CHINA BOOKS BY MISS SINGLETON TURRETS, TOWERS, AND TEMPLES. Great Buildings of the World Described by Great Writers. GREAT PICTURES. Described by Great Writers. WONDERS OF NATURE. Described by Great Writers. ROMANTIC CASTLES AND PALACES. Described by Great Writers. FAMOUS PAINTINGS. Described by Great Writers. HISTORIC BUILDINGS. Described by Great Writers. FAMOUS WOMEN. Described by Great Writers. GREAT PORTRAITS. Described by Great Writers. HISTORIC BUILDINGS OF AMERICA. Described by Great Writers. HISTORIC LANDMARKS OF AMERICA. Described by Great Writers. GREAT RIVERS OF THE WORLD. Described by Great Writers. FAMOUS CATHEDRALS. Described by Great Writers. FAMOUS SCULPTURE. Described by Great Writers. MODERN PAINTINGS. Described by Great Writers. WONDERS OF THE WORLD. Described by Great Writers. PARIS. Described by Great Writers. LONDON. Described by Great Writers. RUSSIA. Described by Great Writers. JAPAN. Described by Great Writers. VENICE. Described by Great Writers. HOLLAND. Described by Great Writers. ROME. Described by Great Writers. GERMANY. Described by Great Writers. SWITZERLAND. Described by Great Writers. TURKEY AND THE BALKAN STATES. Described by Great Writers. FLORENCE. Described by Great Writers. EGYPT. Described by Great Writers. CHINA. Described by Great Writers. LOVE IN LITERATURE AND ART. THE GOLDEN ROD FAIRY BOOK. THE WILD FLOWER FAIRY BOOK. A GUIDE TO THE OPERA. A GUIDE TO MODERN OPERA. DUTCH NEW YORK. Manners and Customs of New Amsterdam in the Seventeenth Century. How TO VISIT THE GREAT PICTURE GALLERIES. How TO VISIT THE ENGLISH CATHEDRALS. . CHINA As Described by Great Writers Collected and Edited by ESTHER SINGLETON A uthor of ' 'Turrets, Towers and Temples, " ''Great Pictures," "A Guide to the Opera," etc. WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS Nero Dodd, Mead and Company 1912 Copyright, 1912, by DODD, MEAD & Co. Published, October, STAG! ANNUL Preface POPULAR opinion with regard to China is rapidly changing as this strange world is becoming better known. Even now, it may be almost termed an untravelled country, although of late years the tourist and artist have been extending their adventures farther afield. Mr. Liddell, who, in his beautiful book China: its Marvel and Mystery (London, 1909), has given many delightful pictures with both pen and brush, says : " China is such a vast country, and holds such wealth of beauty and interest that an artist might spend years and then only have taken the cream from each place. . . . I venture to think that if Europeans could but see more pictures, realistically painted, of the natural and created beauties of that great Empire, they would form a better opinion, not only of the country, but of the civilization and very high artistic sense of the people. . . . My visit to Japan was but a short one, . . . but I could not help comparing the two countries artistically, very much (from my point of view) in favour of China, which, with increased facilities for travelling, will become a great holiday ground for, at any rate, the wealthier traveller." vi PREFACE Another artist, Mortimer Mempes, writes : " The trav- eller in China is impressed with the vastness of its extent, the fertility of its various countries, the grandeur of its rivers, the beauty and boldness of its bridges, the strength of its city walls, the contrast of wealth or squalor in the cities, the untiring industry of the people. A more de- tailed knowledge compels admiration for their proficiency in arts and crafts." It is manifestly impossible in a book of this size to give a detailed description of eighteen provinces covering a mil- lion and a half square miles in which there are no less than four thousand walled cities ! I have, therefore, had to limit my selections to a few of the best-known places and leave the rest to general articles. The inhabitants of the Flowery Kingdom are almost less known than the country itself. Like everything else in this curious country, their character is paradoxical and hard for the Westerner to comprehend. Not comprehending, he is naturally lacking in sympathy. In this topsy-turvy land one of the obstacles to mutual understanding is the re- lation of man to his ancestors and the spiritual world. The whole of Chinese life revolves around this. One of the authors quoted in this book notes : " The Chinaman ob- viously believes that a man's soul is immortal and that its welfare has the very closest connection with the welfare of his descendant. The commercial man will tell you that the Chinese are materialists people who have no faith ; and yet, with glorious inconsistency, he will explain that the PREFACE vii difficulty of using Chinese labour abroad is that even the commonest coolie demands that his body shall be repatriated and shall lie in some place which will not hinder his son doing filial worship to his spirit." Another stumbling-block is the envelope of etiquette that surrounds everything etiquette developed through and by centuries of practice. " Much of the falsehood to which the Chinese as a nation are said to be addicted," says Mr. Holcombe, " is a result of the demands of etiquette. A plain, frank c no ' is the height of discourtesy. Refusal or denial of any sort must be softened and toned down into an expression of re- gretted inability. Unwillingness to grant a favour is never shown. In place of it there is seen a chastened feeling of sorrow that unavoidable but quite imaginary circumstances render it wholly impossible. This habit of repression and misrepresentation of feeling has given the outside world the idea that, as a nation, the Chinese are stolid, indifferent, and lacking in nerves. Such is not the case. They are keenly sensitive, proud, and passionate. As might be ex- pected, when, under a provocation too great for endurance, they give way to their feelings, the result, whether it be grief or anger, is as extreme and unreasonable, from our standpoint, as their ordinary suppression of emotion is absurd and unnecessary. It is difficult, perhaps unfair, to judge them in this regard, since their standard is absolutely different from ours. They have covered themselves with a lacquer of courtesy and etiquette so thick and highly pol- viii PREFACE ished that the real fibre of character lying underneath is discovered only upon very rare occasions. Half the world believes that the lacquer covers nothing valuable, or con- taining the finer qualities of manhood." One of the most illuminating essays in this book is Wu Ting Fang's Civilization of China delivered before the Universal Races Congress held in London in 1911. In this we gain something like a clear insight into the social and moral code of the most venerable civilization in ex- istence. The people of the different provinces vary greatly, and there is no uniform tongue to bind them together; but now that China is awakening the Chinese of the Mandarins is being taught everywhere, and before long the Chinese peo- ple will speak one common language. The interesting extract by H. Borel shows the growing tendency towards the development of national consciousness. The compo- sition of a ten-year-old Chinese boy regarding the needs of China and her future destiny, cited on page 87, is most instructive. The eyes of the world are upon China awakening more and more every day. China is, perhaps, the most fasci- nating of all countries to the student of men, manners and events. Lord Weardale says : " In less than twenty years we have witnessed the most remarkable awakening of nations long regarded as sunk in such depths of somnolence as to be only interesting to the Western world because they presented a wide and prolific PREFACE ix field for commercial rivalries, often greedy, cruel and fraught with bloodshed in their prosecution, but which oth- erwise were an almost negligible quantity in international concerns. " How great is the change in the lifetime of a single generation, when, to select two instances alone, we con- template the most remarkable rise of the power of the Em- pire of Japan, the precursor, it would seem, of a similar revival of the activities and highly developed qualities of the population of the great Empire of China. " Nearer and nearer we see approaching the day when the vast populations of the East will assert their claim to meet on terms of equality the nations of the West, when the free institutions and the organized forces of the one hemisphere will have their counterbalance in the other, when their mental outlook and their social aims will be in prin- ciple identical ; when, in short, the colour prejudice will have vanished and the so-called coloured races shall no longer merely meet in the glowing periods of missionary exposition, but, in very fact, regard one another as in truth men and brothers." The punctilious courtesy, (which includes the banishment of all disagreeable, offensive, or even awkward subjects of conversation), the generosity, patience and contentment of the very poor, the respect of the young for the old and the reverence of all for the uncomprehended world of spirits, certainly point to a high order of civilization. We may note, in conclusion, that in the language of flowers and x PREFACE emblems the peony, bamboo and lotus, appearing so fre- quently in art and decoration, stand respectively for " wealth," " peace " and " the perfect gentleman," all three of which it is a Mandarin's ambition to attain. E. S. New Tork, September, 1912. CONTENTS PART I THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE PAGE THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE i Sir Henry Arthur Blake CHINA AND THE CHINESE 8 Alexis Krausse HISTORY ........ 26 Edward Harper Parker DR. SUN YAT SEN AND THE CHINESE REVOLUTION . 50 7. Ellis Barker THE CIVILIZATION OF CHINA .... 74 Wu Ting-Fang THE AWAKENING OF CHINA ..... 82 H. Bore! WHAT HAS AWAKENED CHINA .... 91 Lord William Gascoyne-Cecil PART II DESCRIPTIONS THE CITIES OF CHINA 101 Lord William Gascoyne-Cecil CHINESE STREETS ....... 108 John Henry Gray PEKING 118 Pierre Leroy-Beaulieu THE TEMPLE OF HEAVEN . . . . . 126 T. Hodgson Liddell xi xii CONTENTS THE SUMMER PALACE 133 T. Hodgson Liddell THE MING TOMBS AND GREAT WALL . . . 140 Pierre Leroy-Beaulieu NANKING AND THE MING TOMB .... 146 J. de J. SHANGHAI 153 T. Hodgson Liddell NlNGPO 162 Arthur Evans Moule HONGKONG 169 T. Hodgson Liddell CANTON X 7 6 T. Hodgson Liddell CH'ENG-TU l8 3 R. F. Johnston MOUNT OMEI l8 9 R. F. Johnston PART III MANNERS AND CUSTOMS THE LANGUAGE *97 Chester Holcombe THE LITERARY AND MANDARIN CLASS . . 212 Pierre Leroy-Beauheu HONOURARY DISTINCTIONS 221 Henry Charles Sirr RELIGIONS IN CHINA . . . . 22 & Lord William Gascoyne-Cecil ANCESTOR WORSHIP 2 3^ R. S.'Gundry CONTENTS xiii ETIQUETTE AND CEREMONY 245 Chester Holcombe WOMEN AND MARRIAGE ..... 257 Henry Charles Sirr THE POOR IN CHINA 267 Chester Holcombe DRESS 275 Henry Charles Sirr AMUSEMENTS 284 J. Dyer Ball FESTIVALS 290 Sir Henry Arthur Blake FEAST OF LANTERNS ...... 296 John Henry Gray HOTELS, INNS AND RESTAURANTS .... 300 John Henry Gray A MANDARIN'S DINNER PARTY .... 308 Henry Charles Sirr FLOWERS AND GARDENS 314 J. Dyer Ball AGRICULTURE AND FISHING ..... 320 Sir Henry Arthur Blake BOATS 326 John Henry Gray PART IV ART THE DRAGON AND OTHER EMBLEMS . . . 336 J. Dyer Ball ARCHITECTURE ....... 34 2 Robert K. Douglas xiv CONTENTS PAGODAS 352 John Henry Gray PORCELAIN AND POTTERY . . . . .361 J. Dyer Ball COINS AND ART 376 Robert K. Douglas INDUSTRIAL ARTS 383 Henry Charles Sirr ILLUSTRATIONS The Great Wall . . . . . Frontispiece Monumental Arch, near Soo-Chow . Facing page 2 Chinese Doorway, Canton " " 8 Taou-Kwang Reviewing Guards at Pal- ace, Peking " " 26 Village on Soo-Chow Creek . , " " 50 Ancient Tomb with Stone Figures . " " 74 Koolangsen, Amoy . . . " " 82 Emperor's Summer Palace, near Peking " " 92 Inn- Yard, Peking ...."" 102 Palace near Hong Kong . . " " 108 A Peking Cab " " 118 Temple of Heaven, Peking . . " "126 Grand Pailau, Summer Palace, Peking . " " 134 Avenue Leading to Ming Tombs, Peking " " 140 Avenue Leading to Ming Tombs, Nan- king " 146 Shanghai from the Harbour . . " "154 Chinese Merchants . . . . u " 162 Hong Kong and Harbour . . " "170 Canton Showing Whampoa and Floating Dwellings " "176 Group of Cantonese . . . " "178 Szechwan Highway . . . " "184 Summit of Mount Omei . . ** " 190 xvi ILLUSTRATIONS Chinese Mandarin .... Facing page 212 Confucian Temple ...."" 228 Chinese Funeral Procession . . . " " 238 Chinese Officials ...."" 246 Bride Receiving Presents " " 258 Chinese Itinerant Merchants . " " 268 Chinese Ladies " " 276 Kite-Flying " "284 Festival of Dragon-Boat . . " " 290 Inn near Peking " " 300 Dinner-Party at a Mandarin's House . " " 308 Tea-Gardens, Soo-Chow . . . " "314 Ground the Emperor Ploughs . " " 320 Hong Kong Harbour ...."" 326 Pagoda near Shanghai ...."" 342 The Porcelain Pagoda, Nanking . . " " 358 Old Tea House, Shanghai " " 362 Feeding Silkworms ...."" 384 THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE SIR HENRT ARTHUR BLAKE k HE continuous territory in Asia over which China rules or exercises a suzerainty is over 4,200,000 square miles, but China Proper, excluding Man- churia, Mongolia, Tibet and Turkestan, consists of eight- een provinces, covering an area of 1,530,000 square miles, with a population of about 410,000,000, or about twelve and a half times the area of the United Kingdom, and ten times its population. This area is bounded on the west by southern spurs from the giant mountain regions of Eastern Tibet, that stretch their long arms in parallel ranges through Burma and Western Yunnan, and whose snow-clad crests send forth the great rivers Salween and Mekong to the south, the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers to the east, to fertilize the most productive regions on the surface of the globe. It is this conformation that has so far presented an insur- mountable barrier to the construction of a railway from Bhamo in Burmese territory to the high plateau of Yunnan, from whence the province of Szechwan, richest of all the eighteen provinces in agricultural and mineral wealth, could be reached. Some day the coal, iron, gold, oil and salt of Szechwan, will be exploited, and future generations may 2 CHINA find in the millionaires of Szechwan Chinese speculators as able and far-seeing as the financial magnates who now practically control the destinies of millions in the Western world. The portion south of the Yangtze is hilly rather than mountainous, and the eastern portion north of that great river is a vast plain of rich soil, through which the Yellow River, which from its periodical inundations is called China's Sorrow, flows for over five hundred miles. In a country so vast, internal means of communication are of the first importance, and here China enjoys natural facilities unequalled by any area of similar extent. Three great rivers flow eastward and southward the Hoang-ho, or Yellow River, in the north, the Yangtze in the centre, and the Pearl River, of which the West River is the largest branch, in the south. The Yangtze alone with its affluents is calculated to afford no less than 36,000 miles of waterways. The river population of China comprises many millions, whose varied occupations present some of the most interesting aspects of Chinese life. The population of China is composed of different tribes or clans, whose records date back to the dynasty of Fuh-hi, 2800 B. c. Sometimes divided in separate kingdoms, some- times united by waves of conquest, the northern portion was welded into one empire by the conqueror Ghengis Khan in A. D. 1234, and seventy years later the southern portion was added by his son, Kublai Khan, who overthrew the Sung dynasty. It was during his reign that China was THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE 3 visited by Marco Polo, from the records of whose travels we find that even at that time the financial system of the Far East was so advanced that paper money was used by the Chinese, while in the city of Cambaluc the Peking of to-day Christian, Saracen, and Chinese astrologers con- sulted an astrolable to forecast the nature of the weather, thus anticipating the meteorological bureaux of to-day. There are, however, still districts in the southern portion of China where the aboriginal inhabitants have never ac- cepted the position of complete incorporation with the Chinese neighbours. In the mountain district, between the provinces of Kwangtung and Hunan, a tribe exists known as the Yu people, in whose territory no Chinese officials are permitted to reside, nor do they allow strangers to enter their towns, which are built on crags difficult of access and capable of offering a stubborn resistance to attack. Their chief occupation is forestry, the timber being cut during the winter and floated down the moun- tain streams when in flood. Their customs are peculiar. Among them is the vendetta, which is practiced by the Yu alone of all the people in the Far East. But no woman is ever injured ; and even during the fiercest fighting the women can continue their work in the fields with safety. Their original home was in Yunnan and the western part of Kwangsi, from whence they were driven out by the Chinese in the time of the Sung dynasty. The Yu, Lolos, Miao-tse, Sy-fans, etc. (all Chinese names expressive of contempt, like our " barbarians " ), are stated by Ma-tonan- 4 CHINA lin and other Chinese historians to have been found in- habiting the country when, six thousand years ago, it was occupied by the ancestors of the Chinese, who came from the northwest. The savage inhabitants were gradually driven into the hills where their descendants are still found. Their traditions point to their having been cannibals. Intermarriage with the Chinese is very rare, the Chinese regarding such a union as a mesalliance, and the aboriginal peoples as a cowardly desertion to the enemy. The em- broideries worked by the women are different from those of the Chinese and, I am informed, more resemble the em- broideries now worked at Bethlehem. They are worked on dark cloth in red, or sometimes red and yellow. After the time of Kublai Khan, succeeding centuries found the various divisions of the Chinese again disunited in accordance with a very old Chinese proverb frequently heard at the present day : " Long united we divide : long divided we unite " ; but the final welding took place under Shun-chi, who established the Tsing dynasty in 1644, and imposed upon all Chinese people, as a permanent and evident mark of subjection, the shaving of the front portion of the head and braiding of the back hair into a queue after the Tartar fashion an order at first resented bitterly, but afterwards acquiesced in as an old custom. To this day the removal of the queue and allowing the hair to grow on the front portion of the head is regarded as a casting off of allegiance to .the dynasty. In the Taiping rebellion that raged in the southern provinces from 1850 to 1867, and THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE 5 which down to its suppression by Gordon and Li Hung Chang is computed to have cost the lives of twenty-two and a half millions of people, the removal of the queue and allowing the hair to grow freely was the symbol adopted by the rebels. To secure the empire against future risings, the Manchu conquerors placed Tartar garrisons in every great city, where separate quarters were allotted to them, and for two hundred and sixty years these so-called Tartar soldiers and their families have been supported with doles of rice. They were not allowed to trade, nor to intermarry with the Chinese. The consequence was inevitable. They have become an idle population in whom the qualities of the old virile Manchus have deteriorated, and supply a large pro- portion of the elements of disorder and violence. Of late, the prohibition against entering into business and inter- marrying with the Chinese has been removed, and they will ultimately be absorbed into the general population. From the point of view of a trained soldier these Tartar " troops " were no more than armed rabble, with the most primitive ideas of military movements; but in the north the exigencies of the situation have compelled the adoption of Western drill, adding immensely to the efficiency but sadly diminishing the picturesqueness of the armies for there is no homogeneous territorial army, each province supplying its own independent force, the goodness or badness of which depends upon the energy and ability of the viceroy. The pay of a Chinese soldier is ostensibly about six 6 CHINA dollars a month, which would be quite sufficient for his support were it not reduced to about half that amount by the squeezes of the officers and non-commissioned officers through whose hands it passes. He receives also one hun- dred pounds of rice, which is not always palatable, the weight being made up by an admixture of sand and mud to replace the " squeeze " by the various hands through which the rice tribute has passed. While under arms he is clothed in a short Chinese jacket of scarlet, blue, or black, on the front and back of which are the name and symbol of his regiment. The sleeves are wide and the arms have free play. The shape of the hat varies in every corps, the small round Chinese hat being sometimes worn, or a peakless cap, while some regiments wear immense straw hats, which hang on the back except when the sun is unduly hot. The trousers are dark blue of the usual Chinese pattern, tied round the ankles. The costume is not unsoldierlike, and when in mass the effect is strikingly picturesque j but it must not be inferred that all the men on a large parade are drilled soldiers. An order to the officer commanding to parade his corps for inspection not seldom interferes seriously with the labour force of the day. He draws the daily pay of, say, two thousand men, but his average muster may not exceed three hundred. This is a kind of gambling with Fortune at which China is disposed to wink as being merely a somewhat undue extension of the prin- ciple of squeeze that is the warp and woof of every Chinese THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE 7 employee, public or private. But he must not be found out ; therefore seventeen hundred coolies are collected by hook or crook, and duly attired in uniform, possibly being shown how to handle their rifles at the salute. The muster over, the coolies return to their work, and the arms and uniform are replaced in store until the next occasion. The officers are chosen from the better classes, except when a more than ferocious robber is captured, when sometimes his supposed bravery is utilized by giving him an army command. The young officers undergo some kind of elementary training. That Chinese troops are not wanting in bravery has been proved ; and if properly led a Chinese drilled army of to-day might prove as formidable as were the hosts of Ghengis Khan, when in the Thirteenth Century they swept over Western Asia and into Europe as far as Budapest. It has been stated that the empire has been welded to- gether by its conquerors, but perhaps it would be more correct to say that it coheres by the almost universal ac- ceptance of the ethics of Confucius, whose wise precepts delivered five hundred years before the birth of Christ inculcated all the cardinal virtues and included love and respect for parents ; respect for the Prince ; respect for and obedience to superiors ; respect for age and courteous man- ners towards all. He held that at their birth all men were by nature radically good, but " as gems unwrought serve no useful end, so men untaught will never know what right conduct is." CHINA AND THE CHINESE ALEXIS KRAUSSE CHINA with its dependencies occupies nearly a third of the Asiatic Continent. Nominally one vast kingdom, the territories comprised have the cohesion of neither race, nor constitution, nor religion. The people of Manchuria are the opposites of those of Tibet; nor is there aught in common between the men of Hunan and those of Kansu. In accordance with the paradoxical principle which underlies most things Chinese, the Empire is itself a dependency of a subject state, since the Emperor is a descendant of the Manchu insurgents who conquered the eighteen provinces of China proper in 1644. To give a general idea, the land may be spoken of as a vast slope stretching from the table-lands of Tibet and the Koko Nor to the Pacific Ocean. In the territory com- prised in this far expanse, which covers an area of 4,218,401 square miles, there is to be found every description of physical feature and climate, from the snow-clad mountains of Yunnan to the alluvial plains of the maritime provinces, and from the tropical region of Kwangtung to the temperate margin of the Gulf of Pechili. The most noteworthy characteristic of China proper is the remarkable system of rivers, which provides a ready r CHINA AND THE CHINESE 9 means of communication in nearly every direction ; and it is a curious instance of the want of logic inherent in the Chinese mind that these natural highways are so rarely utilized as boundaries of the different districts into which the country is divided. The eighteen provinces comprised in the kingdom of China, known also as the "Flowery Land" and the "Middle State," may be conveniently divided into four divisions. On the north are Kansu, Shensi, Shansi and Chili. In- land, forming central China, are Sechuan, Hupeh, Honan, Anwei, Kweichau, Hunan and Kiangsi. On the southern border are Yunnan and Kwangsi, and on the east are the maritime provinces Shantung, Kiangsu, Chekiang, Fukien and Kwangtung. The smallest of these, Fukien, is rathel bigger than Ireland ; and the most extensive, Sechuan, is nearly half as large again as the British Isles. In its phys- ical aspect, China proper may be divided into two spheres. On the north and east sides the land is generally level and productive. On the west and south it is much cut up by mountain ranges, some of them of great height, bare and precipitous. The mountainous districts are rich in mineral deposits, and teem with natural produce, while the low- lying lands comprise a soil so fertile as to produce in many districts three crops a year. The rivers of China are of the utmost importance to the Empire, inasmuch as they afford what is practically the only means of communication between the different territories. Roads are few and bad, the highway consist- io CHINA ing, in most instances, of the merest track and in the alluvial lands and those districts in which the loess beds are situated, the paths are often knee-deep in mud. The great rivers, however, with their numerous tributaries and canals, traverse the Empire in every direction, and afford a cheap and ready means of transport, which has rendered the vast trade of the country possible. The rivers of China are known by a variety of names each one receiving various appellations in different portions of their course. The word river is represented by two distinct terms : those in the north being called Ho, and those in the south Kiang or Chiang. Thus Hoang Ho signifies Hoang River, and the Yangtze Kiang, Yangtze River, facts which serve to exhibit the ignorance of persons who refer to the Yangtze Kiang River, and thus show that they are unaware of the signification of the words they use. The most important of the rivers of China are the Yangtze, the Hoang, the Si, the Pei and the Min. The Yangtze Kiang ranks third in size among the rivers of the world. It rises in the table-land of Tibet, and, after a tortuous course, enters China near Batang, whence it traverses the provinces of Sechuan, Yunnan, Hupeh, Anwei and Kiangsu. Its total course covers more than 4,000 miles, and it is navigable by large vessels for more than 1,000 miles from its estuary. The Yangtze Kiang receives a number of tributaries of which the Kia-ling and Han are the most important. It also affords communica- tion with two lakes of considerable extent. The most CHINA AND THE CHINESE n remarkable feature in connection with the Yangtze is the extraordinary variation in its level, which alternates as much as 100 feet in the higher reaches, where the banks narrow and confine the stream within a series of remarkable gorges and fifty feet at Hankow, where the river is more than a mile wide. These phenomena are due to the summer melting of the snows on the Tibetan plateau, where the river takes its rise at a height of more than 15,000 feet, and the water rushes down in a flood, which at times submerges the country over a breadth of twenty miles. The same extremes are to be noted in the other rivers which rise on the great table-land, known as the " roof of the world," especially in the case of the Hoang Ho or Yellow River, which has long since earned for itself the title of " China's Sorrow." This river, rising in close proximity to the Yangtze, takes a more northerly course, and after skirting the Mongolian plateau, passes through the great plain of China and enters the sea in the Gulf of Pechili. It has a course of nearly 3,000 miles, and is quite unnavigable, ex- cept over a portion of its lower reaches, and, even here, vessels are hindered from ascending the stream by shoals and other difficulties. This river is peculiarly subject to floods, which submerge whole provinces, and it has more than once entirely changed its course which is to-day some 300 miles north of the bed it occupied in 1854. The last occasion in which the Hoang Ho escaped its banks was in 1887, when, owing to an embankment giving way, whole towns and villages were destroyed, hundreds of thousands 12 CHINA of people were drowned and several millions rendered destitute. A great plain, half as large as Scotland and densely populated, was suddenly, without warning, turned into a raging sea. The Governor of Honan, the province most affected, stated, in his official announcement of the visitation : vt Nearly all the people have been drowned in the districts reached by the water," and the Peking corre- spondent of The Times placed the number drowned at not less than a million. The final estimate issued with official sanction, and generally accepted, gives 1,600,000 as the number of people swept away ; 5,000,000 as being rendered destitute. The Si Kiang, or West River, which rises in Yunnan, is navigable for big steamers over a course of 350 miles above Canton, and is rapidly becoming one of the most im- portant trade routes in South China. The Pei Ho, known also as the Peking River, is navigable as far as Tung Chow, 140 miles from the sea, and is the main route be- tween the northern capital and the rest of the Empire. The Min Kiang is a much smaller river than the above named, but ranks high as a trade route, being the approach to the important city of Fuchow, and the centre of the southern tea trade of China. In addition to these water- ways, there are two others, which, like the Hoang and Yangtze, rise in Tibet, and flow through a portion of Southwestern China. They are the Salween and the Mekong. Neither is navigable within the Chinese fron- tier. The former, after crossing the Chinese frontier at CHINA AND THE CHINESE 13 Kunton, flows through Burma, while the latter passes by Kiang Hung into Siam, and serves as the boundary be- tween that country and French Indo-China, until it reaches Cambodia and loses itself in the China Sea. The most important adjunct to the rivers named was the Grand Canal, an undertaking completed more than six hundred years ago by the Emperor Chitsou, and intended to place Peking in communication with Hangchow and Canton. This undertaking, which, in daring, ranks second only to the Great Wall, runs its course from Tientsin to Chinkiang and thence to Hangchow, crossing on its way both the Hoang Ho and the Yangtze Kiang. The total distance traversed is rather over 600 miles. This wonder- ful engineering feat has, of late years, been suffered to fall into a very bad state of repair, and, partly owing to the change in the course of the Yellow River, partly on ac- count of the improvement effected in steam communication by sea, the canal is used only by small junks, which are, with infinite labour, and in the face of many difficulties, propelled or hauled along its course. Closely allied to the question of internal waterways is that of seaports, and in this respect the coasts of China are exceptionally well equipped. The whole seaboard from north^to south is indented by a succession of deep bays and landlocked harbours, unsurpassed in the security they afford to shipping, and the facilities they provide for the loading and unloading of merchandise. Commencing in the Liao-tong peninsula, the southernmost province of Manchuria, we i 4 CHINA have the remarkable harbours of Talienwan and Port Arthur. Just round the southernmost point of this prom- ontory, known from its shape as the " Regent's Sword," is the shelter afforded by Port Adams and Society Bay. Across the gulf, one hundred miles away, is the roadstead of Chifu, and the bay of Wei Hai Wei, while beyond the projecting cape of Shantung are the enclosed harbours of Tingtze and Kiao Chou. Passing the estuary of the Yang-tze, and the Woosung River, with its port of Shang- hai, we reach Nimrod Sound, the approach to Ningpo hard by San moon Bay, which is in itself a harbour capable of sheltering the navies of the world. From this point to the southern border of the Empire the coast line teems with creeks and bays of the first class. Bullock Harbour, Nam- kuan Harbour, the Samsah inlet, and the entrance to the Min River, are all especially favoured ; and the harbours of Hinghua, Amoy, Tung San, Swatow, Mirs-bay, Bocca Tigris, Sui-tung and Pakhoi are among the finest shelters for shipping in the world. The roads of China are, as already stated, the worst in existence. When paved, they consist of blocks of stone imbedded loosely in the surface of the ground. The stones are frequently abstracted by the people for their own use, and in the hilly districts the tracks are utterly neglected, and never, under any circumstances, repaired. There are in different directions certain well-known caravan routes, which are largely patronized by traders, and, in a sense, may be regarded as public highways. Among the most CHINA AND THE CHINESE 15 important of these is the great caravan route from Peking across the Gobi Desert to Urga and Kiakhta. There are also tracks from Peking to Shan Hai Kuan on the Manchu- rian frontier; to Paoting and the rich Shansi province; and the central Asian caravan route via Sigan in the great loess ' country. Apart from these the trade of China is, with few exceptions, conducted by means of the water- ways. The most important of the dependencies of the Chinese Empire is Manchuria, a country about three times the size of Great Britain, and containing a population estimated at twenty-two millions. The people are mostly Chinese, the Manchus, who entered China in the Seventeenth Century, having become absorbed in the race they conquered, while the country they formerly owned has become repopulated by Chinese immigrants, with a sprinkling of Mongols and Koreans. The country is extremely mountainous except on the northwest, where the ranges of hills give way to a series of plains which merge into the Mongolian desert. It is Covered in many parts with dense forests and cut up by a large number of fine rivers, mostly connected with the Amur, which separates the northern provinces of Manchuria from Siberia. Mongolia, a vast territory, which comprises one and a quarter million square miles of territory, mostly desert, on 1 The loess is a form of tertiary deposit, in appearance a brown, porous earth, easily pulverized, which covers the ground to an immense depth in the northwest of China. This earth possesses a fertility which is prac- tically inexhaustible. 16 CHINA the northern borders of China proper, is an unproductive region, peopled by about two million nomads, of indolent habits and low intelligence. Tibet, the most mountainous country in the world, with an average altitude of fifteen thousand feet, comprises nearly a million square miles of hill and valley interspersed with table-lands, which are mostly covered with snow. Its population is estimated at six millions, among whom are nearly one hundred thousand lamas, or priests, who are supported by the Government. Tibet is the head-centre of Buddhism, and the Dalai-lama, 1 who resides at Lhassa, is the high priest of the cult. Besides the mountains, the most notable feature of Tibet is the large number of im- portant rivers which rise within its borders. Among the most notable of these are the Indus, Sutlej and Brahma- pootra on the west, and the Yangtze, Salween and Mekong on the east. Though the country is nominally ruled by the Emperor of China, it is questionable whether the Peking Government exercises more than a nominal sway over Tibet, which has only admitted the suzerainty of the Chinese since 1648. Intercourse with the eighteen provinces is maintained by caravans, the route between Lhassa and Peking being by Sigan, Lanchau and Sining, and the journey occupies four months. Tibet is probably the least known country in the world. Chinese Turkestan, a large and little-known territory, 1 The Dalai-lama was driven out of Tibet in 1910 and deposed by imperial decree. CHINA AND THE CHINESE 17 situated on the extreme west of the Chinese Empire, and wedged between Mongolia and Tibet, consists largely of desert. Owing to the great distance which separates the dependency from Peking, communication is slow and the governmental influence weak. Jungaria, the last and smallest of the outlying Chinese provinces, is practically an appanage of Turkestan, which it closely resembles. It comprises the district of Hi, or Kuldja, so long a bone of contention with Russia, and was the scene of the Mohammedan rising of 1871. It covers an area of less than 150,000 square miles, with a popula- tion of approximately half a million. The bonds by which these dependencies are united to China proper are of the slightest. They are the last of a number of States which at one time acknowledged the suzerainty of the Chinese throne, but to-day have become the vassals of other powers. The modern history of China is indeed but a record of the loss of empire. On every side the Celestial Kingdom has been mulcted in territory ; and in addition to being bereft of regions which were once her own and which rendered tributes to her treasury, she finds herself surrounded by Western powers exerting an unwelcome but increasing influence over the government of what remains. As might be expected in the case of a country so ill provided with roads as is China, the places at which foreigners have come into communication with the natives are for the most part situated either on the coast line or on the banks of the great rivers. 18 CHINA At different periods in her history, China has known three capitals in different portions of her Empire. For upwards of a thousand years, the seat of Government was at Sigan, in the fertile Wei valley, which crosses the province of Shensi. In the year 420 A. D., the imperial residence was transferred to Kienkang on the Yangtze, which thenceforth became known as Nanking, the southern capital, and there within one of the largest cities of the Empire, surrounded by strong walls, the court was held for more than eight centuries. In 1260, the Mongol Emperor Chitsou, better known as Kublai Khan, removed from the southern capital, and chose as his resting-place the city of Cambaluc, which came to be renamed Peking, or northern capital. The city stands in the middle of an extensive plain, twelve miles northwest of Tung Chow on the Pei Ho, and 160 miles from the Gulf of Pechili. It is reached by a road from Tung Chow, the town which marks the limit of navigation on the Pei Ho. It is surrounded by walls fifty feet high and sixty wide, and entered through strong gates, all of which are closed at night. The city consists of three divisions : the Chinese city, the Tartar city and the Purple Forbidden city, sacred to the Emperor and his immediate retinue. The latter is strictly guarded, and is rarely entered by any under the rank of first man- darin or viceroy. The Chinese and Tartar cities are very large, and, like all the other towns in the Empire, very dirty. The population is estimated at about a million. The streets are fairly typical, being gaily decorated but CHINA AND THE CHINESE 19 filthy to a degree, and the condition of the streets, owing to an utter lack of either drains or supervision, is such as to disgust the visitor, and prevent his going out except in a closed chair. The most striking feature of Peking is the dust which permeates every quarter and finds its way through every interstice. Despite the unpleasantness of this nuisance, it is said to serve a useful purpose in acting as a disinfectant, an important desideratum mid such sur- roundings as those to be found in the Chinese capital. The most important cities in the north of China, after Peking, are Tientsin, Paoting, Tai Yuen, Sigan, Tsinan and Chifu. In Central China, inland, are Cheng-tu, Nan- chang, Changsha, and Talifu ; and on the Yangtze Kiang, Chungking, Ichang Shaszi, Hankow with Wuchang, Nan- king, Chinkiang, Shanghai, Hanchau, Ningpo and Fuchow. In the south are Yunnan, Nanning, Wuchau, Canton, Amoy and Swatow. Of these Peking and Nanking, the two capitals, possess an interest which is mainly historical. Of the commercial centres the chief are Shanghai, Hankow and Tientsin, being the main trade centres of South, Cen- tral, and North China respectively. Hongkong, which is British territory, and totally free from Chinese interference, is in reality the great forwarding centre for the foreign trade of China, and it is from Victoria, the capital, that the markets throughout the length and breadth of the land are supplied. It remains to speak of the produce of the country. As will have been gathered from the foregoing, China is well supplied both with agricultural and with mineral wealth. 