid rule admitted of. The moral of all this is that a beginner must choose a dialect and stick to it. The reason is this : as will shortly be shown, all dialects are regular ; that is to say, no matter how unlike they may be, the changes in pronunciation follow definite fixed rules : hence instinct teaches every native to make mental allowances for speakers of other dialects, and it is obvious that these mental allowances are more easily made when the speaker is "in order " than when he speaks imperfectly. For instance, when a Scots- man says sair taes for " sore toes," or when an Irishman talks about Tay Pay O'Connor drink- ing a cup of tay at the say side, even the dullest English yokel soon learns instinctively that certain classes of o and i (or ee) are changed to ei (or ay) in a Scotchman's or Irishman's mouth respectively ; but if Scotch changes were irregu- larly mixed with Irish changes, neither the Scotsman nor the Irisliman would be so well understood by the yokel in question. Another point. All the Chinese dialects, and all the " tonic " languages akin to Chinese (Annamese, Miao, Yao, Lolo, Shan, etc.) are monosyllabic, i.e. no matter what single word, whether noun, verb, adjective, conjunction, or what not, that word is enunciated in one syllable ; the only apparent qualification of this statement being that the vowel of many such syllables is 354 LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE [chap, xvii often what may be called an " inverted diph- thong " ; thus chiang and chang, chiu and chu, though monosyllables, contain vowels of different degrees of purity or simplicity ; like the word " gardener," by a few old-fashioned people still pronounced " gyardner," or like the faint differ- ence between the vowels in chew and choose made by some clear speakers. But, after all, this monosyllabic theory of the Chinese lan- guages must not be overweighted. All lan- guages, even the most sesquipedalian, are mono- syllabic, in the sense that all polysyllables must consist of single syllables ; and all inflections, agglutinative particles, and so on, are either pure unmodified monosyllables with a definite mean- ing, or impure monosyllables the original mean- ing of which it is difficult to trace back. Inde- pendence and Unabhdngigkeit are both exactly the same word : if, like the Chinese, we had always kept our European syllables separate and uncorrupted, we should have been equally comprehensible if we had said " Not from hang like way," or, as we still say, " not hang on to others," or " to one's mother's apron strings." The important difference is that the Chinese in all their parts of speech, whether primary or auxiliary in meaning, have only had their own single language to deal with, whereas we in England have borrowed from so many sources that most of us are ignorant of what our own monosyllables mean. German occupies a mid- way position between English and Chinese : it may be said aphoristically, " Every Chinaman knows analytically exactly what he is saying ; every German knows pretty well what he is saying ; few Englishmen have any exact analyti- cal idea of what they say." What with Greek, Latin, and other borrowings, we in England have frequently lost all trace of our component parts. A.D. 1900] WHAT IS GRAMMAR ? 355 Every one talks of " insufficient circumstances," and knows generally what this means, but how many people can split these words up and define why each syllable has its partial or contributes to the total effect ? This instinctive wholesome feeling every Chinese has, no matter what dialect he speaks, and thus there are no Mrs. Malaprops in China, and no hawkers of " haspidesterers " or " enuncrancies " for the " drorin' " room flower- pots. The Dowager-Empress could enjoy her street chaff, on precisely equal dialectic terms, with any old peasant crony who brought her a bowl of rice to the countryside ; and it is recorded that she did. There is no grammar in Chinese : this is the next point to be examined. How many of us can explain the word " grammar " which we use so confidently : gramma means " a word " or " a written sign," and " grammar" by exten- sion " the study of forms of speech " ; but the idea conveyed to the popular mind is a vague collection of half-understood terms, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, tenses, cases, moods, and so on. Every Chinese word, written or spoken, is absolutely unchangeable ; it cannot be inflected, agglutinated, or " parsed " in any way. Which of us can explain the word " parse " ? The mere utterance of the word is all the parsing, partitioning, or defining a Chinese requires, just as we have shown that the most ancient written signs were " names," and there was an end of it. The Chinese word for a written gramma (ideograph) is no longer ming or " name," but a word only 2,000 years old as used in that sense called tsz, and a " not- recognize-i52 " means " an ignoramus." Wen-li (grammar) means the " orderly arrangement" of tsz, and an official statement by the Board of Education roundly asserted quite recently that 25 356 LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE [chap, xvii less than 1 per cent, of the whole Chinese race (seven per mille) were acquainted with literature. As a matter of fact, a much larger proportion of male Chinese have for many centuries had a casual acquaintance with the tsz sufficient to carry them through their daily business, women in most parts having been, until a few years ago, entirely ignorant; but this slender male know- ledge was before the introduction of newspapers and advertising a generation ago : now both sexes are rapidly advancing, and the dullest minds are stimulated by curiosity as to what is going on in the outer world. But all Chinese, illiterate or learned, have as much grammar as we have ; that is to say, they arrange the order of their words by hereditary instinct and daily practice in such a way that they extract the same effec- tive results as though they had all our moods, tenses, declensions, and cases. The main differ- ence between vulgar speech and literary elegance is that the latter aims at eschewing tautology, repetitions, expletives, coarseness, and vague- ness ; the style tends to the telegraphic in its economy. The most learned Chinese literatus cannot in the least explain how he arrives at "style"; yet the official, historical, narrative, and other styles are all recognised and mentally fixed, subject of course to the qualification that real masters of style attract special attention, as with ourselves : official dispatch writers form a sort of semi-secret guild. The fact that Chinese written characters or hieroglyphs are final and unchangeable cannot possibly have anything to do with the fact that the spoken language is (as above qualified) mono- syllabic and uninflected, for men spoke and formed their language for the current purposes of life long before they ever thought of even elementary writing ; moreover, even within B.C. 200C-A.D. 1900] WHAT'S IN A NAME ? 857 historical memory, Chinese writing was so laborious and clumsy an art, writing materials were so expensive and unwieldy, that only an infinitesimal number of scholars in a very few capital cities could have had the independent means to study critically. In the same way it must be remembered that Chinamen spoke long before the idea of "grammar" was conceived in other lands ; the peculiarity of Chinese is that the people, literate or illiterate, have continued to speak as they have always spoken, without the faintest idea of " good grammar " or " bad grammar " having entered a single mind, and this over a period of some 4,000 years. Speech has no formal recognition at all, except as an ordinary function of life, like toddling, walking, suckling, weaning, eating, belching, or drinking. A school- master may chide a boy for rude acts and ex- pressions, just as Don Quixote warned Sancho about erutar and regoldar ; but he never dreams of correcting his " grammar " ; nor are there any books on grammar. With us the omission or insertion of an /?, a "you was^' instead of werCf " kep " instead of " kept," srimp instead of shrimp, may affect a young man's whole career in life, because, in addition to a more or less artificial grammar, we have evolved a more or less " caste " pronunciation, which is not that of the pi'ojanum vulgus. But plants grew before botany was invented, with its artificial classifi- cations and impossible Greek or Latin words, invented to split up leaves, anthers, and other component parts into innumerable imaginary departments, futile to all but specialists ; and plants will continue to grow in omne aevum, subject only to the fcAv insignificant graftings or unnatural modifications that science may occasionally supply. So language grew through untold generations of gradual development before 358 LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE [chap, xvii grammar was invented to harness it to the restraint of fancy rules. Even in Europe, dialects still run wild, and " correct " speech is only ancillary to local brogues, whereas in China no one has ever dreamt of regulating mere speech, however finically rules for poetry and essay- writing may have developed. Every Chinese official speaks or tries to speak " man- darin " of some kind ; not necessarily Pekingese (the fashionable language for the last thousand years, and, it seemiS, still the only one in which really good colloquial novels are published), but some form of that vast series of correlated brogues current over the whole of China, Man- churia, and (if Chinese be spoken at all) Mon- golia, Corea, and Tibet, which pass by that unsatisfactory generic name. But no Cantonese or coast-Chinese of any kind holding an official position under the Manchu dynasty would ever speak his native "non-mandarin" brogue officially in public ; interpreters were always used in courts of law, and it was no uncommon sight to witness, say, a Cantonese judge, who himself spoke imperfect "mandarin," having the evidence of a Cantonese prisoner (which he meanwhile understood perfectly) interpreted to him in another form of "mandarin" equally imperfect. This, of course, is only an ex- aggerated or extreme form of the general fact already stated — ^that mere speech is a private and personal affair not to be seriously taken ; whilst litera scripta manet, whatever dialect be used ; for composition in no matter what form, legal, official, narrative, essay, poetical, historical, or what not, is always resolvable into perfectly regular local elements, though six men may (as they do) pronounce one iden- tical written word as chi, cup, cake, kip, dji, kih, and so on. A.D. 1917] DULL ONES, TAK^ COURAGE! 359 It may strike Europeans as singular that the total number of syllables for 40,000 written characters ranges between 350 to 800. But this seemingly alarming statement is subject to qualifications which reduce it to comparative impotence. In the first place 12,000 characters easily embrace the whole gamut of reasonable literature, and probably of the three or four million men in China officially dubbed " literate," not one million can be depended on to pronounce clearly upon more than 8,000 or 9,000. Three- fourths of the characters are waste ; duplicates or " cranks " of this or that kind. A good average knowledge, sufficient for supervising correspondence, reading proclamations (not too exactly), glancing over the newspapers and official gazettes, dealing with commercial docu- ments, etc., would be 4,000 or 5,000. Hence it follows that no character beyond this last number can possibly have a local pronunciation that can be depended upon ; that is to say, if a person, Chinese or other, does not know it from personal experience, he must accept the native dictionary pronunciation; and this itself is imperfect, because the native dictionaries, in arranging their initials and finals, have only been able (1) to go back to ancient dicta, or (2) to accept the personal pronouncements of indi- viduals (who may be provincials) in court circles. To put it in another way, the ordinary business Chinese of standing only makes use during life of 4,000 or 5,000 words in the whole of his conversation and business, and can only fit that conversation with the same number of signs. Hence the European student need not burden his memory with more (unless he wish to be a specialist) ; and if he stumble across either strange words or strange characters he must look them up ; after which done, he is as 360 LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE [chap, xvii good an authority as the average Chinese, who must do the same thing. As to the number of syllables in a monosylla- bic language not exceeding 350 — indeed the Hankow dialect has only 320 — it is doubtful if even in polysyllabic English our separate monosyllables would reach 1,000. The whole Japanese language from first to last, including Chinese importations, is expressed by fifty separate monosyllables ; but then that language is highly polysyllabic, and there are many clip- pings, prolongations, and " thickenings " — such as in Welsh d for t (Llandudno and St. Tudno) — to help it out. In China the same helping out effect is partly gained by tones, which practi- cally double, treble, or even quadruple the distinctions, according to refinement of dialect : yet, with all that, one of the real difficulties of Chinese — especially the " mandarin " dialects — to foreign students, even those with a good ear for tones, is, it must be confessed, the want oi variety in word-sounds, which difficulty is of course accentuated in the case of persons — and they are many — who cannot for the life of them " get into " the tones at all. The reason why some dialects have only 400 whilst others have 800 sounds is that either initials or finals or both have been merged in the cases of the "mandarin" group — i.e. in the current corre- lated brogues of nine-tenths of interior China — whilst they have been preserved' — sometimes most carefully' — in the ignored dialects of the coast. It is easily provable, from close examina- tion of the present form of Corean, Japanese, and Annamese words taken over from Chinese (from A.D. 1 till, say, a.d. 1300), that the Cantonese dialect, which is far and a long way the highest in develojDment, corresponds most closely with the theoretical or dictionary form of A.D. 1917] A "TIP" FOR STUDENTS 361 ancient times, still rigidly adhered to for poetical purposes, though no Chinaman can explain why. This is the more remarkable in that the Cantonese people are not of pure " Old China " stock; and the explanation probably is that, as the Tartars gradually possessed themselves of North China (as expounded in the chapter on history), the pure Chinese colonised the south in huge numbers by way of the lakes, and took their speech with them. On the other hand the now existing " mandarin " dialects of Old China, West China, and the foreign provinces above enumerated, evidently represent corrupt forms as debased by successive inroads by Tartar rulers, who (just as the Coreans and Japanese have done with adopted Chinese words) would tend to make a clean sweep of tones, surds, sonants, aspirates, and other refinements strange to their own guttural and agglutinative speech. The case of the Cantonese is well illustrated by a parallel with Quebec (and French Canada generally) ; there sixteenth or seventeenth-cen- tury French is spoken, which I personally found barely intelligible. The case of "mandarin" is well illustrated by a parallel with France itself, where Northmen have played such havoc with Latin that a debased but fashionable " man- darin " form has thrust the purer Spanish, Portu- guese, Italian, Romance, and Rumanian into the political background. To illustrate the extent of " mandarin " corruption : what ought to be ki, tsi, kik, kip, kit, tsik, tsip, tsit, are all debased into one uniform " mandarin " form chi ; thus a Cantonese — who, moreover, subdivides his four theoretical tones into about twenty colloquial tones — has eight chances at guessing right against one " mandarin" chance in this particular instance; in fact, he has 8 x 5, or forty chances. The whole question of comparative tones. 