20 CHINA Foremost among the articles for which the Empire has long been famous are tea, silk, wax, cotton and rice, and these are produced in various parts of the Empire. The production of tea, though declining alike in quantity and quality, is yet considerable, and the culture of the plant and its preparation find occupation for the people in half-a- dozen provinces. The best growths are produced in the western and southern provinces, bordering on the Yangtze. The finest black tea comes from Hupeh and Hunan, a second quality hailing from Fukien, while the choicest green tea is grown in Chekiang and Anwei. Both kinds of plant prove prolific in the climate of Sechuan and Kwangtung. A considerable proportion of the leaf pro- duced is utilized in the preparation of brick tea, which is largely exported to Mongolia and Tibet, where it is highly appreciated on account of its portability and keeping quali- ties. Within the limits of the Empire, tea is practically the national drink. It is not taken, as with us, at special meals, but is used as a beverage, and kept available and ready for use at all times and in every household, excepting only the very poorest. Next in importance to tea is the production of silk, which owes its origin to Chinese ingenuity. It is on record that the care of the silkworm and the art of spinning and weaving were known to the Chinese as early as two thou- sand years B. c. The spinning of the silk has always been regarded as women's work, and the occupation has been followed by the wives and daughters of the people from the CHINA AND THE CHINESE 21 earliest times. The mulberry is cultivated throughout the breadth and length of the land, and every one of the eighteen provinces produces its quota of cocoons. The silk which comes from Sechuan is, however, regarded as being the finest in texture and quality, and this commands the highest price in the market. In recent years, the old- time methods of spinning and weaving by hand have been improved on by the introduction of filatures^ which have been established at several of the treaty ports. The ease with which cotton and hemp can be grown in the alluvial lands has always encouraged the manufacture of fabrics suited to the peculiarities of the native cotton. The Chi- nese cloths are, however, inferior to the machine-made ar- ticle, which is gradually beating them out of the field. The culture of the opium poppy * has, notwithstanding the de- nunciation of the traffic by the Government, long been largely indulged in, and the production of the drug has, during recent years, considerably increased. Tobacco, at 1 In 1907 an edict was issued to end opium-smoking. Lord William Gascoyne-Cecil relates that in 1907 the country was beautiful with white and pink poppy fields and in 1909 not a single poppy flower was to be seen. He adds : " Could any Western power hope to accomplish such a feat ? Would the most extreme temperance reformer suggest that all public houses should be closed, that the amount of barley should be diminished every year till within ten years none should be grown, and that all the Government officials, from the Prime Minister downwards, should become total abstainers within that period ? The reason of this vigorous action of China and its present success is to be attributed to two things: first, to the terrible and very real national fear that this vice will destroy the nation, as it has destroyed countless families and individuals; secondly, to the vast store of energy which enables China to accept new ideas and act vigorously on them." 22 CHINA first grown in Manchuria, has gradually found its way into China proper, and is now cultivated in many districts. Sugar is grown with considerable success in the southeast. The mineral deposits of the country have not yet been thoroughly prospected ; but, judged by the reports of ex- perts who have had opportunities of surveying the surface, the land is the most richly mineralized in the world. The absence of suitable communications and the objection of the people to having the interior visited by foreigners, have hitherto stood in the way of any satisfactory opening up of the subterranean wealth which undoubtedly exists and the first promise of a change in the condition of things is to be noted in the granting of the Shansi and Honan concessions. Coal-fields abound in Chili, Shansi, Honan, Shantung, Hunan and Yunnan. These fields cover a large extent of country and the quality of the coal discovered is excel- lent. The deposits in Shansi are declared by the greatest living expert to be the most extensive in existence, cover- ing many thousand square miles, and containing sufficient fuel to supply the world with all the coal it needs for thou- sands of years. Nor is coal the only, or indeed the principal, mineral de- posit in China. Iron is found as freely as is coal, the two being frequently found in juxtaposition. Lead, tin and mercury are produced in paying quantities, and copper abounds in Hupeh, Hunan and Shantung. Gold is worked in Manchuria, and it is known to exist in the southern provinces, while traces of silver have also been noted. Salt CHINA AND THE CHINESE 23 workings are numerous throughout the loess beds and sup- ply a valuable contribution to the revenue. The Chinese are descended from the Tartars, who, thousands of years ago, peopled the great wastes of Siberia, and, by migration and intermarriage, became merged in the people of China, Mongolia, Manchuria, Korea and Japan. The parent stock was a hardy one, and besides becoming responsible for the peopling of northern and central Asia, they found their way to the south, where they implanted certain characteristics to be found to-day in the peoples of Burma, of Siam and of Tibet. The first Chinese are said to have settled in the province of Shensi, where, according to the records of the semi-mystical period of Celestial his- tory, they appointed one Fohi to be their first ruler about three thousand years before the Christian Era, and to this reputed first monarch of future millions is credited the de- vising of the leading outlines of the Chinese system of moral and political economy. Though little more than his name has endured, he is supposed to have originated the Chinese calendar, to have introduced the cycle of sixty years, and to have inaugurated that love of exclusiveness and that extravagant conceit, which form to-day such strongly-marked characteristics in the Celestial character. The original Tartar stock consisted mostly of nomad tribes. These spread and became dispersed, and, as always happens, the individuality of each set of immigrants to fresh pastures became affected by their geographical surroundings. Thus it came about that the Mongols proper, who had 24 CHINA settled in the northwest of Asia, and the Tunjusian or Turanian tribes, who pitched their tent in the northeast, became a rude and semi-barbarous people, shy of inter- course, and given to strife among themselves. Of these, the lowest in civilization were the Arinians, who peopled the districts of the Yenisee and the Amur Rivers, races who did not cultivate the land and who ate their meat raw. It is from these that the Manchus are descended and it is remarkable that such savage and illiterate tribes should have proved the forerunners of so fine and stalwart a race as the people of modern Manchuria. The early history of the Chinese people is a record of civil war, rapine and robbery, and it is doubtless to the constant struggles which were indulged in that the race owes its power of organization and its administrative ability. The Chinese and their fellow Asiatics vary in physique and attributes in different parts of the Empire, but in certain characteristics they closely resemble one another. The in- habitants of China proper are the most cultivated and highly civilized of all the subjects of the " King of Heaven." They possess a literature essentially refined, a love of learn- ing non-existent elsewhere, and a regard for law and order admirable in its consistency. The Mongols, on the other hand, lack all these attributes, the only strong point of which they can boast being a simplicity of taste and love of peace. The Tibetans, like the Mongolians, to whom they are nearly akin, resemble the Burmese rather than the Celestials. They are an indolent race, given to pleasure CHINA AND THE CHINESE 25 and practicing polyandry. The Siamese, Annamese and Shans, all of Chinese descent, possess the civilization of their ancestors without their strong character. They are vain, weak, and effeminate, and in Tonkin and the adjoin- ing French territories, which have been brought under an injudicious governmental system, they are becoming treach- erous, mean and dangerous to those with whom they are brought into contact. The characteristics of the population of the eighteen provinces vary greatly. The people of northern China are a more stalwart and hardy tribe than those of the south, while the race which is located along the coast line between Shanghai and Canton differs alike in language and in cus- toms from the rest. The inhabitants of Chili and Shansi are strongly opposed to foreign intercourse, and do not hesitate to annoy or even ill-use the stranger within their gates. In Shantung and Anwei the people are more peace- ably inclined, and altogether more tolerant of the " bar- barians." The most typical of the pure Chinese are to-day to be found in the province of Hunan where the people possess a finer physique and more highly-developed intelli- gence than elsewhere. These are, however, the most ex- clusive of the Chinese, intolerant to a degree, and always ready to attack the foreigner. The character of the Celes- tial, like most things connected with his country, is para- doxical. The Chinese possess many attributes which are in themselves admirable. On the other hand, they evince certain shortcomings which are proportionately despicable. HISTORY EDWARD HARPER PARKER THE semi-historical period, as distinguished from the semi-mythical period, begins about noo B. c., and now it is that we find a new dynasty has to cope with northern Tartars as well as western Tibetan invaders, who were the chief bane of earlier dynasties; in fact, this dynasty, which was practically invited in by the people, owing to the misrule of the ejected Chinese mon- arch, is described as being of " Western stranger " origin a term which sounds much more suggestive than it really is, for no great distance is meant. At this moment all China south of the Yangtsze, all the Upper Yangtsze valley and the Shantung promontory, were still in the hands of barbarian tribes. Nothing was yet known of Mongolia, Manchuria, Corea, Japan, Tonquin, Tibet, or Kokonor. The condition of China was much like that of the Roman Empire after the conquest of Italy, but previous to the Punic wars. In Europe there was some vague notion of Britain, Germany, Spain, France, the barbarians of the Danube, and so on, all of which peoples, if strange to the Romans and Italians were at any rate of Aryan race like themselves. Rome had usurped the Greek place in civilization and was con- fronted with Semitic and Hamitic rivals to the south, in HISTORY 27 shape of Carthage and Egypt. In China it is not to be doubted that the unconquered tribes to the south were, as they still are, of tone-using, monosyllabic race, akin to the Chinese. The more westerly and new dynasty usurped the old one's place in civilization and was confronted with Turanian rivals to the north. Rome's expansion was north- wards amongst her own kind : her truly foreign foes lay southward across the seas. China's expansion was south- wards amongst her own kind : her truly foreign foes lay northward across the deserts. The policy of the new dy- nasty was to parcel out the " middle kingdom " (which is still the current name for China) into fiefs or principalities, the Emperor receiving a moderate province to his own direct rule, and exercising over his feudal relatives a sort of loose supervision akin to that which the Popes of the Middle Ages practiced over European States. Copies of all the most important vassal-state archives and chronicles were preserved at the imperial capital, which also issued ceremonial, astrological, and other functional directions and rules. There is evidence to show that many dialects were spoken then, as now, and that the methods of writing, whilst maintaining a general resemblance, differed in slight detail in the various States. Documents were scratched with a style upon thin tablets of wood or bamboo, almost as we may see at this day the Hindu bankers scratching their accounts upon dried palmyra leaves. Hence books were cumbrous and expensive, and recorded knowledge was necessarily confined (as with ourselves during the 28 CHINA Middle Ages) to a very, limited official and fiterary class. Parts of Manchuria were now conquered, but political deal- ings with that region were subsequently confined to the principality situated about modern Peking, and have no im- portant bearing on general or imperial history. There are fairly trustworthy accounts or traditions that about B. c. 977 a Chinese Emperor made a great military tour of inspection over Mongolia and the highroads to the West ; there is specific mention of kumiss, or mares' milk, and of a mountain known to be near modern Urga and the Russian town of Kiachta. In the whole of Chinese history and tradition there does not seem to be the faintest hint of any knowledge of the Great West anterior to this. Though we have thousands of clay inscriptions in London, some of them 6,000 years old, not even the mere mention of writ- ing on clay ever once occurs in Chinese tradition, so that we must wait for specific evidence before we couple Chi- nese culture with Akkadian. This travelling Emperor seems to have lost the old influence over the Tibetan tribes on his frontier, and about B. c. 874 the westernmost princi- pality of Ts'in first secured that influence, and then sepa- rated from the Chinese federal system altogether. A few years later we find the Emperor approving one of the vassal successions in Shantung ; but subsequent to this the cen- tral authority begins to wane, and this waning of the cen- tral power is coincident with the date which the first and greatest Chinese historian (whose book, written 2,000 years ago, is perfectly good and plain reading now) assigns to HISTORY 29 the commencement of true and exact history; that is, B.C. 827. Now, although we arrive at last at the portals of true history, the chief difference between it and the more doubt- ful history is that the dates are precise, and exhortations to act give frequent place to intelligible action. The more certain facts in no other way either differ in quality from or discredit the older uncertain ones. It is evident that if all English records previous to 1800 were absolutely an- nihilated, our defective memories and traditions would soon force us to confess that the true history of England began in 1 80 1. So with Chinese history. It is sober enough. There is no reason why we should not accept as vaguely true what we are vaguely told ; no reason for inventing what we are not told; and no reason (judging by the provable fidelity of the true later history) to suppose that the less exact and therefore less provable 'history ever was unfaithful. Chinese history begins 2700 B. c., but it is insipid and intangible until B. c. 800, which is about the date when genuine Western history began too; that is to say, until the quite recent discoveries in Asia Minor, Crete, Egypt, Babylonia and Persia yielded to our archae- ologists whole libraries of forgotten records, some dating long anterior to the supposed creation of the world. If, instead of cumbersome but perishable wood, the Chinese had used still more cumbersome but imperishable baked mud, we might hope to achieve in due course the same triumphant results for China. As matters stand, it is no 30 CHINA exaggeration to say that we have scarcely a single Chinese document of importance actually existing now as it existed 2,000 years ago ; all the ancient writings, with trivial ex- ceptions, are copies from memory, or transcriptions in a modified form of writing, from defective manuscripts. From 800 to 200 B. c. the Chinese imperial power de- clined, very much as the Roman power and the mediaeval Germano-Roman power successively declined in Europe. The feudal princes ruling over territories roughly corre- sponding to the now existing northern provinces contested both with each other and with the Emperor for supremacy ; very much as France, Spain, England, Germany and Italy intrigued with each other, and with the Pope, for temporal advantages, whilst at the same time accepting the Pope's spiritual supremacy when it suited them. Dove-tailed in, between what the Chinese called the half-dozen Great Powers, were minor states corresponding to our Belgium, Holland, Switzerland and Denmark. Looming away to the west was the untamed state of Ts'in, like Russia in Peter the Great's time, developing her resources in distant secrecy and nourishing vast ambitions. Along the line of the Yangtsze River were powers only half Chinese, which may be compared with our half European Turkey, Saracen Spain and Egypt or Syria. Sometimes one great Power became doyen, or " holder of the cow's ear"; sometimes the other ; offensive and defensive alliances were formed, minor Powers rose and fell, the Emperor was hustled, bar- barian aid (chiefly Tibetan) was invoked, and finally, be- HISTORY 31 tween 400 and 200 B. c., the vassal States openly assumed independent regal status, just as the Teutonic and other countries nominally under the sovereignty of the Roman Augustus, or Supreme Emperor, arrogated to themselves, first the title of Caesar or Associate Emperor, and then that of Augustus. It was in the middle of this transition pe- riod, say 500 B. c., that Confucius occupied a commanding position as statesman in the vassal Kingdom of Lu (part of Shantung). Lu was a highly respectable power, but never a great one, and Confucius' aim was to suppress violent ambitions and mean passions, to restore the Emperor's su- preme authority, and to do away with " Jingoism," both in political and provincial life. The end of all this was that Ts'in, which in B. c. 374 had rejoined the federal system after a separate and semi-barbarous existence of 500 years, gradually intrigued or fought other States one by one out of their independence, until at last, in B.C. 221, the trium- phant King of that country assumed the new title of Hwang-ti, or Imperator, which continues in use to this day. During all this time the various vassal States had natu- rally increased their knowledge of South China, Korea, and other outlying parts; but although Chinese colonies pushed along the lines of the great rivers, it seems quite certain that no part outside the area of the Yellow River and its tributaries was yet any more truly Chinese than Britain, Gaul, Batavia, Spain, Pannonia, Africa, and other parts colonized or occupied by Roman power were truly Italian. There were from time to time brushes with the various 32 CHINA Tartar horsemen in the north, and several great walls were built a century or more before the so-called First Emperor conquered the whole of China and constructed or increased the long line of now ruined fortifications still extending from the Shan-hai Kwan (during 1900-1 in our occupa- tion) to near Lake Kokonor. It was in B. c. 221 that occurred one of those great epoch- making events upon which hinges the main history of the world. Since her readmission into Chinese diplomacy in B. c. 374 the western State of Ts'in had made such excellent use of her opportunities in agriculture, diplomacy and war, that the other States, including the Imperial State, fell one after the other into her toils, and were crushed out of political existence, as already stated. The King of Ts'in (who, like the modeller of our own new system, William the Conqueror, was a bastard) at last declared himself Supreme Ruler of the world (as then known), divided what we now call China Proper into thirty-six provinces ; and set about making a series of military promenades in person, which, however, never extended southward of the lakes Poyang and Tungting. The Tartars were driven beyond the Yel- low River; an attempt was made to simplify, to assimilate, or standardize the various forms of writing ; the present writing-brush was invented or improved ; the axles of all carts were made of the same breadth, so as to facilitate trade movements ; an adjusted calendar was circulated ; laws, weights and measures were verified ; and metal arms were called in to be recast into bells and images. Whilst HISTORY 33 touring towards the Shan-hai Kwan and modern Chefoo, the Emperor heard vague rumours of certain islands beyond the sea, which the vassal Kingdom around modern Peking had already either discovered or heard of a century before this. These islands were Japan \ but as yet nothing defi- nite was known of Japan, Korea, Manchuria, Mongolia, Tibet, Indo-China, or even Canton, Foochow and Yun Nan. This revolutionary Emperor died in B. c. 210, whilst on tour, and at a spot quite close to where 2,100 years later a murder of German missionaries led up to the present situa- tion in China. His son was a poor eunuch-ridden creature, incompetent to carry on the grandiose ideas of the father, in consequence of which revolts broke out through the whole " block-head " region (as the restricted area of true China was then called), and several rival adventurers strug- gled for power. This is one of the most charming and vivid stories in the history of the world, and yields not one whit in interest when compared with the accounts of the two Caesars' struggles with Pompey and Mark Antony. Any one who can understand French may read every line of it in a translation of China's first great history published by Professor Chavannes of Paris. At last the adventurer, known from his appanage as the Prince of Han, succeeded in destroying all his rivals, and in establishing himself as Emperor at modern Si-an Fu (the place to which the flying Empress-Dowager betook herself in the year 1900). There were two or three sue- 34 CHINA cessive editions of the Han dynasty, which from first to last endured from B. c. 206 to A. D. 263. There was a short break at the time of Our Lord's birth, but by A. D. 25, the Eastern Han had got rid of revolutionary pretenders, and had planted its new capital securely at modern Ho-nan Fu. Between A. D. 220 and 263 the Empire was divided into three, owing to Imperial decay and rival ambitions. The northern or Old China part was entirely in the hands of a rival house, founded by the celebrated General Ts'ao Ts'ao, whose achievements are as much a matter of noto- riety in China as the contemporary struggles between Sep- timius Severus and his rival Clodius Albinus for the possession of Rome in Europe. The third edition of the Han house ruled in what we now call Szechwan, which was then a congeries of Tibetan and other half- savage tribes. South China, but thinly populated by tribes of the Annamese, Siamese, and Lolo type, was loosely held up by a third successful family, which thus had a monopoly of the Roman, Persian and Indian shipping trade. Rome, or Roman Syria, was then called Ta-ts'in. The total results of these 460 years of Han rule may be shortly summarized as follows : The power of the Hiung-nu Tartars or Huns had been so broken that, before Jesus Christ was born, one-half of their hordes had been driven far away towards the Aral Sea and the Volga; the other half became pensioners and allies of the Chinese. But even these gradually fell a prey to, or wore themselves out in struggling against, the rising power of the Tungusic HISTORY 35 Tartars ; so that when, in the Third Century A. D., China split up into three empires, the nomads were unable to take advantage of the general anarchy further than to seize portions of undefended territory, and temporarily to set up as aspirants for power, after the fashion of the Ostrogoth, Visigoth and Vandal chiefs, who used to take similar advan- tage of Roman dissensions. China was reunited in A. D. 265 in the hands of the Ts'in dynasty, founded, like most Chinese dynasties, by a successful General taking advantage of a decrepit and cor- rupt court. From the very beginning this new ruling house (which must not be confused with the Ts'in dynasty of B. c. 221) had to contend with a pack of Tartar and Tibetan adventurers, more or less instructed in Chinese ways and usually prompted by renegade Chinese interpre- ters and secretaries. With the space at our disposal, it is impossible to say more than that China, with her capital still at Loh-yang (Ho-nan Fu), was like the more easterly Roman Empire under Diocletian, Constantius, and Constantine. The centre had shifted. Buddhism had now obtained a firm foothold in China, as Christianity had in Europe. Just as the Gauls, Germans, Goths and Vandals pressed upon Rome and Constantinople, so the Koreans, Tunguses, Hiung-nu and Tibetans pressed upon the two capitals of China. In yet a second way does history repeat itself. In A. D. 386 the Tungusic Tartars of the Toba house suc- ceeded, not only in driving away all Tartar and Tibetan rivals, but also in dividing the Chinese Empire with the 36 CHINA Ts'in dynasty, which had then already for seventy years been driven by the contending Tartars to the modern Nanking. The Ts'in dynasty soon afterwards collapsed altogether, and for 200 years five short Chinese houses ruled one after the other in the south, whilst the Toba Tartars had undisputed possession of North China. This period of 200 years is what the historians call the " North and South Dynasties Period." The general development in the succeeding 400 years that is up to A. D. 600 may be described as follows : The southern dynasties have developed a considerable sea trade with India, Ceylon, Indo-China and the islands of the southern seas. The Toba Tartars ruling in North China have reopened a connection with the Far West as far as Persia, but nothing new is learnt about Mesopotamia or the Roman Empire. The same Tobas, who were apparently akin to what we now call Mongols, have only driven their rivals, the Hiung-nu away to the West in order to find an- other nomad power that of the Geougen developing in the desert regions. When at last the Toba dynasty split up into two rival factions, one faction allied itself with the Turks against the other faction, allies of the Geougen. To cut this complicated tangle short, China emerged from the general fray united under one native emperor of the Sui dynasty : Tartar dynasties of all kinds were driven from China, and the whole of Siberia, Mongolia and Manchuria was once more reunited under the sway of energetic Turk- ish khans. HISTORY 37 Just at the time when united China was thus left face to face with united Turkey (if we may use this term) news came, apparently through Persia and Turkey, of a great power in the Far West called Fuh-lin, stated to be identi- cal with the Ta-ts'in, first vaguely heard of during the first century of the Christian Era, trading envoys from which place came to China by sea in the Second and Third Cen- turies. This Fuh-lin I take to be the growing power of the Franks, who had already come into contact with the Avars in Bavaria. To this day Ferreng, Afrang, Folang, or Filing is the almost universal word in Eastern languages for Europeans of all kinds, and it is from this date, say A. D. 600, that I trace the commencement of true inter- course and free interchange of thought between the Eastern and Western group of civilizations. Our word " China" is not a whit more clear in its origin than is the Chinese word " Ferreng." But now Mahomet arose in Arabia ; the isolated power of Tibet had grown amazingly under the impulse of Hindu culture ; a powerful Shan or Siamese empire had developed in Yun Nan ; Japan had adopted Buddhism, and had also acquired an extensive knowledge of Chinese civilization ; Nestorian Christians had found their way overland to China; the three petty Kingdoms of Korea had become metamorphosed into cultured States ; and the great T'ang dynasty of China had overthrown and developed the grandiose ideas of the Sui, whose magnificent rule sud- denly collapsed in the same way, and for the same reason, 38 CHINA as when the Han empire took over the succession of Ts'in. At last we are brought face to face with people we can recognize and facts we can prove by evidence available to this day. In the Tibetan city of Lhassa the original bi- lingual Sanskrit-Chinese inscriptions dated 822 still remain there, carved upon stone to confirm the statements of Chinese history; the celebrated Syriac-Chinese Nestorian stone still stands in Si-an Fu, to explain who the Franks were, and what Christianity was ; the stone inscriptions of Ta-li Fu in Yiin Nan remain to corroborate the rise and fall of the first Siamese empire ; within the past fifteen years numerous Turkish-Chinese bilingual slabs have been found by the Russians in various parts of Mongolia, prov- ing that the Hiung-nu of B. c. 200 to A. D. 200 were the Turks of A. D. 500 to 700; and during the migrations West an alphabet of Aramoean or Syrian origin had been introduced, by way of Sogd, into Mongolia. After a brilliant rule of 300 years the T'ang dynasty fell into decrepitude, partly in consequence of the exhaustion brought about by its incessant struggle with the Tartars, Tibetans and Siamese ; partly from eunuch influences and internal corruption. The Turkish power had, in the Seventh Century, been divided and crushed just as the Han dynasty had split up and driven west the Hiung-nu power; but the other results had been the same. China was so impoverished in blood and treasure that the Tungusic pow- ers had once more time to grow, and the remains of the HISTORY 39 Turks intrigued for rule in North China exactly as the re- mains of the Hiung-nu had done. China fell to pieces, and for about half a century there ruled a succession of five short dynasties, three of them rather Turkish than Chinese ; but they only ruled over Central, or what may be called " Old China," and this only at the cost of paying tribute to the Cathayans of modern Peking. The Cathayans, it must be explained, were simply a reshuffle of the ancient Sienpi, just as the Turks were a reshuffle of the ancient Hiung-nu. Meanwhile the south and west of China were once more divided into a number of semi-independent Imperial States ruling at or near what we now call Canton, Foochow, Hangchow, Nanking, Hankow and Ch'eng-tu. A strong mixed power, usually described as Tangut, and consisting chiefly of Tibetan elements under migrated Toba rulers, gradually gained consistence in the regions of Ordos and Kokonor; Korea, Annam, Yiin Nan and Tibet took ad- vantage of the anarchy to recover their practical independ- ence ; and there followed a series of devastating wars. Towards the close of the Tenth Century the situation stood thus. A successful General had succeeded in reunit- ing the whole of Old China and South China under a new native dynasty called Sung. The Cathayans, assisted by Chinese renegades, and fed by enormous relays of artisans, cultivators and other prisoners of war, founded a very strong empire of what may be called the Parthian or Boer type, z. ., half horse-back and half settled. For 200 years this Cathayan empire monopolized the whole of the su- 40 CHINA preme power in Mongolia, receiving tribute from the re- mains of the Turks to the west and the rising Manchu tribes to the east. The tyranny of the Cathayans over their eastern vassals, the true Tunguses, or Manchu States, then collectively known as the Nuchen, led to a revolt in those little known regions. The tribes in question, hardened by the discipline of a hunting life, had by degrees evolved a military strategy of no mean order. Their masters, the Cathayans, had be- come correspondingly corrupt and softened by two centuries of close contact with Chinese luxury. The upshot of all this was that the southern Chinese intrigued with the Nu- chens on the basis of regaining for China the Peking plain, which had been so long a part of Cathay. As seems to have been the invariable case in the history of the world when a weak power asks the aid of a strong one, the Nu- chens not only drove out of North China the common Cathayan enemy, but soon found pretexts for keeping the Peking plain for themselves, and encroaching farther upon China proper. Simultaneously with the substitution of the Nuchens for the Cathayans in North China, the Sung or pure Chinese dynasty found it necessary to move their cap- ital, which was in 1136 transferred to Hangchow. The powerful State of Tangut, on being summoned to do so, promptly transferred to the Nuchens the limited amount of homage it had once paid to the Cathayans, and continued to keep the two balls in the air, so to speak, by playing off North China against South China. HISTORY 41 The chief picture to focus before the eye with reference to this period 900 to 1200 A. D. is that Tartars of a Tungusic kind, first of the Mongol type, and next of the Manchu type, had absolute and exclusive rule of the Peking plain and the parts west of it as far as the Ordos bend. To the north lay the rest of their vast Mongol-Manchu Empire, with which South or literary China had no con- cern. Throughout the whole of this period the mixed Tibeto-Chinese populations, under the rule of a migrated Tungusic family, maintained a really powerful empire, by Europeans styled Tangut, on account of the preference given to Tangut or Tibetan speech. Owing to this large infusion of Tartar blood, the northern dialects of China, and notably that of Peking, which is the best known to Europeans, became corrupted in exactly the same way that Latin became corrupted in Gaul. Hence the Pekingese, or other " mandarin " dialects may be styled the French of China, whilst the true Latin or ancient classical pronun- ciation must be looked for in the south. Thus it comes that Korea and Annam having practically been shut out for many centuries, we find that the numerous Chinese words imported into these regions two thousand years ago confirm better than does any other pure Chinese dialect the key to ancient sounds still furnished by colloquial Cantonese. During this period of divided empire, the southern Chinese got into the habit of humorously describing the northerners as ta-ta or ta-tsz, being our vague word " Tartar." By way of return compliment, the northerners ridiculed the 42 CHINA southern men as tnati-tsz or " fuzzy-wuzzies." During this same 300 year period nothing whatever is said of either Christianity or Islamism ; the remains of the Turk seem to have quietly developed their new religion in political relation with the Khaliphate, and to have gone their way totally unheeded by either North or South China. Now occurred one of those events upon which hinge the higher history of the world. The chief of an obscure Turko- Tungusic tribe, often called Ta-ta, and apparently identical with a branch of the Cathayan type already for centuries known as Mung-wa, became incensed at the tyrannical in- solence of the Niichen tax-gatherer, spit in his face and told him (as we should say) to " go to the devil " with his im- perial master. This chief was the future Genghis Khan, and this first insubordinate act led by degrees to the over- throwing of the Niichen dynasty. Like all Tartar leaders who have once succeeded in rousing enthusiasm, the chief of the Mung-wa or Mung-ku tribe soon succeeded in at- tracting to his banner the innumerable hordes of Turkish and mixed race scattered about with their horses, cattle, tents and wagons over the vast expanse of North Asia. One of the first things was to sweep away the inter- vening Tangut empire which stood in his way. He seems to have had no particular idea of western conquest until the Mussulman Sultan of Otrar in Turkestan behaved in an outrageous way to some Mongol ambassadors. This led to the conquest of Turkestan, Bucharia, all the countries of the old Ephthalite or Yet-ti empire between HISTORY 43 the Indus and the Euphrates destroyed by the Turks about 550, and ultimately to the incorporation of the Kirghis, Kipchaks, Armenians and Russians. At one time even Western Europe trembled with apprehension, and it is from the accounts left behind by Rubruquis and other emissaries sent by the Pope and the King of France to the Mongol Khans in Russia and Mongolia that we derive much of our information about those times. This information is amply confirmed by the Chinese histories. The native historians, it is true, understood little or nothing of the outlandish persons and places they described on the authority of return warriors in Hungary, Russia and Persia ; but fortunately they " nailed their names at least to the counter," and scanty though the context is, it is sufficient for us to know by these names that there is no serious distortion of the fact as we are sure of it from Western sources. But even with all this practical experience of the West, and the oc- casional reappearance of the word Fuh-lang or " Frank," the Mongols carried back to China no definite notion of what kind of people the Franks really were, and how they stood in relation to the old Roman Empire of Ta-ts'in. They may be partly excused by the circumstance that the Byzantine Roman Empire had then practically ceased to exist, and that the miserable remains of it to be found at Constantinople were barely on a footing of equality with the Popes of Rome, and with the Teutonic Roman Empire, or the Western Powers of Spain, France, England and Germany. 44 CHINA On the first menacing appearance of the great Mongol Power, the Nuchen Emperor had appealed in vain to Tangut to forget old grudges and unite against an invader who would otherwise destroy both in turn. The Southern Chinese empire had the same bitter experience. After assisting the Mongols to drive out the Nuchens the Man-tsz (Marco Polo's Manzi) empire was devoured piecemeal by Genghis Khan's successors and in 1280 Kublai Khan, grandson of Ghenghis, having completed the conquest of China, reigned over the greatest empire ever seen in the Far East. Marco Polo's faithful narrative best enables those who cannot yet study Chinese history to judge what this empire was. Members of Kublai's family ruled over Russia, the Caucasus, Persia, all the Pamir countries, all the useful parts of Siberia and Manchuria. Mongol viceroys dictated conditions to Korea, Tibet, Burma and Annam. Mongol influence extended fitfully to Sulu, Java, Sumatra, the Bay of Bengal and Ceylon. Japan alone succeeded in absolutely repelling any attempt at invasion. But the usual course of events followed : Saul among the prophets was not more out of place than are nomad Tartars on a civilized throne. Success begat insolence and carelessness, and Kublai's suc- cessors soon dissipated their great inheritance. Even Kublai himself only ruled immediately over China proper, and his empire beyond that was much less firmly knit to- gether than is the Manchu empire even now. His cous- ins in the west soon proclaimed their independence, and in HISTORY 45 1368 the Chinese rose en masse against their oppressors, who were promptly driven back to their native deserts and steppes. It must be conceded, however, that the Mongols were tolerant of foreign religions and foreign science. Islam, Christianity and Buddhism all enjoyed as much countenance as Confucianism. The priestly founder of the purely Chinese Ming dy- nasty, whose venerated tomb is still respectfully preserved at Nanking, completely changed the face of affairs. China for the Chinese was his motto, and the provinces were soon reorganized, much on their present basis, with a firm hand. The Mongol policy of conquest and forced homage was modified, if not entirely abandoned. Korea, Tibet, An- nam and other bordering States were encouraged by just treatment to attach themselves voluntarily to the new em- pire, but otherwise left to administer themselves. Mes- sages were sent by Prankish merchant envoys to Europe ; the change of dynasty was notified to the Central Asian States ; and a very lively sea-trade sprang up in the early part of the Fifteenth Century with Japan, Loochoo, Ma- nila, Borneo, Java, Sumatra, Siam, India, Arabia, and the northwest parts of Africa. This was the only period in Chinese history (and it did not last many years) when Chinese assumed a truly aggressive and even military as- pect in the Indian Ocean ; the accounts given by Marco Polo prove that the Mongol trading-junks had frequented exactly the same ports as were a century later visited by powerful Chinese fleets. The disappointed Mongol 46 CHINA hordes naturally endeavoured to avenge their dismissal to the deserts, and gave incessant trouble by hovering aggres- sively upon the northern frontiers, just as the Hiung-nu, the Turks, the Cathayans and the Niichens had succes- sively done before them. The very name of all these na- tionalities had now utterly disappeared from men's minds. Mongol was the only name for all Tartars, except that the powerful Western Mongols or Kalmucks, were usually dis- tinguished as Eleuths. The Niichens, or Manchus, were loosely grouped as Uriangkha Mongols, and forgotten. Christianity utterly disappeared for over two centuries, and very little was heard of Islam. The Japanese, aroused to secular hostility against China partly through the recollec- tion of Kublai Khan's abortive invasion, kept up incessant piratical attacks by land and the Japanese raids by sea led China to adopt a policy of exclusion, which was further accentuated when the Folangki, or Franks, in the shape of Portuguese and Spaniards, appeared upon the scene about 1520. They were not at first recognized as the old Fuh- lin, but were supposed to be strange savages from the southern ocean. It may be said that, between the collapse of the Mongols and the arrival by sea of Europeans, China kept pretty closely within her shell. Marco Polo's story was long re- garded in Italy as a mere sailor's yarn, and the ignorance of China throughout Europe was obsolete. As for Zipangu, or Japan, it was appraised by Westerners as a fictitious invention, until Mendez Pinto actually visited the place HISTORY 47 about 1542. During this period of comparatively peaceful seclusion, the Nuchen tribes, driven away by the Mongols, and for 300 years almost entirely forgotten, had time to grow strong in their distant obscurity. Under the new and ill-explained name of Manchu, they began to come into prominence on the Chinese frontier just at the very time Japan was nervously wrestling in her own domains with Christianity, and when the jealous Japanese Napoleon Hi- deyoshi was sending his Christian Generals to the front, like so many Uriahs, to attack China through Korea. Meanwhile eunuch misgovernment and excessive taxation had provoked serious internal rebellions in Shansi and Ho- nan. Expiring China had succeeded, before these broke out, in saving Korea from permanent occupation by Japan, and the first Jesuit missionaries managed to imbue the Chinese Emperor with a kindly and tolerant feeling towards Christianity. At this auspicious moment, a lucky turn might have made China a Christian country under friendly European tutelage : but it was already too late ; the hungry and discontented Chinese rebels took Peking ; the Emperor committed suicide ; the Manchu enemy was foolishly called in to assist ; and of course he did what all Tartars had done before him, and what the Russians seem to aim at now in Manchuria he took the contested quarry for himself. Under pretext that there were no legitimate heirs to the Ming throne, the Manchu prince, in 1644, declared him- self Emperor of China, and proceeded to extend and con- solidate his conquests. 48 CHINA Many readers, after the events of the past years, will think it incongruous when I suggest that the Manchu dynasty is, perhaps, the very best the Chinese ever had. But it is so. The first Emperor died young ; the second, K'ang-hi, ruled gloriously for sixty years, and has left a name which both in literature and in war is imperishable. He thoroughly conquered and consolidated the Chinese Em- pire, besides securing his position in Mongolia, Russian Siberia and Korea. His grandson K'ien-lung also reigned for full sixty years i he was one of the wittiest and most intelligent men that ever sat upon a throne. The Kal- mucks, Tibet, Turkestan, Formosa, Annam, Nepaul, Burma all these were either crushed or severely handled in turn j and at last the boundaries of his vast empire were fixed as we see them marked now on the maps. Lord Macartney visited him just over a century ago. Decay and rebellion set in with the Nineteenth Century just expired. None of the Emperors were particularly bad men as rulers, but they have all been inferior in capac- ity to the two excellent monarchs above specified. The introduction from India of opium on a large scale undoubt- edly led to a hostile feeling against foreign trading con- cessions generally, just as the introduction of profitless religious disputes upon mere points in empty dogma exer- cised an unfavourable influence upon the reception accorded to European religions. The Opium War of 1839-42, the "Arrow" lorcha War of 1858-60, the Taiping rebellion of 1854-64, the Mussulman revolts in Yun Nan HISTORY 49 and Kashgaria, the stealthy advance of Russia, the Japa- nese seizure of Formosa in 1874, the French hostilities of 1884 all these mark steps in disaster; but, with astonish- ing sagacity and vitality, China was gradually surviving the ill effects of all, and was consolidating her position, when the unfortunate Japanese war broke out. This blow fairly staggered China. As she attempted to struggle to her feet, Germany delivered a final knock-out blow in the shape of the Kiao Chou affair ; then took place a rush for the spoils of the dying gladiator. In sheer desperation the old empire made one last mad dying lunge for freedom in the shape of the foolish " Boxer " revolt. Undoubtedly she would have been torn to pieces this time had it not been for the remnants of conscience ultimately exhibited by Great Britain, the United States and Japan, for an alliance with which last named gallant country I, with others, have pleaded from time to time I am glad to say now success- fully. DR. SUN YAT SEN AND THE CHINESE REVOLUTION J. ELLIS BARKER A FEW days ago we received the news that sud- denly, and almost simultaneously, a revolution had broken out in Hupeh, Hunnan, and Szechuan. These three provinces are situated in the very heart of China, in the valley of the incomparable Yangtze-kiang, China's principal highroad and trade artery. They have together about 125,000,000 inhabitants. They contain some of the greatest industrial, commercial, and mining centres of China, and they possess an importance comparable with that which Lancashire and Yorkshire have for Great Britain and which the States of Massachusetts, Illinois, and Pennsylvania, with the towns of Boston, Chicago, Saint Louis, Philadelphia, and Pittsburg have for the United States. The position in China is extremely serious, and people are asking them- selves, What are the causes of this sudden revolution, and what are its aims ? What is the character of its organizer, Dr. Sun Yat Sen, and what is his policy ? How will the revolution affect China and the surrounding States, es- pecially India ? How will it affect the foreigners living in China, European interests, and the balance of power in the Far East ? Last, but not least, ought Great Britain, which alone is able to control the situation, to interfere in the DR. SUN YAT SEN 51 struggle, and what should be her policy if other nations wish to intervene f I have perhaps some qualifications for answering these questions. During many years I have taken a great interest in Chinese history, literature, and politics, and especially in the latter. Only a few months ago I visited the great Chinese settlements in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, and Victoria, British Columbia, where I discussed the situation in China with many of the most prominent Chinese citi- zens. In Victoria I had the good fortune of meeting Dr. Sun Yat Sen himself. I spent several afternoons and even- ings in his company, and when he found that I had much sympathy with his country and his countrymen, he told me without reserve of his plans, and allowed me to discuss with him every aspect of the Chinese question. As the charac- ter of a revolution depends largely on the character of its leader, I would give a brief account of the impression which I received from my intercourse with Dr. Sun Yat Sen. The doctor is a man of medium height, slight but wiry, and is forty-five years old. He speaks good English. He is very quiet and reserved in manner, and extremely moderate, cautious, and thoughtful in speech. He gives one the im- pression of being rather a sound and thorough than a bril- liant man, rather a thinker than a man of action. He does not care to use the dramatic eloquence which appeals to the imagination and the passions of the masses, and which is usually found in political and religious reformers of the or- 52 CHINA dinary kind. But then the Chinese are perhaps not so emo- tional as are most Eastern and Western nations. I have heard Dr. Sun Yat Sen addressing a meeting of his coun- trymen. He spoke quietly and almost monotonously with hardly any gestures, but the intent way in which his audience listened to every word his speeches occupy often three and four hours, and even then his hearers never tire of listening to him showed me the powerful effect which he was able to exercise over his hearers by giving them a simple account of the political position in China, of the suf- ferings of the people, and of the progress of the revolution- ary movement. The majority of the Chinese in America are revolution- aries, and they worship their leader. Chinamen are com- monly supposed to be sordid materialists, devoid of patriot- ism, and interested only in money-making, who are always ready to sell their country to the enemy. The incorrect- ness of that widely-held belief, and the influence of Dr. Sun Yat Sen, will be seen from the fact that the Chinese living outside China have given enormous sums to the revo- lutionary movement. According to the doctor's state- ments, many have given him their entire fortune. Even the poorest shopkeepers and laundrymen contribute their mite. Dr. Sun Yat Sen seems to be actuated solely by unselfish motives. He does not " make a good thing " out of his agitation, like so many professional agitators. I found him at a fourth-rate hotel, a kind of lodging-house for working DR. SUN YAT SEN 53 men, occupying a bare and miserable little room. His dress was modest and his luggage scanty. Upon my in- quiring he told me smilingly of the many attempts which have been made on his life, and enumerated the rewards which the Chinese Imperial Government, and various provincial Governments, have offered for his head. If I remember rightly, they amount altogether to the enormous sum of 700,000 taels, or about ; 100,000. One night, when we had been discussing Chinese affairs till past mid- night at my hotel, I wished to accompany him back to his hotel, a distance of about three-quarters of a mile, partly from courtesy, partly in order to protect him if he should be attacked. Although he was alone, he absolutely refused my repeated and pressing offers. At last I told him, " With a reward of .100,000 on your head, you should not go alone through the deserted streets of a strange town. If you have no fear for yourself, you should at least spare yourself for your cause and your country." He replied with a quiet smile which was half sad and half humorous : " If they had killed me some years ago, it would have been a pity for the cause ; I was indispensable then. Now my life does not matter. Our organization is complete. There are plenty of Chinamen to take my place. It does not mat- ter if they kill me." That little incident showed the charac- ter, spirit, and courage of the man. After saying good-bye at the door of the hotel, I followed Dr. Sun Yat Sen at a distance, feeling responsible for my guest's safety. To my surprise, I found that none of his countrymen were waiting 54 CHINA outside to escort him to his hotel. The streets were empty. A Chinaman might easily have earned that night the reward of 700,000 taels. Simple, unaffected, and modest, Dr. Sun Yat Sen gives one the impression of a really great man in the fullest sense of the word. It is ridiculous to compare him with Benjamin Franklin and with Garibaldi, for he stands by himself, and is likely to be classed in history among the world's greatest men. No greater task has ever been attempted than that of reforming the oldest and the most conservative State the world has seen, and of con- verting it into a republic. The reform of Japan is but a small thing compared with the re-creation of China. Dr. Sun Yat Sen told me that he had millions of ad- herents, and described to me the organization of his society, which, with its self-supporting branches, its honorary presi- dents, etc., may be compared with the great political as- sociations existing in Anglo-Saxon countries. The doctor has led an agitator's life for more than twenty years. At first he was in favour of reform. He became a revolution- ary when, at last, he recognized that all attempts to reform China by peaceful and orderly methods were quite hope- less. He told me that the revolutionary movement had re- ceived an enormous impetus when, during the short reform period inaugurated by the late Emperor, many thousands of students belonging to the best families had gone abroad, especially to Japan in 1905 there were 10,000 Chinese students in Japan : who had come to see with their own eyes the hopeless backwardness of China, the tyranny of its DR. SUN YAT SEN 55 Government, and the necessity of thorough reform in order to save it from utter ruin. Thus, a very large number of men belonging to the educated, cultured, and privileged classes had become his supporters, and had spread the gos- pel of revolt all over the country. The Government knew the strength of the revolutionary party and feared it. A revolution would break out within two years. Practically the whole of the modern army, that is, that part of the army which has been drilled by Europeans and Japanese, were patriots, and were on the side of the revolution. The Gov- ernment, being aware of this, relied for its defence on the ancient and unreformed military forces, hired cutthroats without the sense of patriotism, who fought merely for their pay. These guarded the magazines and arsenals, and were provided with plenty of ammunition. The modern army was left without ammunition. To ensure their harmlessness only five cartridges per man were allowed for firing prac- tice, and only small parties of men were given cartridges at any time. The greatest needs of the revolutionaries were money and arms. By the seizure of the important Han- yang arsenal and treasury, the revolutionaries have obtained both at the outset of their operations, and through their con- trol of mines and factories they can manufacture all the im- plements, arms, and ammunition which they need. China has had about twenty dynasties, which have been introduced by as many revolutions, but China has remained unreformed. A change of dynasty is therefore no longer considered a remedy for China's ills. China has hitherto 56 CHINA been governed by an absolutism which was supposed to be paternal, but which has become tyrannical. The people are tired of being misgoverned. They wish to govern themselves. The revolutionary party desires to convert China into a republic. China proper is a loose conglomer- ate of eighteen semi-independent provinces ruled by Viceroys. They are to be replaced by republics having Parliaments of their own. These local Parliaments will look after purely local affairs, while national affairs will be under the control of a supreme National Parliament. The Government of China will be modelled on that of the United States or of Canada, and all has been prepared for effecting such a change. In Dr. Sun Yat Sen's opinion, the Chinese people are able to govern themselves, being in- dustrious, orderly, and docile, especially as they have been trained in the art of self-government and cooperation through their powerful guilds and secret societies. He told me that the Chinese were revolting not against the foreign- ers but against their corrupt Government, against the Manchus. The Europeans dwelling in China would be safe. A reformed China would be friendly to all nations, but it would expect to be treated as a civilized nation when it had earned the respect of Europe and could no longer be reproached with barbarism. The Chinese revolution is caused by the misgovernment and corruption which are apparently inseparable from China's present form of government. In China there are about 400,000,000 Chinese and 5,000,000 Manchus. The DR. SUN YAT SEN 57 latter, having conquered the country, reserved to themselves all positions of power and profit. They rule through a host of more or less irresponsible and venal officials, most of whom are Manchus. Self-preservation is the first in- stinct in men. Owing to their great numerical inferiority it was in the interest of the Manchus that the people should be weak, ignorant, unwarlike, and disunited. Therefore the chief aim of the Manchu policy was not to maintain the integrity of the country and to promote the welfare of the people, but to preserve the power of the ruling caste and to keep the people in subjection. Intercourse with foreign nations would have been profitable to the Chinese traders, and it would have enlightened the Chinese people. How- ever, the enlightenment of the people might become danger- ous to the small ruling caste. Therefore the Manchu offi- cials preached hatred to the foreigners, who were excluded from the country. To the Manchus a disastrous war was a smaller calamity than the existence of a national army which might overthrow them. So the Chinese army was neglected, and the country was humiliated and despoiled by all nations. Modern industries and railways would have increased the national prosperity, but as both would have in- creased the power and cohesion of the people, the introduc- tion of both was forbidden. The people prayed for good and honest government. However, as the officials were Manchus they had to be humoured to ensure their fidelity and support, and thus they were allowed to prey upon the people. During two and a half centuries the Chinese were 5 8 CHINA ruled by an absolute and corrupt bureaucracy, and their taskmasters were aliens. Confucianism, the prevailing doctrine of China, is neither a religion nor a system of transcendental or cosmic philoso- phy. It is an agnostic system of ethics, and a system of practical, and purely temporal, common-sense philosophy which sees no further than this earth. It takes practically no notice whatever of the question of an after-life, of eternity, of future rewards and punishments, of God. It teaches merely that one ought to do good because it is man's duty to do good. Confucianism is entirely con- cerned with the relations between man and man, and it deals very fully with the question of government, with the administration of justice, and other practical matters. Con- fucianism is the most democratic of doctrines. It con- demns in the most unsparing terms governmental absolutism and favouritism, the appointment of incompetent officials, and official tyranny and extortion the very evils which exist in China. All Chinese study the Classics as soon as they have mastered the alphabet. Official appointments have, until lately, been made solely on the strength of purely literary attainments, although we read in the Confucian Analects, " Though a man be able to recite the three hundred odes but be incapable as an ad- ministrator or an ambassador, and cannot work without as- sistance, of what practical use is then his knowledge ? " Chinese literature is extremely rich in telling proverbs. Many of these insist on the supremacy of the people : DR. SUN YAT SEN 59 " The people's will is the will of Heaven." Others emphasize the authority of the law, and complain of the tyranny of officialdom, the venality of the judges, and the necessity of forming secret societies for the mutual protec- tion of the people. A proverb says : " The mandarin derives his power from the law, the people from the secret societies." Another warns us: "The doors of the law courts stand wide open, but you had better not enter if you are only strong in right, but not strong in cash." Another tells us : " The friendship of mandarins impoverishes j that of merchants makes rich." The foregoing extracts suffice to show that the tyrannical misgovernment, official incompetence and obstructive con- servatism prevalent throughout China are not due to the in- fluence of Confucianism as has hitherto been believed in the West. They are opposed to Confucianism, and are condemned by it. The condition of the Chinese people has been well de- scribed by Dr. Sun Yat Sen, in 1897, in the following words, which incidentally show his great literary ability and power and his wonderful command of the English lan- guage : " The form of rule which obtains in China at present may be summed up in a few words. The people have no say whatever in the management of imperial, national, or even municipal affairs. The mandarins, or local magistrates, have full power of adjudication, from which there is no ap- peal. Their word is law and they have full scope to prac- 60 CHINA tice their machinations with complete irresponsibility, and every officer may fatten himself wiih impunity. Extortion by officials is an institution. It is the condition on which they take office j and it is only when the bleeder is a bungler that the Government steps in with pretended benevolence to ameliorate, but more often to complete, the depletion. " English readers are probably unaware of the smallness of the established salaries of provincial magnates. They will scarcely credit that the Viceroy of, say, Canton, ruling a country with a population larger than that of Great Britain, is allowed as his legal salary the paltry sum of 60 a year j so that, in order to live and maintain himself in office, accumulating fabulous riches the while, he resorts to extortion and the selling of justice. So with education. The results of examinations are the one means of obtain- . ing official notice. Granted that a young scholar gains distinction, he proceeds to seek public employment and, by bribing the Peking authorities, an official post is hoped for. Once obtained, as he cannot live on his salary, perhaps he even pays so much annually for his post, licence to squeeze is the result, and the man must be stupid indeed who can- not, when backed up by the Government, make himself rich enough to buy a still higher post in a few years. With advancement comes increased licence and additional facilities for his enrichment, so that the cleverest c squeezer' ultimately can obtain money enough to purchase the high- est positions. 41 This official thief, with his mind warped by his mode DR. SUN YAT SEN 61 of life, is the ultimate authority in all matters of social, political, and criminal life. It is a fatal system, an im- pertunt in imperio, an unjust autocracy which thrives by its own rottenness. But this system of fattening on the public vitals the selling of power is the chief means by which the Manchu dynasty continues to exist. With this legal- ized corruption stamped as the highest ideal of government, who can wonder at the existence of a strong undercurrent of dissatisfaction among the people ? " The masses of China, although kept officially in igno- rance of what is going on in the world around them, are anything but stupid people. All European authorities on this matter state that the latent ability of the Chinese is considerable; and many place it even above that of the masses in any other country, European and Asiatic. Books on politics are not allowed ; daily newspapers are prohibited in China; the world around, its people and politics, are shut out ; while none below the grade of a mandarin of the seventh rank is allowed to read Chinese geography, far less foreign. The laws of the present dynasty are not for public reading ; they are known only to the highest officials. The reading of books on military subjects is, in common with that of all other prohibited matter, not only forbidden but is even punishable by death. None is allowed on pain of death to invent anything new, or to make known any new discovery. In this way are the people kept in darkness, while the Government doles out to them what scraps of information it finds will suit its own needs. 62 CHINA " The * Literati ' of China are allowed to study only the Chinese classics and the commentaries thereon. These consist of the writings of the old philosophers, the works of Confucius and others. But even of these, all parts re- lating to the criticism of their superiors are carefully ex- punged, and only those parts are published for public read- ing which teach obedience to authorities as the essence of all instruction. In this way is China ruled or rather mis- ruled namely, by the enforcement of blind obedience to all existing laws and formalities. " To keep the masses in ignorance is the constant en- deavour of Chinese rule." Matters have very slightly improved since 1897. Still, the position is in the main as it was then, and the people are worse off than they were fourteen years ago, through the very great increase in taxation, and its constantly grow- ing arbitrariness. The revolutionary principles of Dr. Sun Yat Sen were laid down in a pamphlet of his entitled " The Solution of the Chinese Question," which was published in 1904. As far as I know there is no English translation of that important pamphlet. Some of its most important passages are as follows : " The Chinese have no real Government. The term 4 the Chinese Government ' is a term without meaning. The Manchus were a tribe of savage nomads who wan- dered about the deserts of the Amur before they came in contact with the Chinese. Often they made inroads into DR. SUN YAT SEN 63 China and plundered the peaceful inhabitants near the frontier. Towards the end of the Ming dynasty civil war broke out in China and, taking advantage of the con- fusion, the Manchus conquered Peking. That was in 1644. The Chinese did not want to be enslaved by foreigners, and offered a desperate resistance. To overcome the op- position the Manchus massacred millions of people, war- riors and peaceful inhabitants, old and young, women and children. They burned their houses and forced the Chinese people to adopt the Manchu costume. Tens of thousands of people were killed for disobeying their orders to wear the queue. After terrible slaughter the Chinese were forced to submit to the Manchu laws. " The first measure of the conquerors was to keep the people in ignorance. They destroyed and burnt the Chinese libraries and books. They prohibited the forma- tion of societies and the holding of meetings for the dis- cussion of public affairs. Their aim was to destroy the patriotic spirit of the Chinese to such a degree that they should in course of time forget that they had to obey foreign laws. The Manchus number 5,000,000, whilst the Chinese number about 400,000,000. Hence the con- querors live under the constant fear that the Chinese should wake up and reconquer their country. " It is generally believed among the people in the West that the Chinese wish to keep themselves apart from foreign nations and that the Chinese ports could be opened to foreign trade only at the point of the bayonet. That 64 CHINA belief is erroneous. History furnishes us with many proofs that before the arrival of the Manchus the Chinese were in close relations with the neighbouring countries, and that they evinced no dislike towards foreign traders and missionaries. Buddhism was introduced into China by an Emperor of the Han dynasty, and the people received the new religion with enthusiasm. Foreign merchants were allowed to travel freely through the Empire. During the Ming dynasty there was no anti-foreign spirit. The first minister became Roman Catholic, and his intimate friend, Mathieu Ricci, the Jesuit missionary in Peking, was held in high esteem by the people. " With the arrival of the Manchus the ancient policy of toleration gradually changed. The country was entirely closed to foreign commerce. The missionaries were driven out. The Chinese Christians were massacred. Chinamen were forbidden to emigrate. Disobedience was punished with death. Why ? Simply because the Manchus wished to exclude foreigners and desired the people to hate them for fear that the Chinese, enlightened by the foreigners, might wake up to a sense of their nationality. The anti- foreign spirit created by the Manchus came to its climax in the Boxer Risings of 1900, and the leaders of that move- ment were none other than members of the reigning family. " It is therefore clear that the policy of exclusion practised by China is the result of Manchu egotism. It is not approved of by the majority of the Chinese. Foreign- DR. SUN YAT SEN 65 ers travelling in China have often remarked that they are better received by the people than by the officials. " During the 260 years of the Tartar rule we have suffered countless wrongs and the principal are the follow- ing : " i. The Manchurian Tartars govern for the benefit of their race and not for that of their subjects. " 2. They oppose our intellectual and material progress. " 3. They treat us as a subject race and deny us the rights and privileges of equality. "4. They violate our inalienable rights to life, liberty, and property. " 5. They promote and encourage the corruption of officialdom. " 6. They suppress the liberty of speech. " 7. They tax us heavily and unjustly without our consent. " 8. They practise the most barbarous tortures. 11 9. They deprive us unjustly of our rights. " 10. They do not fulfill their duty of protecting the life and the property of the people living under their juris- diction. . . . " Although we have reasons to hate the Manchus we have tried to live in peace with them, but without success. Therefore we, the Chinese people, have resolved to adopt pacific measures if possible and violent ones if necessary in order to be treated with justice and to establish peace in the Far East and throughout the world. . . . 66 CHINA " A new Government, an enlightened and progressive Government, must be substituted for the old one. When that has been done China will not only be able to free her- self from her troubles, but also may be able to deliver other nations from the necessity of defending their independence and integrity. Among the Chinese there are many of high culture who, we believe, are able to undertake the task of forming a new Government. Carefully thought out plans have been made for a long time for transforming the old Chinese monarchy into a republic. " The masses of the people are ready to receive a new form of Government. They wish for a change of their political and social conditions in order to escape from the deplorable conditions of life prevailing at present. The country is in a state of tension. It is like a sun-scorched forest, and the slightest spark may set fire to it. The peo- ple are ready to drive the Tartars out. Our task is great. It is difficult, but not impossible." Dr. Sun Yat Sen's assertions, contained in the foregoing, that a reformed China would " establish peace in the Far East and throughout the world," seems at first sight rather exaggerated. However, I think there can be no doubt that a reform of China, a reform which would regenerate the country, would tend not only to establish peace in the Far East but would also tend to diminish the dangers of war threatening Europe and America. The greatest danger to the peace in the Far East lies undoubtedly in China's weakness. As long as China is weak, Russia, Japan, and DR. SUN YAT SEN 67 other nations desirous of expansion will feel tempted to ac- quire Chinese territory, and as a peaceful partition of China among the numerous claimants is out of the question, a weak China will continue to be a danger, not merely to the peace of Asia, but to that of Europe and America as well. But for China's weakness the Russo-Japanese War would never have occurred. China's weakness has caused in the past dangerous friction between Russia and England, be- tween France and England, between Germany and Eng- land, and between the United States and Japan, and it has more than once raised the spectre of war between these countries. The Sick Man of the East is as great a danger to the peace of the world as is the Sick Man of the West. Dr. Sun Yat Sen states that a reformed China " will not only be able to free herself from her troubles, but may be able to deliver other nations from the necessity of defend- ing their independence and integrity." He evidently refers to the small nations on the frontiers of China, such as Tibet, which used to stand under China's protection, and which at present are unable to defend themselves against the Powers of the West. Many European officers and other competent observers who have lived in China I could mention several promi- nent generals, admirals and administrators, and among them General Gordon are of opinion that the Chinese, if properly trained and led, will make excellent soldiers. Some believe that the Chinese, owing to their extremely hardy constitution, their great endurance and marching 68 CHINA power, and their contempt of death, are the best military material in the world. A country with 400,000,000 in- habitants can of course raise very large armies. The late Sir Robert Hart prophesied that China would create an army of 30,000,000 men. She could undoubtedly do this if she introduced universal and compulsory military service on the model of Germany and France. But let us not forget that large armies provided with modern weapons and the numerous and extremely costly appliances indispensable in modern warfare are very costly luxuries, and that China is, and will for many years remain, a very poor country. Be- sides the larger an army is, the greater are the difficulties of transporting and provisioning it. The Huns could travel without baggage when invading Europe. Nowadays the transport of the impedimenta of an army offers in- finitely greater difficulties than the transport of the men themselves. The idea of a score of millions of China- men overrunning and overwhelming India, Asiatic Russia, and Europe, cannot be seriously discussed except by those who are ignorant not only of military affairs but also of China's geographical position. The peculiarities of China's geographical position will be clear from the following figures : China proper (18 Provinces) Manchuria Mongolia Tibet Area. 1,532,420 sq. miles 363,610 1,367,600 " 463,200 Population. 407,253,030 people 16,000,000 2,600,000 " 6,500,000 " Chinese Turkestan .... 55 340 1,200,000 " Total of the Chinese Empire United Kingdom 4,277,170 " 121,391 433-553.030 " 45,000,000 DR. SUN YAT SEN 69 The foregoing table shows that the eighteen Provinces of China proper, with their 400,000,000 inhabitants, occupy only a little more than one-third of the gigantic territory of all China. If we look at the map we find that China is almost isolated from the outer world, for those parts of China which do not touch the sea are separated from the neigh- bour nations by an enormous belt of deserts and mountains which make an invasion by large foreign armies across the land frontiers and an attack by large Chinese armies upon her Continental neighbours equally difficult if not impossi- ble. The populous provinces of China proper are separated from British India by the tremendous mountain wastes of Tibet, a country which is almost four times as large as the whole of the United Kingdom, and they are separated from Russia by the enormous deserts of Mongolia and Turkestan, which together are fifteen times as large as the United Kingdom. Yet these countries have together only 10,000,- ooo inhabitants. We can best represent to ourselves their desolation and the sparsity of their inhabitants by imagining that the whole of the United Kingdom was inhabited by 500,000 people, a number which would correspond to the population of the outlying portions of China. If a Chinese army should succeed in crossing the enor- mous, foodless and roadless wastes surrounding China, which are peopled only by wandering tribes of nomads and a small number of mountaineers, it would still have to cross the Himalayas before it could penetrate into India, and the vast Siberian deserts before it could attack Russia. We yo CHINA know the difficulty of penetrating Tibet with a small force, and of providing camel transport for crossing a desert such as the Gobi desert. How many, then, of the teeming millions of China would survive the ordeal of a march across the Chinese frontiers ? An advance into Burma and thence into India, and an advance through the slightly more populated Manchuria into Eastern Siberia is possible, but it would bring a Chinese army only to Assam in the former case, and to the comparatively valueless Russian Amur and maritime Provinces with Vladivostock in the latter. Be- sides, the risk run by the Chinese would be very great. It must not be forgotten that China is not an inland, but a maritime, Power and that she is extremely vulnerable on the sea. All her largest towns lie on, or in easy reach of, a hostile navy, and nine-tenths of China's trade is sea borne. China would, therefore, have to secure the rule of the sea before she could invade her neighbour States with impunity. Confucianism is a doctrine of peace and good- will among men. China is by history and tradition a peaceful nation. It is not likely that the present revolution will alter China's historic character and the character of her people, but even if the character of China should be altered completely by the present revolution, if she should become a warlike and aggressive nation, determined upon attacking her neighbours, her peculiar geographical circumstances would prevent her doing much harm. The expansion of China had ended long before the expansion of England had even begun. It had ended when the Gobi desert and DR. SUN YAT SEN 71 the highlands of Tibet were reached. Nature has set lim- its to China's expansion. The Yellow Peril is a ridiculous bogey. If ever there was a people rightly struggling to be free it is the Chinese. The Chinese deserve the sympathy of the world in their struggle for freedom and for good popular Government. England and the United States, the great protagonists of popular Government in every country, are considered to be the fairest nations by the people in the Far East, who are aware that Great Britain and the United States have in the past invariably shown their active sym- pathy for all nations struggling for freedom. Many China- men have told me that they look to Great Britain and to the United States for sympathy and encouragement in their attempt to rid themselves of an odious tyranny, and that they look for their active support and assistance in the event that other nations should try to occupy Chinese territory at a time when the Chinese are righting among themselves. Intervention in the present struggle is possible only from the sea. No nation, and no combination of nations, can interfere in this Chinese civil war without England's assent, and her toleration of foreign intervention would be equiva- lent to her assent. England has a great responsibility in the present struggle, and has a great task to perform. It is to be hoped that the revolutionists will succeed in overthrowing the Manchu regime in a very short time. A protracted struggle would undoubtedly seriously damage China's foreign trade, and cause great losses to the foreign 72 CHINA traders and to the foreign capitalists who have invested money in Chinese railways and other undertakings. These losses of capital would, no doubt, be very serious to a num- ber of individuals, but they would scarcely affect to a per- ceptible extent the wealth of the nations to which the indi- vidual investors belong, for the sum total of European and American money invested in China is comparatively very small. Hence the losses arising to foreigners through the Chinese civil war would not be an adequate justification for interference on the part of other nations. It would not justify them to treat the revolutionists as rebels and to aid the Manchu Government in the suppression of the revolu- tion. It would be morally indefensible for a European na- tion to assist the Manchu Government in keeping enslaved 400,000,000 people in order to save a few millions of money to a handful of capitalists who knew the risks they ran when they invested their money in China. Patience will pay the foreign capitalists. A regenerated China will give an infinitely greater scope to European enterprise than China in its present stagnation. I think China should be allowed to work out her own salvation in her own way. Foreign intervention would not only be unjust, but might also be extremely unwise. The Chinese people have such great qualities they possess far greater gifts than the Japanese and their country has such magnificent resources that they are bound to come to the front and to have a great future. China has awakened, and her progress cannot be stopped. The Chinese people have DR. SUN YAT SEN 73 at last awakened to a sense of nationality. They would never forgive a nation which had taken the part of their alien rulers at the present juncture and had tried to perpet- uate the misery of the people, or which had robbed China of territory during the present struggle. In the event of foreign nations landing troops, the revolutionaries will proba- bly not resist, but will make all concessions demanded of them ; but they will continue the war against the Manchus. They cannot fight simultaneously their Government and the foreigners. The Chinese have recognized that they can create an army sufficiently strong to defend the integrity of their country only when they have overthrown the effete Manchu Government, which is determined to stifle all progress and to prevent the creation of a modern army. As soon as the Chinese have driven out the Manchu dynasty, and have introduced good government, they will create a powerful army, and they would undoubtedly in course of time call those nations to account which had taken an un- fair advantage of China's defencelessness during her pres- ent troubles. It is as yet too early to form an opinion whether the revolutionary movement will succeed or fail. However, the best authorities agree that the Manchu regime has been so seriously discredited in the eyes of the people that it can scarcely last much longer. At the same time, the character of the revolutionary movement and of its lead- ers ensures the ultimate success of the cause of progress. The regeneration of China is inevitable and is at hand. THE CIVILIZATION OF CHINA WU TING-FANG IT is an undisputed fact that no existing country in the world has a more ancient history than China, and that her civilization dates from the earliest times. Like other nations, she has her legends, which purport to have arisen half a million years ago, but from the lack of authentic records little credence can be attached to such claim. The accession of the Emperor Fuk-Hi, 2953 B. c., is, however, recorded in the Chinese annals, and with him begins the period known amongst the Chinese as " High Antiquity." From that epoch dates the succession of dynas- ties down to the present time ; and the names of the different rulers, their reigns and the principal events hap- pening in each, are recorded in Chinese history. Her civilization may justly be described as the most venerable in existence. It was founded in the remotest period of antiquity and developed under her own peculiar system of ethics, her own social and moral code, without aid from extraneous sources. This is partly due to her geographical position, but chiefly to the homogeneity of her people, all of whom, with a few unimportant ex- ceptions, belong to the same race, use the same language, have a common religion and literature, and are governed THE CIVILIZATION OF CHINA 75 by practically the same system of laws, morals and customs. Religious. From time immemorial, the Chinese appear to have had definite religious beliefs. They had clear ideas of a Godhead, a supreme being ruling over the uni- verse. He was designated the " Heavenly King " or " Supreme God," by whose decree the destiny of every creature or thing was supposed to be fixed. He was repre- sented as both merciful and just, and, while rewarding the good and punishing the wicked, he was not indisposed to temper justice with mercy. Consequently, he was feared, revered, and worshipped by all, from the Emperor down to the peasant. Other gods were admitted and worshipped ; but they were regarded as ministers, so to speak, of the Heavenly King, who appointed them to various offices, much in the same way as the Emperor appointed his officials to rule over his empire. This kind of religious belief persists to the present day, especially among the educated classes, and has exerted a strong and beneficial influence on the civilization of China, in spite of the mystic, and frequently idolatrous, doctrines and creeds introduced by the so-called Taoists and Buddhists during the middle ages of Chinese history. Social and moral. The Chinese had their own social and moral code ages ago and scores of centuries have passed away without any material change in it. There are five degrees of relationship recognized by the code and each de- gree has its prescribed duties, responsibilities and rights. 