362 LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE [chap, xvii aspirates, sonants, surds, etc., is, however, one that no casual student can be expected to tolerate for a moment. Sanskrit purists in the shape of Buddhist priests first explained it to the Chinese, or tried to do so. A final piece of practical advice may, however, perhaps here be hazarded :■ — If you want to learn Chinese, no matter what dialect, get a native who does not understand a word of any foreign language, and is guaranteed to be a safe moderate scholar, speaking his own dialect only. Do not bother yourself with grammar, but start off by pointing to something, gradually working your way up to such words as " give," " me," the numerals, the negatives, the way to say "is " and " has " (practically the sole real "verb" or verbs in existence). Make the man read ; follow his sounds, take notes, keep him in good humour by letting him smoke and drink tea ; and, having thus got the thin end of the wedge in, go ahead in the way most agreeable to yourself, repeating all doubtful points the next lesson, and going on repeating day by day till you are clear. With regard to reading and writing, take notes of the sounds as they seem to you, and postpone dictionary work, or comparison with other men's views, till you feel you are on your own solid ground. Do not trouble to learn the radicals {i.e. the 214 conventional, m.ostly obsolete, char- acters used in forming parts of hieroglyphs), but get a Chinese brush, Chinese ink, and Chinese slab ; watch how the teacher rubs the ink, holds the brush, and in what order of strokes he writes each word. Imitate him, always keeping up Chinese conversation withal. The main rule is this : (1) No word should be allowed to pass for an instant unless you can utter its tone and sound, (2) recognise it on paper, and (3) write it as the teacher writes it. A.D. 1917] BIZARRE DIALECTS 863 The above remarks chiefly concern Pekingese, the " mandarin " dialect most usually studied, not only because it is the fashionable court brogue, but because it is (or was until quite recently) the only one provided with adequate machinery in the way of handbooks, etc., for foreigners : etymologically it is a decidedly cor- rupted dialect. It may in a general way be said that no one except missionaries ever seri- ously engages a purely local dialect : of course there are very occasional exceptions, and Can- tonese is not rarely taken up by officials and other non-missionaries on account of the practical needs of Hong Kong ; and there are excellent Canton dictionaries, besides handbooks. The dialects of Amoy and Ningpo seem to be picked up by local smatterers^ — apart from missionaries • — with unusual facility, perhaps because both are " unlit erary," and full of local locutions which cannot be written with recognised standard tsz; both are provided with good dictionaries. Such strange "abortions" as the dialects of Foochow and Wenchow are never studied ex- cept under force majeure; yet both have been thoroughly dissected and explained in published papers. Few practical students who may take up Chinese, whether Pekingese, " southern man- darin," " western mandarin," or any of the coast dialects, will care or have time for com- parative or etymological studies. If they should wander into these pleasant pastures, they will find that China follows out nearly all the " laws " of change we are accustomed to in Europe ; such, for instance, as the passage from surd to aspirate, from sonant to aspirated surd, from one class of nasal to another, from faint nasal to pure consonant, from o to ue (as in Spanish), from partial omission of final conson- 864 LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE [chap, xvii ants to entire omission with occasional re- suscitation (as in French), etc. In short, there is scarcely any bizarre change to be found in Europe that cannot be closely paralleled in Chinese ; even the pure Welsh II is extensively found in one of the Cantonese group, where it takes the place of s. Through all this maze it is comparatively easy to grope one's way for practical purposes if the student masters and adheres to one definite dialect, never passing to a second unless he feels that he can do so with- out wrecking the first ; for even Chinese them- selves can very rarely speak two dialects with sufficient purity in each case to pass muster to a native speaker as a native speaker of either ; and it may be here repeated that speech in China takes quite a back seat, and (except between natives of the same tract) it is scarcely an ex- aggeration to say that no two men talk alike : one might even go farther, and say that few persons quite understand a complicated conversation without calling for repetitions and explanations; these, indeed, form the salt that gives zest to an interchange of ideas, just as with us the broad racy talk of a native of Perth entertains and amuses the educated Englishman, and vice versa. CHAPTER XVIII THE RISE OF THE CHINESE REPUBLIC A RUSH of very detailed books upon this subject burst upon the world four or five years ago, but the present account reviews the whole question in condensed proportions, under the light of official Chinese documents published from day to day, and from the standpoint of one who was actually present as events progressed in most of the countries concerned. The " Awakening of China" began when Turkestan was reconquered, and the Marquess Tseng (who subsequently wrote a paper thus entitled) succeeded in negotia- ting a favourable treaty with Russia. At the same time Li Hung-chang, then Viceroy at Tientsin, managing also external relations gener- ally, thought it good policy to encourage treaties between foreign powers and Corea so as to thwart designs upon that vassal state's virtual independence. Meanwhile French activity in Indo-China (1884) led up to the loss of China's first war fleet and of Tonquin, whilst the Pendjeh in- cident in Affghanistan had the indirect effect of causing a strained situation in connection with the British occupation of Port Hamilton off Corea. The death of Sir Harry Parkes at this juncture (1885) deprived us of our one "push and go" man who understood the situa- tion. China made efforts to create a new navy 366 366 RISE OF CHINESE REPUBLIC [chap, xvm and fortify Port Arthur, Wei-hai Wei, etc., an operation which was by way of placing Great Britain in an unusually sympathetic relation- ship with her had not our occupation of Upper Burma in 1886 stimulated the Marquess Tseng from his London post of observation to attempt with us at Bhamo a repetition of his successes with Russia touching the Hi domain. The question of Indian trade with Tibet subsequently complicated the Burma frontier discussion, which latter ultimately involved China in triangular difficulties with ourselves and France (1894-5). In 1891 the Siberian railway (the Tashkend extension of which had already attracted China's uneasy attention in 1881) was inaugurated at its far- eastern end by the present Czar, and simultaneously Count Cassini appeared upon the scene at Peking. For some years since the Port Hamilton bungle of 1886, things had smouldered in comparative quiet in Corea, but China's general attitude had meanwhile become somewhat aggressive, haughty, and notably anti-missionary, after Admiral Lang — a British Captain, lent to China — had shown the dragon flag in the southern and Japanese seas ; she had lost foreign sympathy. In 1894 the sudden out- break of the Sino-Japanese war, however, took every one by surprise, culminating, as it did, in the crushing defeat of China, the destruction of her fleet for the second time, and the loss of Formosa : Germany, notwithstanding, success- fully engineered a joint effort with Russia and France to secure Japan's renunciation of the Liao Tung peninsula point of vantage ; but Japan held on to Wei-hai Wei, on the mainland oppo- site, as security for the fulfilment of other peace- treaty conditions ; and now began the first of those heavy foreign borrowings which have since landed China into such financial embarrassment. A.D. 1896-8] DESCENSUS AVERNI 367 Li Hung-chang, after settling matters with Japan, proceeded to Europe and America in 1896 to see what he could do there to mend matters politically ; as he was still burning with a sense of personal and patriotic humiliation at his diplomatic defeat by Count Ito in Japan, it seems certain that he must have had a large share (probably when in Russia) in the concoc- tion of the Cassini treaty concluded at Peking that autumn : indeed, he was appointed on his return to assist at the Foreign Office only a day or two after its conclusion. In a secret clause of that treaty certain preferential "options" at Kiao Chou (never published, I think, except in Chinese) were granted to Russia. Meanwhile Germany, as "honest broker" in the Liao Tung affair, had received no reward ; but at an interview with the Czar about that time, William the Second seems to have twisted some sort of an acquiescence out of the Kiao Chou discussion with the Czar and Prince Lobanoff or his successor (just before or shortly after that statesman's death in August 1906), which, on the murder of some German missionaries in 1897, he treated as part justification for his audacious seizure of what was a secret option rather than an admitted Russian " right " ; and thus we find Germany plumped down almost exactly opposite the commanding spot on which she had hypo- critically objected to the Japanese presence. Russia was therefore not long before she found an excuse for leasing the coveted Port Arthur. Japan's security hold on Wei-hai Wei being now liquidated, China, ever ready to set one barbarian against the other, agreed in May 1898 that Japan should hand it over to Great Britain for as long as Russia held Port Arthur; and, moreover, the mainland territory opposite Hongkong was largely extended for Great Britain's benefit. 368 RISE OF CHINESE REPUBLIC [chap, xviii Meanwhile in April the French had taken " French " leave and secured a free port, with Hinterland, in the extreme south ; and even the Italians were claiming countervailing coastal con- cessions between Ningpo and Foochow (success- fully resisted). Thus abject China had almost resigned herself to the " melon-slicing" or spheres of influence process when the young Emperor, under the vivifying influence of the Cantonese re- former K'ang Yu-wei, suddenly took every one's breath away by launching a series of revolutionary edicts with the object of shaking up China from her lethargy ; but, as to popular representation, there had been, up to this date, no visible demand for it ; reform was inspired from above. There was really nothing amiss about the matter of this reform ; it was rather the abrupt manner of the move that roused conservative and pocket interests to hostility. The old Dowager, who had long retired with her eunuchs to an inoffen- sive otium cum dignitate, now angrily emerged from her seclusion. K'ang Yu-wei and the Emperor tried to suppress her, and enlisted the aid of Yiian Shi-k'ai (who since the disastrous Japanese war had been training up an effective army near Tientsin). But instead of murdering the Dowager's nephew the Viceroy Jungluh, Yiian made to him, as his military chief, a clean breast of the business ; the Viceroy hastened to Peking ; the Emiperor was placed under sur- veillance ; the Dowager assumed charge once more ; and all the premature reforms were summarily annulled. But with these suspicious events a glimmering of true patriotic feeling, coupled with sympathy for the Manchu Emperor, had now begun to possess even the Chinese mind ; to which must be added a sentiment of disgust at Manchu cabinet's incapacity to de- fend the integrity of an ancient empire against A.D. 1898-1902] THREE GOOD VICEROYS 369 foreign aggression in the same way that the Japanese had done for themselves. This indefinite bitter feeling culminated in the ill-conceived " Boxer " revolt, which was simply an inarticulate protest and an arms-taking against the sea of troubles mistily visualised. Practically it ended in the " Boxers " saying to the dynasty : — "Clear these (European) foreigners out, or get out yourselves." It was this consciousness of a quandary that forced the Dowager to adopt the hedging or " run with the hare and hunt w4th the hounds " attitude that proved so mystifying to onlookers during the Legation siege. Her sanest adviser close at hand was Jungluh. Fortunately the experienced as well as extremely sane viceroys of the Yangtsze valley, co-operating with Governor Yiian Sh'i- k'ai of Shantung province, saved the situation beyond the bounds of Peking just in time ; and after the Legation relief in the autumn of 1900 it was the task of the veteran Li Hung-chang to cobble up the best peace he could with the assembly of eleven foreign envoys at Peking. But, after indulging in this egregious dance, China had naturally to pay the piper, the neces-? sary huge foreign loans of course increasing her permanent commitments to an enormous extent. On return in 1901 from her self-imposed exile in West China, the Dowager set industriously to work upon real reform, military, judicial, finan- cial, administrative, and what not, acting chiefly under the earnest and detailed exhortations of the two Yangtsze viceroys Liu K'un-yih and Chang Chi-tung above referred to. Meanwhile Yiian Shi-k'ai, who on Li Hung- chang' s death had become Viceroy at Tientsin, and had seen with his own eyes how well foreigners administered that place, showed an excellent example by putting locally into prac- 370 RISE OF CHINESE REPUBLIC [chap, xviii tical effect a number of foreign methods, coupled with genuine reforms. At Peking a thorough investigation into constitutional principles was made, with a decided bias in favour of the limited German and Japanese types. The Dowager herself gradually followed the lines taken in 1898 by the rash young Emperor she had ruthlessly put in the background, and by 1906-1907 not only was a Constitution promised within nine years, but effective armies were created, a free press spread general intelligence, and China was rapidly being covered with a network of business-like railways. The fierce war of 1904-5 between Russia and Japan had meanwhile practically left China proper un- touched, and indeed had given her as a tertia gaudens a welcome respite of breathing time ; as for Manchuria, which economically scarcely concerns — or then concerned- — China at all, it had been for a time quietly abandoned or ignored as a heaven-sent cockpit for the two formidable com.batant neighbours. China's official history scarcely mentions the war ! It was quite a coincidence and not by calculation that Great Britain — since 1902 an ally of Japan — also found 1904 a convenient year for settling her accumulated disputes with Tibet about rival influences there, and so far from " grabbing " anything for herself beyond the long- stipulated frontier trade, she really placed Manchu authority in Tibet in a stronger position than it had been for some years ; in fact, the way was left almost too generously open for the reconstitution of Chinese suzerainty during the four years of the Dalai Lama's flight, and a fair understanding with Russia was arrived at besides. But now we come to the more immediate causes of the revolution of 1911, the brewing of which, as we have seen, had been in reality A.D. 1908-1915] A GIGANTIC BLUNDP^R 371 going on steadily ever since the fringes of China — Corea, Manchuria, Formosa, Annam, Burma, Tibet, and part of Hi in turn — liad either dropped off or been lopped off. The Dowager- Empress and the Emperor unexpectedly died within a few hours of each other, and whilst the forgiven but unrepentant Dalai, on his way back to Tibet, was actually on the spot in Peking to see things for himself and contribute his prayers for the im^perial souls. Instead of continuing to utilise Yiian Shi-k'ai's services in conjunction with those of the surviving elder statesmen at Peking, the late Emperor's brother and wife (the Regent and the new Dowager) unfortun- ately soon succumbed to a vindictive palace intrigue, having for its main object the avenging of the late Emperor's 1898 failure ; and thus the only rem.aining statesman in China who had had practical dealings with the representatives of all nations, and had been able to test in the actual working improved administrative and military measures based on foreign concrete examples, was relegated under a silly pretext to private obscurity. The master hand having been thus removed, the new provincial councils began to meddle, and attempts were made to speed up the National Assembly temporarily acting for the Parliament promised for 1915. Moreover, the newly created foreign-drilled armies rapidly dis- covered that they possessed a coherence and a dignity vis-a-vis of civilians they had never en- joyed before. This unwelcome military pro- vincialism, particularly in railway management, coupled with the perception of its ominous political importance, made the Manchus on the one hand as eager for central control as the provinces on the other were determined for local management : the attempt on the part of 26 372 RISE OF CHINESE REPUBLIC [chap, xviii the Imperial Government to place Manchu princes in control of military, naval, and other departments might have succeeded if these young men had exhibited adequate strength of character. Financial reforms were nullified by rival central and provincial claims to likiUf which, so far from being abolished as stipulated under the Mackay treaty of 1902, was actually used more and more by short-sighted foreign financiers as a security for further loans. Thus many local leaders of the Chinese people, at first sympathetically inclined towards the Regent, his infant son the new Emperor, and the new Dowager-Empress (widow of the late Emperor, the Regent's brother), gradually began to despair of ever obtaining the promised Constitution, and shrank back with horror at the prospect of effective central military and railway control riveting their loosened chains to Peking corrup- tion once more ; the National Assembly actually did meet in 1910, and a programme of graduated work was sanctioned, the Emperor, however, remaining " above the law, but living within the law," like Justinian of old and the Emperor of Japan anew. So, when the Hankow-Wu-ch'ang revolution prematurely broke out in the autumn of 1911 (October 10), the cry of "Away with the Manchus " raised there was immediately caught up by the provinces generally ; Sun Yat-sen and the exiled republicans of 1898 hurried back to China with all speed ; and then, as a last hope, the Manchu government, in their conster- nation, appealed perforce to the very man they had flouted in 1909, begging him to come back and save the situation. This on pressure he at once loyally attempted to do, first as Viceroy of Hu Kwang (the two lake provinces) and with combined powers as Generalissimo for the whole A.D. 1911-1912] VAE VICTIS! 