76 CHINA First comes the relationship between the sovereign and his subjects. The former is charged with the loving and be- nevolent care of his people, while the latter are enjoined to obey and serve their king with loyalty and faithfulness. Parents and children come next. " Honour thy father and thy mother " was, and is, as much a divine commandment with the Chinese as with the Hebrews; and under the heading of u filial piety " all the offspring of a family are bound by an inflexible law to yield obedience and love to their progenitors. Parents are not without obligations to their children. They have to cherish, educate, and main- tain them and to provide for their future welfare. It may be said that in no other country is the family-tie held more sacred than in China. The next relationship is that of husbands and wives; and as some misapprehension exists concerning the status of women and the practice of polyg- amy in China, it may be well to dwell at greater length on this relationship. A husband is bound to treat his wife with great consideration and courtesy, and to cherish and provide for her, while the wife is required to love and obey her spouse. A man is permitted by law to have one wife only, and the wife one husband. It is incorrect to say that the Chinese are polygamous, since the marriage of more than one wife is treated as an offense in Statute-law, and is punishable by heavy penalties, and the second marriage is declared null and void. As a concession to human weak- ness, however, and especially for the humane purpose of providing for the unfortunate issue of unmarried women THE CIVILIZATION OF CHINA 77 and securing the continuation of the family line on the male side, the law, by a fiction, recognizes the status of children born in concubinage, and admits them to become members of the families as if they were born in wedlock. This legal indulgence has, in course of time, led to much abuse, and has given the impression that a Chinese can have as many wives as he desires. As a matter of fact, the so-called secondary wife is not recognized by law, and has no legal status in a Chinese family. As to the present position of women there is also some misconception. To those who are well acquainted with the family life of the Chinese, the position of Chinese women does not seem much lower than that now attained by the majority of their sisters in the West. Within the Chinese home their reign is supreme. As Empresses, mothers, wives and sisters they usually obtain their due share of honour, power, homage, affection and respect. Their education, even in former times, was not entirely neglected, and, besides lit- erature, they were early instructed in needlework and household management, in order to fit them to become ef- fective helpmates of their future husbands. Since the be- ginning of the national reform movement within the last few years many public as well as private schools for girls have been established. The custom of the seclusion of women is being gradually abandoned, and they now enjoy as much liberty and freedom as their Western sisters. The relationship between the older and younger mem- bers of the family forms the fourth degree, and rules have 78 CHINA been framed for the regulation of their conduct towards each other. The Chinese exact from the younger mem- bers great respect and reverence for their elders, who, in turn, are enjoined to treat their juniors with kindness and courtesy. This rule is enforced, not only in families but in all the village-communities throughout the empire. Hence in every hamlet or country-place a council of elders is generally elected to deal with local affairs, and its deci- sions on matters referred to it have usually the force and authority of law. The officials interfere very little with their findings, and thus a vast amount of time is saved, and good order maintained, with little expense and trouble to the Government. This method of local government by the gentry and elders has been, and is, of the greatest util- ity and benefit. It forms the nucleus of local self-govern- ment and the foundation of parliamentary rule. The last and fifth degree of relationship is that between friends and others with whom one associates, and the re- quirements of the social code in this respect are cordiality, sincerity and faithfulness. Honest dealing in all transac- tions is secured by this moral law ; very few Chinese ex- cept those of the lowest order dare transgress it. For this reason the commercial integrity of the Chinese is proverbial and is much appreciated by foreigners and natives alike. Political. The government of China from the beginning of its history until now has been patriarchal in character. The theory was that the Emperor was the sire, having re- ceived his appointment from Heaven, and his various min- THE CIVILIZATION OF CHINA 79 isters and officers were the responsible elders and stewards of the various departments, provinces and districts. For many centuries the occupant of the Imperial throne held his high office for life, and at his demise or retirement some able and virtuous minister was chosen either by the Emperor himself, or by the people, or their representatives, as his successor. As the government was for the benefit of the people, the Emperor was in some instances compelled to resign, or was forcibly removed, if his reign turned to their detriment. The history of China contains several instances in which these drastic measures were taken to remove un- just rulers. In 1766 B. c. Ch'eng-t'ang, founder of the Shang dynasty, banished the wicked ruler Kieh, and in 1 1 22 B. c. Wu Wang, of the Chow dynasty, deposed the cruel King Chou. The rare occurrence of such incidents were due to the comparative soundness of the government and wisdom of the rulers, and to the institution of a pecul- iar system of strict surveillance and mutual responsibility among all classes of the people, which had the effect of de- terring them from any interference in government affairs that might involve them and their relations in trouble. Since the advent of foreigners into China, the establishment of foreign consulates in different ports, and the acquaint- ance with foreign officials, merchants and missionaries, the Chinese have gradually learned the more liberal systems of government prevalent in Europe and America. As a con- sequence, within the last few years, the officials and the people have shown an eager desire for reform in various 8o CHINA directions. This has led the people to take a more active interest in municipal and imperial affairs, and in some in- stances they have not hesitated to send remonstrances against governmental measures or actions which they looked upon as unwise or injurious. A few years ago, in com- pliance with the express wishes of the people, imperial edicts were issued promising constitutional government and the formation of a national parliament in ten years. Prep- arations are being made for carrying out this promise. Lo- cal assemblies, composed of delegates from different districts, have been formed and meetings are held periodically to discuss matters of local or provincial interest. A senate, composed of nobles, officials and men of distinction in science, literature, or commerce has lately been established in Peking. The formation of a responsible cabinet has recently been urged by the public and the period of ten years fixed before the inauguration of a parliament has been considered too long. Yielding to public opinion and to the representations of a majority of the provincial Viceroys and Governors, and of the ministers in Peking, the Gov- ernment issued an Imperial Edict on Nov. 4, 1910, chang- ing the date for the establishment of the Parliament to the fifth year of Hsuant'ung, the year 1913, and decreeing that the official system be reorganized, a cabinet formed, a code of constitutional law framed, and the rules and regulations governing Parliament and the election of members of the Upper and Lower Houses, and other necessary constitu- tional reforms, be prepared and put into force before the THE CIVILIZATION OF CHINA 81 assembling of Parliament. Thus it is hoped that in two years' time a constitutional Government and a Parliament will be in existence in this ancient empire. Educational. The instruction of the young had in the earliest times engaged the attention of Chinese educators. Besides teaching their youths polite literature and other branches of learning, they gave them moral training of a high order. The curriculum embraces mathematics, me- chanics, painting and music, athletic exercises, such as fencing, horse-riding, driving and archery, etc. As a re- sult the Chinese led the world in polite literature, in invent- ive and mechanical genius and in fine arts. But in the course of time some of these useful subjects were neglected, or omitted from the curriculum, and, instead of improv- ing, the educational system deteriorated considerably. Since the national reform movement, however, the education of the young has engrossed the serious attention of officials and people and energetic steps have been taken to improve the educational system and to train boys and girls in all useful subjects along modern lines. THE AWAKENING OF CHINA H. BOREL THE awakening of China to national conscious- ness is a process suddenly excited by the thunder of Japanese guns after a long period of silent brooding, and it is beyond the pale of possibility to estimate the immense influence it may have on the evolution of the whole world in the domain of politics, economics, science and art. Until a few years ago there was, as a matter of fact, no Chinese people, in the sense of a single conception com- prehending all Chinese. China was an unwieldy, inert mass of heterogeneous provinces and peoples, perhaps only kept together by the difficulty of falling asunder. When in 1894 the war in the north was waged against Japan, the South Chinese in the Fuhkien Province did not concern themselves with it, and it left the Chinese in the colonies beyond the seas as cold as a war between Bulgaria and Servia might have done. Up to the time of the Russo- Japanese War I hardly ever heard any Chinaman in Singa- pore or Batavia express the slightest interest in what might happen in Chinese politics. A Chinese emigrant in the English, American, or Dutch colonies might have ancestral tombs or prayer-houses somewhere in China which might THE AWAKENING OF CHINA 83 bind him to a certain spot in the land of his early life, but his interest was only associated with that particular place of his origin, not with the native country, conceived as a national unit. A Chinese from Shanghai was, moreover, as distinct from one hailing from Canton as a Spaniard from a French- man, and the same applies to a Chinese from Foochow, as compared with one from Peking, etc., etc. One usually speaks of Chinese " dialects," but " languages " would be the more correct expression. A Chinaman from the north could not understand one from the south ; a domestic from Amoy could not talk to a tramping tailor from Shanghai. China was a heterogeneous mass of peoples who had only one tie in common the written language, but this amounts to no more than do the Roman numbers in Europe to-day. The number X., for instance, is the same all over Europe, but the Englishman reads it as Ten, the Frenchman as Dix, the Italian as Died, and so on. In addition there is the so-called Chinese of the Mandarins, the Kuan hua or Ching yin. This language was spoken more or less gen- erally in the north, but in the south only by high digni- taries and by highly cultured literates. Its slightly differ- ent Pekingese variety was the language of the Court and of diplomats, but in the south it was not nearly so much used as French is in the more refined sets of Europeans. Only a select few of the officials and the literates knew the Chinese of the Mandarins ; the overwhelming large propor- tion of people, especially in the south, did not. 84 CHINA A single popular language one that could be used among all the civilized middle classes from Canton to Shanghai, from Peking to Foochow and Amoy did not exist. The Chinese of various southern provinces and districts of China remained foreigners to each other ; they did not feel themselves as belonging to one brotherhood, as the possessors of one common treasure the national ver- nacular by which the national mind may give utterance to its most sacred and intimate sentiments. It is for this reason that I never anticipated the possibil- ity of this conception suddenly emerging into a reality one Chinese nation, one Chinese language, as there is one English nation and one English language. But the roaring thunder of the Japanese guns over Chinese seas and the plains and mountains of Chinese Manchuria roused into activity the latent forces slumber- ing in the heterogeneous, indolent mass. Exactly how it came about no one really knows. At the back of the world's history mystical, spiritual powers are at work un- seen, raising and lowering the rhythm of those great move- ments of the world wherein nations and dynasties rise to their culmination and then fall into decay. It was as if a magnetic current, an electric vibration, passed through the body of this gigantic colossus, this mag- nificent, huge, primeval creature of prehistoric periods, ap- parently dead but in reality only slumbering through the centuries, on whose back foreign parasites had settled down, stinging and wounding and nesting in its skin. Suddenly THE AWAKENING OF CHINA 85 the heavy thick eyelids are half opened, a tremour of new life shivers through the unwieldy frame, the thick flabby skin contracts, the tremendous legs make the earth resound ; and with a cry reverberating through the whole world, it hails a new day. Here we had not only Japan defeating Russia on the plains of Manchuria, but a fragment of the East the coloured shaking off the West the white which reeled under the repulse. This terrific occurrence rang in a new era for the East, and the Chinese, the Hindu, the Mo- hammedan, awoke trembling, divining, with that Eastern intuition which is like second-sight, the hardly credible pos- sibilities of the future. And then the abstract idea, so ultra-realistic because it is abstract, according to Eastern wisdom, the idea of " the East for the East," born in the gore of battle-fields and ensanguined seas, saw the light. It is the idea now hovering over hundreds of millions of souls from Benares to Peking, from Calcutta to Batavia, and finding an echo far away in the hearts of all who are coloured, yellow and brown in farthest America, in Cape- town and the Transvaal, in Australia, in Alexandria, in Constantinople. Europe is not yet immediately threatened by the Yellow Peril of bayonets, air-ships, and armoured cruisers; but there is the much greater, much stronger because spiritual and mystical danger of the Yellow Idea; indestructible and irresistible like all spiritual forces in the history of the 86 CHINA universe, mightier than the thickest armour-plates, more far- reaching than the monsters of Krupp or Creusot. One can level to the ground by heavy artillery any armoured fort, destroy Dreadnoughts by mines and torpedoes, but the spiritual idea fermenting among hundreds of millions can- not be exterminated by material weapons. Much has already been written about railways and con- cessions, about loans and the exploitation of mines. Many have pondered and meditated on the reform of the Chinese people and the awakening of the Young Chinese. But it has not been clearly understood that what is really happen- ing in China at the present moment is merely the outward symptom of a single inward idea arising in Eastern Asia, a pulse of the rhythm in which the whole world moves. European diplomacy and European sinology ought to understand in the first place that any appreciation of the Young Chinese movement must start from the point of view that the idea, " the East for the East," is essentially spiritual, even mystical, and will not at all carry with it only the material movements of economical and trading in- terests. It involves immensely more than social reform and the expansion of trade. China with her four hundred millions is now moving upward in the world's course, be- cause in future she will work mightily towards the spiritual and intellectual progress of all humanity. Stated briefly, the beginnings of reform, as far as out- ward signs go, were as follows : After the defeat of the big, hairy Russian by the small brave Japanese, China be- THE AWAKENING OF CHINA 87 gan to realize her own latent power ; she began to consider how it came about that this small David had been able to slay this gigantic Goliath. It was as simple as the problem of Columbus's egg, but it took centuries after centuries for China to see this egg standing on its end. About three years ago I, with a Chinese friend, visited a private Chinese school somewhere in Java and opened the desk of an urchin scarcely ten years old. I picked up his exercise book of compositions, and what I read there I may copy here without any comment, so exactly does it reflect the actual situation. He wrote : " Small Japan defeated big China. Afterwards small Japan defeated big Russia. How was it able to accomplish this ? You think by ships and soldiers. But that is not so. It defeated Russia by its knowledge, by its education. It defeated the stupid Chinese and Russian soldiers, because education is so good in Japan; because the Japanese people are instructed in the sciences and are no longer ignorant. There is hardly a Japanese soldier who cannot read and write. China is much bigger than Japan and much bigger than Russia or any empire of Europe, and it has more than four hundred millions of in- habitants. When these people are instructed and know, China will be much more powerful than little Japan or the strongest peoples of Europe. Therefore the first thing China wants is instruction. It must start with that. Then China will become the first empire of the world." This short essay of a ten-year-old child from the Dutch colony offers a striking instance of what now fills the Chi- 88 CHINA nese popular mind, of what is taught in Chinese schools. Education has been reformed all over China and perhaps forced upon it by public opinion education is now the foremost care of the Chinese Government. It was ini- tiated by an impulse from Japan. Japanese schoolmasters opened in China the first modern Elementary School and were followed by Chinese scholars who had studied in Japan. Afterwards the Government took the official lead and had schools erected as far as possible all over China. The general curriculum of these schools is formed on a Japanese model, this again being an imitation of a European one rendered suitable to Eastern conditions. The present governmental programme contains a promise of compulsory education. Educational appliances, originally from Japan, are now being printed and manufactured chiefly in China. There is a separate Ministry for Education established in Peking and inspectors of High Schools and Grammar Schools are appointed by this department. A few schools have already been opened and a larger number are provided for. There are still not a few Japanese teachers in China, but there is a growing tendency to substitute for them Chi- nese who have studied in Japan. And in China itself Pre- paratory Schools are being erected for the education of elementary teachers. But the most important thing is in all these schools the Chinese of the Mandarins (Ching yin) is being taught. Why ? Because and here lies the central importance of the Chinese education question, wherever there are Chinese THE AWAKENING OF CHINA 89 settlements because the awakened national sentiment has discerned that unity of language is indispensable to national unity. What is at present possible to a small part only of the present generation in China will be possible to the whole of the next generation now attending the Elementary Schools : the Chinese people will speak one common lan- guage that of the Mandarins. Consequently the Chinese of the Mandarins has become the greatest good of modern China, because of all means it is the only one, the saving measure by which unity of State and nation can be accomplished. It is impossible to pre- dict what may be the consequences of this reformed ele- mentary education, soon to be followed by High Schools. The scope is so vast, so comprehensive. Everything per- taining to modern civilization is praised and explained in the reading-books of these schools of the people. A few years ago telegraphs, railways, telephones were of evil origin, sorceries of foreign devils, temples and tombs were obstacles in the way of tracks and roads. At the present moment railways, telegraphs, telephones, balloons, radio- telegraphy, everything that is modern and customary in Europe, is expounded in the national schools as the indis- pensable means to civilize China and put it on the same footing as the European States. Even Buddhist and Taoist temples are everywhere being equipped as schools and it is well to notice the symbolic significance thereof. Idols are removed from temples: modern science walks in. This single fact means the complete mental revolution of a 90 CHINA people of over four hundred millions ; and the aspect of the entire world will be altered by it. Morever, thousands of Chinese students go to Japan and America a small minority come to Europe as well ; they imbibe there the milk of modern science and new ideas and return to China, somewhat conceited and overbearing, but full of a sublime ideal : to devote their lives to the educa- tion of their native country. Amongst them there are numerous well-to-do people who become schoolmasters without taking any pay, from pure love of their ideal, and who disseminate knowledge as the apostles disseminated love. The Chinese have always been abused as inferior, as dirty, cowardly, and cruel, and particularly as materialistic and egotistical. Missionaries, and even learned professors who ought to know better, joined in, and (as happens everywhere through mistaking external deteriorations for the original, ancient, internal essence) they described the Chinese as a nation of heathen, full of superstition and witchcraft, steeped in materialism and egotism, too much debased to feel devotion to high ideals. Only a few have always known that this characterization was untruthful. Those who had thoroughly got into touch with Chinese literature and philosophy, not as dry-as-dust philologues but as artists and philosophers, knew better what was the real essence of the Chinese national soul. F WHAT HAS AWAKENED CHINA LORD WILLIAM GASCOTNE-CECIL OR centuries China has been the land that never moved. It had a political history full of wars and bloodshed, of intrigue and murder ; periods of pros- perity and enlightenment ; periods of darkness and desola- tion ; but the country remained essentially the same country. There might be some small alteration in its customs, but China was distinctly unprogressive. And everybody who knew China ten or fifteen years ago was prepared to proph- esy that it would continue to remain unprogressive. Many a missionary speaks of the China that he used to know as a very different land from the China of to-day. It used to be a sort of Rip Van Winkle land that had slept a thousand years, and showed every sign of remaining asleep for another thousand. Mrs. Arnold Foster told us that when she first came to Wuchang she used to see the soldiers dressed mediaevally, learning to make faces to inspire terror in the hearts of the adversary. Monseigneur Jarlin, the head of the French mission in Peking, described the China of olden times by saying that in his young days all Chinamen had a rooted contempt for everything Western. Theirs was the only civilized land. The West was the land of barbarism. Now, he added, the 92 CHINA positions are reversed ; every Chinaman despises China, and is convinced that from the West comes the light of civilization. Archdeacon Moule tells how he sailed out to China in a sailing ship, and found a land absolutely indifferent to the existence of the West more ignorant of the West than the West was of the East, and that, when he was young, was saying a great deal ; and now he finds himself in a land that has telephones and motor cars and takes an active interest in flying-machines. China has fundamentally altered. She used to be abso- lutely the most conservative land in the world. Now she is a land which is seeing so many radical changes that a missionary said, when I asked him a question about China : " You must not rely on me, for I left China three months ago, so that what I say may be out of date." China is now progressive; yes, Young China believes intensely in progress, with an optimistic spirit which re- minds the onlooker more of the French pre-Revolution spirit than of anything else. And this intense belief in progress shows itself at every turn ; the Yamen runner has become a policeman, towns are having the benefit of water- works, schools are being opened everywhere, railways cover the land. . One may well ask what has accomplished this change, what has awakened China ? Perhaps, like many other great events in history, this change of opinion in China should be attributed to more than one cause. There are two chief causes. One may be small, but it is not insignificant; the other is certainly WHAT HAS AWAKENED CHINA 93 great and obvious. The less appreciated factor that is causing the regeneration of China is Christianity ; the larger and more obvious factor is the new national move- ment. The cause of the new national movement was the sense of humiliation brought about by political events culminat- ing in the battle of Mukden, where a flagrant act of inso- lent contempt for the laws of neutrality was felt all the more deeply because China had to submit to that which she was powerless to resist. China, confident in the number of her people, which reached to a quarter of the world's population, at- tempted to assert her rights of suzerainty over Korea against Japan. She had not realized then that Japan was no longer an Eastern Power, where knights with two- handed swords did deeds of valour and won for themselves everlasting renown. And when at Ping-yang the armies met, the Chinese general ascended a hill that he might direct the armies of the Celestial Empire with a fan. He conceived the battle to be merely a small affair, where a fan could be seen by all the officers engaged. The result was, of course, that the German-trained Japanese army had a very easy victory. The war ended in the taking of Port Arthur by the Japanese, and China was in the humiliating position of having to appeal to Western countries to secure her territory. So far, however, the sting of her humiliation gave to China a sense of resentment against all foreigners, rather 94 CHINA than a sense of repentance for her own shortcomings, and the missionaries found hostility to their work in every part of China. That hostility resulted in the murder of two German Roman Catholic missionaries in Shantung. The well-known action in Germany in demanding a ces- sion of territory as a punishment for this murder may have been a good stroke of policy, but it has brought but little honour either to Germany or to Christianity. In fact it may be regarded as a most regrettable action from a mis- sionary point of view, for it convinced the Chinese that the missionary was but a part of the civil administration of a hostile country, and that if China was to be preserved from the foreigner, missionaries must be induced to leave the country. A deep feeling of national resentment spread over the land which was encouraged by some in authority. The direct connection between Government patronage of the anti-foreign movement and the German occupation of Kianchau can be deduced from the fact that the Gov- ernor who was responsible for the awful murders in Shansi had been Governor of Shantung when Germany took Kianchau. The result of this bitter feeling was the creation of a secret and patriotic society which concealed the nature of its propaganda under a name with a double meaning. The Boxer Society was, as its name suggests, apparently an athletic society a society which had for its object the en- couragement of the art of self-defense. But the name had another signification. Its real object, as a Chinaman ex- WHAT HAS AWAKENED CHINA 95 plained to me, was to " knock the heads of the foreigners off." It was a religious as well as a political movement, however. It had its prophets, who did wonders or were thought to do them, and its disciples were believed to be invulnerable to any Western weapon. It protested against the movement towards Western ideas, which it regarded as immoral ; it condemned and destroyed everything Western, from straw hats and cigarettes to mission houses and rail- ways ; its disciples believed that the spirits that defend China were angry at the introduction of Western things, that they were withholding the rain so necessary to the light loess land of that district, and that the only way they could be propitiated was by the sacrifice of a Western life or by the destruction of a Western building. One of the things that precipitated the siege of Peking was the apparent suc- cess of such an action. In pursuance of their faith, the Boxers set a light to the rail-head station of the half-made Hankow-Peking railway, a place called Pao-ting-fu ; the station was a mere wooden barrack and blazed up merrily with an imposing column of smoke ; hardly had the smoke reached the heavens, when the sky was overcast with heavy thunder-clouds, and in a short time the thirsty land re- ceived the long-wished-for rain and the Boxer prophets pointed with sinister effect to the heavenly confirmation of their doctrine. With the relief of Peking the Boxer Society fell ; but the popular view was not that Boxer teaching was false, but that the spirits behind Western religion were stronger 96 CHINA than those behind Boxerdom. So one of the immediate results of the fall of the Boxers was to establish the spirit- ual prestige of Christianity ; the second result was to in- spire the Chinese with a respect for the military power of the foreigner. The Boxers had failed, the foreign powers had taken Peking, the Son of Heaven had become a fugi- tive ; all this was gall and wormwood to the Chinaman. The sack of Peking was especially felt, both because of the wanton destruction that was committed one informant told me he saw a vase worth 200 smashed into a thousand atoms by a drunken soldier and because the enlightened Chinese knew very well that no civilized city is sacked at the present time, and that they were being treated as no other race is now treated. The bitterness of their next humiliation made them ready to learn as they had never been before in the whole of their history, and events provided them with teachers who taught them that the cause of this humiliation was their refusal to accept Western ideas, and that if they would maintain their independence they must learn the art of war from their conquerors. After the siege of Peking came the Russo-Japanese war. The Russians had long been known and feared by the Chinese ; they were to the Chinese mind the embodiment of the warlike and bloodthirsty spirit of the West; they were hated for their cruelty and feared for their prowess. The awful story of the massacre of Blagovestchensk in 1900 was still present to the popular mind. The story was WHAT HAS AWAKENED CHINA 97 this. The Amur divides China from Siberia. When the Boxer movement broke out the Russians required all the Chinese to go to their side of the river j but with sinister intent, they removed all the boats, so that no one could cross. The Chinese pointed this out, and the respectable merchants of the town presented a petition saying they were ready to obey the Russian Government in everything, but without the boats they could not do so j but the Russians insisted that boats or no boats, they must cross the Amur; they protested but in vain ; a half-circle was formed round them by the soldiery, and the whole Chinese population of the city was driven into the river at the point of the bayonet. The Japanese were also well known to the Chinese ; they had been till lately, when the Western movement had altered everything in Japan, their pupils in civilization. The Japanese believe in Confucius, used Chinese charac- ters, worshipped in Buddhist temples, sacrificed to ances- tors, in fact were in Chinese estimation a civilized race, though inferior of course to themselves. When these two antagonists met in Manchuria, the war could not fail to make a deep impression on China. To begin with, it was an insult surpassing that of the sack of Peking to the Chinese amour propre to have the war carried on in Manchuria : Russia and Japan were disputing over Korea and both nations were at peace with China. Russia might have invaded Japan ; Japan might have invaded Russia, or both might have met in Korea, but what they did was to select a province of a neutral State and decide 98 CHINA that there should be the scene of conflict. What made this more striking was that they agreed to respect the neu- trality of China ; in fact they selected their battle-ground with the same equanimity as if China and her natural rights did not exist. But the deepest impression made on the Chinese was by the victory of the Eastern over the Western. The Japa- nese demonstrated that there was no essential inferiority of the East to the West, and that when an Eastern race adopted Western military methods it proved itself superior to the most powerful of the Western races. This was the lesson the battle of Mukden taught the Chinese, and which convinced the anti-foreign party in China that, however much they might hate the foreigner, they must adopt West- ern methods if they would retain their independence. The result was that the progressive and anti-foreign parties found themselves at one. Both agreed that Western ideas were necessary. The first because they believed in West- ern progress ; the second because they felt that the only way to preserve China from the hated foreigner was to learn the secret of his military power. The first thing to be done was to study Western education, and then they could hope to hold their own against the Western races, as Japan had more than held her own against the Russians. I believe the battle of Mukden will prove one of the turning-points in the history of the world. Few of us have any conception of the bitterness of the humiliation of China. People speak of Russia as having been humili- WHAT HAS AWAKENED CHINA 99 ated ; but my experience is that the Russians looked at the whole question as a colonial war in which a bungling Gov- ernment embroiled their country a war which, if it demonstrated the incapacity of their officers, proved the courage of their soldiers. But the humiliation of China was intense. When one remembers the position that the Emperor occupies in China; when one also remembers the reverential feeling that exists towards ancestors, one realizes what it must have meant to the Chinamen that the site of the tombs of their Emperors should have been the scene of that titanic struggle between the East and the West. But the result of that humiliation was to burn in the lesson that Japan had taken the right course, and that, however hateful were Western ways, they were a necessity, and that every lover of China must do his best to introduce them into the Empire. Of course there are many Chinamen nay, I should think a vast majority who intend to preserve to China the essential points of the Confucian civilization ; they mean to accept Western ideas only in so far as they are necessary to struggle against the West. Some, no doubt, definitely admire the West, but most are anxious for a compromise ; they want to preserve China with its customs, with its essential thought, but to strengthen it by foreign knowl- edge and a foreign military system. The exact de- gree of what should be preserved in China and what should be destroyed and replaced by Western innova- tions differs according to the age and the temperament ioo CHINA of the thinkers, but the principle is most generally accepted Western thought must be grafted on to Eastern civili- zation. When we remember the size of China we may well ask ourselves what effect this policy will have on the rest of the world. We have at present a period of reflection, for how long we cannot tell. The task of welding East and West into one whole is in practice proving difficult, and at present failure is very often the result ; but with Japan as a successful example, and with the threat of national extinction and foreign domination before them, the Chinese can never give up the effort j and whatever the exact result may be, I think one may assert without rashness that not only will it fundamentally alter the whole of China, but through China affect the whole world. THE CITIES OF CHINA . LORD WILLIAM GASCOTNE-CECIL NOWHERE is the transitional period through which China is passing more obvious than in the cities of China ; many towns are still com- pletely Chinese, but as you approach the ports you find more and more Western development. The contrast be- tween towns is extremely marked. Shanghai or Tientsin are Western towns and centres of civilization ; the differ- ence between them and such towns as Hangchow or Ichang is very great. The true Chinese city is not without its beauty in fact, in many ways it is a beautiful and wonder- ful place. But to appreciate it eyes only are wanted, and a nose is a misfortune. The streets are extremely narrow passages, which are bordered on either side by most attract- ive shops, particularly in the main street. The stranger longs to stop and buy things as he goes along, but the dif- ficulty is that it takes so much time ; he must either be prepared to pay twice the value of the things he wants or to spend hours in negotiation. There is one curious excep- tion to this rule ; the silk guild at Shanghai does not allow its members to bargain, and therefore in the silk shop the real price is told at once. The shopkeepers are charming, and there are numbers 102 CHINA of salesmen salesmen who do not mind taking any amount of trouble to please. It is delightful, if insidious, to go into those shops ; and one can well believe that if a Chinese silk shop were opened in London, and silk sold at Chinese prices, the shop would have plenty of custom- ers. The quality of Chinese silks far exceeds that of the- silks of the West. A Chinese gentleman mentioned as an example of this superiority that one of his gowns was made of French silk and that it was torn and spoilt after two or three years ; but that he had had gowns of Chinese silk for twenty years or more which were just as good as on the day he had bought them, and that he had only put them on one side, because the fashions in men's garments change in China as they do elsewhere for ladies. The same gentleman related many interesting things about the silk trade. This is much more like the guilds in mediaeval Europe than anything that we have nowadays, and this is why China is not exporting more silk than she is at present. These silk guilds to a certain extent prevent the Chinese catering for European customers, as they will not allow or at any rate encourage the production of silks that would take on the European market. The West has many faults as well as many virtues, and one of its faults is that it no longer cares for articles of sterling value, which last long and for which a high price must be paid, but it delights in attractive articles of poor quality at a low price. It is to be feared that the West may spoil some of China's great prod- ucts as she has spoilt the great arts and productions of India. THE CITIES OF CHINA 103 But to return to Chinese streets. Next the silk shop will be the silver shop. Here again the work is admirable. At such a place as Kiukiang you can spend an hour or more bargaining and watching the wonderful skill of the silver- smiths as they turn out beautiful silver ornaments. It is pleasant to wander along and to look into the shops and see the strange things that are for sale fish of many kinds in one shop, rice and grain in another, strange vegetables, little bits of pork, flattened ducks ; or to glance at the clothes and the coats hung out> many of them of brilliant colours. The signs over the shops and the names of the merchants are a feature in themselves, illuminated as they are in vivid hues of red and gold, in those wonderful char- acters so full of mystery to the foreigner. In a native city up-country the traveller is practically forced to go through the city in a chair. There are no wheel conveyances except wheelbarrows, and except where there are Manchus, horses are quite unknown. Walking is profoundly unpleasant for a European, for as he walks along he is constantly jostled by porters carrying loads of goods on a bamboo across their shoulders ; or cries are heard, and a Chinese Mandarin is carried past shoulder high, leaning forward looking out of his chair perhaps with a smile of contempt for the foreigner who can so demean himself as to go on foot like a common coolie ; or perhaps it is a lady with her chair closely covered in and only a glimpse to be seen of a rouged and powdered face, for the Chinese women paint to excess, as part of their ordinary 104 CHINA toilet. Next comes the water-carrier hurrying past with his two buckets of water ; or perhaps it is some malodorous burden which makes a Westerner long to be deprived of the sense of smell. But in a chair a ride through a Chinese town is delightful; the chair-coolies push past foot-pas- sengers who accept their buffets with the greatest equa- nimity, and from a comparatively elevated position the traveller can look down on the crowd. But when the Chinese city is near a port, all this begins to change. The chair is replaced by the ricksha, and though in many ways it is less comfortable than a chair, the ricksha is after all the beginning of the rule of the West, being a labour-saving machine. One coolie or two at the most can drag a man quickly and easily where with a chair three or four bearers would be needed. Outside the old town will be built the new native town, and the new native town is built on European lines, with comparatively wide streets. In a treaty port the completed specimen of the transitional stage through which all China is passing is to be seen. Shanghai is a most delightful town, although it seems commonplace to those who live there, but to a stranger it is a place full of contradictions and eccentricities. The first thing that strikes one in Shanghai is that none of the natives know any of the names of the streets. It is true they are written up in large letters both in English and in Chinese ; but as not one of the coolies can read, they have not the very slightest idea that that is the name of the street they call it quite a different name ; and as they THE CITIES OF CHINA 105 speak a different language both to that of the educated Chinaman and to the Englishman, there is no reason why they should ever learn the names given by them. The habitual way of directing a ricksha coolie is by a sort of pantomime, and there is always a great element of uncer- tainty as to whether he will get to his destination even with the oldest resident unless he knows the way himself. Another example of the difficulty of carrying on the de- tails of city life is afforded by a common spectacle at Shang- hai. In the crowded streets you see a little crowd of po- licemen. The group consists of three splendid men, typical of three different civilizations. First there is the English policeman ; next to him is a black-bearded man, bigger than the first, a Sikh, every gesture and action re- vealing the martial characteristics of his race j then a Chinaman completes the group, blue-coated and wearing a queue and a round Chinese hat as a sign of office. The traveller wonders why this trio is needed till he sees them in action. A motor car rushes down one road, a ricksha comes down another, and a Chinese wheelbarrow with six women sitting on it slowly progresses down a third. All three conveyances are controlled by Chinamen, and when they meet, all shout and shriek at the top of their voices ; no one keeps the rule of the road, with the probable result that the wheelbarrow is upset, the ricksha is forced against the wall, and the motor car pulled up dead. Then the police force comes into action. The Chinese policeman objurgates vociferously and makes signals indifferently to 106 CHINA everybody ; the Sikh policeman at once begins to thrash the Chinese coolie ; meanwhile the English policeman at last gets the traffic on the right side of the road, quiets his sub- ordinates, sees justice done and restores order. Possibly if the matter had been left to the Chinese policeman, he would have arranged it in the end j the traffic in Peking was controlled entirely by Chinese policemen and was fairly well managed. Shanghai, with its mixture of races, with its national antipathies and jealousies, is indeed one of the most attract- ive but strangest towns in the whole world. Every race meets there ; and as one wanders down the Nanking road, one never tires of watching the nationalities which throng that thoroughfare. There walks a tall bearded Russian, a fat German, jostling perhaps a tiny Japanese officer whose whole air shows that he regards himself as a member of the conquering race that has checkmated the vast power of Europe; there are sleek Chinese in Western carriages and there are thin Americans in Eastern rickshas ; the motor cycle rushes past, nearly colliding with a closely-curtained chair bearing a Chinese lady of rank, or a splendid Indian in a yellow silk coat is struck in the face by the hat of a Frenchman who finds the pavements of Shanghai too narrow for his sweeping salute ; one hears guttural German alter- nating with Cockney slang ; Parisian toilettes are seen next half-naked coolies ; a couple of sailors on a tandem cycle almost upset two Japanese beauties as they shuffle along with their toes turned in ; a grey-gowned Buddhist priest THE CITIES OF CHINA 107 elbows a bearded Roman missionary j a Russian shop, where patriotism rather than love of gain induces the owners to conceal the nature of their wares by employing the Russian alphabet overhead, stands opposite a Japanese shop, which, in not too perfect English, assures the wide world that their heads can be cut cheaply; an English lady looks askance at the tightness of her Chinese sister's nether gar- ments, while the Chinese sister wonders how the white race can tolerate the indecency that allows a woman to show her shape and wear transparent sleeves. CHINESE STREETS JOHN HENRT GRAT TO this large and ancient Asiatic Empire many names are given by its inhabitants. The prin- cipal are Tchung Kwock and Tien Chu. The term Tchung Kwock, or Middle Kingdom, was given to the country on the arrogant supposition that it is the grand central kingdom of the globe around which all the other petty states are arranged as so many different satellites. Tien Chu is the term in which the nation sets forth its heavenly origin in contradistinction to the inferior genesis of all other earthly states. By the tribes who dwell be- tween China and the eastern shores of the Caspian Sea, the country is called Cathay, or the Flowery Land ; and as, before the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, the high- way from Europe to China lay through these countries, this was the name Europeans became acquainted with. The word China is said to be derived from the name of an emperor of the short-lived dynasty of Tsin. This emperor, who was named Ching Wong, is said in Chinese annals to have been one of the greatest heroes of whom China, or, in- deed, any other land can boast. He extended his conquests over the countries immediately contiguous to the western frontier of his kingdom, and he drove the Tartar tribes in CHINESE STREETS 109 the north back to their mountain fastnesses, and completed the construction of the Great Wall of China to prevent their incursions in future. The great political divisions of the country are eighteen provinces, viz., Shan-tung, Pe-chili, Chih-li, Shan-si and Shen-si in the north ; Kwang-tung and Kwang-si in the south ; Cheh-Kiang, Fu-kien and Kiang-su in the east ; Kan-suh, Sze-ch'uen and Yun-nan in the west ; and Ngan- hui, Kiang-si, Hu-nan, Hu-peh, Ho-nan and Kwei-chow, which may be regarded as the midland provinces. Of these provinces Sze-ch'uen is the largest, Cheh- Kiang the smallest and]Kwang-tung, from its almost tropical position, one of the most fertile. Each province is sub- divided into poos, districts, or counties and prefectures or departments. A poo, the capital of which is a market- town, consists of a number of towns and villages ; a district or country, the capital of which is a walled city, consists of a number of poos ; a prefecture or department, the capital of which is also a walled city, consists of a number of districts or counties, and a province, the capital of which is also a walled city, consists of a number of prefectures. The eighteen provinces of China Proper, in their collective capacity, contain upwards of four thousand walled cities, Peking (which though a royal city, and the seat of the cen- tral government, is without exception the dirtiest place I ever entered) being the capital. The cities which rank next to the capital in point of importance, though vastly superior to it in almost every respect, are Nanking, Soo- no CHINA chow, Hang-chow and Canton. The market-towns and villages of this vast empire are also very numerous. The walls by which each country and prefectoral and provincial capital city is enclosed are from thirty to fifty or sixty feet high. Those by which Peking is surrounded are in appearance by far the most imposing. In many in- stances, however, the walls of Chinese cities are undertak- ings of great magnitude, and are remarkable, both for the extent of their circumference and for their massive appear- ance, their width affording space sufficient for two carriages travelling abreast. Thus, for example, those which enclose the city of Nanking are eighteen English miles in circumference. At all events it took me six hours to walk round them ; and I walked, without stopping once, at a rate exceeding three miles per hour. The walls of Chinese cities are castellated, and provided with embrasures for artillery and loopholes for musketry. At frequent intervals there are watch-towers and barracks for the accommodation of troops. On the top of the ramparts in some places are piled large stones which in times of tumult or war are thrown upon the heads of assailants. At the north, south, east and west sides of each Chinese city, there are large folding gates of great strength. These are further secured by equally massive inner gates. Each of the principal outer gates of the city of Nanking is strengthened by three such inner gates. Of the gates of a Chinese city, the one which is held in honour above all CHINESE STREETS in others is that at the south. Through the south gate, or gate of honour, which is especially regarded as the emperor's gate, all officials coming to the city to hold office enter ; and when they vacate office, it is by the same gate that they de- part. No funeral procession is allowed to pass through this gate, and the same prohibition excludes the bearers of night-soil, or of anything which is regarded as unclean. The south gate of the capital of the empire is regarded as so sacred that, as a rule, it is kept closed, and only opened when the emperor has occasion to pass that way. The streets of cities, towns and villages are generally wider in the northern than in the southern provinces of the empire. Those of Peking are very broad. Indeed in this respect they equal those of European cities. The narrow- ness of the streets in the south of China gives them the great advantage of coolness during the summer months. Many of them are so narrow as to shut out in a great measure the rays of a hot tropical sun ; and in some in- stances they are partially covered over during the hot season by the residents with canvas matting, or thin planks of timber. Many of the towns, also, in the north of Formosa, are protected in this way. The pathways which run in front of the shops are arched over, and as they are frequently constructed in the form of rude arcades, it is possible to pass from one part of the town to another with- out exposing oneself to the sun or rain. Between the foot- paths that are covered in this way, there is a thoroughfare for sedan-chairs and beasts of burden. It appeared to me, ii2 CHINA however, that this centre thoroughfare is more generally used as a public dust-bin than as a street. The shop- keepers are in the habit of throwing into it all sorts of refuse, which is not so speedily removed by the scavengers of the town as it ought to be. Manka, which is one of the principal towns in the north of Formosa, is above all others remarkable for the arrangements of its streets after this fashion. At Hoo-chow, a prefectoral city in the province of Cheh-Kiang, I passed through two streets which were constructed in the form of arcades, which are not however so perfect as those of Manka. The streets of Chinese cities are paved with granite slabs, bricks, or paving-stones. Those of the city of Canton are paved with granite slabs. The streets of the city of Soo-chow so long famous for the wealth of its citizens are in some cases paved with granite slabs, and in others with paving-stones. Under the streets of Chinese towns there are conduits into which the rain percolates as it falls through the chinks between the granite slabs. Where the streets are paved with paving-stones, there are channels or gutters on either side ; these, however, are so narrow as to prove of little or no service, so that they become pools of filth from which there is a fearful stench in the summer months. The streets of Peking are macadamized, or supposed to be so. They are considerably raised in the centre, so that the rain- water may easily flow into the conduits on either side. In summer, they are so covered with dust as to render travel- ling upon them a thing to be avoided. In the evening, CHINESE STREETS 113 there is a most intolerable stench ; for the conduits are then opened and the stagnant water they contain is scooped out and scattered broadcast over the streets for the pur- pose of laying the dust. The names which are given to the streets of Chinese cities are generally very high sound- ing. Thus we have the Street of Golden Profits j the Street of Benevolence and Love ; the Street of Everlasting Love ; the Street of Longevity ; the Street of One Hun- dred Grandsons ; the Street of One Thousand Grandsons ; the Street of Saluting Dragons ; the Street of the Sweeping Dragon ; the Street of the Reposing Dragon ; the Street of Refreshing Breezes ; the Street of One Thousand Beati- tudes ; the Street of a Thousandfold Peace ; the Street of Five Happinesses ; the Street of Ten Thousand Happi- nesses j the Street of Ninefold Brightness ; the Street of Accumulated Goodness. Other streets are simply num- bered as First Street, Second Street, Third Street, and so on. The shops of which the streets of Chinese cities are formed, and which are built of bricks, are of various sizes. They are entirely open in front. There is, however, no rule without an exception ; and many of the shops at Peking are provided with glass windows. I also saw them in the banking establishments in Soo-chow. At the door of each shop stand two or more long sign-boards, upon each side of which are painted in neat bold letters in gold, vermilion, or other gay colours, the name of the " hong" and the various commodities which it contains for sale. The name of the hong or shop consists of two characters. U4 CHINA In some instances a shopkeeper places above the door of his shop a small sign-board resembling in form some par- ticular article which he has for sale. Thus a collar-maker has a sign made in the form of a collar; a hosier's sign re- sembles a stocking ; a bootmaker's a boot ; and a specta- cle-maker's a pair of spectacles. In some cases the signs are not shaped to represent the articles, but representations of these, such as hats, fans, and even sticking-plasters are painted on them. Some shopkeepers, not satisfied with having sign-boards suspended from the side-posts of the doors of their shops, seek to make themselves still better known by painting their names and the wares in which they deal in large characters on the outer walls of the cities in which they reside. On the walls of the cities of Tang- yang and Chang-chow, on the banks of the Grand Canal, I observed this to be especially the case. Boards on which are recorded the names of each person residing in the house are also, in compliance with law, placed on the entrance door or outer wall of each dwelling-house. This custom appeared to me to be much more observed in the rural dis- tricts than in the cities and towns. Above the entrance- door of each shop hang lanterns ; and, from the roof, lamps of glass or horn upon which are gaily-coloured representa- tions of birds, flowers, gardens and temples. These in- numerable, bright-painted sign-boards and lanterns give a Chinese street a most cheerful and animated appearance. The streets of Canton, which, in this respect, are most con- spicuous, are the Chaong-tan Kai ; the Chong-yune-fong ; CHINESE STREETS 115 the Tai-sing Kai ; the Sue-sze-tai Kai ; the Koo-tai Kai ; the Shaong-mun tai ; the Wye-oi Kai j and the Tai-fat- sze-chein. The shops are not distributed indiscriminately through- out the Chinese towns, as is the case to a large extent in European cities. They are confined to certain quarters, and even in the streets appropriated to them, they do not occur promiscuously. Each branch of trade has its special place to which it is usually restricted. On each side of a street we should generally find shops of the same kind. Near the entrance of his shop, the master is often seated waiting with much patience for the arrival of customers. No female member of the tradesman's family resides in apartments either above or behind the shop. In the even- ing, therefore, when the shutters have been put up, the tradesman hastens to his home in the more retired parts of the town, leaving his stock in charge of his assistants and apprentices. The streets in which the gentry reside consist generally of well-built houses, which, like the majority of houses in China, are of one story only. They extend, however, a considerable distance to the rear, and are so large and spacious as to be capable of containing a great number of persons. They are approached by large folding-doors. As the walls which front the streets are without windows, they present, in many cases, the appearance of encampments. Detached houses of which there are many bear a very striking resemblance to encampments. This is particularly n6 CHINA true of the houses of the gentry who reside in the cities of Soo-chow, Yang-chow, Hang-chow and Hoo-chow ; and it has often struck me in my peregrinations through the prov- inces of Kiang-su and Kiang-soo. Chinese houses have no fireplaces. In the cool season, therefore, the occupants have to keep themselves warm by wearing additional cloth- ing, or by means of portable brass or earthenware vessels in which charcoal embers are kept burning. Owing to the houses and shops which form its streets not being generally of the same height, or arranged in a direct line, a Chinese town or village looks very irregular. This irregularity is due to the fact that the houses are built according to the principles of geomancy, which do not admit of the ridge- beams of each house in a street being placed in a direct line. Were they so placed, evils of various kinds would, it is said, be the inevitable result. The streets, or squares, of Chinese cities are not adorned like the streets and squares of European cities with stone, marble or bronze statues of the great, the brave, and the learned. In nearly all the principal cities of China there are, however, monumental arches erected in honour of re- nowned warriors, illustrious statesmen, distinguished citi- zens, learned scholars, virtuous women, or dutiful sons or daughters. In some instances such monuments are built of brick, in others of marble, in others of old red sandstone, but more generally of granite. A Chinese monument of this nature consists of a triple arch or gateway, that is, a large centre gate, and a smaller gateway on each side. On CHINESE STREETS 117 a large polished slab, which is placed above the middle gate- way, are figures done in sculpture, or Chinese characters setting forth the object with which the citizens, by imperial permission, erected the arch. PEKING PIERRE LEROT-BEAULIEU ALTHOUGH not the most ancient city in the Celestial Empire, Peking is an epitome of the rest of China, together with its ancient civilization and its present stagnation and decadence. It belongs to a very different type from the cities of Europe, or even of the Moslem world, and the sight of its immense wall and suc- cessive enclosures, which divide it into four distinct parts, reminds one of Nineveh or Babylon. In the centre is the " Forbidden " or " Purple City," about a league in length from north to south, and a quarter of a league in width, containing the palaces of the Emperor and Empress Dowager, and the gardens and the residences of a swarm of parasites numbering, it is said, between six or eight thousand persons, inclusive of guards, concubines, eunuchs, functionaries, gardeners and other attendants upon the Im- perial harem. The only Europeans who are allowed to cross the sacred threshold of the Purple City are the mem- bers of the Diplomatic Corps, to whom the Emperor gives audience on New Year's Day, as well as since quite re- cently on the occasions of their arrival or taking leave. Around the Purple City extends the Imperial City, its walls painted pink, which in its turn is surrounded by the Tartar PEKING 119 City, a rectangle of four miles in length by three miles in width, whose sides face the cardinal points. Its colossal walls are fifty feet high, and at their summit are fifty feet wide. Their external fronts consist of two strong brick walls, rising from a substructure of stone. The interior is filled up with earth, and the summit, covered with flag- stones, forms a walk bordered by embattled stone parapets. Bastions project outwards, and huge pavilions built of brick, pierced with many balastraria, and coated with highly-var- nished coloured tiles, ornament its four corners and gates. It rises only ninety-nine feet above the ground, beyond which height it is never allowed to build, lest the flight of the good spirits might be inconvenienced thereby. This magnificent rampart, which to the northeast and to the west rises abruptly from the midst of the country, Peking having no suburbs, presents a most imposing aspect ; and it is not less impressive when beheld from any one of the half-moons, which are very vast, and are built before the various gates, but which, owing to the height of the em- battled walls which surround them on all sides, each of which is surmounted by a massive brick pavilion, look like wells. To the south of the Tartar City is a group of less im- posing walls surrounding the lengthy rectangle which in- cludes the Chinese City, the commercial part of Peking. The broad street that intersects it from north to south, and cuts it into two equal parts, especially close to the Tsieng- Men Gate, by which you pass into the Tartar City, is the 120 CHINA most animated artery of the city. In the central walk, paved with magnificent flagstones, not one of which is now in its right place, and which apparently only serve as stum- bling blocks to pedestrians, and are covered with mud a foot deep in summer, and by a pestilential dust in winter, circu- late in the utmost confusion the ever-present waggons, al- ready described, palanquins, sedan-chairs, whose colours vary with the dignity of the owner, chairs drawn by mules, men riding on small Manchurian ponies, indefatigable asses, which are the best means of locomotion in the place, enor- mous one-wheeled barrows, coolies struggling under the burden of huge baskets filled with fruit, vegetables and other comestibles, fixed to the end of a very long pole slung across their shoulders all this busy world bustles along, filling the air with shouts and cries of every kind, from the croaking of the porters to the stentorian shouts of the waggoners. Occasionally a long string of huge two- humped camels, a cord running from the nostrils of one animal to the tail of the other, and led by a Mongolian urchin, adds to the incredible confusion. All this crowd, together with beasts and vehicles, has to content itself with what, under ordinary circumstances, would be a very broad roadway, if at least a third of it were not encumbered by a sort of permanent open-air fair, carried on in rows of booths, some of which are used as restaurants, others as shops of every description. These booths turn their backs to the middle of the street, and thus hide the line of shops beyond, of which, from the centre of the road, you can only per- PEKING 121 ceive the enormous and innumerable sign-boards hanging from a veritable forest of gaily-painted poles. Beyond the Tsieng-Men Gate is situated the Beggars' Bridge, always thronged by groups of wretches clamouring for alms and ostentatiously displaying the most appalling mutilations, with all kinds of loathsome diseases added to their sordid misery to excite compassion. The narrow sidewalks, which are bordered on the one hand by booths, and on the other by big shops, are filled by a motley gath- ering of small shopkeepers, each plying his business in the open air barbers, hair-dressers and fortune-tellers, among whom the crowd has no little difficulty in threading its way. Here you see men in light-blue blouses, with long pigtails; Chinese ladies with their hair dragged back magpie-tail fashion, who balance themselves painfully as they go along on their tiny deformed feet ; Tartar women, whose hair is puffed out on each side of their faces, and who, like their Chinese sisters, stick a big flower behind their ears. Not being crippled by bound feet, like their less fortunate Chinese sisters, these women strut along with as firm a step as their high-heeled clogs will permit. Their faces are bedaubed with rice-flour, and their cheeks painted an alarmingly bright red. Children with their heads shaved in the most comical manner, dotted about with little tufts, that have a very funny appearance, being cut according to the taste or caprice of their parents, also run about. Among the well-clad children of a better class are others, stark- naked, looking for all the world like small animated bronzes, 122 CHINA so dark and warm-coloured is their polished skin. In order to avoid being mobbed, one has occasionally to seek refuge in a shop, which usually opens on to the street, and is without windows. In the back the shopkeepers are peacefully seated behind their counters smoking long pipes, whilst exhibiting their goods and listening to the bargain- ings of their customers. These shops are always very clean, and the goods are arranged with great order and even considerable taste. A bowl with goldfish, or a cage full of birds, adds not a little to the charm and peacefulness of the scene, which is peculiarly refreshing after the noise and dirt of the streets. All the great arteries of Peking are equally filthy and closely resemble each other, excepting that not one of them can equal, either in the size of the shops or wealth of their contents, the famous High Street that leads to the Tsieng- Men Gate. In summer, after the rains, a coating of mud some two feet and a half deep covers both road and foot- path, which when the weather dries again is converted into thick clouds of dust. The sideways, always lower than the central road, are usually filled by pools of green water, whence arises the most horrible stench of decayed vege- tables and rotting carcases of animals, in addition to the accumulated offal of the neighbouring houses. The won- der of it all is that the entire population of Peking has not long since been swept away by some appalling epidemic. Leaving aside the few broad streets, one frequently comes PEKING 123 across immense open spaces, whose centres are generally occupied by a huge dunghill. The narrow little streets that branch out in all directions can be divided into two classes those which border on the three or four principal commercial thoroughfares, which, like them, are lined with shops, but are scarcely broad enough to allow of the pas- sage of a single cart, although they are thronged from morning to night by a seething, noisy crowd ; and the silent and deadly dull private streets, where the dwelling- houses are to be found. On either side runs a gray wall, whose monotony is broken at intervals by a series of shabby little doors. If any one of these happens to be open, one can only perceive from the street a small courtyard a few feet square, and another dead wall, beyond which is the inner courtyard, shut off from all observation, and on which open all the windows of these singular dwellings, not one of which is more than one story high, and always protected by a gray double-tiled roof, usually ornamented at the four corners by some grotesque stone beast or other, but never turned up at the ends as are invariably those of the temples and the monuments. There is no movement whatever in these streets. A few children play before the doors, a dog or so strays about in the road, and now and again a coolie or an itinerant merchant, with two baskets suspended from a pole across his shoulders, breaks the silence by a shrill cry ; sometimes a donkey or a cart passes along but fails to enliven the deadly quiet of the street, which is so still and monotonous that one might almost imagine one's self in a I2 4 CHINA village instead of in one of the most populous cities in the world. The scene changes entirely when Peking is seen from the heights of the walls which form the only agreeable promenade in the capital, to whose summits ascends neither the mud nor the stench of this dirtiest of cities. The eye wanders pleasantly over a forest of fine trees, for every house has one or two in its courtyard, and barely a glimpse of the offensive streets is to be had : only the gray roofs of the little houses ; and thus Peking looks for all the world like an immense park, from whose midst rise the yellow roofs of the Imperial Palace, and to the northern extremity of the city, a wooded height called the Coal Mountain, sur- mounted by a pagoda. As to monuments there are very few in Peking worth the seeing and into these foreigners are never allowed to enter. Twenty-five or thirty years ago visitors were ad- mitted into a great number of the temples : that of Heaven, which is now being restored and where the emperor goes annually to make a sacrifice, and the Temples of the Sun, the Moon and of Agriculture, and they were even allowed to peep into the Imperial Gardens ; but since the entry of the Anglo-French troops into Peking in 1860, the Chinese have been very reticent with respect to their monuments. The only temple now open for our inspection is that of Confucius, an immense but rather commonplace hall, with a steep roof supported on pillars painted a vivid red. Foreigners are also permitted to visit the place where the PEKING 125 literati undergo their examinations. It consists of some thousands of little cells lining several long, open corridors, wherein the unfortunate candidates for law and medicine are shut for several days while they answer the questions set them. Then there is the old Observatory, wherein are two series of highly useful instruments. The first dates from the time of the Mongol Dynasty in the Thirteenth Century and lies scattered half buried among the weeds at the bot- tom of the courtyard ; the second series is less antiquated, having been made under the direction of the Jesuit Verbiest, who was astronomer to the Emperor of China in the early part of the Seventeenth Century. They are shown on the walls. After seeing these thoroughly up-to-date astronom- ical instruments, one has visited all there is to be seen in the Imperial city of Peking. THE TEMPLE OF HEAVEN T. HODGSON HDD ELL ONE of the first notable places I determined to paint was the Temple of Heaven. The entrance to this place is quite easy for a European it simply means a ten cent payment at each of the gates. The ordinary tourist who is going to see the many temples, all appertaining to the Temple of Heaven, has many pay- ments to make. The entrance to the Temple of Heaven is about two miles out in the Chinese city. I made the journey in rickshas, one for myself and one for my boy a new boy, by the way, lent to me for the time by one of my friends in Tientsin. The boy carried most of my working materials. Leaving the hotel we crossed the canal, passed the American Legation, and skirting the great entrance to the Imperial Palaces, went out under the imposing Chien- Men on to and over the beautiful marble bridge, through a great pailau and away out to the long, straight, and wide road lined on either side by stalls and booths of all kinds, with the shops behind these. The first part of this road is new macadam and good, but some distance out one comes to another marble bridge of very pretty design. This we do not cross, but went to one side and over a commonplace THE TEMPLE OF HEAVEN 127 timber bridge, the marble bridge being kept for Imperial use. Then we began to bump along the old paved road. A little of this goes along way; but soon we turned off to the left, and reached the outer gate in the wall surrounding the grounds, where the greatest of China's great temples is placed. Inside the gate, having duly paid my ten cents (about two pence) I found myself in what was like a large Eng- lish park, with stretches of grass and great trees and groups of black cattle which are bred and kept here for sacrificial purposes ; they are rather like " Black Angus " cattle. On through this park we sped in our rickshas till we reached another high wall, with the usual three gates, and from here we had to walk. Another ten cents, and we enter, by a small side gate, more park lands ; but we see signs of buildings, and soon come to another wall with more gates ; ten cents again, and we enter, to find ourselves in full view of the Temple of the Year. This great building is circular and stands high, with terraces and balustrades of marble, all carved and sculptured with designs of dragons, fish, and all the mythical creatures in which these mystical people delight. The architectural forms here show, as in all buildings in China religious, Imperial and domestic that the number three, or a multiple of it, is of great moment, a sacred sign. There are three of these marble terraces, rising one above the other; and in the third is the huge temple itself. The building is carried and held by the usual great coloured pillars, on which rests the triple roof, covered 128 CHINA with glazed tiles of a wondrous blue ; to see the play of the blazing sunlight on those shining blue tiles and red painted woodwork, and on the gleaming marble balustrades and terraces, is one of the grandest sights in the world. From this I made my way to other temples of various forms, all showing great beauty. There was one with a green-tiled roof which, for the quality of the colour, was very remarkable. From the Temple of the Year there is a series of temples, each used by the Emperor when he comes here to perform the sacred rites of his office. The last of all the covered buildings is the Emperor's robing temple. It is of ex- quisite form and colour, the same wondrous blue tiles being used. It is from this temple that he comes to the great open-air sacrificial altar. The form of this altar is circular ; it is enclosed within two circular walls of brick, plastered and painted red, and covered with blue tiles and pierced at regular intervals by groups of gateways, three in each group, each with tall and massive but simple pailaus. The altar is of white marble and rises in three terraces to the centre and topmost, in the middle of which is set up a plain rough stone, looked on by the Chinese as holding the position of the centre of the universe. In the outer enclosures can be seen the buildings on which the actual burnt-offerings or sacrifice of the black cattle is made. My description of this, the most beautiful and impressive example of architecture in existence, is lamentably want- THE TEMPLE OF HEAVEN 129 ing; no words of mine can describe it. But let any one stand, say, in the courtyard in the Emperor's robing temple, and look over the scene, and I think they must feel im- pressed. First you see the tall stone gateways, beautiful in simplicity and ruggedness, and serving to show up by contrast the more finished beauty of the wonderfully de- signed, carved and sculptured marble of the terraced altar, with the most gorgeous roof of all overhead, the blue sky, and the sun sending down his rays of gleaming light on these old terraces, casting shadows from the pillared balus- trading, showing the cunning work on the steps, and toning and beautifying the whole into the most beautiful and im- pressive picture I have ever looked upon. What would I not give to see this place at the time when those mysterious rites of worship are carried out in all the barbaric splendours of the country ? To describe the many other temples within this lovely park would be superfluous, because the lesser temples are all much alike, and I fear that all suffer by comparison with the greater one. Many days did I spend in this quiet place, working in great comfort, taking my lunch with me, enjoying the crisp sunlight of autumn, occasionally seeing a foreign visitor being shown around ; whilst almost my only onlookers were the few coolies employed to pull up some of the weeds in the courtyards. I say some, because they seemed purposely to leave many, and most of their time was spent in talking to each other. ijo CHINA I have remarked how easy it is for foreigners to obtain entrance to this, the most sacred place in China. It was not so before 1900, when our troops took, and encamped in, the park to which they have ever since exercised the right of entry. One day when I was sitting peacefully at work in one of the outer rings of the altar, I heard the steady tramp of many booted feet ; and, to my surprise, through the gateways of the surrounding walls (the very gateway which would be used by the Emperor), came a company of the Cameron Highlanders. Right through and up the steps they marched, and stood round admiring the view from the " Centre of the Universe." I understand that very few Chinese except high officials have ever seen this place, it being difficult for them to ob- tain admission ; and I believe no Chinese women are ever allowed within the walls. A foreigner, an official of high rank in the Chinese Service, drove out with his wife to visit this place, having with them a guest, a young Chinese lady. She was refused admission, and nothing would in- duce the gatekeeper to allow her within ; so my friends, who would not go without her, returned to Peking without seeing the temples. Although the ordinary Chinaman is not allowed entrance, there is no objection made to the native servant of a for- eigner : my boy was with me always, and was in great glee at seeing such a place. From Martin's Lore of Cathay: "When taxed with ingratitude, in neglecting to honour that Being on whom THE TEMPLE OF HEAVEN 131 they depend for existence, the Chinese uniformly reply, 4 It is not ingratitude, but reverence, that prevents our worship. He is too great for us to worship. None but the Emperor is worthy to lay an offering on the altar of Heaven ! ' In conformity with this sentiment the Emperor, as the high-priest and mediator of his people, celebrates in Peking the worship of Heaven with imposing ceremonies. " Within the gates of the southern division of the capi- tal, and surrounded by a sacred grove, so extensive that the silence of its deep shade is never broken by the noises of the busy world, stands the Temple of Heaven. " It consists of a single tower, whose tiling of resplendent azure is intended to represent the form and colour of the aerial vault. " It contains no image and the solemn rites are not per- formed within the tower, but on a marble altar which stands before it ; a bullock is offered once a year as a burnt-offer- ing while the Master of the Empire prostrates himself in adoration of the Spirit of the Universe. " This is the high place of Chinese devotion, and the thoughtful visitor feels that he ought to tread its courts with unsandalled feet." Dr. Legge, the distinguished translator of the Chinese, visiting Peking (some years after this was written), actually " put his shoes from off his feet," before ascending the steps of this great altar. Yet, in 1900, this sacred spot was con- verted into barracks for British troops. " For no vulgar idolatry has entered here ; this mountain I 3 2 CHINA top still stands above the waves of corruption, and on this solitary altar there still rests a faint ray of the primeval faith. "The tablet which represents the invisible Deity, is in- scribed with the name of Shang Li, the Supreme Ruler ! and as we contemplate the majesty of the empire prostrate before it, while the smoke ascends from his burning sacri- fice, our thoughts are irresistibly carried back to the time when the King of Salem officiated as ' Priest of the Most High God.' " THE SUMMER PALACE T. HODGSON LIDDELL I HAD noticed that a sentry was placed at the outer door of my quarters which opened on to the court- yard in front of the chief gates ; he presented arms as I passed out to find a double line of fine-looking soldiers drawn up near my door across to one of the side gates. The centre gate is only used by the Imperial family. Be- tween these lines I and my procession passed along, to be received at the gateway by the officer of the guard and va- rious palace officials. Once I was inside, there was a little less formality. The mandarins ranged up to me, and kindly told me the names, etc., of all the different build- ings we came to. The first was a large hall used, I believe, at times of audience as a sort of first reception chamber. Passing by and going around this we quickly came in sight of a large and beautiful sheet of very clear water, with several islands dotted about ; it was surrounded by low walls with fine-wrought marble balustrading. On one of the islands can be seen the Dragon Temple ; and from this island to the mainland on the southern side is the long and beautiful marble bridge of seventeen arches. At intervals other bridges are to be seen, including the famous 134 CHINA camel-backed one of white marble. Also there are orna- mental pavilions with red-pillared walls. As I first saw this palace in soft autumn sunlight, the western hills bathed in light but wonderfully soft in outline, the distant pagodas and temples placed on various emi- nences and the great gleaming yellow-roofed, red-walled buildings on the rugged hillside, their roofs of various pavilions just appearing out of the masses of foliage, it was fairy-land ; and when I was able to see more closely various views of it, its great beauty became more and more im- pressed on my mind. The first designer of this lovely Summer Palace well may it be named so must have had a true appreciation of the beautiful, first of all, in the choice of such a delightful site. That bold hill, with its southern face running down to a marsh which was easily made into a lake, was certainly chosen by some one with the true artistic sense ; the same sense is shown by the wonderful way in which the buildings were not only de- signed but placed to the best advantage, separately and in the mass. The lake is largely artificial. It was a piece of marshy land, the waters from the famous " Jade Fountain " run- ning through it. On the northern side is the sharp and abrupt hill on which the main buildings are placed, all centred in the Great Temple built on a foundation of the most solid masonry one can imagine, composed of immense blocks of stone very closely laid. This foundation rises to a great height ; and the front is broken by the two stair- THE SUMMER PALACE 135 cases, which in three sections on either side lead up and meet on the top, which forms a large space, from the centre of which rises the chief temple with its enormous gilded image. The temple rises in three great tiers, each with its yellow roof bordered with green. Leading up be- hind this gorgeous building are more stairs to another temple The Myriad Buddha which is on the highest point of the hill. It is entirely faced with porcelain tiles of yellow interspersed with green, with a white marble triple gateway in front. On each side of this central group and cunningly placed on the steep hillside are various pavilions and memorials some with yellow, some with green tiled roofs. There are some stone tablets and bronze tablets to famous persons of the past. On the western side is that wonderful work of art and marvel of bronze, the Bronze Pavilion, wholly made of fine bronze : even the tiles are bronze and the floors and interior furniture of which little now, I am sorry to say, is left. It is a reproval to Western civilization that such beautiful things should be pillaged. Of the wonderfully wrought open-work windows some are gone taken away, I believe, in 1900 ; but I was glad to hear that the British prevented the entire pillage of this place. It would be a gracious act of the owners of those window-frames, which are, I believe, still in China, were they to restore them to this unique building. After a general inspection of this part we went on board some barges and were rowed across the lake to inspect the 136 CHINA Dragon Temple and the various bridges and buildings. From the water there is a wonderful view of the whole central group of temples and this position, by the way, is entirely for state ceremonials and worship, and is enclosed by a red wall which runs along the top and down the sides of the hill. In front of all the group and on the water's edge is the Grand Pailau, through which, by the water, is obtained the state audience-hall and temples. This pailau is a gor- geous thing in itself, with its huge red pillars dividing the usual three gateways; these pillars set on white marble plinths, and carrying over them gaily coloured and gilded open-work and carvings of dragons and other mythical creatures. Over all, and divided in three, are the blazing yellow roofs. This building is backed by the first entrance-hall, which in turn leads through to others and so reaches the state audience-chamber. Each hall rises above the other, and over all are the solid stone wall and towering temples. The great group of architecture, all reflected in the clear waters of the lake, made a picture hard to equal. I had not time, alas ! to attempt to reproduce it on paper or canvas. Looking from the steps of the entrance-hall one sees the pailau clear and massive against the lake and sky, and, through it, the Dragon Temple with a glimpse of the Seventeen-Arch Bridge. Going on by boat we reached the curious " Marble Junk." Built