373 Yang-tsze valley, and then as Premier at Peking (13th November), where again he was at once placed in supreme command over all the metro- politan forces. Meanwhile as anarchical war was still going on or threatening in the provinces, with a pro- fessed view to stopping bloodshed, the baby Emperor under the Dowager's and Regent's direction announced to the spirits of his ancestors (26 November) the Magna Charta of nineteen articles which the Senate or Deliberative Parlia- ment (Tsz-cheng Yiian) had passed on 2nd Novem- ber, and as a further act of propitiation all Manchu princes Avere removed from high mili- tary and naval command. On 6th December the Regent gave up his seals of office, and the next day an imperial decree, countersigned by all the heads of departments, sanctioned the cutting off of the Manchu queue, and likewise the discussion of a Western or solar in place of the ancient lunar-solar Calendar. On the 28th December an edict of the Dowager-Empress, bearing the imperial seal and countersigned by all departmental ministers, left it to an Emer- gency Parliament {Lin-sh'i Kwoh-hui) to decide whether the new form of constitutional govern- ment should be monarchical (Kiin-chu) or re- publican (Kung-ho). However, all these and many other desperate efforts to save the dynasty were of no avail, and the very last imperial decrees, dated 11th February, but issued the 12th February, announced that the Dowager- Empress and the Emperor had form.ally abdi- cated under agreed conditions then fully set out : it is characteristic that the deceased old Dowager's brother Kweisiang was, as though by a Parthian shot, at the same moment appointed to a lucrative post in the Peking Octroi (he died in the following December). 374 RISE OF CHINESE REPUBLIC [chap, xvin On the 13th Yiian Shi-k'ai issued his first mandate as " Plenipotentiary to function as Emergency President of the Repubhcan {Kung- ho) Government," from which circumstance it stands out plainly as an historical fact that, in technical form at least, the Republic was not a self-creation, but the result of an act of imperial grace. The following day tlie Hawaiian-born Cantonese Sun Yat-sen, vv^ho had arrived in Shanghai on the 26th and been elected President on 29th December (elected at Nanking, but election sanctioned by the Shanghai delegates), telegraphed his congratulations to Yiian and, with the Nanking Assembly's approval, announced his willingness to resign ; his Vice-president Li Yiian-hung also sent from Wu-ch'ang a friendly message, and promised to arrange with Nanking for a conference : the official gazette of the 17th February (30th of the 12th moon) contained an announcement that Yuan Shi-k'ai had tele- graphed (presumably on the 29th) a reply to Sun Yat-sen and to the Nanking Assembly {Ts^an-i Yiian); and in the gazette of the 1st moon (cyclic year, not reign year), but dated 30th of the 12th moon, appeared an announce- ment from " the newly elected President Yiian " to the effect that " we must now use the first day of the purely solar year, jen-tsz, of the endless cycle, and style it the 18th day of the second month of the first year of the Chinese Republic " (Chung-hwa Min-kwoh). These details are his- torically important in view of the fact that Li Yiian-hung had in October already used the endless cyclic era beginning conventionally with the mythical Emperor Hwang Ti (2697 B.C.), and had styled a.d. 1911 "the 4609th year of Hwang Ti." Thus also it is historically recorded how, by ingenious manipulation, Yiian Shi-k'ai succeeded A.D. 1912] VIVAT RES PUBLICA ! 375 in getting rid of the Manchu dynasty on dignified terms agreeable to the Manchu princes them- selves ; how the Manchu dynasty, ignoring the Nanking Republic, created the Republic in a voluntary way through their own plenipoten- tiary agent Yiian ; and how Yiian in turn never took any notice of the new love at Nan- king till he was clearly off with the old love at Peking ; Nanking making the first advances to him, he himself as the " newly elected " (inferen- tially by Nanking included) in the plenitude of, his powers establishing a Min-kwoh, which was neither monarchical (Kiln-chu) nor Kung-ho as suggested by the Emergency Parliament on 28th December. It is necessary to emphasise the exact bearing of all these points, in order to bring out the generation of the Chinese Republic in its true historical light. At the end of February a serious military revolt, accompanied by looting, broke out at Peking, to the personal hum.iliation of the President, whose position had really been upheld by these very men's support : it was suppressed with difficulty, and not on creditable terms : it formed, however, a fair pretext for Yiian' s declining to proceed to Nanking for investiture, as he had to " preserve order " at Peking. On 10th March Yiian Shi-k'ai was formally and duly installed as President, took the oath of fidelity to the Republic in the presence of the Nanking delegates, the Army chiefs, the Manchu, Mongol, Tibetan, and Turki representatives, the Foreign Custom.s and Post-office officials, and the European, Japanese, and American journalists : the yoh-fah ( = concise law) or Constitution of fifty-six Articles as drawn up by Li Yiian-hung at Wu-ch'ang in December and adopted, with him as Vice-president, by tlie Nanking republic, seems to have been promul- 376 RISE OF CHINESE REPUBLIC [chap, xviii gated as part of what on 10th March the new President swore to maintain ; the defect in this hastily drawn-up document was that it had been draughted by neo-Chinese, i.e. by men more ignorant of Chinese administrative history and practice than competent to introduce theoretical European reforms ; and tliis absence of experi- enced northern deliberative concurrence natur- ally kept open the cleft between the conserva- tive or northern and the ultra-radical or southern elemicnts ; these latter were represented by the T^ ung-7neng Hwei or " United League Associa- tion," founded by Sun Yat-sen and [General ^] Hwang Hing shortly after the " Boxer " humilia- tion of 1901, but afterwards known as the Kwoh-min Tang or " Popular Party," under which name after Yiian's installation it deliber- ately set to work, by m.eans of the two-thirds vote rule, to thwart the action both of the new President and of his provisional Parliamxcnt. Meanwhile Yiian's old Corea henchman T'ang Shao-i (now enrolled as a member of the United League) as Premier had formed a ministry ; Hwang Hing had been propitiated with the post of Chief-of-the-Staff, also with the rank of Field-Marshal to maintain order in the Yang-tsze Valley; and an important railway inspectorship had been invented in order to conciliate the disappointed Sun Yat-sen, who was evidently waiting for a " job," as he does not appear to have formally abandoned his southern presidency until a little later, i.e. on 29th March. No doubt it was under the restraint of this inconvenient covert opposition that Yiian on 19th March issued his " scrap of paper," denouncing by " mandate " those misguided per- sons who advised a return to monarchy, and ^ Died as such towards the end of 1916, and buried with the highest ofificial honours as a good patriot. A.D. 1912] TOO MANY COOKS 377 referring once more to his solemn oath of fidehty to the Kung-ho principle. On 13th April the Vice-president Li Yiian-lmng, though remaining at Wu-ch'ang, was made Chief-of-the-Staff, and a mandate recommended the " five races " com- posing the Chinese dominion {cf. p. 375) to take advantage of the new privilege of intermarriage : one more effort was made also to secure the aboli- tion of the barbarous " squeezed feet " custom amongst purely Chinese females. The temporary Parliament now gave way to a National Assembly or Advisory Council (Ts'an-i Yuan) of more man- ageable proportions. A few revolts or rebellions, now of the mihtary discontents, or anon the " last ditchers " of the Manchu Party, in several pro- vinces, were quelled without much difficulty one after the other ; but still the civil agitators of the United League displayed persistent hostility at Peking, where the northerners or conserva- tives had, notwithstanding, at last succeeded in reversing the practical balance of power. For some time attention was now concentrated upon foreign loan negotiations ; the question of what military and naval flags should be adopted was finally settled ; and presidential mandates once more dealt seriously with the necessity of getting rid of the opium curse. Then there were difficulties with Tibet and Outer Mongolia, both of which territories had at an early stage declared their independence ; similar tendencies manifested themselves in Chinese Turkestan and the Tarim valley. T'ang Shao-i, harassed by United League squabbles, soon got tired of his premiership, from which he quietly " walked away " one day; as he did so narrowly escaping assassination by a political crank at Tientsin. Meanwhile, talk became more general in China about the advantages of a Dictatorship, if only in order to put a stop to this eternal parlia- 378 RISE OF CHINESE REPUBLIC [chap, xviii mentary wrangling ; at the same time it must be allowed that Sun Yat-sen and Hwang Hing had a hearty reception when they visited Peking in August, though in view of the recent execu- tion at Peking of two of their quondam military friends they felt extremely uneasy as to their own safety. On 10th January, 1913, Parlia- ment (elected mysteriously) was announced to meet in April, and it was amidst all these seeth- ing intrigues that the second Dowager died on 22nd February ; and after the assembly of Parliament in April America and Mexico " re- cognised " the Republic. The murder at Shanghai of the Popular Party's hero, Sung Kiao-jen, in March 1913, placed Yiian Shi-k'ai in rather a suspicious position, and perhaps it was as a consequence of the general uneasy feeling as to his connivance that in May a really serious revolt broke out once more in the Yang-tsze provinces, the disgruntled Hwang Hing joining hands in the fray, in open declared war against Yiian' s growing pretensions ; against Hwang & Co. was pitted by Yiian the re- doubtable General Chang Hiin with his "pig- tailed" army, which subsequently captured and mercilessly sacked the city of Nanking. Chang Hiin is one of the most curious and picturesque products of the great revolution ; he had faith- fully held Nanking for the Emperor in 1911 until, driven out by the republicans, he suc- ceeded in escaping with his defending army to the important land and water junction of Sii Chou in North Kiang Su, one of the three or four real hinges or pivot points of the whole empire * ; emerging from this stronghold (where he is still practically independent in 1917), he assisted early in 1914 in the White Wolf robber campaign, and ever since then he has, by his jnonunciamentos upon " policy " generally, 1 c/. p. 252. A.D. 1913-1914] OH ! WHAT A TANGLED WEB ! 379 been a danger to the best interests of public order ; no one can get at him or round him. But, to return to 1913. In the autunm Yiian arrested certain members of both houses of Parhament, and began to take strong measures towards " controUing " recalcitrant votes. The result of all this intriguing v/as that on 6th October he was elected Permanent President, and was solemnly inaugurated as such on the second anniversary of the 1911 revolution, receiving in due course the coveted recognition of the " Powers " that chiefly mattered to him, i.e. the European Powers and Japan. The Committee charged to draft a new Constitution were so obstinately impracticable, however, that the result of their efforts by the beginning of Novem- ber was only to clog still further the wheels of real progress, and to chain President, Cabinet, and Judiciary alike to the uncertainties of par- liamentary caprice ; seeing which Yiian Shi-k'ai, now firmly seated with the" desired foreign support, summarily broke up the Popular Party altogether, and by a sort of Pride's Purge drove its members entirely out of Parliament. As a reward for retaking Nanking in 1913, Chang Hiin had been temporarily rewarded with the military governorship of Kiang Sli, from which post (after declaring his " indepen- dence ") he was only coaxed out, in January 1914, by heavy money payments, and by his appoint- m.ent to the nebulous new charge of Supreme Inspector of the Yang-tsze Defences, which in 1917 he still holds against all comers.* It is impossible to deny that all this action of Yiian' s in 1913-1917 was a coup d'etat tending towards monarchy, and it seems certain that the final denoument was solely prepared in secrecy by the President himself; but up to this date Yiian Shi-k'ai had by no overt act disclosed dynastic ^ Though nominally Military Governor of An Hwei. 380 RISE OF CHINESE REPUBLIC [chap, xviii ambitions, contrary to his declaration of March 1912 ; and, indeed, the fact that his ministry in- cluded such staunch radicals as Liang K'i-ch'ao and others showed that a firm policy had now the general approval. The arch-reformer of 1898, K'ang Yu-wei, seems to have kept in the back- ground during the whole revolution, but his then comrade Liang, now in power, succeeded in obtaining for K'ang and his family their con- fiscated estates near Canton. It was also now that the Vice-president Li Yiian-hung (who, however, had to steal off in the night like a thief in order to avoid his jealous soldiers' con- straint) thought he might safely lend his moral support to Yiian and venture to Peking, where he duly arrived on 10th December; formed a marriage alliance with Yiian' s family, and for a couple of years disappeared into absolute obscurity as Chief- of -the-Staff. As a next step, to take the place of the ob- noxious Parliament, the President organised an Advisory Council {Ts^an-cheng Yuan) of members (paid) nominated by himself, and in the following May Li Yiian-hung was appointed nominal chief of it with a salary of $10,000 a m^onth.; m.any of the other members were prominent men. A good deal of really useful work was accomplished during the year 1914 ; the military and civil governorships were reorganised under historical names ^ sounding less aggressively republican ; the lesser high officials in the provinces were recast, and had their relative degrees of subor- dination to the Peking Boards and the Provin- cial Governors more intelligibly fixed ; revenue began to flow into Peking from the provinces ; Sir Richard Dane got his hand well in upon the reformed Salt Administration ; internal loans proved successful ; foreigners were content with the situation ; and it really looked as though » c/. p. 179. A.D. 1913] "WHAT WOULD DOVEY DO?" 381 China were settling down at last to a practicable Repviblic — in name at least, if monarchical in effect ; the only uncomfortable thing was, What shall happen if Yuan dies ? Is good Vice-president Li capable of wearing gracefully and effectively the mantle of succession ? Presi- dent Yiian anyway played a bold hand, and at Christmas time proceeded in state to worship Heaven for all the world like any Emperor ; even the dethroned Manchu house agreed to certain modifications in its status. The breaking out of the great European war in August 1914 must necessarily have had some effect in strengthening both the coherence of China and the firm hold of Yiian, if only because financial busy-bodies and grasping syndicates of all nationalities had now less leisure and less money at their disposal for the Far East than had been the case before. The year 1915 opened with the arrangements for the drafting of a new Constitution in place of that so summarily abolished in 1913. It had been originally pro- posed by Japan that Germany should hand over Ts'ing-tao to China "for the period of the war"; but when the Emden started out on her raids, and the presumptuous Kaiser treated Japan's offer with contempt, he received a sarcastic ulti- matum, and his governor was ultimately ejected, bag and baggage ; moreover, for her own pro- tection Japan was obliged to formulate certain at first sight harsh and peremptory demands upon China in order to forestall Teutonic spite or intrigue, and any future attempt of the tricky Kaiser to wrest from China by violence any Ersatz " place in the sun " to " take the place of Kiao Chou " under an easily forced construction of som,e such provision in the 1898 treaty. In cavilling at the excess of Japanese demands, the unfriendly press of the Far East seem to have 382 RISE OF CHINESE REPUBLIC [chap, xviii forgotten this prime necessity for Japan : ^' no Power " to he granted any coast or island territory by purchase or lease ; that is, specifically, treacherous Prussia. The first serious signs that something uncanny was brooding in the President's mind, or in the minds of those of his creatures who were suscept- tible to foreign gold and intrigue, manifested themselves in the summer of 1915, when a mysterious society called the Chii-an Ilwei or " Peace-promxoting Association " suddenly blos- somed into existence, promoted by three pro- minent members of the Advisory Council itself, its avowed object being to discredit the re- publican in favour of the monarchical idea, or at all events to deprecate government by popular clamour in favour of concentrated in- dividual rule. The next thing was the unex- pected pronouncement of the Am.erican Professor Goodnow, one of Yiian's political advisers, in the same sense; it being well known at the same time, or at all events generally believed, that no such germinations had taken place in the universally trusted British Adviser Dr. Morrison's sagacious mind. On the whole, the Japanese Adviser Ariga, seems to have person- ally favoured monarchy. Then came a number of Chinese " petitions " of doubtful provenance from all quarters, and at the same time fairly definite news that Yiian's scapegrace eldest son Yiian K' eh- ting was interesting himself in the movement ; whilst on the other hand the Minister of Justice, that uncompromising republican Liang K'i-ch'ao, showed a decided tendency to leave the Governm.ent. The Japanese Minister, M. Hioki, hastened back from furlough to Peking, but made no opposition, and the Germans (who had recently displayed considerable intriguing activity in Harbin, Tsing-tao, and Ningpo) re- A.D. 1916] IT COMES IN DOUBTFUL SHAPE 883 mained remarkably silent (so far as the general public v\^as aware). It was at this moment that Yiian Shi-k'ai himself seems to have fallen under some occult baleful influence, and the monarchical agitation accordingly grew apace. At last on 8th October appeared a Presidential Decree setting forth how the Advisory Council had received a repre- sentation from the Temporary Parliament {Lih- jah Yiian) explaining that all the provinces, dominions. Banners (including the " one-time