about two hundred years ago, it has at THE SUMMER PALACE 137 various times been added to; but the additions are not beautiful, nor do they improve the architecture. The original boat, in form like an old state junk, is good, being built of blocks of white marble and finely wrought, the stern rising high, and the whole very realistic. Built on this fine old work and rising to some height is a tawdry erection of wood, painted to imitate marble. The upper floor consists of tea-rooms for the Imperial family and their guests. Again, to meet modern ideas, excrescences of marble have been added to imitate roughly paddle-wheels ; this is badly done, obviously out of keeping and proportion with the original structure; but the added paddle-wheels seem to suggest that the Chinese mind of some years ago really wished to adopt Western ideas, and used this means of showing this desire. Adjoining the Marble Junk is a fine marble bridge, with sculptured lions on the piers and a well-formed double roof over the centre arch. Near by are the boat-houses, in which are kept the gorgeous state-barges and the modern motor-boats now used on the lake. Away across, on the southern side of the lake, stands the grand casting in bronze of an ox. I call it a casting, but much work must have been given to this artistic master- piece after it left the founder's hands. It stands massive and alone. What masters of bronze work the Chinese are ! Look at the great lions near the Grand Pailau, finer even than those at the Lama Temple ; think of the storks and deer at the Winter Palace. I 3 8 CHINA I believe Italian priests were called in to help design this Summer Palace ; and, looking at the whole from across the lake, I could see evidence of their work. That central group, on its enormous stone foundation, shows it dis- tinctly in the severity of the stonework ; even the temple on the top, in spite of the Chinese roofs, has a touch of Italian, and I could almost imagine I was on an Italian lake, looking at some fairy palace. Italian or Chinese I care not which it is extremely beautiful. Could one wish for a more ideal place in which to dream away the sweet summer ? The pavilions of the Empress Dowager and of the Emperor and Empress, are close to the lake, nearer to the entrance of the palace grounds than the state buildings, which they differ from in being roofed with gray tiles ; they are not large, but very dainty and the word pavilion describes them well, as nearly all are of one storey and un- pretentious. They border on the lake, with only a narrow paved footway in front balustraded with white marble and approached by steps at which passengers can land from boats. In front of the Empress Dowager's are two tall slender pillars of wood arched over at the top, from which hangs a large electric arc-lamp ; these tall pillars are decorated with white dragons on a green ground. Under the eaves of the pavilion are rows of electric lights. The windows are glazed inside elaborate woodwork, much of which is painted a brilliant red. To see all this lighted up at night THE SUMMER PALACE 139 and reflected in the clear waters of the lake must be very beautiful. I could imagine it to be somewhat like parts of Venice on a fete night, with the addition of the more pic- turesque Chinese figures. The gardens of these pavilions are neither large nor par- ticularly beautiful, but the whole palace is a natural garden, and so lovely that one does not miss the artificial garden of Western style. From these gardens to the state buildings and temples there is a covered way raised slightly from the ground, paved and roofed with tiles, the roof being supported on timber posts and beams, all of which are most elaborately decorated and painted with many quaint designs. THE MING TOMBS AND GREAT WALL PIERRE LEROT-BEAULIEU ON leaving Peking by the Northern Gate, one crosses a sandy and barren space occupied in the Thirteenth Century by a part of the town which has now disappeared. Then come some outlying towns, mainly inhabited by merchants, succeeded by the admirably cultivated plain which extends from the north of Peking to the foot of the hills. It is more barren to the south, and trees only grow close to the villages, which are invariably surrounded^by groups of weeping willows. In this region the soil and the climate are too dry to allow the cultivation of rice, but a crop of winter wheat is obtained, and I have seen it sown and even appearing above the ground in the month of October. It does not freeze in the very dry earth, although the thermometer falls twenty degrees and the snow is never very deep. The crop of wheat is harvested during May. Presently you see fields of sor- ghum, millet, the staple food of the people in these parts and also of buckwheat. On all sides the peasantry are hard at work, usually alongside strong wagons, better built than those of the Siberian mujiks and drawn either by two mules or two horses, or sometimes by three little donkeys. In the villages you can sometimes see the grain threshed or THE MING TOMBS AND GREAT WALL 141 the long leaves of the sorghum being bound in sheaves, which when dried are made into mats and screens. The women help in the latter work, which invariably takes place close to their doors, for they are never seen in the fields. The roads are generally very bad, but have not always been so. Many of the bridges are still in a superb condition, although the fine flagstones with which they are paved are in a shocking condition. Others, however, are in absolute ruin, and the rivers which they once spanned have consequently to be forded. Everything points to the fact that we are passing over a once magnificent highroad, and effectively it leads to the Tombs of the Mings, which explains why it was built in such a sumptuous manner by that Dynasty, as well as the state of abandonment into which it has fallen since it has come into the hands of the Manchus, who dethroned the Mings in 1644. Very few places I have ever visited have produced upon me a greater impression of grandeur than the amphitheatre formed by the lofty hills on whose last slopes stand the Tombs of the thirteen Emperors of the Ming Dynasty. Each of these monuments is formed of an aggregation of buildings shaded by magnificent trees, that present a strik- ing contrast to the usual gray barrenness of Chinese hills. The broad road which leads to them, once paved but now in ruins, passes under a superb triumphal arch into the silent valley, which seems deserted, although in reality it is highly cultivated ; the little villages clustering at the foot of the heights, too, are, as a rule, difficult to make out. i 4 2 CHINA After passing under numerous elegant gateways, supported by winged columns, we at length arrive at a gigantic alley of colossal monoliths, representing figures of animals and monsters alternately sitting and crouching, and statues of famous legislators and warriors. Roads radiate towards each of the Tombs, of which I only visited that of the first Ming Emperor who reigned in Peking. After having passed through a high wall by a porch with three badly-kept gates, we crossed a spacious courtyard planted with trees, and presently entered the great hall. Before the whole length of the facade extends several flights of marble steps with exquisitely sculptured balustrades. The hall itself is not less than 200 feet long by about eighty feet wide and forty feet in height. It is nearly empty, and at first you can only perceive the forty gigantic wooden columns, each formed of the trunk of a tree, that support the roof, and which two men cannot embrace. These columns are said to have come from the confines of Indo-China. In the midst of them, half-hidden away, is a small altar, ornamented with a few commonplace China vases, which are crumbling to pieces and full of dust. Be- yond the altar, enclosed in a sort of tabernacle, is the tablet inscribed with the deceased Emperor's name in three Chinese characters. His body lies beyond, at the end of a gallery a mile long, which penetrates straight into the heart of the hill, but is walled up a short distance from the en- trance, which one reaches through two courtyards separated by a portico. From the lofty tower that rises over this THE MING TOMBS AND GREAT WALL 143 entrance, the walls of which, by the way, are embellished with names which numerous Chinese and a few Europeans have been vulgar enough to scratch on the walls with the points of their knives, the view includes the whole semi- circle of hills, as well as all the Tombs, which, by reason of the very simplicity of their design, create an impression of extreme grandeur. Their erection must have cost as great an amount of labour as that which was bestowed by the Egyptians upon the sepulchres of their Pharaohs. The Great Wall of China is another colossal under- taking, in order to reach which you take the highroad to Mongolia that passes through the Pa-ta-ling Gate at the extremity of the pass of Nan-kow. This highroad which for centuries has been daily traversed by long caravans of camels engaged in the traffic between Mongolia, Siberia and China, was formerly paved with blocks of granite, of which no trace is now to be seen, either on that part of the road in the little town of Nan-kow, or in the difficult mountain pass, and the traveller may therefore conclude that they have either been used in the construction of houses or washed away by some torrent. Nan-kow is a walled town, like almost all those in the neighbourhood of Peking, including the curious old suburb of Chao-yung- kwan, over one of the doors of which there is an inscription in six languages, one of which has not yet been deciphered. Everywhere on the mountainsides towers and picturesque ruins of fortifications manifest how great has ever been the fear of the Chinese of the Tartars and Mongols, forprotec- 144 CHINA tion against whom the Great Wall was built. It is divided into two parts, the inner and the outer wall, the first of which extends for nearly 1,560 miles from Shan-hai-kwan, on the Gulf of Pe-chi-li into the Province of Kan-su on the upper Yellow River. Built two hundred years before our era, needless to say, it has often been repaired and re- built. Near the sea it is constructed of stone, but brick has been used on the inland portions. In thickness it varies from sixteen feet to twenty feet, and is about the same in height, but to the west it is nothing like so lofty. The inner wall, which dates from the Sixth Century, was almost entirely reconstructed by the Mings in the Sixteenth Century and is 500 miles long. This is the wall to be seen from Pa-ta-ling, passing over the hill, and then proceeding right and left to climb in zigzag fashion to the very summit of the mountains. It is constructed after the model of the walls of Peking on a substructure of stone, with two rows of brick battlements. The top is paved, and forms a roadway eleven feet in width. Its height varies, according to the irregularity of the land, between twelve feet and twenty feet, and at about every 300 feet there are towers twice the height of the wall, also sur- rounded by bastions and battlements. Although less im- posing than the Wall of Peking, the Great Wall of China does not deserve the flippant remarks that have been made about it. Against an enemy unprovided with artillery, and horsemen like the Mongols and Tartars, it must have pre- sented a very serious obstruction, and if occasionally they THE MING TOMBS AND GREAT WALL 145 have been able to scale it, it has generally resisted every attempt at invasion. Although it has not been used under the present Dynasty, which is of Tartar origin, it has re- mained, thanks to the care bestowed upon it in former times, one of the best preserved monuments in China. NANKING AND THE MING TOMB J. DE J. THE morning sun gilds the earth of the banks and brightens the green of the willows. Mountains encircle the horizon, beautiful violet mountains with wooded slopes. A luminous line of water cuts cleanly through this picture and upon it here and there white sails are shining. The water has reflections of apple green, colours of a strange world. The air is soft and delicious : we breathe spring ! The Yangtsze is like a lake. Here is Cauhia the anchorage of Nanking. Our anchor drops into the deep near two big Chinese gunboats at the open- ing of a channel where a convoy of large junks with mat sails is sailing away. On the left bank a sort of camp is seen in the shadowy distance. It has the appearance of a feudal castle, notwithstanding its gate with a double and contorted roof. Nanking is on the right bank. The town is invisible. We see, however, two forts crowning the heights overlook- ing the anchorage and a conical mountain with its sharp silhouette against the clear sky. This is the Golden Hill, where lies the first of the Mings. Its name is often used by the literati to designate the town itself. A little peak rises above the willows and clumps of bamboo and the dis- NANKING AND THE MING TOMB 147 tant pagoda and the temples of Confucius. Looking atten- tively, we perceive a line of battlements that bars the valley. It is the extreme north of the enclosure and runs for about a mile along the Yangtsze. A sampan brought us here at half-past six o'clock. The suburb where we landed borders the length of the canal which follows the walls, half a mile away, and connects the river with the southern part of the town. At the bot- tom of a squalid street, lined by miserable shops in which baskets of horrible big-bellied and yellowish fish and half rotten vegetables were exposed, we gained the canal. Here some junks were being rowed ; and on one of them some Chinese sailors were beating a gong, making the classical thunder of the theatre. At the same time they uttered cries. This was done to call up a breeze. A little further, and we reached the European road and stepped into the rickshas. It required real courage to venture into these dilapidated and shaky vehicles drawn by dirty beggars. The road enters Nanking by the gate of the west. It is very high and surmounted by a double and curved roof. The battlemented walls have an imposing appearance. The opening is thick : we pass through a real tunnel. But we are in no more of a city than we were before. A road bordered with clipped willows runs through the fresh green country with its groves of bamboo here and there. Then it leads suddenly to a little eminence on which a monu- mental gate rises. It has three openings of thick masonry. i 4 8 CHINA The tower that crowns it is composed of blood-red bricks. This is the Red Gate. We now enter a more inhabited region, but nothing suggests a city. It is supposed that this part of Nanking has never been more populated. This has always been the place for the country-seats and gardens of princes. We follow a path that is partly paved ; and around us we now discern a large and badly-kept town. Through the greenery we see the lightning-rods of the Methodist mission and a little further the bell-tower and cross of the Catholic mission. We are received here with charming hospitality ; and, as soon as we have announced our determination to visit the Ming tomb, Father G. offers to accompany us. Three fresh asses are brought and off we go. We take a paved road which leads to the Gate of the East. We have to cross the entire city. However, we do not enter the rich and most populous quarters of Nanking. These are in the south of the enclosure, where are the animated streets and fine shops with gilded signs. All the northern part seems to be a conglomeration of large villages often separated by fields and immense tracks of ground. Here are ruin, misery and shocking poverty. The population, in proportion as we advance, is composed of Tartars. The men can barely be distinguished from the Chinese, but the women wear long robes. On the other side of the canal, crossed here by a stone bridge of a single arch, is the Tartar city. It is not very thickly settled : on the open plains the cavalry is manoeuvring. Let us leave on our left the twisted roofs NANKING AND THE MING TOMB 149 of yellow brick marked with the five-clawed dragon, and the Temple containing the Emperor's tablet, and enter the Imperial City. The gate is here : a gate heavy and massive, between whose worn and blackened stones earth and straggling grass are seen, recalling certain old arches of ruined monasteries. Of the three entrances, two are walled up : that on the left, through which passed officers of the court ; and the winding one on the right reserved for the people. There remains only the principal way, the Emperor's. On the old pav- ing stones over which clattered the horses' hoofs of Hungwu, the first of the Mings, our little asses trot. Now we are beneath the vault : what do we see there ? What remains of this palace which saw the glory of the Sungs and the Tangs, those old forgotten dynasties ? Nothing : nothing but the five stone bridges over the stagnant canal leading to the devastated spot with its heap of red and yel- low bricks. Even the ground is broken ; and such is the whole of Nanking ! Time passes : the new generation builds its frail dwellings on the ruins of those of their fathers. To-morrow, a fire or a revolt, will destroy them in their turn and a new town will arise : the present will have become the past ; and the past of to-day will be effaced beneath the ruins of to-morrow. Who knows how many times Nanking has been rebuilt ! Before becoming the capital of China, she was a powerful kingdom. After the departure of the Mings, she remained one of the first cities of the Empire until the Tai-pings demolished it j to-mor- 150 CHINA row, if China is dismembered, she will, perhaps, take her ancient rank. An immense plain unfolds its melancholy undulations before us. In such a thickly-settled country, the utter desolation of this corner of the earth expresses something distressful. The place is haunted by death. In front of us on a mound two constructions show their gray mass against the pale sky. One is a sort of triumphal arch ; the other, a rectangular monument in the form of an oratory. On the left, other gray forms are outlined : stone animals that guard the avenue to the tomb. This avenue, how- ever, commences much further away in the vast plain hid- den from us by this rise in the ground, just where the sombre roofs of the temple are visible among the trees and fields. Here is no vegetation : a few bachelor's buttons, some scentless violets, a sort of blue flower resembling lilacs and a few anemones appear among the gray stones. Here are also some remains of trenches and ruined walls ; and, in the background, the Golden Hill on whose bare flank we see the black, heavy and massive tomb. The Tai-pings camped here. Everywhere we see traces of their vandalism. They ravaged this then wooded spot, where the silence of the imperial sepulchre was veiled with freshness and shade ; and they damaged the walls of the arches and oratories, the colossal animals and even the tomb itself. Blood flowed on the slopes; and it was from the very mausoleum of Hungwu on the top of the moun- tain that the rebels precipitated themselves into the van- NANKING AND THE MING TOMB 151 quished city, where the English had formerly planted their batteries. That was the weak spot. The mountain domi- nates and commands the whole of Nanking. It was by the Gate of the East that Gordon and Li-Hung- Chang entered submissive Nanking, after eleven years' oc- cupation and pillage by the Tai-pings. Opposite us, the rectangular monument that we had been noticing and found so difficult to understand, we now see is a great tortoise. We enter the great enclosure. Some of the bricks still retain the imperial yellow hue. The tortoise stands on its marble pedestal with outstretched neck. Its head is a cross between that of a seal and that of a dog. The beast is composed of a single block of marble to which time has given a greenish coating and a roughish grain so that sometimes it is mistaken for granite. It is about three yards high. On its back rises a stele, also of marble, with a long inscription in Chinese characters setting forth the exploits of Hungwu. Beyond the monument the avenue turns towards the east, and, after traversing a ravine, passes between the two rows of animals intended to protect the tomb against the Koues, or evil spirits. These animals are placed in pairs. They stand opposite one another, leaving between them a narrow passage, regulated by rites according to the feng schui of the place. These are unicorns, tigers, camels, elephants, horses and other animals of unknown species. There are two pairs of each kind : one kneeling and the other standing. The sculptor who carved them out of a i 5 2 CHINA single block was certainly not a Barye. He made them colossal ; but it is hard to find the slightest trace of art. The elephants are over five yards high ; their heads are enormous and out of proportion. One of the horses lies, with broken legs, in a ravine which the waters have dug below its pedestal. This avenue of animals winds and therefore the effect of the whole is spoiled. The avenue to the Ming tombs in Peking is straight. Constructed according to the same principles as this one, it is in a perfect state of preservation, and it requires a special permission to visit it. All the dynasties of China have rendered great honours to the pre- ceding ones, even after having dispossessed them. Each year sacrifices are made at the tomb of the Mings in Peking, and also among the ruins of Nanking. In the mind of Hungwu the avenues leading to the tombs of his successors here at Nanking should radiate from the symbolic tortoise ; but his successor carried the seat of government and imperial sepulchre to Peking. Hungwu rests alone in the place he selected to watch, even after death, over the ancient capital extending below his feet. SHANGHAI T. HODGSON LIDDELL ^HE approach to Shanghai from the sea offers a great contrast to that at Hong Kong. Here no towering Peak greets the traveller's eye ; but as the ship enters the mouth of the Whangpoo at Woo-sung (the Pilot Station), twelve miles from the city, the nearness of the great trading centre of the Far East is suggested by the large numbers of steam-craft, tugs and dredgers inter- spersed with numerous native boats of quaint design, large and small, plying busily hither and thither. The waterway is here a mile or more in width, bor- dered by a flat landscape, almost Dutch in character though not in colour. The course of the river has been altered considerably from time to time, by Nature and man, and the hard task of keeping open this great commercial high- way is the duty of European conservators, who have their hands full. Off Woo-sung the great liners lie anchored until lightened of part of their cargo, that they may pass up the river and one may see the white hull of an Empress or the dark mass of the P. and O. or German mails, or the blue funnels of a Holt cargo steamer. Here passengers are transferred to the launches waiting to take them up to Shanghai, on the 154 CHINA last stage of their long journey. The yellow waters of the Whangpoo run swiftly, and this, added to the strong tide, makes navigation no easy matter. Soon we began to see buildings of European character, plain and solid, and factories with tall chimneys ; we could read the names of European commercial firms; and when we got up as far as Hongkew we realized that indeed we had reached the commercial metropolis of the Far East, re- minding us of some of our ports at home in the similarity of the river approach and traffic. I was met on landing at the wharf by my relatives, and if it had not been for the number of coolies and rickshas, could almost imagine myself at home ; but as I was driven away along the fine Bund, the chief thoroughfare facing the river, on which are all the finest commercial buildings, banks, and the fine Shanghai Club, I soon saw evidence of the mixed nature of the population. There is no sharp line of demarcation in the European settlement of Shanghai between the streets inhabited by the Chinese and those occupied by Europeans ; the houses in the Nankin Road, for instance, changing their character as one proceeds, although the native city is and always has been walled in and quite separate from the foreign settlement. The native-built houses usually differ from those built by Europeans, in being highly ornate and more cheaply and slightly constructed. The shop-signs in the Nankin and Foo-chow Roads and other thoroughfares are wonderfully picturesque in red, gold and other colours and of all shapes SHANGHAI 155 and sizes. Passing along, one notices crowds at the upper windows, drinking tea and smoking ; while in the street, side by side with the fine equipage of the foreign merchant, may be seen the wheelbarrow, pushed by the coolie in scanty attire, carrying perhaps a whole family ; a single passenger must be tilted to one side, to keep the barrow balanced. A wonderful medley of East and West ! rickshas speeding along, bicycles ridden by natives and foreigners, and even the latest in motor cars, for which there must be a great future. The Chinese are taking up motors ; they love speed ; but as yet they can only use a motor in the foreign settlement where are roads fit to drive on. I have heard that on first seeing a motor car a China- man remarked : " What thing ! No pushee, no pullee, go like hellee ! Hi yah ! " The American Concession of Hongkew is reached by crossing the new iron bridge over the Soochow Creek, and has a long and valuable frontage on the Whangpoo River, where large " go downs " (warehouses) and wharves, ship- building and engineering yards, are springing up on every side. Lying back from the river is a large residential quarter. In the opposite direction by the Nankin Road one reaches the fine Racecourse and Recreation Ground, which only a few years ago was open fields. Here the foreign residents of sporting proclivities formerly held their " paper- hunts." They are obliged to go further afield now; but with commendable foresight this fine open space was rescued from the hands of the builder and thus preserved for 156 CHINA future generations. Beyond the Racecourse is the Bubbling Well Road, so called from the famous well at the farther end of it. This is one of the chief boulevards used by the foreign residents in the hot summer evenings for driving, and also by the well-to-do Chinamen, who have not been against taking advantage of some of the luxuries of the Westerners ; for among the stream of carriages on this favourite road one can see in a well-built and equipped open carriage, with mafoos (coachmen) uniformed in white linen and with a red tassel on their hats, probably three or four solemn-looking Chinese (they often more than fill the carriage) or, again, a young spark in his high dog-cart driving his fast pony, his mafoo standing or sitting behind. I noticed that most of the Chinese of this class wore Panama hats the only article of apparel in any way approaching our own, but usually set on the head with a knowing tip to the side, and part of the brim turned down. The Chinese favour very fast ponies ; and so fast do they drive that the action being forced, becomes more what we know as " pacing " than trotting. Their main idea is to pass anything else on the road. The houses round here are well built, of European char- acter, and often of striking architecture, varying from the more ordinary solid red brick edifice with spacious veran- dahs, to the black and white old English style, with one or two of even greater pretensions and almost palatial in style. They stand in considerable grounds, with many trees and SHANGHAI 157 are altogether delightful residences, from which (I can testify) is dispensed lavish hospitality. These are the homes of the well-to-do merchants j but here and there we find that a wealthy Chinese has stepped in and pur- chased one, and lives under European rule and pays his rates and taxes like any other good citizen. Good services of electric trams connect up this and the other suburbs with the central part. The foreigner has pushed even across the big yellow Whangpoo River and built many factories, engineering and other works on the farther bank; and from the Bund, which is the hub of Shanghai, constant intercourse with this quarter is kept up by numerous steam-launches. On this part of the river are anchored many ships, large and small, with one or two gunboats of the Western powers always on guard, and with a few small Chinese war-vessels mostly employed in the Customs Service. There is almost as much contrast between East and West on the river as on land. Off the native city lie scores of junks, of all kinds, some from Ningpo, with their very high sterns where the families on board live : I say families advisedly, because in many cases there are several generations on board ; and there they lie, side by side, the population passing from one to the other. They almost seem like an extension of the city itself, so thick are they. And oh ! the filth and dirt, the garbage of all kinds ! The measly-looking cur dogs prowl about the waterside and among the boats, picking up what they can. I 5 8 CHINA The Native City is reached by passing through the French Concession. It forms as complete a contrast to the European Settlement as can well be imagined. On ap- proaching the boundary between the two, we notice that the houses diminish in size and importance, and are much more Chinese in style ; but at the dirty little creek which forms the real boundary-line this creek sweeps right round the original Settlement to the Soochow Creek, and formed at that time a natural means of defense which is still known as Defense Creek. Along this creek there are many small shops for the sale of all sorts of hardware and many a good old bronze has been picked up here. We then reach the old walls of the Native City. Huddled against them are dirty native houses, booths and stalls, and on crossing the bridge and entering the gate we meet with perhaps the greatest contrast in all China. Within a few hundred yards of these modern buildings, constructed according to all the latest ideas of civilization, we are at once carried back to the conditions prevailing in the Middle Ages in our own country. Plunging into a low, dark and evil-smelling tunnel, or passage, through the wall, we see the old gates fitted with immense wooden bars for closing them at night. Beggars are everywhere, cripples with grotesque and unusual de- formities, and other sufferers. The air is filled with the loud cries of the small huckster announcing the nature of his wares. Quaint little shops line the narrow passages, whose SHANGHAI 159 greasy pavement exhales the rich, close, and altogether pe- culiar odour so familiar to all old residents in the Celestial Empire. A few more narrow streets and we come to the New Maloo, so called, of greater width and, at any rate, a potential carriage road, if indeed a carriage could reach it, though at present this is quite out of the question. Leaving this picturesque street with its quaint signs, busy shops and crowds of people, one dives once more through intricate passages and emerges at the Bird Market, there to be deafened by the ceaseless songs of the birds, the shouts of the salesmen and their customers. Near at hand, sur- rounded by water, stands the Old Tea House, famous as the original from which the inspiration was taken for the design on the willow-pattern plate. 1 Here are bridges of 1 The Legend of the Willow Pattern is as follows : " Koong-Shee was the daughter of a wealthy mandarin, and loved Chang, her father's secre- tary. The mandarin, who wished his daughter to marry a wealthy suitor, forbade the marriage, and shut his daughter in an apartment on the terrace of the house which is seen in the pattern to the left of the temple. From her prison Koong-Shee watched the willow-tree blossom,' and wrote po- ems in which she expressed her ardent longings to be free ere the peach bloomed. Chang managed to communicate with her by means of a writ- ing enclosed in a small cocoanut-shell, which was attached to a tiny sail, and Koong-Shee replied in these words : ' Do not wise husbandmen gather the fruits they fear will be stolen ? ' and sent them in a boat to her lover. " Chang, by means of a disguise, entered the mandarin's garden and succeeded in carrying off Koong-Shee. The three figures on the bridge represent Koong-Shee with a distaff, Chang carrying a box of jewels, and the mandarin following with a whip. " The lovers escaped and lived happily ever after ' in Chang's house on a distant island until, after many years, the outraged wealthy suitor found them out and burnt their house, when, from the ashes of the bamboo grove, their two spirits rose, phoenix-like, in the form of two doves." 160 CHINA zigzag pattern leading to the beautiful old building, with its many gables and quaint windows of oyster shell, built on piles and tilted considerably out of the perpendicular. One can see it all on the old blue plates. These bridges are lined with people in indolent attitudes sunning themselves, many of them having birds in cages, or tethered to sticks, or their wrists. How the Chinaman loves a bird ! and how keen is the competition to obtain good songsters which fetch high prices ! To this quaint and beautiful place he brings his pets, and stands with one, two, or even three cages, holding them in turn out over the water in the sunshine ; listening intently, and with evident delight, to their music. The " yellow eyebrow " thrush is the chief favourite : it has a low and mellow note and fetches $1.00 or $1.50, cage and all; larks are also some- times on sale. The scene inside the Old Tea House is a busy one ; crowds drinking tea, smoking, gossiping and transacting business. It seems to me that from this little spot alone one could form a tolerably correct concep- tion of the Chinese character lovers of peace and beauty, and withal industrious and keen in business. Such in a nutshell is my estimate of the qualities possessed by the Chinese, qualities indeed of which any nation might be proud, and without which any people must soon degenerate. With its great roofs turned up at the corners, the Piece- Goods Temple (so called because it is largely used by the Chinese merchants who deal in Manchester piece goods), on the City Wall is a fine specimen of the architecture of SHANGHAI 161 Southern China. It also has oyster-shell windows and woodwork framing of most quaint design, the centre of each casement having a small square of glass, thus increas- ing the dim light admitted by the oyster-shells. I have heard travellers say that there is nothing to see in the Native City of Shanghai. All I can say is that such people must be entirely lacking in appreciation of things quaint and beautiful. The few streets and buildings in the Native City which I have mentioned are in themselves worth a long journey, so intensely interesting and peculiarly characteristic are they. A pleasant drive, and one often taken by visitors, is by the Bubbling Well Road or through the French Settlement and across the Sicawai Creek, past the Arsenal to Loong- wha, where there is a fine pagoda and large temples. The latter show in a remarkable manner what I would call the roof architecture of Southern China. The ridges stand up above the tiling, and are most profusely decorated with open-work carving, etc. ; the front temple in this case show- ing in the centre the two fish, emblem of plenty, and on the other side the dragon, and at the end swans. The corners are most gracefully curved, and the points carried up high in a striking and quaint manner, giving most beautiful " lines " to the whole design. Under each point hang bells, which tinkle sweetly in the breeze. In this class of building, and, indeed, in most buildings in China, the roof is the great and outstanding feature. NINGPO ARTHUR EVANS MOULE "f ^HE City of the Peaceful Wave" leads us by its historical documents and legends far back "^ into the earlier ages of the world and touches itself or by its environment some of the most stirring events of China's modern history. Its present situation is almost ideally perfect for com- merce in peace, and for defence in war ; if only we could dispense with the troublesome and merciless instruments of modern warfare. The Chinese have a saying which con- tains sober sense in its bombastic language : " Traverse and search the whole wide earth, and after all What find you to compare with Ningpo's river-hall." The city lies at the junction of the two branches of the river Yung. The southwest branch rises in the heart of the Funghwa mountains, and in the direction of the " Snowy Valley " and waters a large part of Ningpo's rich plain. The northwest branch rises near the shores of the Ts'aungo River, and bears in its higher waters the names of China's primitive emperors Yao and Shun ; and passing the busy city of Yuyao and the sleepy city of Ts'zch'i brings down large wealth of inland commerce and carries on its bosom great numbers of travellers. NINGPO 163 Both branches are now traversed by steam-launches, the service on the Yiiyao River being regular and the boats crowded with passengers. The two branches join near the east gate of the city, and flow in one broad and winding stream, twelve miles to the sea at Chinhai. A very large trade centres at Ningpo and radiates from it northwards to Shanghai and up the Yangtze and to the northern ports, and southwards along the coast, and inland to Shaoning and Hangchow and beyond. Though foreign commerce is not nearly what it was forty years ago, the native trade is steadily growing and developing, and the sea-borne busi- ness enjoys far greater security than in former years, now that revenue steam-cruisers patrol the coast, and the whole junk traffic is under the supervision of the Imperial Mari- time Customs. The city forms what is in a true sense an epitome of four thousand years, linking in its history the events of history and the characteristics of the old China and the new. The strategic importance of Ningpo is demonstrated by the fact that the great Japanese general of the Sixteenth Century, Hideyoshi, the conqueror of Korea, who was hindered only by death from attempting the conquest of China, had fixed upon Ningpo as one point of special ad- vantage in his proposed campaign. He doubtless realized that Ningpo, through her outpost, the Chusan archipelago, would control China's greatest waterway, the Yangtze, which stretches three thousand miles inland, up to and be- yond the extreme southwest borders. 