Manchu Heir P'ulun), Mongols, Tibetans, Turki, Chambers of Commerce, Universities, etc., were through their representatives (2,006 votes) of one mind in favour of a constitutional monarchy (Kiln-chu lih-hien), or " sovereign lord with a con- stitution," and suggesting that a popular vote sliould be taken. Then it was that the Japanese Charge d' Affaires, M. Obata, accompanied by the British and Russian Ministers, paid a hurried visit to the Foreign Office to recommend post- ponement until the end of the war, on the ground that troubles might break out and involve the treaty ports ; this advice was endorsed by France and Italy shortly afterwards. Un- doubtedly at this moment the majority of the trading interests, foreign as well as Chinese, were in favour of trusting Yiian ; but as yet no one seems to have contemplated that the so-called Constitutional Monarchy would take the ulti- mate form of a despotic hereditary dynasty on the old model. The United States were too "proud" to interfere in China's internal affairs; the Grand Lamas of Tibet remained silent ; and the predatory powers, i.e, Germany, with her insignificant satellite Austria, still observed a mysterious silence. Gradually the movement which began so unaggressively gained irresistible momentum ; 384 RISE OF CHINESE REPUBLIC [chap, xviii adulatory appeals to the "Emperor"' followed each other in rapid succession ; but at least one sane document justified in logical and circum- stantial terms the reversion to monarchy, arguing the matter out on plain business-like grounds ; and this remarkable paper was a long aioologia of 4,000 characters (8,000 EngHsh words), pub- lished in the official gazette day after day for some time, by the Preparation for Parliament Bureau. On 13th December, after the regula- tion three refusals. Yuan accepted the imperial crown in a mandate countersigned by Luh Cheng-siang, the Secretary of State; the " ques- tioning" Powers, evidently non-plussed, simply stated that their attitude v/ould be " expectant." Two days later Vice-President Li was created a Prince ; further mandates in very good taste explained and justified the step taken by the President; but on the 22nd a real "imperial" tornado fairly burst in a shower of dukedoms, marquisates, earldoms, viscounties, and baronies, all with pensions. Whilst it raged, many of the President's best men quietly slipped away on various pretexts ; but an attem.pt to secure at least their neutrality in some particularly im- portant cases was made by creating " Four Intimates" from three ex -viceroys and a well- known sterling Hanlin Academician. There were also distributed som.e posthumous honours to persons who had suffered for the State, and the new Emperor (who, however, never once assumed that title, or its honorific attributes, himself) took the opportunity of abolishing the employ of eunuchs and the supply of pretty girls for the menus plaisirs of the palace ; nor was there to be any kotowing at his audiences. The fat was now irrevocably in the fire not- withstanding this personal moderation, and the unfortunate Yuan, having once mounted the A.D. 1916] ALL THE FAT IN THE FIRE 885 tiger, had to go on with his John Gilpin ride. His very last mandate as President conferred a princedom upon the hereditary Duke Confucius the Seventy-sixth, who expressed his thanks a week later ; Li Yiian-hung, by the way, had declined his princely title three times. On the 1st January a new era was created under the style 1st year of Hung-hien^ which term may be here translated "Great Constitution"; but Yuan never at any time abandoned the modest "mandate" in favour of the old imperial "de- cree, respect this." However, simultaneously with these events, which at first appeared to be proceeding quite smoothly, came the ominous news from Yiin Nan that the province had de- clared its independence.^ The ex-tutuh Ts'ai Ao (Ch'oi Ngok), who had been " allowed to resign " and then coaxed to Peking in 1913-1914, and had later been given a high-sounding sinecure post there, became diplomatically ill in November when the monarchy boom was at its highest, sought " medical " advice in Japan, ^ and worked his w^ay thence, via Tonquin, to his former pro- vince. Japan declined to receive a special complimentary envoy from China " at this juncture," w^hich probably meant that the Ameri- can, German, and Austrian promise of recog- nition did not find favour in that quarter. The discontent fomented by Ts'ai Ao spread ; two other southern provinces pronounced ; then two coast provinces ; and soon the whole of central and southern China was in such a blaze of republican enthusiasm that the unhappy 1 25th December, which date has now been declared a national holiday. 2 He again sought Japanese advice, this time quite seriously, as mihtary governor of Sz Ch'wan, towards the end of last year, and died there in December 1916, receiving from President Li thu highest posthumous honours, and, as Hwang Hing, a public funeral. 386 RISE OF CHINESE REPUBLIC [chap, xviii Yiian had to give way and go through the huinihation of reverting to the repubhcan era (Min-kwoh), of course withdrawing his imperial or at least monarchical pretensions (March 23rd). His former Secretary of State (one of the Four Intimates) tried to save the situation by resum- ing his old post ; but it was too late, and on 22nd April he resigned in favour of Twan K'i-j wei. The cry, " Yiian must go," was caught up on all sides ; his deadly enemy, the fire-eating ex-vice- roy " Shum " (Ts'en Ch'un-hiian), emerged from his exile in the Straits Settlem.ents and joined in the fray as Generalissimo of the South. Both he and Sun Yat-sen issued angry manifestoes ; T'ang Shao-i and Wu T'ing-fang published " open letters " of cynically friendly advice, and Liang K'i-ch'ao gave to the public press a lengthy expose of the fraudulent measures that had been adopted by Yiian in order to " nobble " the voters in each province. Yiian, having squandered his funds, made the situation worse first by proclaiming a moratorium, and then by endeavouring to create out of the Parliam.ent Preparation Comimittee an Emergency Parlia- ment, later on a real Parliamicnt {Lih-fah Yiian) to meet on 1st May instead of on its legal date in September. Harassed by all this humiliation and worry, the unhappy man as a last shift took ill, a.nd finally died of uraemia on 6th June, leaving behind him a short, dignified, valedic- tory testament. The next day the Vice-presi- dent Li Yiian-hung announced his succession by law, and since then party quarrels seem to have largely subsided. Meanwhile Twan K'i-jwei as Premier has formed a responsible Cabinet with Wu T'ing-fang as Foreign Minister ; and here I close (15th February, 1917). GLOSSARY Abkhai. Probably a Tartar word meaning " sky," " heaven." Ainos = Aino word Ainu, " men." The ancient Chinese call them " shrimp barbarians," and as the vulgar word for " shrimp " is hia-mi, this is probably the origin of the Japanese ye-bi, " shrimp," and yebi-su, "shrimp people," or Ainos. Ak'su = Turkish "White Water." Aktagh (Turkish). Apparently the Chinese Peh-shan, or " white hills" north of Harashar. Altai. The Kin-shan or " Gold Mountains." The word Altun, alchu, aisin, appears in many Tartar forms. Amoy. Local pronunciation of Hiamen, " gallery-gate." Annam = Chinese " pacifier of the south," a title granted to the rulers of Kiao-chi, just as Antung, or " pacifier of the east," was granted to the rulers of Corea. Ausgleich = German for " that which evens out." Bilga = Turkish " wise," a com- mon appellation of reigning Khans and other princes. Binh-thuan = Annamese form of Chinese P'ing- shun, "run smooth " ; but, query, which language has precedence, as the Chinese seem to have " re- imported " the local pronuncia- tion in the form Pin-t'ung. Bogdo Khan. I suppose this is connected with the Russian Bog, " God." The Chinese T'icn-tsz, or " Son of Heaven," reappears in the Hiung-nu Tengri-kudu, the Turkish and Ouigour Tengri-khagan, the Arabic " Facfur " (Marco Polo), the Japanese Tenshi (Sama). Urga is called Bogdo Kuren, " Holy City." Bonze = Japanese bo-dz, being their pronunciation of the modern Chinese /ow-t'w, which in the sixth century spelt Buddh. Boxer. Translation of K'iian, " fist," or ta-k'iian, " to box." The I-ho K'ican are the " Patri- otic Harmony Fists." Burma = Burmese " Bamma," or Miamma, first called Mien in Mongol times. An earlier Chinese name was P'iao, the people called Byu in the early Burmese records. Cambalu = Khanbaligh, " Khan's citadel." Cambodgia, The word Kam^put- ch'i occurs in mediaeval Chinese history for old Fu-nam country. This last dissyllabic word seems to occur in Pnom-{penh), the present capital. It is ciu-ious to note that the Chinese name for the ruins of Angkor is " Temple of the Ts'in Iving," which looks as though the visit of Antoninus' envoy had left some tradition in the land. Candareen = Malay kondrin ; in the Chinese ports = 10 cash (about), or f Ju of a silver ounce. {Copper) Cash — Portuguese caixa, a tin coin used at Malacca and brought from India ; cf. Sanskrit Kdrshdpana, "copper coins." Chagan Khan = Mongol " White" Khan. Chagan Nor (sea), Chagan Kuren (city). 27 387 388 GLOSSARY Ch'ang-sha = " Long Sands." Chef 00 — CKi-fou, a very ancient name of no very intelligible meaning ; — " sesame-net." Chemulpo = Corean pronunciation of Cantonese Tsaimetpo, or "mandarin" Tsi-wuh-p'u, " Por- terage Cove." Ch'eng-tu = " Has become a centre or metropolis." Chmgnampo — (Rice) - steamer- south-cove, (Corea). Chinkiang = chen-kiang, " rule the river." Chit (Hindoo Chitthi), a word in universal use in India and China for " letter," " memo.," " I.O.U.," " notice," etc. Chow, or chou, in such words as Wenchow, Wu-chou, is simply " flat-land " or " plain," fol- lowed by a place-name, descrip- tive or original. In accepted names like Voochow the popular form is used throughout this book. Gh'ungk'ing = " Double Joy." Chusan = chou-shan, " boat-hill." Cianipa. The word Cham appears in several forms of the Chinese name. I take pa to mean " country " in some Hindoo tongue, for Singpa in Chinese means " Pan jab," or "land of the Sikhs," or " Singhs." Compradore = Portuguese " pur- chaser." The business facto- tum in most foreign " houses," banks, consulates, etc. Confucius = K'ung fu-tsz, " the philosopher K'ung," as Meng fu-tsz is Mencius. In both cases the fu can be omitted, and " Conscious " or " Men- fucius " would do as well. Out of the sages Tseng and Chwang we might create Cincius, San- cius. Coolie, This is an Indian word, but in " mandarin " fitted with Chinese characters to mean " hard work." Corea = Corean Ko-ry& (pro- nounced exactly like the Eng- lish word), being the local form of the Chinese Kao-li, or Kao- kou-li, " the Kou-li state of the Kao clan." Cowloong = Cantonese for Kiu- lung, " Nine Dragons." Daimy5 = Japanese pronunciation of ta-m.ing, or " great name," a term not used historically or officially in China. Dalny = Russian " distant " (Ta- lien Wan) ; a name chosen by the Czar, apparently to "hit off " Ta-lien (Japanese Z)airen). Dccima. I suppose Japanese De- shima, " go-out island." Dolonor = Mongol dolon - nor, " Seven Lakes." Dungans, a contraction of turi- gan or " colonisers," descen- dants of Arabs, Persians, etc., who have married Tibetan and Mongol women. Ephthalites. In old Chinese Iptat, the Corean pronunciation of which is still Eptal, Esmok. The Burmese have a way of putting a final k at the end of Chinese words, just as the Russians put a z7iak tverdi, or " hard sign." I noticed the sign-board of aChinaman named Liu Ts'ai, at Bhamo, marked " Lew Ch'aik." " Sz-mao " ia an impossible mouthful for a Burmese. Fah-hien = " Law's manifesta- tion." Faifo = corrupt Chinese hwui- p'u, or hwei-an-p^u, " assembly shops," or " assembly-of-peaee- shop." Fiador = Portuguese " surety- man"; in pidgin English, " hab got man can skewer." Foochow = " Happy region," lo- cally Houk-chiu, or, by euphonic rule, Uchiu. Formosa — Portuguese " beauti- ful," cf. T'aiwan. Frank appears in various forms, Fu-lin, Foh-lang-ki, P'i-ling, etc. (cf. Ferenghi, Frangkikos, etc.). Fusan Chinese Fu-shan, " Pot Hill," in Corean Pusan. Oayuk — Mongol kuyuk, " clever." Oenghiz. The Hiung-nu khans called themselves shen-yii, which is retrospectively equivalent to something like zen-ghi, or f^i'xi' ; possibly there may be some GLOSSARY 389 etymological connection. The title appears in the middle-agea word Jenuye. Gialbo. The Cliinese always write this Tibetan title tsan-p'u. Qodown = Malay godong, " ware- house." Hainan ~ Chinese " sea-south." Haiphong. The Chinese hai-fang, or " coast defence." Han. A proper name ; rarely has any literary meaning. Han Wu Ti = " Han Military Em- peror," or Divus Martialis. Hankow — " Han (River) Mouth." Hanoi = " River - interior," the Annamese (ha-noui) form of Ho-nei, Cantonese Ho-noi. Hideyoshi. His Chinese name is P'ing Siu-kih. Hing-hwa = " Start civilisation." Hinterland — German " behind- land." Hiung-nu = " Hiung slaves." Hoang-ho = " Yellow River " : hwang is one syllable, and not ho + ang. Hoihow = Cantonese iovHai-k^ou, " Sea Mouth." Hong = Cantonese pronunciation of hang, " a store " or " shop " ; but the word is little used except in reference to foreign " houses," and native " trade-guilds." Hung-tseh = " Vast Marsh." Hwai-kHng — " Cherish joy." IcK'ang = " Should be glorious." III. In the sixth century the Turkish Khans already used the style Hi- Khan, which may pos- sibly be the " Ilkhans " of Wes- tern writers. Irrawaddy = in part Arabic wddi, " a river," but I cannot say what Irra means. The Chinese used to confuse the Upper Irra- waddy with the Upper Yang- tsze, or Gold- sand River. Isayk Kul = " Hot Sea " in some Tartar tongues ; Denghiz Nor in others ; the Chinese also call it Jeh-hai, or " Hot Sea." Japan = Chinese Jih-pen, " sun's origin." Java. From ancient times known as She-p^o, or Djaba ; later Chao-wa, usually misprinted Kwa-wa . Jaxartea, In old-times Chinese called the Yok-aliat. Junk. Probably shun, the Can- tonese form of ch'wan, " a ship," as seen in the Javanese jung. Kachyn = Burmese " wild man." They call themselves Singp'o, or " men." Kalgan = Mongol " Gate," called in Chinese Chang-kia K'ou, or " Chang- family Pass." Kalmuck = " remaining ones " ; those of the Dzun (" right " or "east") who were "left," when Uriankhai abandoned the " Wala," or " confederacy." Hence Kalmuck, Dzungar, Eleuth, Oirat, Wala, Tvu-gut, are all much the same thing. The Boron (" left " or " west ") tribes fell under the power of the Kirghis, and were absorbed ; hence " Borongar." Kanagawa = (I suppose) Japanese " Golden Stream." Karakitans = Turkish for " Black Cathay ans." Kazaka =" vagabond " ; theKara- Kirghis call themselves " Kir- ghis " ; the Eleuths call them " Buruts " ; the Kazaks call them " Kara-Kirghis." The Kazaks, or Kirghis-Kazaks, speak the same language as the Kara-Kirghis, whom they de- test. The Russian word (7oa- aack, or Kazak (also meaning "day labourer"), is evidently the Turkish Kazdk. Kewkiang = " Nine Rivers." Kiao-chi = " Parted toes." I nay- self was struck in Annam with the extraordinary " apartness " of the big toe. Possibly our word " Cochin (China) " comes from this. Another name is Kiao-chou, " Mutual Plain." Kiao Chou (German) = " Glue- plain." Kia-yiih Kwan = " Beautiful Gem Pass." Kilung = " Chicken Hamper." Kirghia = (according to the Chi- nese) " red- faced " in the Kir- ghis tongue. Kobe = Japanese " Divine - por- tals." 390 GLOSSARY Kokand. Until Manchu times usually kno^vn by names corre- sponding to " Ferghana." Kokonor = Mongol " Blue Sea," or " Lake" ; cf. Chagan. Kongmun = Cantonese for Kiang- men, " River Gate." Koxinga = local Kwok - sing - ya, " State's-surname-sire." Kuhlai = Mongol hObilai, " re- embodiment." The re -born hutukhtu, or saints, are in their baby stage called the hubilkhan of the said deceased saints, lamas, etc., e.g. at Lhassa, Shigatse, Urga, etc. Kmnchuk = Cantonese Kom-chuk (Kan-chuh), " sweet bamboo." Kunsan. The Corean form of K'iinshan, " Flock Hill." Kuren — Mongol " city." The Chinese call Urga K'ulun. Kutlug = Turkish " happy." Lama Miao = " priest temple." The Tibetan word lama (mean- ing "without superior") isnow adopted into northern Chinese. Lao, Yao, Miao, are the T'ang, S\ing, and modern names for the ill-defined wild tribes (not Shans, and not Lolos or Tibe- tans). Lao-kai = Chinese for "Old mar- ket-street." Lao-tsz, or Laocius. Usually trans- lated " Old Boy," but really " the Philosopher Lao," or" the Old Philosopher." He might be called " Lafucius," if it were not that (in his case) the fu is always omitted ; cf. Confucius. Lao-wa T'an — " Crow Rapid." Lappa. Apparently some abori- ginal word which cannot be written in Chinese ; neverthe- less the two words Taipa and Lappa (Islands) seem to mean " rubbish-grounds." Lari = Tibetan/Aa-ri, "god- moun- tain." Compare Lhassa. Lau Vinh-phuc = Annamese for Liu Yung-fuh (Cantonese Lao Wingfuk), formerly Black Flag Rebel chief; died Dec, 1916. Likin = Chinese" percentage," or " per mille." Likin, likiien, lit'ou = " percent- age." Loess = German loss, " loose." Lolo = No, the native word for themselves. Like the Kirghia, they have black and white " bones," or castes. Loochoo. The word first appears in A.D. 600 under its present form Liu-k'iu, which, if it is anything more than an imita- tion of native words, seems to mean " string of beads," i.e. " islands." Macao = Ma -ao, or Ma-ngao, " Goddess' Bight " ; but it has many other Chinese names ; the usual one is, locally, Ou-mun, " Bight Door," in " mandarin " Ngaomen. Mace — Malay mas, from Indian masha ; in China ports ^*jj of a tael or ten candareens. Malay. I cannot find more than one trace of this word before the Mulayu of Kublai's time. The Chinese never seem to have conceived the existence of a Malay " state " par excellence. Mali-kha and Nmai-kha are Kachyn words for "Little" and "Great " kha or " rivers." Kha is perhaps allied to the Chinese ho, still pronounced ha in Corea and