164 CHINA Mount to the top of the pagoda " Heaven-invested," and see the great city below you and mark the threefold embrace with which nature and art have combined to sur- round her, and, as the Ningpo people once fondly hoped, surely to protect her. See the magnificent sweep of the amphitheatre of hills, a hundred miles and more in circuit, with peaks rising to two or three thousand feet. They bend coastwards from Chinhai to the south of the eastern lakes, and then twining beyond Funghwa to the "Snowy Valley " hills and the great Sze-ming-san ridge of moun- tains which sweeps to the " Crouching Dragon-hill " and Hap'u. Thence to Chinhai a distance of about ten miles stretches a low shore with shoal-water, from which the sea is fast receding; and this forms the mouth of the amphitheatre and the opening of the horseshoe, and is itself a continuation of the defence. Then watch the gleam of water all round the five miles and more of the wall, the two branches of the river washing the southeast and northeast faces ; and the broad moat on the north- west and southwest, with only a narrow neck of land at the north gate, less than a hundred yards in breadth the only break in that circumambient watery defence. The third and inner line of all is the wall itself, eighteen Chinese It (rather under six miles) in circuit with an average of twenty-five feet in height and a width of twenty-two feet at the base and fifteen at the top. The wall is pierced with six gates, with a barbican to each ; namely the North, South, East and West Gates, and the Salt and Fairy-bridge NINGPO 165 Gates. The last named gate leads to the old bridge of boats, of unknown antiquity, crossing which we enter one of the busiest suburbs of the city, Kiangtung, or " East of the River." There is a second floating-bridge of recent date, connecting the East Gate with the foreign settlement. Now this city, though probably at least twelve hundred years old, is not old Ningpo. The original city lay at some distance from the present site, and I have seen the grass-covered heavings of the ancient walls. The old name was Yangchow or Yungtung, a name which it still bears in certain documents. It was a comparatively insignificant place in ancient days. In the time of the great Yii (B. c. 2205) it was under the jurisdiction of Kwekyi, which now forms one of the districts of the Shaohingy# (prefecture), and is in its turn, by the revolution of the destinies of countries, under the control of the Intendant of Ningpo. The province of Chekiang, of which Ningpo is the commercial capital and the chief seaport, is full of the voices of the past. Perhaps this is not to be wondered at, as Chekiang formed the southern limit of ancient China. Shun, the Chinese Cincinnatus, called from the plough to the throne, tilled, if he ever really did so, his fields with an elephant and an ox near the site of the present city of Yiiyao, thirty miles above Ningpo. It was in his home there that he maintained so calm a demeanour, amidst the quarrels of two troublesome wives, as to attract the atten- tion of the Emperor Yao, who called him thence to share with him the Dragon Throne. The young empire was 166 CHINA already like a household, and he who could order even a disorderly family well, and produce peace where there was no peace, surely must be the heaven-sent helper to secure and maintain order in the household of China. Fifty years later, the great Yu subdued the floods which submerged China, after nine years of such incessant care that he is said to have passed and repassed his home again and again deaf to the call of wife and children. His tomb and image are to be seen standing to-day near the city of Shaohing. The dates assigned to Yu and to Noah are almost the same. Ningpo was still standing on its ancient site when, some eighteen hundred years later (about B. c. 210) She Hwang Ti visited the place, coming down from Hangchow. This emperor, as is well known to all who study Chinese history, destroyed as thoroughly as he could the classical literature of China, and extirpated her scholars, not so much from ignorant vandalism as from an ambitious desire to recreate China, and make its history commence with the inaugura- tion of his own reign and name. In the year A. D. 713 twelve centuries ago, the city was transferred, we know not certainly why, to its present matchless site. It was named Ming-chow after the cele- brated range called the " Four Illustrious Hills." These mountains have their southern base in far-off T'aichow, their western branches behind Shaohing, and the northern and eastern spurs dip into the sea. The title " Four Illus- trious," which is still used of Ningpo, is connected with NINGPO 167 the legend of a hill in the range, on the top of which there is a natural observatory, with apertures in the rock facing the four quarters of the heavens, for celestial and terrestrial survey. To this day, influenced partly, perhaps, by a freak of local pronunciation and partly by a remembrance of that old name, some people call the city Mingpo. When the Ming dynasty came to the throne, anxious fears beset the minds of the loyal citizens as to the pro- priety of continuing to use the name Ming (now identi- fied with the illustrious imperial family) as the name of their mean city. But the emperor of the time came to the rescue, and suggested a change. " There is a city," he said, " sixty miles to the eastward, named Tinghai (" Settle the sea "). When the sea goes down the waves are at peace ; why not call your city Ningpo (" Peaceful wave ") ? " This suggestion was accepted with much fer- vour of gratitude and Ningpo remains to this day the city's name. Meanwhile Ningpo had sprung up and grown round the " Pagoda of Heavenly Investiture." This pagoda dates from A. D. 696, or seventy-six years earlier than the build- ing of the city itself. The following seems generally to have been the order of events in the foundation of a Chi- nese city. First, the luck of the place was ascertained, and the approach of evil influences repelled by the pagoda, or suppressed by its weight. Then the circuit of the walls was traced, and, finally, the houses filled in. Stirring events in the West have coincided with the vicissitudes of the 168 CHINA pagoda's history. It was built A. D. 696, when Oswy was Bretwalda in Britain. In 1107, just as the majestic cathe- dral of Durham was rising on its wood-fringed island-hill, the pagoda was destroyed. It was restored in 1 145, when the yellow plague was devastating Europe. In 1221, dur- ing the reign of one of the Chinese emperors, who strove to suppress Buddhism, it was levelled to the ground and houses were built on the site. In 1285, with the first Edward on the English throne, the pagoda rose from its dust and ruins. In 1327, at the time of our third Edward, it entirely collapsed. In 1330 and again in 1411, it was restored and repaired. In 1413,106 year of Agin- court, it was struck by lightning ; and in the stormier days of our Elizabeth, about the time of our Armada, it was blown over by a hurricane. In the year of the Restoration it was rebuilt ; and it stands to-day, stripped of its outer galleries, apparently by fire, but erect and picturesque still, though repaired fifty years ago, and looking as though a gentle earthquake shock might overthrow it for final ruin. When seen from the neighbouring hills, its dark pencil-like form rising from the smoke and haze of the great city, is a familiar and striking object. HONG KONG T. HODGSON LID DELL HONG KONG, with its majestic Peak rising in glory above a shimmering sea, is one of the most beautiful things in the world. Look at the out- line of the hills, broken and softened here and there by mist floating gossamer-like ; then look at the town of Vic- toria nestling at its foot, and the shipping of many nations from frowning battle-ship and stately liner to the matted- sailing junk and tiny sampan a wondrous place ! Watch the Peak towards evening, when the smoke of the fires from the Chinese quarter rises gently up the hill- side. See this soft-coloured, vaporous smoke of chow- time, with its mysterious suggestions, as it moves slowly in the quiet atmosphere. Thoughts come to you then not only of the prosaic cooking-time of China, but of burning joss-sticks and quiet worship of which we of the West have but vague ideas. Climb the hill on a brilliant sunny morning and look round over the many islands of red and grey rock, dotted about on the gleaming water, with sails sparkling, and per- haps on the far horizon a homeward-bound liner with its freight of humanity, goods and letters with their messages to the loved ones at home. Or look down at night over the 170 CHINA town with its thousands of lights glinting, and out over the harbour to busy Kowloon, at your feet myriads of flitting fireflies, and a brilliant moon and stars overhead. This is altogether one of the most mysterious, fascinating and beau- tiful sights one can imagine. Who, only seeing this side of it, would guess it could be the scene of such ravaging storms as the typhoon of 1908 or previous years, when houses were unroofed and wrecked, big ships driven ashore, junks swept away never to be seen again, and sampans lost by the score, all with their quota of human souls. Such is Nature ever changing, beauti- ful, mysterious, with terrible and gloomy, glorious, sunny and joyous side. Separated from the mainland by a channel varying in width from one mile at Kowloon Point to a quarter of a mile at the Lyeemoon Pass, the island of Hong Kong or Hiang Kiang, on which is built the town of the same name (more correctly, Victoria) was ceded to the British in 1841. The island is very irregular in shape, about ten miles long by two to five miles wide, and rising to a height of nearly 2,000 feet. The geological formation is mainly granite, and the hills in the upper parts are bare ; but lower down, in and about the town and up what have been rough gulleys, our countrymen have planted trees and made beautiful gardens and lovely walks leading up to their pretty houses nestling in sheltered nooks on the hillside. High up one sees them, and to these the well-to-do colonists are carried to and fro in chairs, on poles borne by two or four coolies. HONG KONG 171 There are very beautiful botanic gardens overlooking the town and bay ; and when I paid my first visit to them they were near their best, and I was greatly struck by a beauti- ful erythrea tree with its gorgeous red blossoms. Alas ! within twelve months, when I went again, the dreaded ty- phoon had broken this and many other fine specimens. And another example of the terrible destruction caused by these dreaded typhoons was brought still nearer home to me. The house in which I was a guest, on my first visit, had the roof torn off and was almost a ruin ; the rooms in which I had spent such pleasant times with my genial host were laid open to the skies ; and many months afterwards the house was only beginning to wear its former appear- ance ; because, whatever damage is done, the colonist in his quiet way immediately gives orders for it to be repaired and goes on with his business as if nothing unusual had happened. The buildings of Victoria are very fine. I need only mention a few examples the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, the Hong Kong Club and the New Law Courts and Post-office, all on the front and largely on land gained from the sea by the foresight and energy of some of the leading colonists. Up behind, near the Botanic Gardens and look- ing over the town, is Government House, watching, as it were, over the destinies of the colony in charge of its oc- cupant. Scenes in the street are interesting and very cosmopoli- tan. Here you see the Britisher intent on business ; there 172 CHINA the tourist in gay attire, men and women just landed from a liner, and making the most of a little stay in port to see all they can ; there, again, the shouting chair-coolies, anxious for a fare. All animation and business is this Gate of the East. A most interesting walk is that along the front facing the harbour. Starting west from the Hong Kong Club, hub of the colony, one sees the Star Ferry "Wharf, from whence plies the steam-ferry to and from Kowloon. Then there are various wharves and landing-places opposite great modern buildings, the offices of the shipping and other merchants. Between these wharves and jetties, packed closely, lie many native boats on which the owners live. They are ready to carry cargo of any kind, to ships in the harbour, or to other parts of the colony ; there are smaller boats or sampans for passengers, and others for fishing. All these native craft must push off to a certain distance from the land at night, and all are numbered, and the pas- senger-boats licensed, so that passengers may embark in safety, the police knowing each boat. Farther on one notices that the houses are mostly occupied by Chinese, and along and across this busy street coolies are carrying to and fro from the craft all sorts of goods, from bales of cotton to pigs squealing and kicking tied up in baskets ; farther on still, are the wharves of the various companies running steamers to Macao, Canton and the West River. The blue gown is the prevailing colour and costume of the better-class native, but amongst the coolies all colours HONG KONG 173 are to be found in picturesque confusion. The wide straw hats seem to serve as umbrellas to keep off either sun or rain. Or again from the Post-office, get on one of the smoothly-running electric cars and go east past the bar- racks, and so on till again you are on the sea front (one sees many Japanese names on the shops here), on past East Point, where is one of the oldest Hongs of the colony, built here in the early days and still going strong. Here is the Harbour of Refuge, constructed to provide shelter for the many native craft. On farther, we see to one side the fine racecourse, where at certain times great crowds gather, not only from Hong Kong, Canton, but even Shanghai and other ports, sending their racing enthu- siasts to swell the crowd. Continue on the car and we come to the great sugar-mills, and, near by, the New Dock, built by one of the great and enterprising firms of the Far East. And what an enterprise this is ! cut out of a gran- ite hillside, and, at the time I saw it, nearing completion with all the latest equipment necessary for docking large vessels another instance of British colonial energy. Farther on, the car runs along a pretty road by the waterside and finally stops at the entrance to the village of Sha-kai-wan, which, but a few years ago, was the home and headquarters of many of the pirates which infested these waters. It has now the appearance of a small fishing-vil- lage ; but personally, I would not like to vouch for the strict honesty of all its amphibious-looking inhabitants. At any rate it does not call for great imagination to fancy them 174 CHINA as dressed and armed in old-time style, and waiting ready to pounce on any peaceful craft passing by. One cannot fail to notice another engineering feat the Peak tramway, which I have heard described as ugly. But if one will travel by it and watch from the car as it ascends or descends, he will be rewarded by most beautiful glimpses through semi-tropical foliage along the hillside or over the harbour. From a station half-way up I saw one of the most delightful views. New Kowloon might well be described as the military and commercial and soon will be the railway annex of Hong Kong. This is one end of the Canton-Kowloon Railway, now in course of construction and intended to be part of a great trunk line through China. At Kowloon many of the large vessels discharge and take on cargo. From here one gets perhaps the most comprehensive view of the Peak of Hong Kong and the town of Victoria, with its great and busy harbour. Two or three miles off, to the east, is the old native city of Kowloon. It lies on the slope , of the hill, and the walls wind up and along, and are well seen from the water. The town has now few inhab- itants. I should think they have found it more profitable to migrate to the New Kowloon, or Hong Kong, and trade or work there. Old Kowloon is nearly opposite Sha-kai-wan, and its people, for piratical purposes, as far as situation goes, may have been, and I believe were, brethren in their nefarious trade. I believe the former inhabitants of this place were HONG KONG 175 amongst the worst characters of the district, and such a thorn in the side of peace and quietness that a few years ago it ended in our countrymen at Hong Kong rushing the place, turning the people out and so dismantling it that it could no longer be a menace to the quiet of our colony. Now, as I walked round the walls, I found old iron can- non thrown on the ground and many signs of what had been ; but looking into the town I realized that its power to hurt was gone. It is almost deserted, and only on the outside of the old walls and nearer the water is there a small population left. It is difficult to realize that such a pirate's lair could exist in this century within sight of one of the greatest British colonies of the East. Think of this hotbed of crime only across the narrow waters from those palatial buildings and comfortable houses, to be seen from their windows. One wonders at the patience which al- lowed it to exist so long. No wonder it was considered unsafe to cross the harbour in a small boat after dark and that there were mysterious disappearances while these pirates had a stronghold near by. I cannot finish my notes on Hong Kong without refer- ring'to the wonderful effects of what are commonly known as " mackerel " skies, which are here, I think, seen to more perfection than elsewhere, although they are the prevailing sky of Southern China, and to see a fine sunset from Hong Kong Harbour is something to remember all one's life. CANTON T. HODGSON LID DELL I REACHED Canton in the early part of a beautiful morning, and at dawn I found we were passing along the quiet waters between fertile shores with distant hills looming up in tender pearly colour. Well may this be called the Pearl River. By-and-by along the bank we could discern the rough huts of the fisher-folk, built up out of the water on poles. These people, doubtless, were pirates not very long ago, and would be so still if opportunity allowed. Gradually we neared Canton and began to see more and more boats, until the water was full of them and there seemed hardly room for us to get through. The city covers about sixty-eight square miles, a great part of this being within the walls, which are twenty feet thick and rise to a height of twenty-five feet. On three sides this wall is still further protected by a ditch filled with water by the rising tide, but at low tide containing nothing but revolting filth. There are twelve outer gates and two water gates, the latter allowing boats to pass from east to west across the new city. All gates are shut about sundown. The streets are long, winding and very narrow, the houses rarely more than two storeys in height. CANTON 177 The Buddhist priests and nuns, about 2,000, outnumber any other sect. There is also a Mohammedan mosque with a tall tower. Pawnshops in China are most extensive and remarkable institutions. They are of three classes. The first are owned by wealthy companies, and their places of business are well and strongly built, and, with the exception of the pagodas, are the loftiest buildings in Canton. Tall square blocks, they remind one of some of our old border keeps. They have windows with iron shutters. The entrance doors are also of iron, the basement forming the offices for business, while the upper floors are for storage. Pawnshops of the second class are also run by joint stock companies, while those of the third are in some instances conducted by policemen and yamen-runners and even by wealthy convicts. Interest is mostly excessive, with per- haps a reduction in winter time to enable the poorer people to redeem their warm clothing in cold weather. The boat-life of China, and of Canton in particular, is a thing by itself; nowhere else is it to be found to the same extent ; nowhere else can be seen thousands of craft massed together, seething as it were, and suddenly bursting into life and movement. What a marvellous sight it was ! to see the swarms of people, men, women and children, the boats, big junks with their sterns high up, or tiny little sampans, forming the homes in which they are born, live and die some not even leaving them to be buried on land, but finding their iy8 CHINA last resting-place in the depths below. One sees this mass of boats spreading far and near j covered in with all sorts of material, from the well-fitted hood, part of which slides along and makes further shelter, to the makeshift bits of matting pulled over some bent cane ; they all seem quiet then you suddenly see an oar moved, or a mast and sail raised, and a movement begins as that boat pushes its way out of the crowd, often accompanied by much loud talk, before it gets into the open channel and goes away on its journey. All native boats in the East have eyes painted on them, the Chinese argument being " S'pose no got eye, no can see, S'pose no can see, no can walkee." Living on the foreign settlement, the Shameen at Canton which originally was little else than a mud-flat, and is now a beautifully laid out garden-like residential town, with its turfed roads and paved walks, tennis grounds overhung and shaded by fine banyan trees you might, but for looking out on the river with its boat-life, think you were in Europe. But cross the island and look over the creek at the other side, at the native city and you realize that here is one of the many densely populated cities of China. You note the crowds of boats again, with produce of all kinds, propelled by men, women and children ; some by means of stern paddle-wheels, which are acted on by a sort of treadmill which the coolies walk on ; some by the single oar j and some of the small ones even by the foot, the coolie sitting CANTON 179 down and gripping the oar with his toes, as we would with our hands. These latter boats are the fastest, and have, I believe, been much used for letter carrying. Cross the English Bridge and you are in Canton, the most Chinese city of Southern China ; penetrate into those picturesque streets, overhung by wonderful and grotesque signs, almost covered in overhead by matting and lattice- work ; narrow and dimly lighted, with damp and slippery pavements and a jostling, hurrying, noisy crowd, all intent on their business, but nevertheless with time to cast a glance, sometimes suspicious, but mostly of amusement, at the oddly clothed foreigner. But be careful how you go, for (if without a guide) a few minutes' walk is so confusing you will be completely lost. Here, without doubt, are the most picturesque streets in the world, and in time to come, when the people have grown less suspicious of foreigners, some able brush will show this to be so ; but I could not put an easel up in the streets, and was warned not to collect a crowd, as there was consider- able feeling against the British at that time. With difficulty we made our way about the various streets, seeing the temples and curios and visiting the shops, where gorgeous embroidered vestments were for sale, and where they do the delicate decoration of silver-work by inlaying with the blue feather of the kingfisher. How quaint it all is, and how very different from any- thing else in the world ! You go into a shop, and the doors or gates are closed i8o CHINA after you, and you wonder what will happen next. All that does happen is that nimble boys begin to show you goods you long to possess. Maybe a cup of tea is offered, green, without sugar or milk ; and, although doubtful of the water, one takes it. There is much bargaining and haggling. No one thinks of giving the price asked, and the Chinese appreciate one who knows how to drive what seems a hard bargain. Going right across the city a long walk on foot and mostly done in chairs carried by four coolies, who shout and call to clear the way, and when met by another chair push in against a shop to allow passage the traveller reaches the city wall, and by following it comes to the well- known five-storied pagoda, near which is the best and most complete view of Canton, with the Flowery Pagoda rising out of it, whilst here and there one sees those square tower- like buildings, the pawnshops. And a lovely view it is ! Looking over this one cannot quite think of the overcrowd- ing, the squalor, the dirt, which exists below ; here we look among trees over the roofs of temples, with God's sky above and nothing but brilliant sunlight and beauty around. It is curious that the Chinese think it necessary to at- tempt to repair the old walls, and even to renew the roofs over the ancient guns, as if they were of any use old iron cannon lying rusting on the ground a great and sufficient protection against an enemy in olden times, but of no use now. On looking over the hilly country which lies outside this part of the city wall, I saw that it was one vast cem- CANTON 181 etery hundreds, thousands of small stones marking the last resting-place of past generations of Cantonese. Here and there I could discern a more pretentious monument, mostly in semicircular form, denoting the grave of a dead notability. A remarkable place is the City of the Dead. It is a series of temples and mausoleums, where those who can afford it lay their dead in wondrous coffins, sometimes enamelled and decorated, and they are left here until the soothsayer, or fortune-teller, declares when and where they shall be finally laid to rest. I am inclined to think that the wealth of the relative must be the chief thing which determines the length of time the coffin shall remain in these sacred precincts. I saw a funeral procession on its way here j there were various articles of food fastened to the coffin. A live cock was one, and by his lusty crowing, did not seem at all dis- turbed at his precarious position. Another interesting place is the Temple of Five Hundred Genii. At the gates are carved-stone josses guarding the entrance, which is of considerable extent. In the central or main hall five hundred saints or genii are placed in rows, and in front of each is placed the small porcelain, and sometimes bronze, urn in which those who come to " chin- chin " their particular joss put the burning joss-sticks. The gods themselves are wonderfully varied in character, and apparently, from the number of joss-sticks in front of certain of them, some are greatly favoured beyond others. They are all lavishly gilded, some quite freshly gilt, others 182 CHINA distinctly showing neglect these, I suppose, being gods to whom there is no necessity for appeal, and therefore no call for devout worshippers to show their devotion by gild- ing. One in particular is pointed out to foreigners, Marco Poloj if anything like this image he was no beauty, though a great traveller. Almost in the centre of the city stands the old British yamen, once the house of a great Cantonese mandarin. When the British took Canton, they annexed this beautiful place as the residence for their representative, and for many years it was occupied by our Consul and his staff. But these officials now live in modern houses built on the Shameen, and the old yamen is the house of Consular students sent here to study the Chinese language. I went with a friend to call on them one Sunday and was greatly taken with the quiet beauty of the place ; the grounds are studded with fine trees and paved walks and terraces it is like an oasis set in the midst of dirty, noisy Canton. On the rivers around Canton are many " duckeries." An old junk, with wood platforms projecting out and afloat on the water, forms the house of the duck-keeper and his family, and of the ducks, which are bred in large numbers ; they live on the river in this manner, and are partly fed there, but also are put ashore at suitable places for feeding, and are like a regiment of soldiers under command of an officer. The duck-keeper directs operations with a long slender pole. I have eaten Chinese duck, but I do not wish for any more. CH'ENG-TU R. F. JOHNSTON AT Ichang, through the kind assistance of Mr. H. H. Fox, British Consul at that port and by the courtesy of the local Chinese officials, I procured a " red-boat " to convey myself and my faithful bull-terrier Jim up the rapids and through the gorges to Wan-hsien. The so-called red-boats are Chinese Government life- boats. There are several stationed in the neighbourhood of each of the most dangerous rapids, and they are manned by skilful and daring watermen. Every year a large per- centage of the trading-junks are wrecked in the rapids and the annual loss of life, great as it is, would be appalling if it were not for the red-boats. No description of the scenery of the gorges can do jus- tice to the reality. For though I have beheld scenery more beautiful and quite as grand, I never saw anything in my travels that filled me with a deeper sense of awe. Perhaps one of the secrets of the fascination of the gorges is the ever-present contrast between the dumb forces of nature and evanescent humanity. For ages past human muscle has matched itself in a brave struggle with those titanic forces. The very rocks themselves, the standing symbol of changelessness, reveal something of the history of this 184 CHINA unending strife. The smooth grooves worn deep into the jagged summits of innumerable crags have been scooped out by the ropes hauled by a hundred generations of dead trackers, and just above the water-line the deep holes in the hard limestone made by the poles of millions of toiling junkmen in past centuries are still used as hooks and points of leverage by their descendants of to-day. When it is re- membered that more than a hundred trackers are sometimes required to haul a single junk against the current of the greater rapids, and that a junk may take half a day in covering a distance of 200 yards, some idea will be formed of the per- manent difficulties that confront and always have confronted, the indomitable Chinese navigator on these inland waters. My journey from Ichang to Wan-hsien occupied eleven days. We started on 20 February, reached Pu-tai K'ou (the boundary between the provinces of Hupei and Szech- wan) on the 6th, passed through the Feng Hsiang gorge perhaps the grandest of all the defiles on the 8th, and beached ourselves under the walls of the city of Wan-hsien on the morning of the I2th. Here I paid off my hardy boatmen, and prepared for my overland journey to Ch'eng-tu. The journey from Wan-hsien to Ch'eng-tu consisted of fourteen long stages, the total distance being nearly 400 miles. The road lies through one of the fairest and most fertile portions of the great province of Szechwan, and is one of the best I have met with in the interior of China : a circumstance which is partly due to the fact that Chinese I SZECHWAN HIGHWAY CH'fcNG-TU 185 officials generally use this road in travelling from the east of China to the provincial capital. The inns are numerous and from the Oriental point of view fairly comfortable. The innkeepers so far from showing any aversion to enter- taining foreigners, tout eagerly for their custom, and gen- erally greet one with the amiable remark, " At your Excel- lency's service," as one enters their courtyards. The people are peaceful and industrious, and annoy foreigners only by their insatiable curiosity. Europeans have not very often travelled by this road as they generally prefer hav- ing a good deal of heavy baggage to keep to the Yangtze as far as Chung-king, and thence ascend the Min River ; but there are now several missionary stations between Wan-hsien and Ch'eng-tu, and the country is quite well known to foreigners. The road lies partly over undulating hills, generally cultivated almost to their summits with rice, rape, wheat, maize and many other crops, and partly over rich and densely-populated plains. The scenery is always picturesque and sometimes among the hills exceedingly beautiful. The villages, farmhouses and temples are gen- erally situated amid little forests of feathery bamboo. The hillsides are studded with charming little chalets, and very often the submerged rice-fields in their immediate vicinity give the appearance of artificial lakes in an English park, es- pecially when the banks or balks are lined with graceful vegetation. The Ch'eng-tu plain, with its marvellous system of irrigation ana its three or four crops a year, is the richest i86 CHINA and most populous district in the whole of the Chinese Empire. This extraordinarily productive plain is about ninety miles long by seventy wide, and supports a popula- tion estimated at no less than 4,000,000, of whom about 350,000 reside within the capital itself. It is studded with many prosperous towns and villages, and is cultivated to its utmost extent. Among the crops are rice, wheat, tea, tobacco, maize, the opium-poppy, 1 which was not yet in bloom, and the yellow rape that turned hundreds of acres of land into seas of bright gold. The plain is connected by a navigable waterway (the Min) with the Yangtze, and it is in the heart of the richest province in China. The city of Ch'eng-tu has been identified with Marco Polo's Sindafu. "This city," wrote Marco in the Thirteenth Century, " was in former times a rich and noble one, and the kings who reigned there were very great and wealthy." Of the Min River which had not then been subdivided to the same extent as at present into artificial channels for irrigation he says : " The multitude of vessels that navi- gate this river is so vast that no one who should read or hear the tale would believe it. The quantities of merchan- dise also which merchants carry up and down this river are past all belief." Ch'eng-tu is a city of less importance now, but it is still one of the greatest and most prosperous in China. Its population is much smaller than that of Canton, but its 1 Written in 1908, before the edict to exterminate the poppy had been issued.^. S. CH'NG-TU 187 general appearance is more attractive as well as far more imposing. Its streets are broad and clean, and its wall ex- ceedingly well preserved. In mediaeval times it was a frontier city of great political and strategic importance, for the Tibetan principalities extended then as far east as the lofty mountains that flank the Ch'eng-tu plain on the west. Even now large numbers of Tibetan traders are often to be seen in the streets of Ch'eng-tu, though most of their com- mercial transactions are carried on at the city of Kuan-hsien, about thirty miles away, a place which is also remarkable for the sluices which regulate the waters of the Min and divert them, as occasion demands, into the irrigation canals. The governor general of Szechwan, whose yamen is in Ch'eng-tu, is more like a real viceroy than any other provincial ruler in China, for he it is who, on behalf of the emperor, holds sway over, and receives the embassies of, the various Tibetan princes and tribal chiefs of the extreme west. Though so remote from the seaboard, the people of Ch'eng-tu or perhaps I should say the officials are among the most progressive and enlightened in China. This is especially so in the matter of education. The city possesses a Provincial College, where about three hundred young men are now being educated in Western as well as in Chinese branches of learning. Something of the grandeur of Ch'eng-tu in its most palmy days may be realized by a reference to extant Chinese books, as well as from the eulogies of Marco Polo. 188 CHINA From the Shu Hua Shih we learn that under the T'ang dynasty (618-905 of the Christian era) it was a great art centre, and a long list of paintings and frescoes relating to the Buddhist religion are mentioned in that work as hang- ing on the walls of the palaces of Ch'eng-tu. Some of the temples are worthy of a long visit, though the finest in the district is not in the city itself but in the neighbouring town of Kuan-hsien, where Li Ping and his son, the deified founders of the great irrigation system of the Ch'eng-tu plain, have had raised in their honour a temple that is said to be the most beautiful in China. But, as has been well remarked of Li Ping by a recent English traveller, the perennially fertile fields around Ch'eng-tu are his finest monument. MOUNT OMEI R. F. JOHNSTON THE forests and ravines of Mount Omei teem with mystery and marvel, for there are legends that carry its story far back into the dim days when the threads of history meet together in the knots of myth. There is hardly a peak ungarlanded with the flowers of romance, hardly a moss-grown boulder that is not the centre of an old-world legend. The many stories of wonderful visions and wizard sounds that have come to the shrines of Omei may raise a smile of amusement at human credulity yet they are easily enough explained when we remember how strangely both sights and sounds may be affected by mountain mists ; and it is seldom that the giant bulk of Omei is bathed from peak to base in clear sun- shine. " The swimming vapour slopes athwart the glen, Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine, And loiters, slowly drawn." It is, indeed, true that " many-fountain'd " Omei would lose a great part of its spell if the mists were to melt away into garish daylight. No more could the pilgrim pour into the ears of wondering listeners tales of how, when ascend- ing the mountain amid gloom and silence, he had suddenly i 9 o CHINA heard his own praises of the Lord Amitabha rechanted by spirit voices j how a rift in the curtain of white cloud had suddenly disclosed landscapes of unearthly loveliness, with jewelled palaces and starry pinnacles such as were never raised by the hands of men j how he had caught glimpses of airy forms that passed him with a sigh or a whisper, but left no traces in the forest or the snow and made no sound of footfall ; or how when approaching unwittingly the edge of some terrible abyss he had felt the touch of a ghostly finger that led him back to safety. It is believed that the Lolos who are not Buddhists wor- shipped on Mount Omei a triad of deities of their own, and it is at least certain that men of that race are sometimes met on Omei's slopes. But the earliest legendary associa- tions of the mountain are in Chinese minds naturally con- nected with those mythical progenitors of the Chinese people Fu Hsi and Nii Wo. This carries us back to the Twenty-ninth Century B. c. Both these mysterious persons have their " caves " on Mount Omei, but they are in such inaccessible situations that no mortal eye has ever seen them. Omei-shan like other sacred mountains in China has always been famous for the medicinal value of its roots and herbs, and the monks still derive no little benefit from their sale. Perhaps it was among these herbs that The Old Man found his elixir of life, and if so he did not remain in ex- clusive possession of the secret. The records of Omei are full of accounts of recluses and others whose span of life ex- - SUMMIT OF MOUXT OMEI MOUNT OMEI 191 tended far beyond the normal. One of them is known to legend as Pao Chang, but more popularly as Ch'ien Sui Ho Shang, or "The Monk of a Thousand Years." The period of his long and useful life is given in the records. He was born in the twelfth year of Wei Lieh Wang of the Chou dynasty and died in the eighth year of Kao Tsung of the Tang dynasty at the ripe old age of precisely one thou- sand and seventy-one. He was a native of India, but came to China in the Chin dynasty (265-419 of our era) and went to worship at the shrine of P'u Hsien Bodhisattva on Mount Omei, where he spent the declining centuries of his life. According to another account his arrival at Omei was a good deal earlier than the Chin period, for his name is connected with the most famous of all the Omei stories one which refers to the reign of Ming Ti of the Han dynasty. This story relates to the foundation of what may be called the Buddhistic history of Omei and the beginning of its long historical association with its patron saint, P'u Hsien Bodhisattva. We are told that in the reign of Ming Ti (58-75 of the Christian era) a certain official named P'u happened to be on Mount Omei looking for medicinal herbs. In a misty hollow he suddenly came upon the foot- prints of a deer. They were shaped not like the footprints of an ordinary deer, but like the flower of the lotus. Amazed at the strange sight, he followed the tracks up the mountain. They led him continually upward until at last he found himself on the summit, and there, at the edge of 192 CHINA a terrible precipice, they disappeared. As he gazed over the brink, he beheld a sight most strange and wonderful. A succession of marvellous colours, luminous and brilliant, gradually rose to the surface of the vast bank of clouds that lay stretched out below, and linked themselves together in the form of a glorious iridescent aureole. P 4 u, full of won- der at so extraordinary a spectacle, sought the hermitage of the famous " Monk of a Thousand Years " and told him his strange story. " You are indeed happy ! " said the Monk. "What you have seen is no other than a special manifestation to you of the glory of the great Bodhisattva P l u Hsien : fitting it is, therefore, that this mountain should be the centre from which his teachings may be spread abroad. The Bodhisattva has certainly favoured you above all men." The end of the whole matter was that P'u built, on the spot from which he had witnessed the sublime mani- festation, the first of the Buddhist temples of Mount Omei, and dedicated it to P'u Hsien Bodhisattva j and the present monastic buildings known as the Hsien Tsu Tien and its more modern neighbour the Chin Tien occupy in the Twentieth Century the site chosen for the original P 4 u Kuang Tien, or Hall of Universal Glory, in the First Century. This story is interesting as carrying back the Buddhistic traditions of Omei to the very earliest days of Buddhism in China. My readers will probably remember that it was in the same epoch the reign of Ming Ti that the emperor had his famous vision of the Golden Man, which is sup- MOUNT OMEI 193 posed to have led to the introduction n of Buddhism into China under direct imperial patronage. The story is also of interest as embodying the first record of the remarkable phenomenon known as the Glory of Buddha which has always been one of the principal attractions of the moun- tain and may well have been the real cause as the story itself indicates of its special sanctity. The other curiosities of Omei are so numerous that most of them cannot even be referred to. Near the foot of the mountain is a scooped-out rock which is said to have once formed a bath in which pilgrims were required to go through a course of purification before ascending the mountain. This, if true, is curious and suggestive. There is a spot shown where a miraculous lotus-plant the lotus is sacred to the Buddha used to blossom in every season of the year. There is a flying-bell, the tolling of which has been heard in many different parts of the mountain, though it is never moved by human hands. There are rock-inscriptions written by emperors and empresses and by the great Sung dynasty poet, Su Tung-p'o. Not far from the Wan-nien monastery perhaps the second oldest on the mountain is a stream called the Black Water. The earliest religious buildings on Mount Omei were no doubt solitary hermitages, erected by recluses whose relig- ious enthusiasm impelled them to find in the deep recesses of its forests and gorges a welcome retreat from the noise and vanity of a world that they despised. As time went on, richly endowed monasteries nobler and more splendid than 194 CHINA any now existing rose in its silent ravines and by the side of its sparkling watercourses, and opened their doors to welcome those whom spiritual ecstasy or longing for a life of philosophic contemplation, or perhaps the anguish of de- feated ambition, drove from the haunts of men. But grad- ually as religious fervour died away, the mountain recluses and solitary students of early days were succeeded by smaller men, distinguished neither for piety nor for scholar- ship. It must, indeed, be confessed that no tradition of sound learning has been kept up in the Buddhist Church in China. To some extent the lack of scholarship among Chinese Buddhists may perhaps be traced not too fancifully to the practice and teaching of Bodhidarma, the so-called twenty-eighth patriarch of the Indian Buddhists, and the first of the patriarchs of China. " Buddha's Glory " is not the only marvel that the for- tunate pilgrim may hope to behold when he reaches the Golden Summit. Night on Mount Omei has its treasures hardly less glorious than those of day. These take the forms of myriads of little lights, moving and glimmering like winged stars in the midst of an inverted firmament. They are known as the Sheng Teng (Holy Lamps) and have been described to me for alas ! I saw them not as brilliant specks of light darting hither and thither on the surface of the ocean of mist on which in daytime floats the coloured aureole. A fanciful monk suggested to me that they are the scintillating fragments of the " Glory of Buddha," which is shattered at the approach of night and MOUNT OMEI 195 reformed at the rising of the sun. Foreigners have sup- posed that they are caused by some electrical disturbance ; but the monk's explanation, if the less scientific of the two, is certainly the more picturesque. The monastery in which I was entertained is probably the largest on the summit, but by far the most famous is its neighbour, the Hsien Tsu Tien, which is believed to oc- cupy the site of the original temple to P'u Hsien that ac- cording to the legend was built by P'u Kung in the Han dynasty after he had tracked the lily-footed deer to the edge of the great precipice and had beheld the wonderful sight thenceforth known as the " Glory of Buddha." The temple contains a large sedent image of the patron saint and behind it is a terrace from which may be seen the manifold wonders of the abyss. Not far from this building is the Monastery of the Sleeping Clouds and further off are the temples of the Thousand Buddhas (Ch l ien Fo) and the White Dragon. I regretfully left the summit of Mount Omei on my downward journey early on the morning of loth March, and, after many a slip and sprawl on the snow, reached the Wan-nien monastery in the afternoon. Here I spent a night for the second time, and continued the descent on the following morning. Just below the temple of the Pai Lung (White Dragon) which I had already visited, the road bifurcates ; and as both branches lead eventually to Omei- hsien, I naturally chose the one that was new to me. By this time I had left far behind me the snow and icicles of the 196 CHINA higher levels and had entered a region of warm air and bright green vegetation. The change was startling as though by some magic power the seasons had been inter- changed. " I dreamed that as I wandered by the way Bare winter suddenly was changed to spring, And gentle odours led my steps astray, Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring." Shelley's dream would have been realized on the slopes of Mount Omei. THE LANGUAGE CHESTER HOLCOMBE IT is impossible to know any people well until the stu- dent can speak and think in their tongue. And a bar- rier far more serious than the Great Wall to any inti- mate acquaintance with the Chinese is found in their language. It is the oldest spoken language now existent upon the earth, has been the mother tongue of a far