Annam, and ka in Japan. Manchu. According to the Em- peror K'ien-limg, this word is connected with the Chushen tribe of Tunguses. In Con- fucius' time they were called Sushen. It is just possible that the Buddhist word Mahdjus^ri may have been adapted or utilised, as the earlier Turks and Tunguses often took Bud- dhist names in compliment to themselves or their country. Mandarin = Portuguese man- darim, " a ruler." Mangu — Mongol mongge, " per- severing." Manila = the local river of that name. Manipur. Only known to the Chinese as Kase ; the Burmese say Kath6 (th as in EngUsh thin). Manzi. The Chinese man-tsz or " Southern barbarians," a word I have myself seen in a procla- GLOSSARY 391 mation issued by the Tartar General of Canton, referring haughtily to the Cantonese. Masanpho = " Horse-hill Cove." Mei-ling = " Plum Ridge." Mengtsz = in the Shan tongue, " the district Tsz." See also Confucius. Mikado = Japanese " Imperial Gate," " Sublime Porte." Ming — Bright. Mokpo, the Corean form of Muh- p'u, " Wood Cove." Mongol =" silver " (perhaps). The word " mungku " appears at least 1,000 years ago as a tribe of Turko-Tungusic origin near the Shilka River. Mukden = This seems to be a Tungusic word for " glorious capital." Its ancient name in Corean times was Shen-yang. Nagasaki = Japanese " Long- point." Nanking — " South Metropolis." Nepaul. The oldest Chinese word is Nip'olo ; then Parpu (Palpa), and now Kwo-r-k'a (Goorkha). Newchivang = " Cow-village." Ningpo = " Calm the Waves." Novgorod = Russian, "New- town." Niichens = a supposed native word something like" Djurchi," mean- ing " west of the sea." Octroi — " authorised (charge)," or " grant." Odon-tala. I believe this word means " Thirteen Seas," but I have forgotten the nimiber. Ogdai = Mongol ogedei, " su- perior." Ordos. This word first appears 600 years ago. Several Mongol princes still have their ordo in this plateau, which possibly takes its name from the fact. Cf. Urga and Yamen. Ouigour. Name of one of the T'ie-le or Tolos tribes. The Turkish tablets discovered a generation ago never use the word ; only the word Tolos, or sometimes " Tokuz Uguz," which corresponds to the Chi- nese " Nine Surnames " of the Ouigoiu-s. Oxus. In old Chinese called the Wei or Kwei, the Oech of Zemarchus. Pakhoi = Cantonese for Peh-hai, " North Sea." Pamir. This word appears in Chinese as po-mit in the eighth century {pa-mir according to philological rule). Pecul = a Chinese cwt. of 133 J lbs. Peh-seh = " 100 colours," pro- bably some Shan word. Peking — " North Metropolis." Persia. Always called Po-sz ( = Pas, or Pars) by the Chinese. Pescadores = Portuguese pescador, " fisher." The Chinese name is P'eng-hu, " Lake P'eng." Philippines — Spanish Filipinos, or " (King) Philip's (isles)." PHng-jang, Corean Pyong-yang = " even soil " ; a very ancient name. P'ing-shan = " Flat Mountain." Pirouz. In Chinese Pi-lu-sz. Port Arthur (from Captain Arthur) in Chinese Lii-shun K'ou, or " Port Agreeable to Travellers " — a hopeful name. Po-yang = " Spread out." Pulo Condor. The Malay piih, " island," and theChinesejK'?i7i- lun; but, query, which lan- guage has precedence. Quelpaert (Dutchman's name), called Tan-lo, or Tamra, by the Chinese and Coreans. Samshu = Cantonese sam-shiu (san-shao), " thrice distilled." Mentioned by Dampier 220 years ago, but uncertain. San-tu Ao =" Three centres bight " (cf. Macao). Shamien = " Sand-stirface," pro- nounced in Cantonese Shamln. The flat islet constructed from the rubbish of the " Thirteen Hongs " after the second war, much on the principle that Decima was set apart for the Dutch in Nagasaki Creek. Sam-shui = " Three Rivers." Shan-haiKwan =" Mountain- sea Pass," or " Barrier." Shash'i = " Sand Market." Shimonoseki = Japanese shimo-no- seki, " lower pass, or barrier of the lower." 392 GLOSSARY Shroff = Hindoo sarrdf : the handler of dollars and other coins in most large foreign con- cerns. " To shroff " has come to mean to " test," or to " sample," or " taste." Si-an Fu = " West-peace City," the more modern name of Ch'ang-an, or " Lasting Peace." Sikkim. Known to the Chinese by an imitation of the native name " Demajong." Si-ning = " West Peace." Songchin, or Sydng-chin. The Corean form of Ch'eng-tsin, " City Ford." Soy = Japanese sho-yu, the Chi- nese tsiang-yu, or " sauce-oil." Strogonoff. There is a Russian word strogi, " strict," but I cannot say if it is the origin of such a word as " strictly ruled ones " (genitive plural). Sui. The founder was hereditary Duke of Sui. Nearly all dyn- asties wore " territorial " by name, until the " Iron" (Kitan), " Golden " (Niichen), " Chief " (Mongol), " Bright " (Ming), and " Clear " (Manchus). Sumatra. This name first ap- pears in Kublai's time as one of many petty states in the island, which never had a Chinese name as a whole. Sung. A proper name ; no mean- ing in literature. Swatow. Local form of Shan- Vou, " end of the Shan (river)." Sz-ma = " Rule the Horses" — Captain-general ; (a Chinese double " surname " or family name). Tad. The Chinese Hang or " ounce," said to be the Malay tail, which I suppose is allied to the Siamese tical (pronounced tick-all). Pere Richard says it is the Hindoo tola through the Malay tahil; cf. Mace and Gandareen. T'ai-pHng = "Great Peace," or by extension " Reign of Peace." T'ai-ivan, or Terrace Bay = For- mosa. Takow = Ta-kou (Cantonese ta- kao), " beat dogs," probably a corrupted Formosan word. Taku = " Great Reach." Ta-lien Wan = " Purse Bay." Often written with other char- acters signifying " Great Unity Bay." Cf. Dalny. T'ang. A proper name; no meaning in literature. Tangut. This word does not occur often in Chinese. When it does, it seems to refer to a common language, including the civilised Tibetans and the wan- dering tribes of that race. So far, I have not come across any Chinese use of the word anterior to the Manchu dynasty. There were Tang-ch'ang and Tang- hiang tribes in Kan Suh, but Marco Polo's Tangut is never called anything except Hia, or West Hia, being the whole Ning-hia region of to-day. Tartar. From ancient times the word Tatan, tata, tata-r, or ta-tsz, has been used for loosely- defined tribes between the Turks and Tunguses. The word ta- tsz is still used jocularly by the pure Chinese in the vague sense of our word " Tartar." Tashkend. Turkish tos/t, " stone" ; Persian kand, kent, " city." The oldest Chinese name is Chech or Djedj, in imitation of the ancient native word Djadj, corrupted by the Turks to Task. The Chinese also call it Shih' ch^eng, or " stone city." Tashkurgan = Turkish " stone- tower." Sir Aurel Stein thinks Ptolemy's " Stone Tower," however, must be at or near Daraut-Kurgan. Ta-tsien Lu = " Strike arrow stove," a meaningless imita- tion of Tarsando (Tib.). Ta-ts'in = " Great Ts'in," or, in the older form, Dziin, which is probably Syr or Syria. The later Chinese form Sz-li occurs in reference to the inhabitants of the Syro-Persian region. Tea = local pronunciation te. It is pronounced ta in Foochow, and tsha in most parts. The Russian ichai is simply the Pekingese ch'a-ye, " tea-leaf." Tibet. The Chinese first called GLOSSARY 393 the civilised Tibetans fnpo, usually mispronounced Vufan. The second syllable is bod (what the Tibetans call themselves) = Tibetan, sKod-Bod, or sTod Bod, pronounced To Bhot, and meaning " Upper-Bod." Bodgul or gyul means "Land of Bod." THen-shan. " Heaven Mountains " = the Tengri Tagh of the Tar- tars. See also Bogdo. Tientsin = " Heavenly Ford " ; a modern name. Ting-hai = " Settle the Sea." Toba = " born in the sheets," but the Chinese give other fanciful meanings for this Tun- gusic word. Tokyo. The Chinese words Tung- king, " eastern capital." Tonquin. The Chinese words Tung-king, " eastern capital." Taaidam. Said to mean " marsh " in some local tongue. TsHng = Clear. Ts'in-wang Tao = " Prince of Ts'in's Island," probably allud- ing to the conquest of Corea by the T'ang Emperor Li Shi-min, who passed that way and had borne that title (seventh cen- tury). Tsung - li Yamen = " General- management Office," short for the fiill title " General-manage- ment of Different Countries' Affairs Office" ; — Foreign Office. After various changes, it is now called the Wai-kiao Pu or " Foreign Relations Board." Tsushima (pronounced almost in two syllables like TzhiHia) is written by the ancient Chinese Tui-ma, or " Facing Horses." I cannot say which language gave the original sounds. T'umu — " Earth Tree." I have twice been there. Tunghwan = " East Sedge." Tung-Ving = " Cave Court," pro- bably alluding to the royal centre of the aboriginal races. Tunguz, Tunguses, generally sup- posed to be a term of Russian origin derived from Tung-hu or " Eastern Tartars " ; but the point is not certain. Turk = Turkish word " liirk," or " helmet," from the shape of a mountain in their earliest habi- tat. Tycoon or Shogun. The first is the Japanese way of pronounc- ing the Chinese words Ta-kiin or T'ai-kun, a term, like the corresponding Corean Tai-tvon- kun, applied to the second per- sonage in the state. The second is simply the Chinese tsiang- kiln, or " generalissimo," being the word " Imperator " in its original miUtary significance. Compare soy. Uliassutai. This seems to be the Chinese word t'ai, " post- sta- tion," added to the ^Mongol word usu; Ulia-usu, the "River" Ulia. Urga, said to come from orgo, a palace ; but see Ordos. Uriangkha. I do not know if this is the Eleuth tribe mentioned luider " Kalmuck," but there are still Eleuth settlements in Tsitsihar and Kokonor as well as in Hi. In Kublai's time this term was applied to Nayen's appanage of Manchuria, from the Amur to Corea. Vladivostock = Russian " rule the east." Wangpoo =" Yellow Cove," meaning the Shanghai River. The same sotmd signifies " Yel- low Depot," or Whampoa near Canton. Wei = state or dynasty. A proper name; no meaning in literature. Wei-hai Wei = " Awe-the-sea Gar- rison." Wei River of Si-an Fu, not to be confused with the Wei River of Wei-hwei Fu (written differ- ently). The first- named is dubi- ously mentioned 3,000 years ago as being either clear or muddy, and the intellectuels disputed for 2,000 years which of the two it was ; until the Manchu Em- peror K'ien-lung ordered the learned Viceroy of Kan Suh to go to the source in the desert, and follow the stream person- ally all the way down to its junction with the King, so as to close the question for ever. 394 GLOSSARY Whampoa = Wongpou, " Yellow Quays," the Cantonese form of Hwang-p'u. Wonsan — Chinese Yiian-ahan, or Ngiian-alian, " Head Hill " ; in Japanese Genzan. Wo-nu = " Japanese slaves." Cf. Hiung-nu. Wu-hu = " Jvmgle Lake." Yamen = Chinese " gate of the ya." The ya was first " a flag " ; then the entrance to the camp-gate where the flag was planted ; then " head- quarters " ; then "nomad court," or " ordo." Yamen now means " public residence," or " office." Cf. Urga. Yang-tsze = the " philosopher Yang " : the old name for the modern salt dep6t of Icheng near Chinkiang, and of the Great River in that vicinity, or a ford of it. The usual trans- lation "Son of the Ocean" seems incorrect. Yedo = Japanese " River-door." Yin Shan =" Sombre" or "hy- perborean " mountains. Yiian-kung P'u = " Duke Yiian's Cove." Zanzibar. This word seems to occur in the Chinese ts'etig or Dzang, " black slaves " from which place were imported by the Arabs. As to bar, see the remarks on Ciampa, Lappa, Singpa, etc. Zuider Zee = Dutch for " South Sea." NoTK — In Giles' Anglo-Chinese Dictionary (first edition) I have given the pronunciation in eight dialects (also in Corean, Japanese, and Annamese) of every important Chinese word. In the Philological Essay contributed to the same work, I have explained the etymo- logical rules involved. I have not yet seen the later edition of Giles' dictionary. For most of the Mongol words I am indebted to Mr. Zach, of the Foreign Customs in China. Pere Richard's Geography is responsible for the Indo-Malay coin words, and Mr. L, C, Waddell for one or two Tibetan meanings. Although the paragraphs on Corean and Formosan trade have been expunged from this edition, the Corean and Formosan place-names still appear in this Glossary. INDEX Abascia (see Abyssinia) Abbassides, 32 Abdeli, 68 (see Ephthalites) Abdications, 304, 373 Abkhai, 39, 387 Aboriginal officials, 8 Aborigines, 7, 183 (see Tribes) Abu Said, 54, 67 Abyssinia, 75 Accadian origin, supposed, 4 Acheen, 57, 80, 83, 92 Achmac, 241 Actors, 183 Aden, 50, 75, 80, 83 Admiralty, Chinese, 211 Adults, 199 Advance of Chinese, 6 Advisory Committee, 145 — Councils, 377, 380, 382 ^rarium, 209 Aeroplanes, 86 Affghanistan, 22, 65, 365 Afranghi, 127 (see Franks) Africa, 36, 57, 58, 71 Agricultural implements, 48 Aigun, 103, 138, 174 Ainos, 127, 387 Ainscough, M. T., 60 Aintab, 83 Aisie, 106 Aksu, Ak-8u, 64, 83, 387 Aktagh, 66 Akwei, General, 304 Alans, 67, 134 Alashan Mountains, 235 Albazin, 103, 104, 138 " Albazins," 306 Albumen trade, 149 Alchuk, 84 Aleppo, 83 Alexander the Great, 21 Alexander III, 104 Alexandria, 48 Almalik, 72, 77, 78 {see Hi) Alompra of Burma, 139 Altai, 136, 137, 180, 387 Altyn Khan, 137, 138 Alum, 156 Amaral, Governor do, 114 America, 111, 341, 378, 383 — Chinese in, 40, 112 American immigration laws, 112 — parallels, 20 — syndicates, 1 1 — tirade, 111, 112, 113, 146, 147, 166, 170 Amherst, Lord, 97 Amoy, 74, 79, 90, 96, 98, 156, 387 — emigrants, 91 — trade, 148, 156 Amur, 103, 132, 138 Ananas sativus, 153 Ancestral Worship, 287, 294, 298, 302, 373 Ancient remains, 4, 31, 55, 76, 77, 131 Andamans, 80 Andijan, 83 Andrab, 64 Andrade, 88 Andrea, 78 An Hwei, 229, 231, 253 Aniseed, 152 An-k'ing Fu, 252 Armals of Confucius, 17, 345 Annam, 21, 24, 29, 31, 32, 35, 37, 40, 60, 107, 197, 387 — annexed, 29, 32 — conquered, 35, 193 — independent or tributary, 32, 33, 37 — French in, 32, 167 Annamese, 21, 49, 85 — language, 360 Ansi, 59, 69 Antimony, 161 Antioch, 52, 83 Antiochia Margiana, 61 395 896 INDEX Antiquities (aee Ancient Remains) Antoninus, 23, 48, 50, 52, 62, 387 An-tun, 23, 48, 50 Antung, 174 An Yih, 240 Aphrodisiacs, 289 Arab conquests, 65 — traders, 32, 54 Arabia, 33, 36, 37, 54, 63, 67, 68, 71, 92 Arabs, 33, 49, 53, 68, 88, 300 Archery, 258, 259 Areas of China, 2 — of trade (see Trade) Argun, River, 85 Ariga, Mr., 382 Armenia, 40, 73, 135 Armies, Chinese, 42, 80, 210, 25G- 270, 370 Arms, trade in, 110 (sec Cannon) Arrian, 62 Arrows, 47 Arsacides, 50 Arsenals, 211 Art, 132 Artesian wells, 231 Artillery (see Cannon) Aru, 80 Aryans, 19, 47, 134 Asbestos, 49 Asiatic Co. (German), 109 Astrakhan, 77 Astrology, 17 Astronomy, 95, 106 Atlas of Yang-tsze, 12 Attila, 21, 128 Augustan era, 33 Augustines, 90 Auli6-ata, 64 Aurelian, 51 Austin, jurist, 309 Austro-Hungary, 119, 383 Autochthones, 184 Ava, 83 Avars, 128, 130 — the word, 131 Awakening of China, 365 Ayuthia, 140 Azes, 135 (see Alans) Azov, 77 Babel, Tower of, 6 Baber, E. C, 8 Babylon, 4, 50, 61 Babylonian theories, 4, 348 "Babylonian" women, 43, 238 Back River, 160 Bacot, M. Jacques, 9, 82 Bactria, 22, 47, 134 Bactrians, 63 Badakshan, 60, 74, 79, 81 Bagdad, 53, 71, 77, 83 Baghdur Khan, 20, 46 Baikal, 31, 131, 132, 138 Baikoff, 103 Balkash, 66, 73, 74, 77, 132, 139 Balkh, 64, 68, 73, 83 Balti, 32 Bamboo, edible, 157 Bamian, 64 Banner system, 103, 195, 208, 256, 272 Bannu, 63 Bantam, 75, 92 Baotu, 82, 84, 169, 235 Barbarians, 7, 9, 70, 118, 183, 184, 212, 234 Barbers, 183 Barca, 73 Barkul, 59 Bashkirs, 136 Basman, 75 Basra, 50, 61, 71 Batavia, 75, 92 Bathang, 13 Batu Khan, 73 Bayen, General, 75, 197 Bayen-Kara, 82 Bean-cake, bean- oil, beans, 148, 166-70 Beer, 46 Beggars, 283 Behar, 65 Belgiiun, 113, 148 Bell of Antermony, 36 Benedict XII., 78 Benevolences, 45, 204, 230, 239 Bengal, 80 Beni Asfar, 127 Bentham, Jeremy, 314 Berbera, 71 Beresov, 135 Beyla, 83 Bhamo, 62, 74, 83, 147, 174, 366, 388 — trade, 74 Bharam, 54 Bicycles, 147 Bink-thtian, 70, 79, 387 Bird-Bishop, Mrs., 9 Birds' nests, 289 Bismarck, 110 Black dwarfs, 52, 57 — Flags, 107, 390 — River (Mongolia), 1 1 1 (Tonquin), 21 INDEX 397 Black Salt Wella, 234 Blagoveschtschensk, 103 Boards at Peking, 178, 180, 186, 210, 215, 230, 246, 308, 312, 341, 380, 393 Bocca Tigris (see Bogue) Bock, Mr. Carl, 120 Boehmeria nivea, 163 Bogdo Khan, 126, 387 Bogue, The, 112 Bokhara, 31, 68, 72, 81, 83, 283, 286 — Little, 81 Bombay, 75 Bone inscriptions, 343 Bones, desert, 86 Bonham, Governor, 98 Bonnet, N. de, 78 Bonzes, 66, 76, 304, 387 Book of History, 42 " Books" of bamboo, etc., 344 Books, burning of, 346 Borneo, 32, 36, 57, 71, 77, 92 — oil, 146 Boundaries, natural, 2 Bouvet, 106 "Boxer" Indemnity, 112 "Boxers," 37, 40, 99, 103, 105, 109, 117, 118, 154, 167, 169, 212, 235, 255, 266, 303, 304, 340, 369, 387 " Boxers" (earliest), 35 — (later), 37,40,41, 303 — (midway), 41, 304 "Boys," 277 Branco St., 114, 151 Brava, 80 Bravery, 273 Braves, 263 Brazil, 120, 148, 297 Bretschneider, Dr. E., 15, 19, 79, 134 Brick inscriptions, 344, 350 — tea, 163, 169 Brigade generals, 260 British interests, 3 {see English) Buddhism, 22, 63, 65, 282, 296, 305, 330, 339 Buddhist pilgrims, 51, 62, 65 Budget, 205, 207, 210, 219 Buffaloes, 45 Bukur, 55 Bulgars, 134 BuUion, 66, 57, 154, 216, 248, 283 Burma, 8, 13, 22, 35, 37, 40, 62, 74, 99, 100, 139, 145, 172, 197, 304, 387 — Convention, 109 Burma Expedition, 99, 366 Burmese, 43, 47 — races, 8 Buruts (see Kirghis) Butter, 234 Button rank, 186, 260 Byu, 387 Byzantines, 66 (see Greeks) Cabinet Council, 246 Cadastral lands, 190, 253 Cail, 75, 80 Cairo, 83 Calatu, 75 Calcutta, 63, 72, 83, 149 Calendar, 73, 373 CaUcut, 76, 80 Caliphs, 31, 70 Cambalu, 79, 303, 387 Cambay or Cambaia, 71, 75 Cambodgia, 37, 51, 79, 387 Camels, 46, 84, 169 Camels' wool, 167 Camphor, 54, 56 Campichu, 74 (see Kan-chou Fu) Camul (see Hami) Canal, Grand, 11, 208, 239, 245 Canals, 237, 241 Canfu, 32, 56, 72, 75 Cannibalism, 289 Cannon, 88, 89, 95, 258 Cansay, 78 (see Kinsai) Canton, 6, 10, 23, 48, 49, 54-6, 57, 65, 67, 71, 77, 87, 94, 96, 98, 106, 111, 120, 224, 258 — Arabs at, 32, 54, 67 — decline, 55, 71 — dialect, 26, 358 — factories, 94, 106, 109, 141 — mosque, 83 — River, 62, 222 — trade, 154 Cantonese, 20, 30, 274, 285 Capitals of China, 4, 10, 27, 34, 37, 52, 65, 70 (see Peking, Nanking, Hangchow, Si-an Fu, etc.) Capitao do Mar, 88 Carpi ni, 77 Carthaginians, 48 Carts, 66, 73, 131 (see Waggons) " Cash," copper, 56, 206, 213, 291 Caspian, 67 Cassia, 152 Cassini Convention, 105, 151, 366 Caste, 45, 183, 258, 272, 339, 357 Catchment areas, 6, 13 Catchpoole, 90 398 INDEX Cathay, 79 Cathayans, 33 (see Kitans) Cathedral at Peking, 107 " Catherines," Chinese, 20, 31, 46, 323 Cattle trade, 56, 84, 170 Catulphus, 67 Caucasus, 67 Cavalry, 262 Cave-dwellers, 9 Celestial Mountains, 59 Census, 193-204 Central Kingdom, 4, 343 Ceylon, 36, 51, 54, 63, 71, 77, 80, 83, 146 (see Tea) Chagan Khan, 126, 387 — Kuren, 82, 387 Chambers of Commerce, 383 Ch'ang-an, 23, 392 (see Si-an Fu) Chang Chi-tung, 104, 185, 187, 241, 266, 268, 369 Chang-chou Fu, 74, 96, 197 (see Zaitun) Ch'ang-ch'un, 84 Chang Hiin, 251, 378, 379 Chang Kien, 242 Chang K'ien, 47, 61, 64 Ch'ang-lu salt, 238 Ch'ang-sha (and Fu), 22, 61, 161, 387 Chao Confederation, 32, 69 (see Nan-chao) Chao-k'ing (Shiu-heng), 87, 88 Chaosien, 21, 29 (see Corea) Chappedelaine, Pere, 107 Charing Nor, 10, 69 Charlemagne, 27 Charles, iSing of Bumania, 121 Chavaimes, Professor, 17, 65, 77, 132 Chefoo, 98, 247, 387 — Convention, 100, 142 — trade, 169, 175 ChehKiang, 19, 56, 197, 248, 254 — salt, 226 Chemulpo, 387 Ch'en dynasty, 27 Chen-shou-sh'i, 261 Cheng Ho, 58, 79 Ch'eng-tu (and Fu), 12, 174, 202, 388 Chesterfield, Lord, 295 Chevalier, Pere, 12 Ch'ih-feng, 175 ChihLi, 19, 34, 180,239 Chikin-talas, 74 (see Talas) Children, 286-8 Chili-Peru war, 120 China, 1, 191 — divided, 24, 27, 51, 55, 128, 193, 257, 328, 339 — Early, 4-6, 313 — Inland Mission, 99 — Old, 20, 23, 328 (see Old) — Proper, 1 — United, 18, 28, 33, 35, 193, 198, 240, 321, 330, 346 China's Sorrow, 11, 236 (see Yellow River) Chin-cheo, 90 (see Ts'iian-chou) Chinese abroad, 40, 94, 118 — banners, 256 — designations for (see National) — language, 7, 343-64 — legations, 100, 118 — missions, 99, 118 — shipping, 150, 157, 160 Chinese Characteristics, 271 Ching, Commander, R.N., 270 Chingnampo, 388 Chinkiang, 98, 165, 226, 388 — trade, 165 " Chits," 276, 388 ChoUn-uye, 85 Chosen, or Chaosien, 116 (see Corea) Chou cities, 15, 388 Chou dynasty. Early, 18, 330 Tungusic, 27 Chou-ts'un, 175 Chu-an Hwei, 382 Chu, Kiang or River, 14 (sec West River) Ch'u, Kingdom, 5, 35, 160, 222 Chukchis, 132 Ch'un, Prince, junior, 268, 371 senior, 211 Ch'unghou, 104 Chungking, 9, 158, 248, 388 Ch'ungming Is., 227 Chusan Is., 96, 388 Chuvashes, 136 Chu Yiian-chang, 35 Ciampa, 32, 37, 75, 77, 388 Cigarettes, 46, 147 Circumcision, 298 City gates, 264 (see Gates) — walls, 317 Civil Law, 311 Civilian officers, 261, 318 Clarke, Rev. S., 10 Classics, 346 Clavijo, 78 Clerks, Law, 338, 341 (see Secre- taries) Clippers, 157 INDEX 899 Clothing trade, 147 Coal, 80, 167, 1G8 Coast districts, 6 — trade, 144, 160 Cobdo, 81, 137 Cochin, 80 Cochin-China, 23, 57, 107, 318 (see Indo- China) Codes, ancient, 314, 32G, 334, 339 — modern, 335, 337, 341 Coffee, 92 Co-hong system. 111, 141 (see " Hongs") Coilon, 75 {see Quilon) Colleges {see Schools, Universities) Cologan, Sen., 118 Colonies, 21 Comari, 75 Compass, 60, 86 Compradores, 141, 255, 276, 388 Concubines, 284, 300 Condor, 79 {see Kunlun) Confucian era, 43, 47 Confucius, 17, 111, 295, 301, 309, 319, 345, 385, 388 Confucius LXXVI., Duke, 385 Confucius' History, 17 (see An- nals) Conquests of Han Wu Ti (see Wu Ti) Conservatism, 164, 222, 225, 232 Constantinople, 67 Constitutions, 370, 372, 375, 380 Consular jurisdiction, 99 («ee Extraterritoriality) Consuls, status, 189 — Chinese, 90 Contract law, 312 Coolie business, 94, 118, 120, 170, 388 Copper, 44, 56, 206, 211, 219 — coins, 43, 291 {see " Cash ") — standard, 143 Cordier, Prof. H., 58, 96 Corea, 14, 21-3, 29, 33, 39, 47, 53, 116, 131, 165, 264, 286, 388 — Americans in, 113 — conquests, over- runnings, re- ductions of, 21, 22, 29, 30, 35. 39, 53, 192 — language, 26, 360 — Italians in, 119 — "Imperial," 116, 121, 171 — Japanese province, 171 — opening of, 170, 171, 365 — Tripartite, 192 — the word, 388 Corean general, 32 Corean trade, 65 — words, places, etc. {passim in Glossary) Cormos, 75 (see Hormuz) Cosmas, Alex., 63 Cosmetics, 147 Cossacks, 103, 136, 389 Cotton, 45, 85, 157, 159, 160, 167, 173 — American, 166, 170 — fabrics, 49, 142, 145, 152, 155 — yarns, 145, 159, 168 (see Yarns) Courbet, Admiral, 270 Court, the, 177 Courts of Law, 341 Cowloong, 388 {see Kowloong) Cowries, 43 Crimean War, 104 Cronstadt, 169 Csoma, 134 Cuba, 118 Cultivation, 195, 198 Currency, 43, 47, 56, 143, 213, 251, 255, 291 (see Exchange) — fixed, 217 Cushing, Mr., 140 Customary Law, 312, 321 Customs (haVjits), 299, 312 — (Department of State), 254 — duties, 43, 52, 55, 70, 90, 144, 205 — Foreign, 142, 144, 154, 158, 160, 170, 174, 213, 240 — Native, 249 — special, 167, 174 Czars, 136, 137, 165 Czikami, Baron, 119 Dagroian, 75 Daimyo, the word, 388 Dairen, Dalny, or Ta-lien (Wan), 166, 388 Dalai Lama, 371, 383 Damascus, 83 Dane, Sir R., 14, 181, 214, 228, 230, 235, 242, 252, 380 Danish trade, 148 Daraut-Kurgan, 62, 392 Darchendo, Tarsando, or Ta- tsien-lu, 174, 392 Darg6 tribes, 13 Darjiling, 174 Dates (see Era, Calendar) Daughters, 286 Day, the Chinese, 290 Decima, 92, 388, 391 Deers' horns, 289 DeU, Delly, 75 400 INDEX Demajong, 392 Democracy, 181-2, 368 Demotic script, 346 Demiiark, 117 Derbend, 64, 73 Desert, 80, 86, 235 — routes, 61 Deveria, Gabriel, 72, 83 Dialects, 6, 26, 156, 261, 272, 351 - 364 (see Language) Diaz, President Porfirio, 120 Dictionaries, 347 Dir, 63 Dismemberment of China, 371 Divisions, territorial, 5, 187, 222 Dizabul, Khan, 66 Djafar or Dufar, 71, 75 Dogana, 74 (see Tokhara) Dollars, 213, 220 D'OUone mission, 9 Dolonor, 82, 84, 388 (see Lama Miao) Domiciles, 257 Dominicans, 118, 298 Dowagers, 248, 268, 371, 378 (see Empress) Draco, Chinese, 317 Drainage areas, 13, 168 Drichu, river, 13 (see Yang-tsze) Drink, 46, 165, 273, 288, 300 Drugs, 49, 82, 159 Dufar (see Djafar) Dupuis, Jean, 85, 107 Dutch, 36, 89, 91-3, 106 (see Holland) — colonies, 94, 142 — engineers, 11, 228 — in Japan, 87 Duties, 57 (see Customs) Duumvirate, ancient, 17 Dwarfs, 52 Dyes, 49 — aniline, 147 Dykes, 11, 208 Dynasties, tables of, 18, 24, 27, 38, 392 — two greatest, 30 — Tartar, 20, 27 — Tibetan, 28 Dzaring (see Charing) Dzungaria, 40, 389 (see Sungaria) East India Co., 96, 141 Swedish, 120 (see Asiatic) " Eating " provinces, 23 Eclipses, 95 Education, 183, 208, 345 — female, 286, 356 Edward I., 45 Egg trade, 149 Egypt, 56 Eighteen Provinces, 1, 8, 23, 35 Ektagh, Ektel, 66 Electricity, 86, 159, 211, 232 Elgin, Lord, 115 EUzabeth, Queen, 95 El Riim, 126 (see " Romania ") Emigration, 40, 74, 89, 112, 118, 119, 120, 156 Emil, 73 Emperor, 97, 177, 211, 265, 299, 304, 308, 341, 352 — the First, 18 (see First) — the word (character), 320 — worship, 301, 310 " Emperor" (of 1916), 384 — (of Corea), 116, 121 Empire, 177 Empress-Dowager, 20, 46, 165, 211, 243, 248, 261, 266, 268, 299, 308, 341, 352, 368, 371, 378 (see Dowagers) Engineering trade, 159 Engineers, 11 (see Dutch) EngUsh, 36, 72, 95, 99-102, 141-4 (see British) — earliest, 95 — in Manila, 92 — interests, 3 EphthaUtes, 64, 67, 68, 131, 132, 134, 388 (see Indo-Scytliians) Eptat (see AbdeU and last) Ertogrul, s.s., 121 Eschier, 75 Esmok, 62, 83, 101, 109, 173, 388 (see Sz-mao) Essen, Mongol chief, 38 Etymology, 25, 26 Etzina, 74 Eunuchs, 35, 37, 58, 79, 208, 250, 368, 384 Europe, 53, 95 (see Far West) Europeans, 62, 78 — their aspect of China, 7 of Chinese people, 274 Examinations, military, 269 Exchange, 143, 172, 207 (see Currency) Excise, 222, 238 Executive powers, 179, 185, 341 ExtraterritoriaUty, 99, 340, 342 Factories, Chinese, 162 — the old, 94, 117, 141 (see Canton) Fah-hien, 51, 63, 388 INDEX 401 Faifo, 48, 57, 75, 79, 173, 388 Fairs, 39, 46 Fak'umen, 175, 248 Family cohesion, 302 — law, 311, 341 Famines, 201 Fans, 157, 344 Fansur, 75 Far sang, Gl Far West, 23, 34, 52, 57, 87 (aee Europe) " Father and Mother Officers," 257 Feather trade, 149 Feet, squeezed, 299, 377 Females, 48, 141 (see Women) Feng-hwang, 84, 175 Feng-t'ien, 5, 218 (see Mukden) Ferdinand, King, 121 Fereng, Feringhi, 53, 72 (see Franks) Ferghana, 68, 389 (see Kokand) Ferlech, 75 Feudal China, 312, 317 (see Vassal) Fiadors, 141, 388 Filatures, 146, 151, 154, 170 Filial piety, 309 Finance, Chinese, 148, 181, 205- 221, 262-7 Finns, 130, 134 Fires, 162 Firms, foreign, in China, 151 "First" Emperor, 17, 18, 24, 43, 49, 62, 198, 238 Fisc, 205, 209 Fish-skin Tartars, 133 Five dynasties, 38, 55, 69, 139, 193 — monarchs, 1 8 — power loan, 221 — punishments, 309, 330 — races, 375, 377, 383 Flags, 377 Flax, 47 Fleets, Chinese, 108, 211, 366 (see Navy) Florentine trade, 77 Flour, 146, 147 "Flowery Flag" country, 111 (see America) Folang, Folangki, Fulang, 32, 36, 78, 82, 88, 105 (see Fulin and Franks) Foochow, 22, 90, 98, 151, 157, 224, 258, 388 — arsenal, 210, 211 — dialect, 363, 388, 392 — trade, 156 Foot-binding (see Feet) Foreign clothing, 147 — Custoin-house, 142, 154, 158 (aee Customs) — loans, 211 (aee Loans) — Oflice, British, 249 — population in China, 251, 252 — relations, 16, 42, 46 — tribes, 8 Foreigners, 54, 70 (sec Far West) Formosa, 1, 30, 37, 40, 80, 90-2, 98, 115, 155, 225, 388 — ceded to Japan, 1 — Dutch in, 37 — French in, 108, 114 — ignorance of, 30 — Japanese in, 93, 115, 156, 225, 366 — opened, 98 — salt trade, 225 — trade, 156 Four Cronies or Intimates, 242, 384 Fournier, Admiral, 108 Franciscans, 77, 299 Franco-German War, 110 Frankish Empire, 28, 78] Franks, 28, 33, 36, 58, 72, 78, 87, 88, 90, 93, 127, 388 — (extended signification), 78, 88 (see El Rum and " Romania ") Frederick the Great, 109 French, 36, 99, 105 — competition, 3, 109, 172-3 — hostilities, 114, 211, 265, 365 — parallels, 26 — trade, 151, 173 Friars Minor, 77 Fu cities, 15, 24, 187 Fugitives, 103 Fuh Kien, 5, 56, 57, 90, 93, 156, 224, 225, 285 Fulang (ki), (see Fulin and Folang) FuHn, 28, 32, 53, 72, 78, 88, 106, 388 Funam, 387 Funerals, 302 Furs, 39, 49, 136 Fusan, Pusan, 116, 388 Fji-chow, 227 (see Hwei-chou Fu) Gabelle, 14, 181, 223-44 (see Salt) GalUna, Sign., 119 Gambling, 182 Gandhara, 64 Ganges, 63 Gankin, 252 (see An-k'ing Fu) Garni er, Francis, 107 Gartok, 174 402 INDEX Gas, 147 Gas fuel, 222, 231 Gates, city, 258, 264 Gayuk or Kayuk, Khan, 73, 77, 106, 129, 388 Gendarixierie, 186 General of Province, 260 Genghiz, Khan, 34, 72, 78, 133, 388 Genzan, or Wonsan, 394 George III., Letters to King, 97 Georgius, 106 Geougens, 28, 130 {see Ju-ju) Gerard, M., 109 German activity, 149, 159, 162, 232, 382 — shipping, 153 — trade, 148, 149, 170 — trained troops, 265, 266 Germany, 63, 99, 109, 212, 366 (see ICiao Chou) Ghilen-tai, 235, 238, 239 Gialbos of Tibet, 31, 139, 389 Gibbon, historian, 28, 51 Giles, Dr. H. A., 131 Giles, Dr. Lionel, 191, 200 Ginseng, 289 Glassware, 49 Gnatong (see Yatung) Goa, 89 Gobi, 59 Goes, Benedict, 79 Gold money, 43 — trade, 42 • — values, 143, 207 (see Exchange) Golden Khaii (see Altyn) Goldi, 133 Gondophares, 47 Goodnow, Professor, 382 Gorges, 231 Goths, 129 Government, 176-90 — Local, 182, 371 Governors, Military and Civil, 179 Gozurat (see Gujerat) Grain revenue, 206, 240 (see Rice tribute) ■ — trade, 44 Grand Canal (see Canal) Grass-cloth, 153, 163 Graves, 284 Great Northern Telegraph Co., 117 — River (see Yang-tsze) of Canton, 224 — Wall, 14, 84, 239 (see Wall) Greek history, 21 (see Roman) Greeks, 47, 64, 66, 78, 296 Grosvenor, Mr., 99 Guilds, 154, 254 Gujerat, 54, 71 Guns (see Cannon) Habitat of Kitans, 77 — of Ouigours, 63, 70 — of Turks, 54 Haiathala, 64, 67 (see Ephthalitea) Hailar River, 84 Hainan, 9, 23, 98, 147, 389 — salt, 224 Haiphong, 85, 108, 172, 389 Hair, 168 — human, 147 Haiteng, 75 (see Zaitun) Haithon, 135 (see Armenia) Hakkas, 278 Hami, 59, 74, 78, 79, 81, 83, 128 Han dynasty. After, 23, 33, 340 Early, 20, 24, 27, 49, 128, 196, 340 Third, 24, 349 — " Men of," 20, 389 — Prince of, 20, 44 — River. 14, 161, 169, 231, 241 — Wen Ti, 328 — Wu Ti (see Wu Ti) Han Fei-tsz, 318 HanUn Academy, 306, 384 Hang, range, 5 Hangchow", 10, 32, 34, 65, 71, 78, 116, 157, 158, 226, 258 (see Kinsai) Hankow, 52, 75, 98, 151, 161, 169, 245, 389 -r- destruction of, 162 — trade, 158 Hanoi, 85, 388 Harashar, 59, 63, 64, 74, 387 Harbin, 105, 174 Hart, Sir Robert, 241, 251, 317 Havret, Pere, 76 Heaven, words signifying, 387 — worshipped by rulers, 381 Heh-lung Kiang, 218 (see Tsitsi- har) Hemp, 47, 91, 149 Henri of Orleans, Prince, 82 Hephthalites (see Ephthalites) Herat, 79 Hermaios, 47 Hernax, 128 Hia dynasty (Ancient), 18 (Hiung-nu), 27 — state, 34, 392 (see Tangut) Hia-kwan, 174 (see Nanking) Hiao, 341 Hide trade, 39, 149, 168 INDEX 403 Hideyoshi, 3G, 388 Hien, city divisions, 15, 184, 209, 257 Hien, religious sectarians, 71 Hi-feng K'ou (Great Wall pass), 85 High Carts, 131 {sec Carts, Wag- gons)] Himalayas, 13, 00, 81 (see K'un- lun) Hindoo colonies, 32, 49 — connections, 4 — missionaries, 22 — words in Chinese use, 387, 394 Hindu Koosh, 64 Hingan Range, 85 Hing-hwa Fu, 224, 389 Hioki, Mr., 382 Hira, Gl Hirado, 92 Hirth, Frederick, 56, 61, 71, 128 Historians (see Sz-ma and Con- fucius) History, Book of, 42 — Early, 16, 345 — true, 16, 18, 350 Hiung-nn, 19, 20, 23, 25, 27, 28, 33, 46, 64, 121, 127, 191, 238, 347, 389 (see Huns) — dynasties, 27 — modern, 121 Hoh-feicity, 185, 187 Hoihow, 98, 389 — trade, 152 Ho-kien Fu, 239 Hokow, 108, 172 Ho Kwei, Viceroy, 247 Holansi, 106 Holland, or Ho-lan, 36, 89, 93, 106 Ho-nan Fu, or city, 11, 23, 24, 65, 69 Ho Nan province, 19, 34, 231, 239, 246 Hong Kong, 94, 98, 152, 154 — trade, 74, 108, 153, 156, 172 "Hongs," 98, HI, 117, 141, 154, 389 Honolulu, 113, 374 Hooghly, 65 Hoppo of Canton, 56, 154, 249 Hormuz, 75, 77, 80 Horse-back Powers, 6, 18, 129 Horses, foreign, 78, 106 Horse-shoes, 86 Horse trade, 39, 44, 46, 78 Ho-tung, 240 House duties, 182, 193 Households, 198-203 Hiian Chwang, 63 28 Hue, AbW, 82 flu-kiin-shi, 261 Hu Kwang, 203, 372 (see Hu Nan, Hu Peh) Hu Lin-yih, Governor, 245 Hu Nan, province, 5, 22, 35, 58, 161 Hunchun, 174 Hundred Families, 314 Hungarians, 34, 134, 297 Hung-hien, era, 384 Hung Siu-ts'iian, 305 Hung-tseh, lake or marsh, 11, 389 Huns, 21, 63, 128 (see Hiung-nu) Himters, 24, 138, 181 Hu Peh, province, 6, 232, 233 Hwa-hia, 126 Hwai-k'ing Fu. 11, 389 Hwai region, 22 — River, 7, 10, 22, 208, 227 — salt monopoly, 224-7 Hwa-ma Ch'i, 236 Hwang Ho, 388 (see Yellow River) source of, 10 Hwang Ti, era and ruler, 374 Hwei-chou Fu, 227 Hydrogen gas, 231 Hyperboreans, 102, 126 Ibn Batuta, 75 Ice- free ports, 168 Ich'ang, 12, 100, 159, 389 Icheng, 229, 394 I-chou, or Wi-chou, 84 Ignatieff, 103, 139 Ikotanga, Tartar General or Vice- roy, 235 Hi, 22, 40, 47, 59, 73, 78, 104, 127, 129, 134, 137, 180, 263, 366, 389 — Russians in, 104 Iliang, Viceroy, 246 Impecunious provinces,3,203, 215 Import duties, 144 Indemnities, 113, 264 India, 22, 29, 32, 47, 49, 51, 57, 77, 100, 140, 296, 340 — North and South, 04 — relations with China, 32 Indian Government, 13 — Ocean, 54, 67 — yarns, 145 (see Cotton) Indo-China, 19, 23, 51, 172, 226 (see Cochin-China, Annam, Ton- quin) Indo- Scythians, 47, 64, 67, 134, 348 (see Ephthalites, Yueh- chi) Indus, 63, 174 404 INDEX Infanticide, 285 Infants and crime, 31G Ingkili, 72 Inland Water Navigation Pvules, 163 Inner Lower River, 245 Innocent IV., 77 Inns, 282, 290 Inscriptions, foreign, 31, 68, 77 (see Ancient Remains) Inspector-General, 215, 252, 254 Insurance, 291 Intellectuality, 294 Intendants, 189 (see tao divisions) Intermarriages, 27 Invisible exports and imports, 144 Iron ciurency, 47 — dynasty, 392 (see Kitans) — gates, 64, 73 (see Derbend) — licences, 238 — trade, 11, 44, 49, 52, 57, 61, 62, 66, 67, 86, 205, 235, 238 — working, 29, 54, 130 Irrawaddv River, 9, 52, 62, 74, 82, 106, 389 sources, 82 Irrigation, 66 Irtish, River, 131, 137 Isaiah, 106 Islam, 65, 302 (see Mussulmans) Ispahan, 78 Issibur, 136 (see Sibir, Siberia) Issyk Kul, 64, 66, 72, 73, 389 Italy, 118, 119, 368 — Early, 21, 78, 86, 94 Ito, Count, Marquess, Prince, 367 I-tsing, the bonze, 65 Ivan the Great, 136 — the Terrible, 136 Ivory, 56 Jabgu, Khan, 64 Jade, 81 Jaffa, 83 Jagatai, Khan, 78 Janissaries, 267 Japan, 20, 22, 29, 35, 38, 40. 63, 71, 89, 92, 99, 114, 133, 140, 197, 389 — earliest use of the name, 29, 389 European visit to, 89 — ousts Germany, 170, 175 — takes Formosa, 93 Japanese example, 186, 340, 369 — in Corea, 22, 36, 171 — in Mongolia, 129 — language, 360 Japanese pirates, 36 — revolution, 115 — shipping, 150, 157, 160, 161, 164, 166 — trade, 56, 71, 143, 148, 151, 156 trained armies, 266 — war with China, 40, 104, 110, 116, 166, 167, 211, 227, 237, 264, 366 ■ with Russia, 105, 117, 307, 370 — writing, 348 Jartoux, S. J., 106 Java, 25, 32, 35, 36, 51, 54, 57, 63, 71, 75, 92, 94, 197, 387 — Dutch in, 92, 94, 142 Jaxartes, 72, 78, 389 Jeddah, 80, 83 Jehol, 97, 175, 180, 184 Jerusalem, 83 Jesuits, 76, 87, 89, 94, 106, 109, 118,298 Jesus of Nazareth, 296 Jeujens (see Geougens, Ju-ju) Jews, 23, 45, 70, 274, 298 Joostens, M., 113 Jubb, 80 Judaea, 95 Judge, Provincial, 179 Judges, new, 180, 341 Judicial and Executive, 179 — system, 251 Ju-ju or J wan- j wan, 28, 130 (see Geougen) Jungluh, 368, 369 Junks, 35, 70, 91, 225-6, 389 — river, 60 Junk to U.S. and London, 98 — trade, 51, 56, 57, 91, 152, 153, 159,247 Justice, 183, 319 Justin, 66, 67 Justinian, 322, 337, 372 Jute, 149 Kabul, 60, 63, 79, 83 Kachyns, 8, 9, 389 Kadesieh, 68 Kadphises, 47, 64 K'ai-feng Fu, 70 K'ai-Lan, Coal Co., 168, 212 Kaiser (see Wilhelm) Kalgan, 4. 72, 84, 103, 168, 237, 389 Kalhat, 75 Kalikiit, 76 (see Calicut) Kalkhas, 39 Kalmucks, 40, 80, 103, 135, 137, 389 (see Dzungars, Eleuths) INDEX 405 Kampot, 79, 387 Ivamti tribes, Kan, river, Kanagawa Treaty, 115, 389 Kan-ehou Fu, 23, 59, 63, 70, 74 Kandnhar, 60, 83 Kandy, 80 • K'ang, state, 69 K'ang-hi, Emperor, 80, 95, 199, 244, 299, 330 K'ang Yu-wei, 189, 368, 380 Kan"^Suh, 10, 23, 83, 132, 139, 235, 246, 298, 302 Kant, 295 Kaoli, 29 {see Corea) Kapisa, 64 Kapitan Mo, 88 Karahoto, or -hhoto, 82 Kara-Kirghis or Buruts, 389 (see Pu-lu-t'eh) Kara-Kitans, 77, 133, 389 Karakoram city (Mongolia), 00, 72, 74 — Pass (Kashmir region), 59, 63 Karategin, 62 Kase, or Kathe, 139, 390 (see Manipur) Kashgar, 60, 65, 74, 83 Kashgaria, 40, 59, 81 Kashmir, 32, 59, 81 Kattigara, 48 Kawlam, 76 (see Quilon) Kazaks, 135, 389 (see Cossacks, Kirghis) Kazan, orK'a-shan, 136 Kelantan, 80 Kelat, 83 Kellet, Captain, R.N., 98 Kem, river, 137 Keng-hung, 74 Kerosene, 46, 146, 102, 168, 290 (see Petroleum) Kerulon, river, 72, 80 Kesch, 64, 73, 79 Kewkiang, 98, 162-4, 169, 227, 252, 389 Keys, 258 (see Gates) Khabarovska, 105 Khansa, 76 (see Kinsai) Khata, 79 (see Kitans) Khavanda, 65 Kiachta, 84, 103, 138, 169 Kiai Chou, 240 Kia-k'ing, Emperor, 304 Kiang, the (see Yang tsze) — Nan, 226, 248 — Peh or Pei (= North Kiang Su), 228, 252 Kiang Si, 5, 60, 103, 224, 227 — Su, 252, 254, 378-9 — 'J'ung (near Esmok). H3 tsz (Tibet " port "), 174 Kiao-chi, 25, 389 Kiao Chou (" Cernnan sphere"), 63, 105, 109, 144, 167, 170, 230, 265, 367 Kiao-chou (Tonquin), 25, 389 Kia-yiih Pass, 78, 81, 83, 169, 235, 389 K'ien, kingdom, 5, 222 (see Kwei Chou) K'ien-lung, Emperor, 81, 97, 137, 199, 304, 390, 393 Kiev, or Ki-yu, 136 Kikuchi, Baron, 348 Kilung, 80, 92, 389 (see Formosa) Kin-chou Fu, 84, 175 King-chou Fu, 160 Kinsai, 76, 197 (see Hangchow) Kin-sha (or Golden Sand) River, 69, 389 Kin Shan, 387 (see Altai Mts.) Kin-t'ien, 41 (see Sun-chou Fu) Kipchaks, 102, 134, 135 KipHng, R., 183 Kirghis, 66, 102, 127, 132, 137, 389 Kazaks, 135,389 Kirin, 84, 174-5 Kissing, act of, 288 Kitan foundei (Apaoki), 69 Kitans, 28, 33, 38, 40, 53, 55, 69, 84, 133, 195, 257, 339 (se?. Cathayans) Kitat, 53, 79 K'iung-chou Fu (see Hoihow) Knife coins, 42 Kokand, 22, 46, 47, 61,' 68, 81, 83, 389 Kokonor, or Kukunor, 24, 39, 59, 81, 169, 180, 389 K'o-li-foh, 70 (see Caliph) Kongmun, 153, 173, 389 Korla, 59 Kotaiba, 68 Kowloong 101, 153, 367 " Kowtow," the, 384 Koxinga, 91, 93, 96, 389 Ktesiphon, 61 Kublai Khan, 12, 34, 38, 41, 74, 77, 106, 129, 197, 202, 234, 239, 338, 390 Kuche, 04 K'u-ch'eng, or Koziim, Khan, 136-7 Ku-chou (in Kwei Chou), 224 Kugiar, 63 406 INDEX Kukukhoto, 180 (c/. Kokonor and Karahoto) Killing ("cooling" resort), 163 K'ulun, 390 (see Urga) Kunibum, monastery, 82 Kumchuk, 153, 389 Kumiss, 46 Kiln (army or navy), 269 Kiin-chu (monarchical), 373, 375, 383 Kimduz, 74 Kung-ho (democracy), 344, 373 Kiinlon ferry, 62, 74 Kunlun (Condor), 79 K'unlunMts. (Himalayas), 13, 60, 81 Kunsan, 390 Kuren, 390 (see K'ulun) Kushan, 64 (see Ephthalites) Kutlug, Khan, 132, 390 K'wan-ch'eng-tsz, 84, 175 (see Ch'ang-ch'un) Kwan Chung, 43, 238, 296, 314, 320 Kwan Hien, 233 Kwan-tsz (see Kwan Chung) Kwang-chou, 25 Fu, 120 (see Canton) Wan, 109, 110, 173, 368 nan, 25 (see Kwang-chou) Fu (in Yun Nan), 224 — Si, 8, 13, 23, 108, 173, 203, 223, 233, 248, 305 trade, 155 sin, 227 su. Emperor, 211, 243, 308, 341, 371 — -teh, 227 — Tung, 13, 87 (see Canton) Kwei Chou, 5, 8, 9, 13, 23, 60, 83, 184, 203, 218, 231, 300 trade, 13, 83, 224 Kwei-hwa, 84, 180 (see Kuku- khoto) Kwei-lin Fu, 155 Kweisiang, 373 Kwoh-min Tang, 376 Kwok-sing-ya, 93 (see Koxinga) Lake Ghilen (see Ghilen-tai) — salt, 222, 240 — shipping, 164 — Victoria, 65 Lakes, 6, 10, 161, 361 Lama-Miao, 84, 390 Lamas, 139, 383 Lambri, 57, 70, 75, 80 Lamps, 147, 162 Lan-chou Fu, 235 Land-tax, 198-9, 202-5, 241, 249 — -trade, 48, 104, 143 Lang, Admiral, 270, 366 Langson, 108, 173 Languages. 7, 19, 25-6, 351-64 Lan-li, 70, 80 (see Lambri) Lao, tribes, 390 Laocius or Lao-tsz, 295, 314, 319, 322, 390 Laos, Laotian, 9 Lao Vinh-phuc, 107, 390 Lao-wa T'an, 233, 390 Lappa, 153, 390 Lar or Lar, 75, 76 Lari, 82, 390 Law, 307-42 Law, English, 308 — reform, 287, 302, 340 Lay, Mr. H. N., 247 Lead, 142 Leasehold ports, 170 Legal Classic, 317, 322 Legations, Ciiinese, 100 Legge, Dr., 314, 337 Legislative functions, 185, 341 (see Judicial) Legj'a, 83 Lei-chou Peninsula, 23, 56, 173 Lepers, 283 Lesser (or Small) River, 223, 224 Lewis IX, 105 Lewis XIV, 106 Lhassa, 31, 82, 101, 390 Li dynasty, Tonquin, 172 Li Han-chang, 248 Li Hung-chang, 185, 187, 211-2, 248, 365-9 Li Hwei, 245 Li K'wei, 317 Li Shi-min, 30, 333 Li Sz, 318 Li Yang-ts'ai, 107 Li Yiian, 30 Li Yiian- hung, President, 145, 189, 374, 380, 384, 386 Liang dynasty, 27 Liang-chou Fu, 23, 54, 62, 63, 69 Liang K'i-ch'ao, 380, 382, 386 Liao dynasty, 392 (see Iron and Kitans) — River, 166 — Tung Convention, 116 Peninsula, 105, 110, 366 Liao-yang, 175, 235 Licences, 182, 205 Lih-fah Yiian, 383, 386 INDEX 407 Likin, 56, 144, 148, 160, 163, 227, 245-55, 372, 390 Lingering death, 335 Ling-ting Is., 97 Literary men, 17, 25, 44, 111, 346 Liu, the family, 24 Liu-k'iu (see Loochoo) Liu K'un-yih, 187, 248, 268, 283, 369 (see Viceroj^s, Three good) Liu Pang, 20, 44 Liu Ping-chang, 204 Liu Yen, 240 Liu Yung-fuh (see Lao Vinh- phuc) Loans, 211, 216, 227, 239, 253, 360, 369, 372, 377, 380 Lobanoff, Prince, 367 Lob Nor, 59, 63, 74, 81 Local Councils, 186, 371 Lochac, 75 (see Siam) Lockhart, Sir J. S., 171 Loess, or Loss, 11, 390 Loha, river, 85 Lolos, 8, 12, 390 Loochoo, 30, 36, 40, 71, 93, 115, 390 Loop (see Yellow River) Lord of Heaven, 94 Louis Philippe, 106 Lu, state of, 17 Luh Cheng- siang, 384 Lii-chou Fu, 187 LU Shun-k'ou, 391 (see Port Arthur) Luke, Syrian, 106 Lungchingtsun, 174 Lungchow, 108, 168, 173 Lung-k'ou, 174 Luzon, 36, 90 (see Manila) Ma'abar, 36, 75 Macao, 87, 89, 96, 106, 114, 118, 153, 390 — trade, 90, 153 Macartney, Lord, 97, 337 Ma-cha, or Madjars, 134 (see Hungarians) Mackay, Sir Jas., 251 — treaty, 144, 251, 372 Madagascar, 75 Madras, 75, 80 Maes the Macedonian, 62 Magadoxa, 75, 80 Magna Chartas, 321, 373 Mahomet, 53, 80, 296, 302, 330 Mahometans, 292, 298 (see Mus- sulmans) Mailapur, 77' Maine, Sir H., 309 Malabar, 36, 54, 75, 77, 83 Malacca, 37, 83, 88 Malay, 36, 49, 51, 65, 390 Mali-kha, river, 9, 390 Malwa, 71 Manas, 59, 73 Manchouli, 174 Manchu characteristics, 272 — Empire, 22, 37, 258, 335 — princes, 267, 272, 372-3 (ace Emperors) — rulers, 177, 181, 198, 244 — the word, 390 Manchuria, 1, 3, 5, 34, 36, 38, 40, 84, 104, 139, 165, 289 (^ee Kirin, Tsitsihar) — aggressions in, 98 — assimilation of, 2, 165, 272 — Japan and Russia in, 3, 151, 165-6 Manchurian salt, 235 — trade, 143, 151, 165 Manchus, 28, 33, 37, 39, 80, 256, 390 — ejected, 181, 257, 375, 381 — in Formosa, 93 Mandalay, 83 Mandarin, 390 — language or dialects, 26, 363 — " trade," 204 Mangu, Khan, 105, 129, 390 Maniach, 66, 67 Manicha?ans, 72, 77, 132, 298, 330 Manifest faith bonds, 239 (see Loans) Manila, 36, 57, 71, 90, 113, 117, 297, 390 Manipur, 139, 290 Manufactures, Chinese, 145, 163 (see Factories) Manure, 148 Manzi, or Man-tsz, 157, 197, 258, 390 Maps, 12, 15, 95, 106 — Bretschneider's, 15, 19, and end of book Marco Polo, 33-5, 55, 57, 71, 73-4, 168, 197,241 " Marcus Aurelius," the Chinese, 323, 336 Margarine, 148 Margary, R., 99 Margiana, 61, 64 Margilan, 61 MarignoU, 78 Marine activity, 35 Marinas of Tyre, 62 408 INDEX Marriage, 284 — alliances, 70, 272 Marshes, Salt, 241 Martyrdoms, 106 Massacre at Canton, 67 — at Tientsin, 99 Masulipatam, 75 Mathematics, 54 Mats and matting, 149, 157 Maulmein, 74 Mayers, W. F,, 19 Maxims, legal, 319, 324 Mazdeans, 72, 76, 298, 330 Mecca, 83 Medical missions, 299 Mehteh, Khan, 20, 46 (.see Bagh- dur) -' Mei-Ung, range, 14, 391 ]\Iekong, river, 62, 74 Melibar, 75 (see Malabar) Meneius, or Meng-tsz, 320 Mendez Pinto, 89, 102 Mengtsz, "port," 108, 168, 172, 391 Mercantile honour, 283 Merchant guilds, Russian, 136 — — Chinese, 154, 254 Merchants, early, 44, 53 Merv, 63, 68 Mesopotamia, 22, 47, 52, 76 Mexico, 90, 91, 120, 378 Mezzobarba, 118 Miao tribes, 7, 8, 22, 24, 390 — officials, 8, 183 Mien, 387 {see Burma) Mien-chu, city, 234 Migrations, 6, 9, 13, 22, 34, 49, 85, 203 Mikado, resuscitated, 115 — the word, 391 Milan, King, 121 Military instructors, 110, 265, 266 Milk, preserved, 147 Mills, 145, 176, 211 {see Manu- factures) Min-kwoh (RepubUc), 374, 386 Min-Yiieh, 22 Ming dynasty, 35, 38, 58, 135, 198, 304, 338, 391 — history, 79 Mining, 161 Ministries {see Boards) Mints, 211, 224 Mirrors, 147 Missionaries, early, 87, 95, 106, 151, 163 — German, 367 — Hindoo, 22 Missionaries, modern, 99, 151, 305 Missions to Peking, 77, 88, 93, 95 Mixed courts for Manchus, 273 Mocha, 83, 92 Mokhoi, 85 Momein, 74, 101, 174, 234 (see T'eng-yiieh) MongoUa, 34, 39, 40, 133, 221 — Outer, 180, 235, 377 Mongol Empire, 35, 237 — history, 74 — Khans, 40, 72, 73, 75, 102, 105, 129 — race, 28, 180 — trade in oranges, 157 — wars with Ming dynasty, 36 — word, the, 391 Mongols, 28, 33, 35, 39, 66, 133, 135, 266, 282 — conquer China, 65, 102, 134, 197 — Mussulman branch of, 73 Monopolies, 182 Monosyllabic languages, 8, 19, 354 Monsoons, 57, 71 Monte-Corvino, 77, 78, 303 Monuments, 31 (see Ancient re- mains) Morse, Mr. H. B., 113 Moscow, or Moskwa, 136 Moso tribes, 9 Mosques, 68, 83 Motor-boats, 155 Motors, 147 Mountain ranges, 14 "Mouths," 194-6 {see "House- holds") Muang-u, 234 Mukden, 29, 53, 84, 248, 306, 391 Mul Java, 76 Mule traffic, 74, 147 Munitions of war, 168 (see Arms) Muravieff, 138 Muru, or Mulu, 61 Murui-usu, 69, 82 (see Yang-tsze) Musical boxes, 147 Musk, 79, 159 Mussulman revolts, 104, 107, 202, 250 Mussulmans, 11, 32, 67, 83 {see Mahometans) — Chinese, 68, 83, 234, 298 — Kan Suh, 83, 298 — Yiin Nan, 83, 298 (see Pan- thays) Mythical times, 18 INDEX 409 Nagasaki, 92, 391 Naimans, 77 Names, ancient provincial, 5 — national, 31 (see National) Nan-chao, 32, G9, 139 (see Early Siamese, and Chao) — annals, 140 Nanking, 34, 37, 1G4, 220, 2G5, 305, 391 — dynasties, 27, 51, 52 — republic, 242, 374 — sacked, 378 — treaty, 106, 142, 246, 299 Nan-ning Fu, 83, 155, 173 Nan Shan, 14 Nan-yiieh, or South Yiieh, 22, 23, 25, 48, 60, 101, 223 Napoleon I, 44 Napoleon III, 106 " Narses," a Chinese, 79 National Assembly, 377 (.see Par- liament) — designations, 4, 20, 30, 31, 53, 68, 116 (see Names) Naturalisation, 114 Naval bases, 101, 167 Navy, Chinese, 108, 167, 210, 211, 270, 366 (see Fleets) Nay en. Prince, 38, 393 Nayench'eng, 304 Necuveran, 75 (see Nicobars) Negroes, 52, 57 Nemati, Kalman, 134 Nepaul, 32, 40, 69, 80, 97, 139, 234, 391 Nepaulese war, 69, 72 Nerchinsk, 103, 105, 138 Nestorians, 32, 53, 55, 65, 70, 72, 76, 298 Nestorian Stone, 32, 55, 76 Newchwang, 98, 165, 166, 391 — trade, 165-6 New Territory, or Sin Kiang, 1, 2, 22 assimilation of, 2 Nicholas II, Czar, 366 Nicholas III, Pope, 77 Nicholas de Bonnet, 78 — (Koxinga), 92 Nicobars, 65, 75 (see Necuveran) Niekulun, 78 Nien-po, 82 Nine Chapters (law), 322, 338 Ning-hia Fu, 168, 392 Ningpo, 24, 55, 71, 89, 96, 98, 391 — trade, 157 Ninguta, 175 Niuru, 257 Nomad states, 59 Nomads, 6, 18, 19, 26, 41, 43, 59, 129, 191 Non-Chinese, 180 (see Barbarians) Nonni, river, 85 Nordenskjold, Professor, 134 " North " River, 224 (see " Small "') North and South Empires, 26 Novgorod, 135, 136, 391 Nvichens, 28, 33-4, 38, 40, 57, 69, 84, 133, 195, 228, 235, 241, 257, 339, 391 Nudjkend, 64 Nurhachi, 39 Oak-worm silk, 170 Obata, Mr., 383 Obi, river, 135 Ocho (Uchiu or Foochow), 90, 388 Octroi, 373, 391 Odessa, 161, 169 Odon-tala, 10, 391 Odoric, Friar, 77 Oech, 391 (see Oxus) Office, Sale of, 186, 207, 247, 250 Ogdai, Khan, 73, 129, 391 Oil (see Bean, Kerosene) Oirat, 389 (see Eleuths) Okhotsk, 138 Old China, 4, 20, 23, 34, 195-6, 223, 234 — maids, 285 Olopen, 76 Onon, river, 72 Opium, 46, 85, 86, 96, 247, 252, 290 337 — abolition, 145, 157, 159, 161, 165, 252, 300, 377 — Convention, 100, 114, 153 — native, 159, 247 — smuggling, 204, 291 — trade, 86, 98-100, 142, 146, 159 — war, 96, 99 Oranges, bitter, 157 Ordos, 10, 14, 23, 34, 82, 238, 391 Orgetorix, 44 Origin of Chinese, 4 Orkhon, River, 69, 77, 131 Orleans, Prince U. of, 82 Osmanli, 31 Ostiaks, 132, 135, 136 Otrar, 72, 79, 135 Ouigour capitals, 63, 77, 79 Ouigom-s, 31, 34, 63, 69, 74, 131, 132, 241, 391 — become Mussulmans, 69 Oxus, river, 47, 61, 64, 66, 73, 79. 391 410 INDEX Pacific Ocean, 19, 133 Pagoda Anchorage, 108, 121, 270 — at Canton, 68 Pahang, 80 Pakhoi, 83, 100, 391 — trade, 83, 152 Palace expenditure, 208, 211, 214, 384 — favour, 249 Palembang, 57, 80 Pali, 76 Palisade, 248 Pamirs, 22, 37, 47, 51, 60, 65, 81, 128 391 Panjab, 72, 134, 388 Pans, iron, 45 Panthays, 83, 234, 264 Pantoja, 95 Pao Ch'ao, General, 204 Pao-ting Fu, 239 Paper, 347 Parkes, Sir Harry, 365 Parliaments, 181, 186, 341, 371, 373, 378, 383, 386 Parthia, 21, 49 Parthiana, 47, 50, 51, 61 Pascal, 78 Pasio, S.J., 87 Pasture, 66 Peacocks, 48 Peace-promoting Association, 382 Pearl River, 14 (see Great, West, Canton) Pearls, 46, 56 Pecul (Chinese cwt.), 391 Pegoletti, 78 Peh-hai, 391 (see Pakhoi) Peh-ngai, 155 Peh-seh, 83, 224, 391 Pei-kwan suburb, 306 Pei-tai Ho, 168 Peking, 33, 37, 84, 88, 95, 208, 230, 251, 285, 373, 377 — Contingent, 182 — dialect, 352 — Government, 3, 177, 206, 249, 372 — occupied by Manchus, 95 by Allies, 94 — opened, 98, 251 — Syndicate, 119 — the word, 391 PelUot, Paul, M., 77, 132 Penang, 83 Pencil, hair, 347 Pendjeh incident, 365 P'eng-hu, 391 (see Pescadores) Pensioned Manchus, 181-2 Pentam, 76 (see Bantam) Peres de Andrado, 88 Perovsky, Fort, 72 Persecutions, 95 Persia, 30, 32, 34, 40, 51, 53, 66, 67, 68, 105, 131-2, 134,340,391 Persian appeal to China, 30, "^3 (see Pirouz) — Gulf, 50, 71, 80 — priests, 72, 77, 330 — traders, 54, 67, 79 — works, 79 Peru, 119 Pescadores, 92, 108, 391 Peshawur, 63 Petra, 52 Petroleum, 86 (see Kerosene) Philip II, 90 Philip the Fair, 105 Philippines, 91, 118, 156, 391 [see Manila) Philology, 25, 53, 343-64 Philosophers, 308, 317, 346 Phoenicians, 48 P'i-she-ja (see Formosa) P'iao, 387 " Pidjin " (= " business ") Eng- lish, 90 Piebald-horse Pond, 235 (sec Hwa-ma) Piece-goods (see Cotton, Textile) Pigs, 152 Pigtails, 147, 252, 267, 274, 275, 292, 373, 378 Pilgrims, 51, 62, 83 — to Mecca, 83 — to Sanciano, 87 Pilots, river, 13 Pineapple (Ananas saliva) cloth, 153 P'ing-shan, 12, 391 P'ing Siu-kih, 389 (see Hideyoshi) P'ing-yang, 84, 391 Pinto, Mendez, 89, 102 Pin-t'ung (see Binh-thuan) Pirates, 36, 37, 56, 85, 89, 90, 109 Pirouz, 68, 391 (see Persian) Plague, 166 Pliny, 48, 49, 62 Plum Range (see Mei-ling) Police, 183, 209 (see Gendarmerie) Polo (see Marco) Polygamy, 284 Pond-salt, 222, 236, 241 (see Hwa-ma) Pongee silk, 170 (— pen-ki, " our own loom ") Poppy, 97 (see Opium) INDEX 411 Popular party, 376, 378-9 (see Ku'oh-min Tang) Population, 12, 191-204 (sec map) — distribution of, 2, 7 (see map) — foreign, 151-2 Porcelain, 57, 163 (see Potteries) Pork, 298 Po-sz, 391 (sec Persia) Port Arthur, 105, 110, 166, 366-7, 391 (see Lii-shun K'ou) — Hamilton, 365-6 Ports, ancient, 49 " Ports," inland, 108, 168, 171 Ports, special, 174 — treaty, 142 forty- seven, 175 Portugal, one with Spain, 90 Portuguese, 36, 87, 90, 113 — religious intrigues, 96 — trade, 88 Postal conference, 119 Posts, 86, 175, 208 Potocki, Food Dictator, 45 " Po^wfci " man, 88 Potteries, 103 Poutiatin, Count, 103 Poyang Lake, 10, 163, 227, 391 PrcEtorium, 187 (see Yamen) Prefects, 188 Preparation for Parliament Bu- reau, 384, 386 Presidents, Chinese, 145-6, 178, 181, 189, 219, 252, 299, 374 (see Yiian and Li) Press, the, 370 Pride's Purge, 379 Princes, Manchu, 211, 272, 373 Prints, 57 Prisons, 282 Privileges, 258, 272, 336, 339 Proconsuls, Military, 180 Progress, 86, 102, 212 (see Re- forms) Provinces, Eighteen, 1, 2, 5, 15, 19, 23, 180, 184, 222 — Pauper, 203 (see Impecunious) Provincial Councils (see Local) — expenditure, 208, 217 — generals, 260 Prussia, 99, 109 Ptolemy, 48, 62 P'u-chou Fu, 241 Puh-hai, state, 33, 133, 257 P'u-k'ou, 165, 174, 253 Pulo Condor, 79, 391 (see Kunlun) P'ulun, Prince, 383 P'u-lu-t'eh, or Buruts, 389 (see Kirghis) Punishments, 307 (see Nine Chap- ters) Purun-ki River, 23, 59, 69, 81 Purveyors, Army, 44 Pusan (see Fusan) Putao (North Biu-ma), 13 Quelpaert, 38, 391 Queue (see Pigtail) Quilon, 75-7 (see Coilon, Kawlam) Raggi, Sign, S., 119 Railways, 84, 98, 104, 113, 104, 211, 267, 370 — Bhamo to Momein, 174 — Canton to Macao, 114 — Ch'ang-sha to Nan-ch'ang, 164 — Hankow to Sz Ch'wan, 160, 268 — Kiang Si (Kewkiang to Nan- ch'ang, etc.), 163 — Peking to Hankow, 253 to Kalgan, 168 to Mukden, 84 — Shanghai to Nanking, 176, 253 to Ningpo, 158, 212, 267 — Shashi to Hingi, 160 — Siberian, 104, 366 — Tientsin to P'u-k'ou (Nanking), 253 — Tsinan to Kiao Chou, 171 — Tonquin, 74, 108, 173 Rain, prayers for, 301 Ramie fibre, 149 Rangoon, 48, 62, 83 Rapids, 159 Rates, local, 209, 301 Ratio decidendi, 332, 342 Rebellions (see Mussulmans, Tai- pings) Red Cross, 119 — Earth State, 29 (see Siam) hairs, 36, 93 — River, 21, 85, 172 — salt, 241 — Sea, 36, 48, 52, 57, 80 Reed flats, 222, 228, 238 (see Rushes) Reforms, 209, 242, 261, 265, 287, 307, 368 Regent (see Prince Ch'un, Jun.) Regis, S.J., 106 Religion, 41, 132, 293-306 — natural, 302 — political, 309 — privileges for, 339 RepubUc, 344, 365-86 (see Min kwoh, Kung-hoh) 412 INDEX Republic, changes under, 15, 184, 188, 190, 281, 288, 292, 296, 297, 308 Republican China, 177 Revenue, 2, 45, 167, 191, 193, 198, 205-21 (see Grain) — salt, 222-44 Revolts (see Mussulmans, Tai- pings, " Boxers") Revolution in letters, 16, 344 — of A.D. 1911, causes, 268 — of 220 B.C. (unifying), 318, 320 Rhinoceros, 48 Rho, Jacques, S.J., 95 Rhubarb, 57, 79 Ricci, Matthew, S.J., 28, 86, 87, 90, 94, 109 Rice salaries, 205 — trade, 144, 164 (see Grain) — tribute, 1 97 (see Grain Revenue) Richthofen's theory, 11 Rival states period, 43 (see Feudal, Vassal) River steamers, 13, 163 — systems, 10-13 (see Drainage) Riviere, Henri, 107 Roads, definition of, 86 (see Trade Routes) — Great, 59, 69, 73, 81, 83-5, 127 — in land, 74, 78 — to Manchuria, 84 — to Tibet, 82 Robertson, Sir Brooke, 153, 249 Rockhill, Hon. W, W., 56, 71. 201 Rodney Gilbert, 11, 69, 84, 302 Roman parallels, 16, 19, 21, 25, 26, 126, 296, 315, 317, 329, 337 (see Greek) — trade, 49, 52, 62 " Romania," 78 (see El Rum) Rubruquis, 67, 73, 77, 105, 135 Ruggieri, S.J., 87 Rumania, 121 Russia, Early, 34, 102, 126, 136 — missions to and from, 103 — Mongol conquest of, 34 — the name, 3 1 Russian acquisitions, 102-5 — chvurch, 103, 303 (see Orthodox) — College, 306 — competition, 3 — guards at Peking, 102 — shipping, 169 — teas, 146, 162-3 — trade, 146, 151, 161, 163, 169 Russians, 34, 40, 84, 98, 101-4, 126, 134,138, 161,290 Russia's " free resources," 207 Russo-Japanese War, 115, 117, 307 Ruysbroek, 105 [see Rubruquis) Sables, 46, 136 SacharofI, 200 . Sadi Wakas, 68 Saigon, 107 Saints, Buddhist, 180, 390 Sairam, 73, 79 SaJch, 69 (see Tea) Salaries, 205, 209, 255 Salt barter, 45, 232 Salt flats, 228, 235 — revenue, 181, 205, 222-44 — trade, 11, 14, 44, 152, 181, 206, 220, 251 — wells and ponds (see Wells, Ponds) " Sam Collinson," 247 Samoyedes, 132 Samsah Inlet, 156 (see San-tu Ao) Samshu, 46, 391 Sam-shui, 101, 391 — trade, 153, 173 Sanciano, 87 (see Shang-ch'wan) Sandwich Is. (see Honolulu) Sang Hung-yang, 222, 238 Sanitation, 183 Sansing, 175 Sanslcrit, 31 San-tu Ao, 156, 168, 391 Saracens, 241 Sarbaza, 56 Sarikol, 81 Sartak, Khan, 73 Sassanides, 68 Satraps, 23, 39, 44, 95, 325 Savages, 9 (see Aborigines, Tribes, Non-Chinese) Sayang, 82 Schaal, or Schall, Adam, S. J., 95 Schiltberger, 136 Schools, 208, 272 (see Universities) Science, 95, 132, 294 Scot and lot, 193 Scotra, 75 (see Socotra) Scythians, 21, 127 (see Hiung-nu, Huns) Sea routes, 85 Sea-salt, 223, 236 Sea-slugs, 289 Sea trade, 25, 32, 33, 40, 47-52, 56, 63, 67, 70, 71 Secretaries, 209, 338, 341, 356 (see Clerks) Secret Societies, 303-4 (see " Boxers," Shang-tiHwei, White Lily) INDEX 413 Sedans, 163, 261 Seilan, 76 (see Ceylon) Semedo, Pere, 76 Semenat, 76 Senate, 373 Seraglio, 249 (see Palace) Serbia, 121 Seres, Serica, 62, 87 Serfs, 44, 194 Settled states, 59 Sha-chou, 74 (see Tun-hwang) Shaher, or Shehr, 75 Shahidula, 63 Shakyamuni, 296, 297 Shamanism, 302 Shamien, 141, 391 Shan, origin of word, 29 {sec Siam, Chao) — Empire, 13, 69, 234 — States, 37, 74, 101, 107, 109, 145, 173 (see Laos, Muang-u, Momein) Shan-hai Kwan, 84, 168, 248 Shans, 7-9, 22, 29, 35, 140, 183 (sec Siam) Shan Si, 5, 34, 102, 201, 222, 240 Shan Tung, 5, 33, 57, 231, 236, 238 Promontory, 4, 176 trade, 57 " Shantungs," 170 Shang-ch'wan, 87 (see Sanciano) Shang dynasty, 18 bone inscriptions, 343 (see Bone) Shanghai, 23, 79, 96, 98, 165, 171-2, 197, 246 — opened, 98 — trade, 171-2 Shang-ti Hwei, 305 (see Secret Societies) Shara Muren, 85 Shashi, 160, 391 Shehr (see Shaher) Shen Kia-pen, 341 Shen Puh-hai, 317 Shen Si, 5, 19, 62,262 Shen-yang, 391 (see Mukden) Sheng-chang, 179, 253 (see Gover- nors) Sheng-king (city), (see Mukden) Sheng King (province), 5, 165 Shigatsz, 82 ^-j Shignan, 65, 74, 81 ^' SKi-ki, 18 (see Sz-ma Ts'ien, Histories) Shilka River, 133, 138, 391 Shimonoseki Treaty, 116, 391 Shipping, 150, 157, 165, 166 Shipping Chinese, 150, 157, 160 — German, 153 — Japanese, 150, 157, 160, 101, 164, 166 Shiraz, 78 Shiu-heng, 87 {see Chao-k'ing) Shogiin, 115, 393 Shroffs, 255, 391 Shuga, 82 Shuh, Empire, 24 (see Sz Ch'wan) Shuh, Kingdom, 5, 222 (see Sz Ch'wan) " Shum," the Viceroy, 386 {sec Ts'en Ch'un-hiian) Si-an Fu, 4, 23, 24, 33, 52,. 55, 59, 63, 64, 69, 391 Si Iviang, 13, 21, 60, 101 (see West and Canton rivers) Si-ning Fu, 69, 82, 392 Siam, 31, 36, 37, 40, 53, 74, 140 (see Shans) — modern, 140 — trade with, 1 72 Siamese, 8, 49 (see Shans and Chao) — Early, 29, 62, 69, 140 — Modern, 9 Siang, river, 6, 61 Siberia, 28, 54, 104, 127^40, 191 — Railway, 366 (see Railways) Sibir, 135 (sec Issibur) Sicily, 57 Sikkim, 392 — Convention, 100 Silk fabrics. 154, 159 — revenue, 45, 191 — trade, 45, 49, 50, 54, 57, 62, 07, 79, 146, 154, 159 — wild, 170 {see Oak) Silver, 42, 57, 91, 207, 216, 283 (see Bullion) — drain of, 97 — Exchange, 142, 172, 207 (see Exchange) — export, 57 " Sin," external, 281 Sina, 62 (see Thin, Ts'in, Seres, Tzinistan) Singapore, 48, 83, 94, 298 Sin Kiang (see New Territory) Sin-min T'un, 175 Skins (see Hides) Slaves, 52, 195, 300, 337 Slavs, 134 " Small" River, 223-4 {see Lesser) Smith, Rev. A., 271 Smuggling, 204, 290 Snobbery, absence of, 183, 250, 281 (see Democracy) 414 INDEX Soap, 46, 147 Social tabu, 44, 183, 300 Socotra, 75, 83 Sogd, 66-8, 128 Soldier, the Chinese, 263, 270 Soli, 75 Solons, 133, 262 Songchin, 392 Sons, 287, 302 Soochow, 116, 175, 187 Soul, 84 South Seas, 32, 36, 40, 51, 55, 57, 71, 94 (see Indian Ocean) South Yiieh, 48 (see Nan-yiieh) Southern China, 19, 23 Soy, 392 Soya hispida, 148, 166 (see Soy, Beans) Spain one with Portugal, 90 Spaniards, 36, 89, 117 — Early, 78, 85 — in Annam, 107 Spheres of influence, 101 Spice Islands, 92 Spirits (liquor), 46, 182, 298 (see Drink) Spread of Chinese (see Expan- sion) Spring and autumn annals, 17 (see History) Squeezed feet (see Foot- binding) "Squeezes," 206, 216, 220, 221, 250, 290 Srinagar, 63 Stamp duties, 182 Standards of currency, 143 (see Currency, Exchange) Staunton, Sir Geo., 337 Steam, 86 Steamers, 13, 162 Steam-launches, 163 Stein, Sir Aurel, 18, 32, 60, 62, 63, 77, 191, 347, 392 Stepanhoff, 138 Stephen, Sir Oas. F., 308, 318 St. John's Island, 87, 89 (see Sanciano, Shang-ch'wan) Stone city or tower, 62 (see Daraut, Tashkend) " Straits," the. 142, 386 Straw braid, 148, 167, 170 — hats, 157 Strogonoff, 136, 392 Sii-chou Fu, 252, 378 Siian-hwa Fu, 235 Suan-t'ung, Emperor, 372-73 Submarines, 86 Sugar, 57, 91, 147-8, 153-6 Sugar " rigging," 148 Suh-chou (An Hwei), 231 (Kan Suh), 23, 59, 74, 79 Sui, dynasty, 28-9, 38, 53, 192, 392, Suicide, 273, 331 Suifenho, 174 Sukchur (see Suh-chou of Kan Suh) Suleiman the Arab, 54 Suliman the Panthay, 264 Sultan of Turkey, 120 Sulu, 32, 36, 40 Sumatra, 32, 36, 54, 57, 65, 75-8, 94, 96, 392 — ■ coolies, 94 — Dutch in, 94 — oil, 146, 149 Summer Palace, 98 Sumptuary laws, 44 Sun, family, 24 Siin-chou Fu, 41 Siin-tsz, philosopher, 313 Sun Yat-sen, 372, 374, 370, 378, 386 Sung, dynasty of Liu, 27, 392 (the great), 33, 34, 38, 56, 71, 139, 157, 197, 228, 237, 241, 335 (seeManzi) — the word, 392 — I^ao-jen, 378 Suomi, 130 (see Finns) Suzerainty, 116 Swatow, 56, 98, 110, 223, 392 — river, 223, 224 — trade, 148 Sweden, 117 Switzerland, 119 Swords, 57 — as coins, 43 (see Knife coins) Sycee, 213 Syndicates, 167, 211, 381 Syr, 23, 292 (see Ts'in, Sina, etc.) Syria, 22, 23, 55 Syriac, 32, 55, 72 Syrians, 22, 23, 48-9, 77, 106, 132, 348 System of government, 23, 177- 90 Sz Ch'wan, 3, 9, 23, 60, 197, 202, 229, 248 cotton, 145 East and West differences, 3 opened, 100 salt, 229-31 tribes, 8, 9 Sz-li, 392 (see Syr, Ta-ts'in, etc.) Sz-ma, dynasty, 25, 392 INDEX 415 Sz-ma, family, 25 — Ts'ien, historian, 18, 25, 205 Sz-mao, 101, 10!), 173 (see Esmok) Tabriz, 73 Tabu, 183 {.see Social) Tachibana, M., 77 Tael, 142, 172, 207, 392 (see Exchange, Currency) Tagarma, 74 Tai, the race, 29, 140 (see Shan) Taipinga, 41, 106, 200, 203, 225, 227, 228, 245, 248, 260, 305, 392 T'ai-wan, 92, 392 — Fu, 98 T'ai-yiian Fu, 241 Tajiks, 53 (see Arabs) Takakusu, M., 76 Takow, 392 (see T'ai-wan Fu) Taku, 112, 168, 247, 392 Talas, 64, 66, 67, 73 Tolas, the, 74 Talecan, 74 Ta-Uen Wan, 105, 110, 167, 392 (see Dairen, Dalny) Tamerlane, 78, 135 Tamra (see Tan-lo) Tamsui, 80, 98 Tan, 22 (see Burma) T'an Yen-k'ai, 262 Tana, 75, 77 T'ang, dynasty, 30, 33, 38, 07, 194, 339 — " men of," 30, 340, 392 Tang-ch'ang, 392 Tang-hiang, 392 Tangla range, 13 Tangut, 34, 55, 168, 392 (see Hia state) Tan-lo, 391 (see Quelpaert) Tao, division, 189 Tao, principle, 314 Taoism, 72, 295, 297, 303, 317 Tao-kwang, Emperor, 304 Tarbagatai, 73, 103, 137-8 Tarim River, 55, 59, 128-9, 377 Tarsando, 392 (see Darchendo, Ta- tsien-lu) Tartar, the word, 392 — " Emperors," 128 — garrisons, 160 — generals, 258, 260 Tartars, 19, 24, 27, 30, 35, 41, 46, 129, 130, 195, 327, 339, 361 (see Mongols, Tobols, Turks, Tunguses) Tartary routes, 23 Tashkend, 62, 64, 79, 127, 366, 392 Tashkurgan, 62, 63, 74, 392 (see Stone City) Tata, 130, 197, 392 (see Tartar) Ta-tsien-lu, 82, 233, 392 (see Darchendo) Ta-Ts'in, 23, 28, 32, 49, 50, 62, 87, 95, 102, 392 (see Syr, Thin, Romans, Franks, etc.) — envoy, 52 — means " Franks," 28 — monastery, 72 (see Nestorians) — trade, 49, 62 Ta-tsz, 35, 197, 392 (see Tata, Man-tsz) Tatungkow, 174 Taugas, or Tau-hwa-sh, 68 Tax-collectors, 209 Taxes, 57, 182 (see Duties, Likin, Revenue) Taxila, 64 Tazi, or Ta-shih (see Tajiks) Tchimkend, 64 Tchin, 79 (see Thin, Sina, Chi-na, Tzinistan) Tea, 55, 57, 69, 82, 85, 138, 163, 392 — and Tibet, 3, 57, 159, 233 — " boiling," 81 — Ceylon, 146, 162 — Indian, 143, 146, 162 — Java, 162 — smugghng, 117, 142 — trade, 57, 103, 138, 142-3, 157, 227 Tehran, 73 Te-i-chi (Deutsch), 99 Telegraphs, 117, 211 Telephones, 211 Temperance, 288 Temple feasts, 301 T endue, 84 (see Kukukhoto, Kwei-hwa) Tengri Tagh, 392 (see T'ien-shan) T'eng-yiieh (see Momein) Termed, 79 Terranuova, 112 Teutonic tongues, 7 Textile Commission, 145 Thai (see Tai, Shan) Theodore, Czar, 136 " Thin," State (see Sina, Tzini- stan, etc.) " Thirteen Hongs," 98, 141 " Thousand Buddha Grotto," 77 " Thousand Springs," 64 Three Boy Emperors, 248 Tibet, 3, 34, 37. 39, 80, 81, 100, 377 — the word, 393 416 INDEX Tibetan dynasties, 27, 28 — Expedition of 1904, 82, 101, 370 — liighlands, 6 — -inscriptions, 11 {see Ancient) — language, 31 — trade, 57, 100, 159, 168, 174, 233, 3G6 — tribes, 8, 9, 14, 19,22 Tibetans, 20, 180 — and Siamese, 69, 139 — Early, 13, 21, 139 — first aggression, 31, 32 — in Turkestan, 32, 55 T'ieh-ling, 175 Tien, Kingdom, 5, 222 {see Yiin Nan) Tien-li, faith, 304 Tien-peh, or Tin-pdk, 89 T'ien-shan, 59, 393 {see Tengri Tagh) Tientsin, 4, 34, 98, 167, 187, 237, 247, 369, 393 — massacre, 99 — river, 247 — trade, 84, 148, 151, 167 area, 4, 84, 168 {see Trade) — treaty, 98, 142, 247, 299 Tih-hwa Fu (capital of Sin Kiang, see Urumtsi) Timber, 157 Ting, Admiral, 270 T'ing-chou Fu, 224 Ting-hai, 227, 393 Titles, changed, 179 — Sale of {see Ofifice) Titsineh, 93 Toba, ^dynasty, 24, 26, 28, 34, 51, 52, 129, 133, 393(«eeWei) — family, 34 Tobacco, 91, 147, 182, 246 {see Cigarettes) Tobar, Pere, 70 Tobolsk, 103, 135, 136 Tobol-Tartars, 136 Toctamish 135 Tokhara, 64, 68-9, 77 Tokmak, 64 Tokto, 235 Toky5, 393 Tola, river, 73, 80, 131 Tomsk, 136 Toniclanguages, 19, 353, 360 Tonquin, 8, 21, 23, 57, 85, 107, 172, 265, 365, 393 Toro, river, 85 Tortoise-shell, 42 — inscriptions, 343 {see Bone) Torture, 283, 317, 318, 325 Touch, of silver, 213 Tourane, 57, 173 Tournon, Mgr., 118 Toys, 147 Trade areas, 3, 12, 34, 168 — border, 128 — early, 23, 42, 128 — modern, 141-76 — prohibitions, 89 — routes, 32, 57-86, 161 — Transhipment, 155, 160, 162, 172 Traders, Chinese as, 291 — disqualifications of, 53 Trading missions, 139 Transfer fees, 182 Transit-passes, 153, 249 (see Likin) Treason, 336 Treasurer, Provincial, 179 Treasury, 207 {see Fisc, ^rarium) Treaties (see Table, pp. 122-5) — with Austria, 119 Belgium, 113 Brazil, 120 Congo State, 120 Corea, 116 Denmark, 117 England, 98, 100, 101, 106, 109, 114, 142, 144, 247, 299 France, 98, 106-8 Germany, 110, 381 Holland, 94 Italy, 119 Japan, 115, 116, 251 Mexico, 120 Norway, 120 Peru, 119 Portugal, 89, 114 Prussia, 109 Russia, 98, 103, 105, 138, 365 Spain, 117 Sweden, 120 United States, 112, 151 Treaty-ports, 100, 142, 189 — forty- seven, 175 Trebizond, 67, 77 Tribes, distribution of, 7, 24, 183, 203 Tribute, 26, 29, 36, 42, 46, 56, 100, 135-6, 139-40 "Tribute" from Europeans, 93, 100, 118 Tripartite China, 24 Triumvirate, ancient, 17 (see Duumvirate) Ts'ai Ac, 385 INDEX 417 Tsaidam, 81, 393 Ts'an-cheng Yiian, 380 (see Par- liament) Ts'an-i Yiian, 374, 377 {see Tar- liament) Ts'ang Chou, 239 Ts'ao family and dynasty, 24 {see Wei) Ts'en Ch'un-hiian, 38G {see " Shum") Tseng Kwoh-fan, 24G, 305 Tseng, Marquess, 246, 305, 365-6 Ts'i dynasty (Chinese), 27 (Tartar), 27 — kingdom, 5, 43, 238 Tsi-nan Fu, 170, 175 Tsiang-kun, 180, 257 Tsin dynasty, 24, 33 Ts'in dynasty, 18, 19, 24, 43 Ts'in "Great," 23, 392 {see Ta- ts'in) Ts'in people, 23 {see Syr, Syrians) Ts'in- wang Tao, 168, 393 Ts'ing-tao, 170, 381 {see Kiao Chou) Tsitsihar, 85, 127, 175 {see Heh- lung Kiang) T soling, 258 {see Niuru) Tso Tsung-t'ang, 81 Ts'iian-chou Fu, 32, 55, 70, 71, 74, 88, 89 {see Zaitun) Tsung-li Yamen, 393 {see Boards) Tsung-shih, 273 Tsuruhaitu, 84 Tsushima, or Tui-ma, 393 Tsz-cheng Yiian, 373 Tuhkun, 179, 251 Tulishen, 103 T'umu, 36, 393 Tunguses, 30, 39, 47, 128, 165, 181 Tungusic dynasties, 24-9, 240 — races, 23, 128-30, 165 Tunguz, the word, 393 Tun-hwang, 23, 63, 73, 77, 191 T'ung-kiang-tsz, 175 Tung-kwan city, 223, 393 T'ung-kwan Pass, 10 T'ung-meng Hivei, 376 (see Kwoh- min Tang) Tung-t'ing Lake, 10, 19, 103, 393 Turanians, 19, 136 Turfan, 59, 64, 78, 79, 83 Tiirgas, 64, 132 Turguts, 103. 389 (see Kalmucks) Turk, the word, 29, 130, 393 Turkestan, 1, 2, 21, 32, 34, 37, 51, 129, 139, 269, 365, 377 (see Sin Kiang) Turkestan becomes Tibetan, 32, 55 Turki, 180 Turkish dynasties, 38, 193, 240 — language, 29, 31 {see Ancient) — monuments, 31 Turko-Tartars, 14 Turks. 21, 29, 54, 64, 120, 128 — of Turkey, 121 — Central, Eastern, or Northern, 04, 132 — subdued, 30 — Western, 30, 53, 64, 67, 68, 132 (see Dizabul) Tutuh, 251, 253, 268 {see Military Governors) Tut'ung, 180, 257 Twan K'i-jwei, 386 Twelve Tables, 315 (see Roman parallels) TwoCheh, 197, 226 Two Hu, 229 (see Hu Kwang) — Hwai, 227 — Kiang, 229 ' — Kwang, 13, 108, 228 Tycoon, 393 {see Shogun) Tzinistan, 63, 79 (see Tchin, Thin, etc.) Uliassutai, 70, 81, 84, 127, 137, 235, 393 Umbrellas, 147 United League, 376-7 (see T'ung- meng) United States (see America) Universities, 164, 176, 383 Upper Burma, taken, 100 {see Burma) Urga, 84, 127, 132, 180, 387, 390, 393 (see K'ulun) Uriangkha, 38, 393 — dai, 38 Uriankhai, 389, 393 Uruguay, 121 Urumtsi, 59, 73 Usbegs, 82 Ush, 83 Ussuri, 98, 103, 138 Valley of Yang-tsze, 6 Van Braam, 94 Van Hoorn, 93 Vandals, 129 Vasco de Gama, 75 Vassal China, 314 (see Feudal) Vasudeva, 47 {see Indo-Scythians) Verbiest, S.J., 95 418 INDEX Vial, Pere, 8 Viceroys, 178 — " Three Good." 187, 211, 242, 255, 266, 268, 369 Vissicre, Prof. A., 269 Vladivostock, 105, 170, 393 Voguls, 136 Volga, 73, 103 Voluntary ports, 156, 168, 171, 174 Wa (.see Wo) Wade, Sir T., 117, 175, 247, 249, 256 Waggons, 61, 66, 73 {see Carts, High Carts) Wahab, the Arab, 67 Wakhan, 60 Wala, 103, 136, 389 {see Eleuth) Wall, the Great, 14, 84, 180, 236 Walled cities, 15, 184, 317 Wallenberg, Count, 120 Wan Men, 159 Wang-hia Treaty, 112 Wangpoo River (Shanghai), 393 War (see Japan, Russia, " Boxers," Franco) War, Our First, 96, 112 Second, 94, 98, 103, 106-7, 109, 112, 141, 146 Ward, Artemug, 183 Warrants, 187 — salt, 231, 237 Washington Treaty, 112 Wassili, 134 Waterways, 233 {see Routes) Wax, 159 Wealth, 6, 45, 282 Wei, Chinese dynasty, 24, 393 {see Ts'ao) — Tartar dynasty, 27, 393 (see Toba) — River, 391 (see Oech, Oxus) (Ho Nan and Chih Li), 236, 393 (in Shon Si), 4, 10, 14, 76, 236, 241, 393 Wei-hai Wei, 101, 110, HI, 171, 306, 393 Wei-hwei Fu, 236 Wei Kwang-t'ao, 241 Wei Yang, 317 Weights and Measures, 251, 346 Wells, salt, 222, 228, 231, 238 Wenchow, 22, 42, 157, 197, 225 West, Far, 23, 59 (see Europeans) Western Ocean Men, 90, 94, 102 (see Portugal) West River, 13, 21, 61, 83, 100 (see Canton, Si Kiang, Pearl, etc.) « Valley, 222 (see Drainage) Whampoa, 106. 112, 141, 393-4 White Czar, 126 — Lily Sect, 300 (see Secret Societies) — Ocean Faith, 305 — races, 126 WilUam or Wilhelm II, 104, 367, 381 (see Kaiser) Williams, Dr. S. W., 131, 141 Wine (see Spirits) Wireless, 86 Wirth, Albert, 135 - Witte, Count, 207 Wives, Chinese, 284 — Tartar, 46 Wizardry, 328 Wo or Wa tribes, 20, 394 Women, 44, 46, 141, 285-6, 296-7, 327, 335, 336. 377, 384 Women's dress. 147, 286 Wonsan. 394 (see Genzan, Yiian- shan) Wood, Lieut.. 79 Wool, 167, 169 Woollens, 142 Worship of Heaven, 381 Writing, Ancient, 344 — ignorance of, 328 Written systems, 8, 10 Wu, Empire of, 24, 52 — Kingdom of, 222 Wu-ch'ang Fu, 52, 229, 265, 372 (see Hankow) Wu-chou Fu, 13, 100, 155, 173 Wuhu, 100, 164, 394 Wu San-kwei, 39, 234 Wusun, tribe, 134 WuTi, 21, 22, 44, 59, 82, 223, 325, 389 — his conquests, 23 (see Han Wu Ti) Wu T'ing-fang (Ng Choy), 341, 386 Wylie, Alex., 76 Xavier, St. Francis, 87 Ya-chouFu, 57, 159, 233 Yaksa. 103. 138 Yakub Beg. 81, 104, 264 Yall River, 85 Yamens, 187, 189, 219, 260, 394 Yangchow, 229, 246 Yang Kien, 28 INDEX 419 Yang Ti, 28, 53 Yang-tsze River, course of, 161, 220 defences, 379 — gorges, 159, 231 — navigation, 12 — sources, 12, 161 — Upper, 24, 69, 399 {see Kin-sha) — Valley, 3, 6, 12. 231 — word, the, 394 Yao taotai, 245 — tribes, 7 Yards, salt, 230 Yarkand, 59, 02, 74, 79 Yarmak, 130 Yarn, Chinese, 159 {see Cotton) — Indian, 145 — Japanese, 145, 168 Yatung, or Gnatong, 1 74 Year, Chinese, 374 Yeddo, or Yedo, Treaty, 115, 394 {see Lord Elgin) Yeh, Viceroy, 98 Yellow Czar, 137 — races, 120, 236 — River, 4, 101, 195, 208, 211, 230 Bend or Loop, 19, 34, 84, 127 cradle of Chinese race, 4, 230 mouths, 4, 10 navigation, 11 sources, 10, 09, 82, 161 vagaries, 237, 250 Yelu Hiliang, 73 Yenissei River, 130 Yezdedgerd, 68 Yin Shan, 14, 394 Ying (camp), 269 Yodja)ui, 61 Yoh-fah (of 200 B.C. and a.d. 1912), 321, 375 Yii, Emperor, 16 Yiian, dynasty, 38 (see Kublai) — River, 6 — K'eh-ting, 382 Yiian- Kung P'u, 394 Yiian- shan, 394 (see Wonsan, Genzan) Yiian Shi-k'ai, 146, 107, 181, 185, 187, 219, 244, 257, 205, 208, 292 (see " Tliree Good Viceroys ") dismissed, 268, 371 Emergency President, 374 " Emperor," 384 involved with Emperor, 368 Permanent President, 374 — — recalled, 372 Yiieban, 131, 134 Yueh, 19, 21-3, 42, 101, 222 — the Two, 5, 21, 22 (see South) Yiieh-chi, 64, 134 — Fu, 65 Yugm-s, 136 Yule, Colonel, 58 Yiin Nan, 3, 8, 12, 22-4, 34, 48, 60, 83, 99, 107, 172, 174, 195, 203, 224, 233, 298 (see Tien) conquered, 34 explored, 107 independent, 385 Yiin-nanFu, 85, 108, 109, 174 — • opium, 247 — trade, 155, 172-3 — tribes, 8 Yung-ch'ang Fu, 52 Zafar, 75 (see Djafar) Zagros, Mts., 61 Zaitun, 32, 56, 71, 74, 77, 96, 156, 1 97 ( see Chang-chou and Ts'iian- chou) Zanuj, 75 Zanzibar, 57. 71, 75, 394 Zemarchus, 64, 66, 67 Zend-Avesta, 61 Zi, Paul (see Frontispiece) Zoroastrians, 67 (see Persians) Zuiderzee, 11, 228, 394 29 PRINTED BT HAZELL, WATSON AND VINET, LD., LONDON AND AYLESBURY, ENGLAND. t it vTiU b^ tl U'lrveiSltyolCjIifO'l.j ■ n- Jr- ■ L006 834 0i"7 3 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 001 053 673 8 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles Tbb book U DUE .. U,. to, da« sump^ b.,„„. JUW 5 7001 jUIIO^Di 315