larger number of human beings than any other either in the past or present, and, so far as can be determined, has undergone no serious changes either in its construction or written form since it came into existence. It has had, in common with all other languages, a constant process of growth and decay ; new ideas have required new symbols of expression. Characters have dropped out of common use as the ideas which they represented were lost or modified. But the national habit of thrift and economy appears to have shown itself even in their word-building. While new characters have been added to the language, none of the old ones have been absolutely dropped. The result is an enormous list of words, which literally " no man can number." The esti- mate of the total number of distinct characters in the Chinese language ranges all the way from 25,000 to 260,- ooo. The Kang Hsi Tz Tien the standard dictionary of i 9 8 CHINA China contains 44,449. Probably not more than 10,000 of these are in constant use even among the educated classes. The nine volumes of the Chinese classics contain only 4,601 different characters, though in five of the nine volumes are found a total of over two hundred thousand words. Hence the list of what we would call obsolete char- acters must be far more extensive than that of the active living characters of the language. But pedantry, as shown in searching for and making use of some long-forgotten character, is a virtue among the Chinese, and one of the favourite modes of exhibiting great scholarship is by inter- larding a memorial to the throne, or an essay, with a host of characters resurrected from the most ancient debris of the language. While this enormously increases the labour of learning Chinese makes it, indeed, an endless task it carries with it one comfort. It is no discredit to any person, however learned, to be ignorant of the form, sound, or meaning of characters met in his daily reading. The Chinese language has no alphabet. Each character represents in itself a complete idea, and hence it is spoken of as a monosyllabic language. But, practically speaking, each character corresponds more nearly to our syllable. As ordinarily used, it is no more nearly monosyllabic than is English. It is written in columns from top to bottom of the page, and from right to left. A Chinese book ends where ours begins. Writing is done with a fine camel's- hair brush and India ink. The process of printing in THE LANGUAGE 199 China, known centuries before the discovery of the art in Europe, is very simple. Each character must be learned by itself, and when the student has mastered a thousand or five thousand, the suc- ceeding thousands must be learned in the same way. Those already familiar furnish no other assistance than a certain quickness to perceive the peculiar form which serves to distinguish each from its fellows. But there is a peculiar fascination in the study of these same char- acters when once they are known. In their original forms the characters were rude outlines of the objects they were intended to represent. The first change to which they were subjected was the omission of unimportant lines, leaving only such parts of the picture as represented the peculiar form or essential points of the ob- ject. Thus a man was represented with an upright line for the body and two spreading lines for legs; a sheep, by lines so drawn as to represent the horns, head, feet, and tail ; cattle, by a head, two horns, and a tail ; the sun, by a circle with a dot in the centre ; and a tree, by lines repre- senting the trunk, roots, and branches. In this way a limited number of forms, to indicate single visible objects, were secured. Next came the combination of these simple outlines to represent ideas rather than objects. And the study of this process of word-building is especially fascinating, since a large proportion of the compounded characters are, of necessity, ideographic. Dissect one of them and there lies 200 CHINA before you, in its component parts, the Chinese conception of the elements which combine to form the idea which the character represents. Those ancient Chinese word-builders crystallized into these combinations their own conceptions, often crude, inadequate, and even grotesque, of the ideas which they sought to express. Here are a few of these combinations by way of illustration : Two trees represent a forest, three a thicket. The sun beside the moon repre- sents brightness. A prisoner is literally a man in a box. A mouth in a door signifies to ask ; a mouth and a dog, to bark ; and a woman watching at a window, jealousy. A pig under a roof indicates the Chinese idea of home, and a woman beside a pig under a roof, the marriage of a woman ; while the character " to seize " placed over a woman shows the Celestial idea of the part played by a man irj a matri- monial alliance. And when a Chinaman made a woman placed beside a broom represent a wife, he painted thereby his own conception of her principal office in the family. On the other hand, he gave an illustration of his love for male offspring when he made a woman standing beside a son signify good. He indicates his modest conception of wealth, since his combination consists of one mouth under a roof and over a field. Other and perhaps more natural compounds, from our standpoint, are " white " and " heart," to signify fear; a hand beside a man meaning to help, and a man standing by words as a symbol of faith. Few would fail to recognize the aptness of thought under a tiger as a symbol for worry or care, or heart beside a pig-sty as signi- THE LANGUAGE 201 fying mortification or disgrace. But we have a sorry pic- ture of Chinese ideas of womankind in their representation of peace or rest by one woman under a roof, while two women mean " to quarrel," and three together signify in- trigue of the most disgraceful kind. Generally speaking, the frequent use of the character meaning woman in com- binations in which the idea to be expressed is wrong in its nature more than adequately illustrates the ancient Chinese idea that the female sex is " moulded out of faults." In the construction of phrases and idiomatic expressions a similar peculiarity exists. Their idioms are by turns simple, quaint, grotesque, full of force, and utterly devoid of any apparent connection with the idea they represent. By way of example, they show a peculiarly low national idea of the colour white by its general use to signify use- lessness or failure. A " white man " means a useless good- for-nothing, while a " red man " is a popular, successful person. A "white house" is a hovel; "white talk" means unsuccessful argument, and " white running " means labour spent in vain. As the language in common use is practically a hopeless entanglement of these phrases and idioms, from most of which time has stripped all their original force and connection, it will readily be seen that the task of becoming familiar with an innumerable list of characters is, after all, less difficult than that of building them into sentences which, from a Chinese standpoint, shall be intelligible and correct. More foreigners fail to 202 CHINA speak idiomatic Chinese than to acquire a reasonable knowl- edge of the written characters. And the failure is far more serious. Fortunately the grammar of the language gives no trouble. It is so simple as to be almost non-existent. The words appear to have been worn smooth and round by long use, and may be used for the different parts of speech almost at will. The same word serves indifferently as a noun, verb, adverb, or adjective, or for any other subordinate pur- pose as may please the speaker. Moods, tenses, persons, gender, and number are all lacking. Conjugations, de- clensions, and the whole tribe of auxiliary verbs are conspicuous only by their absence. A single character furnishes the root-idea. All qualifications of it must be effected by the addition of other characters. The few educated Chinese who have made any attempt to master the English tongue look with horror and amazement upon what they regard as the clumsy grammatical construction of our language. As has been shown, Chinese characters are, to a large extent, mental pictures of the ideas which they are intended to express. They hint at the thought, but give no clew to the sound or pronunciation. There is absolutely noth- ing about a Chinese character that will give the perplexed student even a faint hint as to how it shall be uttered by the voice. And this is a generic point of difference be- tween the written language of China and those of America and Europe. There, characters paint the idea ; the use of THE LANGUAGE 203 it in speech must be learned separately. Here the word, or combination of letters, is more of a guide to correct pronunciation than to the thought of which it is supposed to be the sign. While the Chinese tongue discloses various lines of thought, delicate turns of speech, and, so to speak, ac- curate shades of idea unknown in English, there are many subjects in which the language is totally devoid of words, many ideas for which there are no forms of expression, simply because those ideas have never entered the Chinese head. In the whole range of scientific language, for ex- ample, and the simpler terms and phrases used in our text- books in common schools, no equivalent expressions are found in Chinese, because the sciences and even the simpler studies are unknown to them. The really serious difficulties inherent in the Chinese language, and which render it an almost insurmountable barrier to any thorough knowledge of the people, lie in the use of the language in conversation. No amount of book study will enable a person to speak it. It must be learned from the lips of a living teacher. With any amount of drill it requires a quick ear and great flexibility of the vocal organs to acquire accurate pronunciation. So serious is the difficulty, that it may be accepted as a rule that no person over thirty years of age can learn to speak Chinese correctly, as the vocal organs, after that period, appear to have lost a portion of their flexibility. Many persons under that age fail to acquire a command of the language 204 CHINA even with the most faithful effort. Not one foreign speaker of Chinese in ten can make the ordinary Chinese cat call. As a rule, the vowel sounds are simple and easy. The consonants are peculiar, and some of them almost beyond the reach of the vocal organs of foreigners. The best that is, the most expert foreign authorities disagree as to the best approximate representation in letters of any alphabet of many of these sounds. It probably will never be settled whether the Chinese word for " man " should begin with j or r ; the fact being that the exact sound is an intermediate one, almost impossible to any for- eigner, between the two. The writer once asked each of several American and European scholars learned in the Chinese language, who were guests at his table, how the Chinese word meaning " porridge " should be represented with English letters. He received the following replies : " Chou" " chow" " ckeu" " chau" " tcheau" " djou" and " tseau." In like manner, the word for " fowl " is trans- literated by different Anglo-Chinese authorities in the fol- lowing manner : " Chi" " ki" " djt" " kyi? and " tsi" And all of these different modes of representation refer to the common, plain hen. The Chinese, curious in their language as in everything else, seem unable to catch the differences between our liquid sounds represented by /, m, n, and r. They confuse and misplace them in their efforts to speak English. Yet each of these sounds is constantly and correctly used by THE LANGUAGE 205 them in their native tongue. There is a large class of Chi- nese words having an initial sound fairly represented by sb as initial, and another, smaller but numerous, which must be represented by those letters reversed, or fo, as the initial sound. Again, all words which, if spelled in English letters, would begin with cb, />, and /, are subdivided into two classes. There is an aspirated ck, p % and *, and an unaspir- ated cb, />, and t. If by mistake one aspirates an initial / where it ought not to be aspirated, or the reverse, he, by that error, changes entirely the meaning of the word spoken. Thus, " tan" the / being unaspirated, means an egg, and exactly the same sound with an aspirated / means charcoal. The writer once heard a venerable missionary address the Deity in prayer before a crowded Chinese audience as " O Thou Omniverous God." He meant to say " omniscient," but used an aspirated cb when the other would have better served his purpose. On another occasion a missionary saw with astonishment an audience hurriedly leave his chapel in response to what he supposed was a courteous invitation from his lips to them to be seated. In point of fact, however, he was not giving them a welcome, but as- suring them that they had made a mistake in entering. An aspirated t caused all the misunderstanding. While it is true that an unaspirated <:, />, and / represent very closely the same sounds as , , and d, they still are not exactly the same. Any attempt to use those sounds, while they would doubtless enable the speaker to be understood, would 206 CHINA at the same time effectually prevent him from speaking ac- curate Chinese. And this fact fitly illustrates the exceed- ingly delicate gradations of some of the sounds in the lan- guage. Another broad peculiarity, which affects every word spoken in Chinese, and forbids all attempt at reduction to alphabetical form, remains to be noticed. In English and most other tongues the sound of what is called a word con- veys a single and invariable idea to the person to whom it is spoken. The tone in which the word is uttered may serve to indicate inquiry, contempt, sarcasm, surprise, anger, or any other emotion ; but the fundamental, the root idea, as we may call it, which is conveyed by the sound re- mains always the same. Thus in our tongue a man is al- ways a man, whether the word is uttered with sudden ex- plosive force, as in anger, with rising inflection, as in in- quiry, or with any other variety of intonation. All this is changed in Chinese. Here the tone of utter- ance affects, or rather determines, the root idea as much as the sound itself does. The tone is equal partner with the sound in fixing the idea to be conveyed ; and any error in the one is as fatal to the correct expression of any thought intended to be conveyed by the speaker as an error in the other. In Chinese a man ceases to be a man the instant you change the tone of your voice in uttering the word. He may be a disease, a nightingale, or a carrot, but he can be a man in only one tone of voice. In the standard or mandarin dialect, as it is called among THE LANGUAGE 207 foreigners, there are four of these tones or inflections of the voice : first, a high-keyed, explosive tone ; second, a rising tone, as in asking a question with us ; third, a curving in- flection ; and fourth, a falling inflection. A sound uttered in one of these tones has a meaning devoid of all relation- ship to or connection with exactly the same sound uttered in either one of the other three. Thus, to take the sound " man " again, if uttered in the first tone, it means brazen- faced ; in the second tone, to hide ; in the third, full ; and in the fourth, slow. Another sound which might be rep- resented by our word " one," if used in the first tone, means warm ; in the second, educated ; in the third, steady ; and in the fourth, to ask. With peculiarities of consonant sounds unknown in any Western tongue, and with a special tone to each idea, a mistake in which changes the entire meaning, it is no easy matter to speak a single word of Chinese correctly. A long and steady drill of the vocal organs is necessary to the accurate and ready pronunciation of each separate character. At the outset of his Chinese studies the author devoted four hours each day for eight weary months to a drill on the tone table a table in which each sound in the language is given in the four different tones and for many months afterwards had occasional reviews of it. There are as many variations in these tones for the sake of rhythm as there are exceptions to some rules of English grammar variations which add greatly to the labour of the student. Thus, for example, if, in any word of two syl- 208 CHINA lables or sounds, the second is the emphatic syllable and is of the fourth tone, the tone is changed to the first. But the presence of so many varying inflections in Chinese gives a rhythmic swing to the language which makes it pleasant to speak and exceedingly grateful to the ear. With some speakers whose inflections are clear-cut and accurate, it sounds much like chanting. One might expect this effect, since it is impossible to speak in a monotone, and the voice, in any sentence, must pass through five notes of the musical scale. But the pleasure of Chinese speech comes, if at all, as a well-earned reward for indomitable perseverance in master- ing the most difficult language on earth, and is interrupted, often in the study and not seldom afterwards, by the most annoying and absurd blunders. A volume might be filled with them. A missionary once informed his audience that the Saviour, when on earth, " went about eating cake." He intended to say " healing the sick " ; but an aspirate wrongly placed changed healing into eating, while an error in tone made cakes out of those who were ill. Upon one occasion, when the writer sat at his dinner- table as the host of a large party, he called the attention of his Chinese butler to some little item that was lacking from the table, and directed him to supply it. The butler ap- peared puzzled, asked if the article named was desired, and on being assured that it was, and must be produced at once and without more words, disappeared, and in a moment re- turned, bringing upon a tray, and with that wonderful THE LANGUAGE 209 gravity which never deserts a well-trained Chinese servant, the kitchen poker an iron rod some three feet in length, knobbed at one end and sharpened to a point at the other. He probably believed that the host was about to brain one of his guests ; but that was none of his business, and the poker was gravely presented to his master, who had simply placed an aspirate where it did not belong. The foregoing statements apply accurately to the Chi- nese language as spoken by at least four-fifths of the popu- lation. While in certain regions there are slight local pe- culiarities of pronunciation and idiom, these are nowhere sufficiently serious to deserve mention with a single excep- tion. This exception consists of a strip of country border- ing upon the seaboard, and extending from a point north of Shanghai to the extreme southern limit of the empire. It runs back inland in distances varying from fifty to one hundred and fifty miles. Throughout this region, while the written language is the same as in other parts of China, the spoken tongue is broken up into a number of local dia- lects. Pronunciation of the characters differs so widely in districts that are contiguous that it is commonly said among that Chinese that " people living upon one bank of a river cannot understand a word uttered by their neigh- bours upon the other." Since Chinese officials are never allowed to hold posts of duty in the provinces where they were born, those on duty in these districts can only com- municate with the people whom they govern by the use of interpreters. Chinese who emigrate to the United States, 210 CHINA and, in fact, to other foreign parts, all come from within this area. Hence, with few exceptions, none of them speak or understand the correct, standard Chinese. A chapter upon the language of China would hardly be complete unless it at least mentioned a nondescript tongue that has sprung up within modern times at the points where foreigners are by treaty allowed to reside and pursue their varied callings. Few of these learn the language, and their only medium of communication with the natives in the transaction of business is through the medium of what is known as " pidgin English." " Pidgin " is the net re- sult of the native attempt to pronounce the word " busi- ness." Hence the proper name of the jargon would be " business English." With the exception of a few mongrel words gathered no one knows how or whence, it consists of the Chinese idiom literally translated into English; the pronunciation, however, being varied to suit the exigencies of the native powers of speech and understanding. A couple of incidents will show how absurd and utterly un- dignified this mode of communication is, and will give all necessary explanation of its peculiarities. The reader may be a trifle astonished and perhaps incredulous at the asser- tion, which, however, is founded in fact, that nine-tenths of the enormous business done between foreigners and na- tives in China is done by means of this grotesque gibberish. A young man who called upon two young ladies was gravely informed by the Chinese servant who opened the door : " That two piecey girlo no can see. Number one THE LANGUAGE 211 piecey top side makee washee, washee. Number two piecey go outside, makee walkee, walkee." By which he meant to say that the elder of the two was taking a bath up-stairs, and the younger had gone out. THE LITERARY AND MANDARIN CLASS PIERRE LEROT-BEAULIEU THE curse of China and the main reason why her remarkable people, who once deserved to be com- pared with the ancient Romans, have sunk to the degraded condition in which we find them at present, is the mandarinate, which she has the misfortune to consider one of her chief glories. It is this corrupt and antiquated system that is destroying the Celestial Empire. It has often been observed that nations generally have the Government they deserve, and it is undoubtedly true that the administra- tion of China is, in a measure, the logical result of her geographical situation and singular history, to which might be added the peculiar character of her people. On the other hand, there is no question that the worst traits of the national character are accentuated in the mandarin class which governs the country, and saps its activity and energy. Theoretically, the Chinese Government is based on paternal principles ; as a matter of fact, it is entirely in the hands of the class known as " literati," from whose ranks all the state officials, or mandarins, are recruited ; and if we wish to understand the primary causes of the misgovern- ment of the Celestial Empire, we must become thoroughly acquainted with the origin and manners of the mandarins, LITERARY AND MANDARIN CLASS 213 who are not hereditary, but recruited from the mass of the people in the most democratic manner in the world, by means of public competitive examinations. These ex- aminations confer three honourary degrees, which might be likened to those bestowed by our Universities : Bachelors, Masters of Arts and Doctors. The degree of Bachelor is competed for in each district (there are sixty districts per province), and that of Master of Arts in the eighteen provincial capitals ; that of Doctor, on the other hand, is only to be obtained in Peking. One may imagine the esteem in which these degrees are held by the people when I mention that in 1897, when I was in Shanghai, no less than 14,000 candidates came up for examination at Nan- king, with only 150 honours to be distributed amongst them. It is considered a great honour for a family to in- clude a literate amongst its members, and his obtaining his degree is celebrated throughout the entire province which enjoys the privilege of being his birthplace. Should he be fortunate enough to obtain his laureate at Peking, he is welcomed on his return to his native town as a veritable conquering hero. It is quite true that, in order to pass his examination, he has to go through an amount of physical suffering and patient endurance which would deter any but a Chinaman from the attempt. Each candidate is shut up for three whole days in a box-like cell four feet square, in which he cannot even lie down, with no other companions than his brush, paper and stick of Chinese ink; and barely an examination passes without some student or other being 214 CHINA found dead in his cell. According to popular rumour, it is said that the all-pervading corruption penetrates even into these cells, and that not a few candidates succeed less through their merits than through the golden gate ; and it has even been observed that the sons and near relatives of existing high functionaries are pretty sure to pass j but, as a rule, however, after the examinations that the real difficult- ies of those who are not rich and who are without influential friends begin. One might naturally expect that after the trouble, fatigue and expense of the examination were over, some post or other would surely be forthcoming to recom- pense the efforts of the candidate ; but the contrary is the rule, and many a man has had to wait a lifetime before ob- taining the reward for which he has striven so hard. Nevertheless those students who seem to possess excep- tional ability generally push themselves forward in the fol- lowing manner : a syndicate has been formed which ad- vances the funds necessary to assist the aspirant in mount- ing the first rung on the ladder of fame, and to help him further, until he is in a position to return the money bor- rowed either in cash or kind, with a very handsome inter- est. The idea of exploiting public offices as a sort of com- mercial concern is, to say the least, ingenious, and, what is more, it seems to be occasionally exceedingly remunerative. On the other hand, the expense and the intrigue that such a pernicious system must necessarily involve can better be imagined than described. As an instance in point, I was assured that the position of Tao-tai or Governor of LITERARY AND MANDARIN CLASS 215 Shanghai, worth, for not more than three years, a salary of 6,000 taels, or 900 a year, was recently bought for over ^30,000. The works of Confucius, those of his disciples, of Mencius and of other philosophers who enlightened the world two thousand years ago, and a mass of quaint lore derived from the ancient Chinese chronicles, form the sub- ject of these extraordinary examinations and the students have to learn some hundred volumes as nearly as possible by heart, memory being the one thing most highly prized by the Board of Examiners. The student is expected to quote certain extracts word by word as they appear in the books, and his examination papers must, moreover, be em- bellished by a great quantity of quotations the more the better. An elegant style is obtained only through acquaint- ance with as many of the 60,000 Chinese characters as pos- sible, from which the student is expected to make an ap- propriate selection, and, as each sign means a word, and not a few of these are almost unknown, and only to be found in some hidden corner of an ancient volume, the waste of time is appalling. The preparatory instruction, therefore, simply consists in cramming the wretched candi- date with a knowledge of as great a number of signs or characters and quotations from the Celestial classics as pos- sible. One of the most curious features of the Chinese is that, although everybody knows how to read and write a little, no one can do so perfectly, for the simple reason that no Chinaman has ever been known to master completely the voluminous alphabet of his country. The most ignorant 216 CHINA has acquired some ten or a dozen characters relating to his trade and sufficient for his purpose. When a man has mastered 6,000 or 8,000 he is considered learned, and, when we come to think of it, there must be very few ideas that cannot be expressed by so many thousands of words. Many of the higher literati manage to acquire even 20,000 words, and the state of the mind of that man may safely be left to the reader's imagination, especially if we reflect that he must have passed his entire youth studying by rote thou- sands of signs only distinguishable from one another by the minutest strokes, and in acquiring a prodigious amount of obsolete knowledge from classical books and annals whose authors lived in remote antiquity. Of late years a slight modification has been introduced in the shape of certain concessions to what is officially called the " new Western culture." To the usual questions selected from the works of Confucius and other philosophers have now been added the identification of names mentioned in modern geography, and since the Chino-Japanese War, the examiners at Nan- king ask their candidates some very grave and informing queries in astronomy, as : " What is the apparent diameter of the sun as seen from the earth ? and what would be that of the earth as seen from the sun or from some other planet ? " The following sage question is typical of both examiner and examined : " Why is the character in writing which represents the moon closed at the bottom and the one which represents the sun left open ? " Here are two examples quoted by Mr. Henry Norman : LITERARY AND MANDARIN CLASS 217 " Confucius hath said, c In what majesty did Chun and Yu reign over the Empire, as though the Empire was as noth- ing unto them ! ' Confucius hath said : c Yao was verily a great sovereign. How glorious he was ! Heaven alone is grand, and Yao only worthy to enter it. How exalted was his virtue ! The people could find no words where- with to qualify it.' " This was the theme that had to be developed by many of a flower of rhetoric. It is only through the study of these books, written twenty centuries ago, and encumbered by parables and affected maxims and of ancient annals crammed with fantastic legends believed in as absolute facts, that are selected the members of the class who are expected to govern China ! The result of this method of education was exemplified as late as 1897, two years after a war which had brought the Chinese Empire within an inch of ruin, when a censor, one of the highest officials in the Empire, addressed a docu- ment to the Emperor, wherein he protested against the con- cessions made to the inventions of the Western barbarians, which he did not hesitate to qualify as calculated to disturb the peace of the dead. Instead of constructing railways, he gravely insisted it were wiser to offer a handsome re- ward to the man who should recover the secret of making flying chariots to be drawn by phoenixes which certainly existed in the good old times. A little time previously a member of the Tsung-li-Yamen had lifted his voice to protest against the various railway embankments and the nails that studded the lines, which, he believed, were likely 218 CHINA to inconvenience and wound the sacred dragons who pro- tect the cities of the Empire, and who dwell beneath the soil. The strange superstitions of the fengshui geomancy dealing with the circulation through the air of good and evil spirits, and with the prescribed height to which build- ings may be erected, and the exact positions of doors and other like grave matters, which, it seems, unless they be properly attended to, are apt to upset and offend the flying spirits in their progress through space, exercise a greater empire over the minds of Chinese officials in the very high- est places than matters which we should consider of the greatest importance. The fact that the mandarinate is recruited from the democracy renders it even more pernicious than if it consti- tuted a hereditary aristocracy, for, as it stands, nobody has any interest in overthrowing it. The most intelligent peo- ple try to enter it, and it attracts all the most gifted men in the Empire, but only to corrupt them. The literary class enjoys an enormous prestige, and the poorest man lives in the hope of seeing his son one of its learned members. It, therefore, does not excite any of that hatred usually pro- voked by caste privilege, and thus does not stand the least danger of being upset. On the other hand, the condition to which it has reduced the Celestial Empire is a jcondem- nation.of the system of examination for Government office, and many a Western State might do well to study this question and to take its lesson to heart. That its effects have been more accentuated in China than elsewhere is LITERARY AND MANDARIN CLASS 219 undeniable, being the result of diverse historic and eth- nographical circumstances peculiar to that nation. The Chinese reached a high state of civilization long before our era, and being more numerous and intelligent than their neighbours, so soon as they were cemented into one compact nationality they proceeded to subjugate Indo- China and Korea ; and so it came to pass that China had no dangerous foes to disturb her, Japan being isolated in her island Empire, and she was separated from India by a formidable mountain barrier, and from the West by im- mense deserts. From that time the Chinese had nothing to trouble them, and had but to live in quiet admiration of the labours of their ancestors who were the authors of the perfect peace which they enjoyed, and thus, little by little, they accustomed themselves to look upon them as superior beings and as types of perfection. More advanced than any of their tributary subjects, and having nothing to fear from competition, they became lost in self-admiration, or rather, in the admiration of those who had made their coun- try what it was, and ended by believing that no further progress was either necessary or possible, and thus are now absolutely non-progressive. The isolation and the want of emulation in which China has existed for so many centuries have destroyed whatever energy and initiative she might otherwise have possessed. It should be remarked, however, that the Roman Empire was in very much the same condition, and for the same reason at the time of the invasion of the Barbarians, and 220 CHINA that outside the moral revolution effected by Christianity which, by the way, only obtained its fullest development by the overthrow of the Empire no further progress was being made. The sterile admiration of bygone greatness, therefore, is the foundation-stone of the doctrines of Con- fucius. The Chinese people, who are essentially practical and positive, and less given, perhaps, than any other in the world to study general questions and lofty ideals, soon de- teriorated under so retrogressive a system, and eventually lost all sight of the origin of many of their most important institutions. Religion and morals were reduced to mere rites and ceremonies that only conceal the emptiness of Chinese civilization, and so the nation came to the conclusion that the one thing in this world worth the doing was to save appearances, and conceal corruption beneath a flimsy mask. The isolation of China and her superiority over her neighbours produced another very grave consequence the ruin of that martial spirit which has obliterated all idea of duty and sacrifice. The military mandarins are despised by their civil colleagues, and their tests consist almost ex- clusively of physical exercises such as archery and the lift- ing of heavy weights. " One does not use good iron to make nails, nor a good man to make a soldier," says the Chinese proverb; and thus it is that the Chinese army is recruited from a horde of blackguards and plunderers, whose only good qualities are their contempt for life and physical endurance, which might under proper management turn this raw material into an excellent army. HONOURARY DISTINCTIONS HENRT CHARLES SIRR THE Emperor, being the fountain of all honourary distinctions, elevates the meanest subject in his dominions, upon proof of his literary attainments, to the highest offices in the State, and at his pleasure de- grades them again ; he is irresponsible in his caprices, ex- cept to the Ruler of Heaven, who he is considered to repre- sent, and by whose pleasure he is understood to rule and govern the Empire. In like manner he also nominates his successor, selecting the most capable of his sons, or, in case of necessity, passing over his own family he names one from amongst the Princes of the Blood Royal, not a mem- ber of his immediate family, to ascend the throne after his decease ; and should he prefer a younger son, in conse- quence of merit and ability, he receives the highest eulogiums. Should, however, the successor, whom he has named, and who has been declared with the usual solemni- ties, commit any offense against the laws, or fail in the sub- mission or deference due to the Emperor, he may be ex- cluded from the succession and another may be named in his stead. The Emperor and his immediate family are clothed in yellow, which is the royal colour; and his silken robes, 222 CHINA and those of his eldest son, are embroidered in gold, with the Lung, or dragon with five claws, which it is unlawful for a subject to wear; this device corresponding with the royal arms. The robe of state has four Lungs depicted upon it, one on each shoulder, another in front and one on the back. The Son of Heaven wears a pearl necklace, and so do his ministers of state ; the button, or ball, which surmounts the cap, being also used as a mark of rank, the Emperor is distinguished by three golden dragons, one above the other, each adorned with four pearls, having one pearl between each, and a very large one above them all. The Emperor's eldest son, or the successor nominated to the throne, has three pearls less than the Emperor upon his cap and wears a coral necklace. The younger sons of the Emperor have five pearls less than their father upon their caps, and their necklaces are of coral, but smaller than that worn by the successor to the throne. The other princes, not of the family of the Emperor, and the mandarins of the first class, wear purple robes, em- broidered with a bird called Fung, the princes being distin- guished by a yellow girdle ; they each wear a ruby button or ball, on the cap, and the mandarins have four agates and rubies on the girdle. The mandarins of the second class and all others wear purple robes, but these are distinguished by having a cock embroidered upon them, a red coral button on the cap, and four golden squares and red coral buttons on the girdle. The third class have a peacock on the robe, a sapphire HONOURARY DISTINCTIONS 223 button on the cap and four golden squares and sapphires on the girdle. The fourth class wear a pelican embroidered upon the robe, a deep, purple-coloured, opaque stone button on the cap, and their girdle has four golden squares and a silver button to distinguish it. The fifth class have a silver pheasant embroidered on the robe, a transparent crystal button on the cap, with a girdle similar to that worn by the fourth class. The sixth class are distinguished by a stork on their robes, with a jade-stone button on the cap and four silver squares upon the girdle. The eighth class have a quail upon the robe, a plain golden button on the cap and a silver button on the girdle. The ninth class have a sparrow on the robe, a silver but- ton on the cap and another on the girdle. The military mandarins wear the same buttons in their caps and the same girdles which distinguish the respective classes of their civil brethren, but the figures embroidered upon their robes are dissimilar ; the first class have an im- aginary animal called Ke-lin^ instead of the Fung; the second, a lion ; the third wear a panther ; the fourth, a tiger; the fifth, a bear; the sixth, a very small tiger; the seventh and eighth, a rhinoceros ; being distinguished from each other only by the buttons on their caps. The scholars who have passed examinations, qualifying them as candidates for office, are distinguished by buttons on their caps, according to their qualifications, and they are 224 CHINA divided into four classes, wearing, respectively, chased gold, plain gold, chased silver, and plain silver buttons, but of a smaller size than those which are worn by mandarins. There are about thirty descriptions of offices in which the civil mandarins are employed, and those in which mili- tary mandarins are engaged are nearly as numerous ; and the total number of both classes is upwards of fourteen thousand. Besides the distinctions in dress each officer has an official seal ; the Emperor's or great seal, which legalizes all public acts, and the decisions of all the tribunals of the empire, is described to be eighteen inches square, and is formed out of yu-cke, or jasper, taken from Yn-yu-ckan^ or the great jasper mountain ; this jasper is not allowed to be used for any other purpose. Yn-yu-chan is a fruitful source for fables, connected with the traditionary history of the country, and among many others the following, which gives the reason for this stone being used for the royal seal. S6me thousands of years ago, the Fong-ho-an, or Chinese phoenix, was observed by the Emperor of that day to descend upon the mountain, where he was watched for many days by the Emperor and his whole court with the greatest anxiety, as he rested upon an enormous unhewn rock ; after he disappeared, a most skillful lapidary was despatched to visit the spot, under the orders of the Emperor, who, having broken a large frag- ment from the rock formed from it the imperial seal, which, from its having been a portion of the rock selected by the HONOURARY DISTINCTIONS 225 sacred-bird as a resting-place, who is believed to be the forerunner of the golden age, is considered to be possessed of inde; :ribable virtue, and to secure prosperity to its pos- sessor. The honourary seals which are given to the princes are made of gold ; those of the mandarins of the first class and ministers of state are composed of silver; while those of the inferior mandarins are made either of brass or lead, and the size is regulated according to the magnitude of the official appointment j and the characters engraven upon these seals are either Chinese or Tartarian, according as the individual is sprung from either source. A seal is also given to any mandarin who may be sent on a special mission into the provinces, and when seals are injured or worn out the officers must return them to be supplied with new ones. The seals are kept in golden boxes, and are carried be- fore the Emperor, prince or mandarin, by two bearers upon a litter, and they are always laid on a table by the side of the possessor, and covered with a silken coverlet, of a colour and embroidery suitable to the rank of the indi- vidual. The princes of the blood royal are, either the children of the reigning Emperor, those to whom he gives his daugh- ters in marriage, the descendants of former dynasties, or those whose ancestors or themselves have been ennobled for public services. They have neither power, jurisdiction nor authority, in the empire : they are allowed a residence 226 CHINA in the vicinity of the palace, with a household and revenue conformable to their rankj in return for which they are bound to attend upon the Emperor on all public cere- monies, or whenever so required by him, and they must present themselves every morning at the palace ; in addition to which they are subjected to the most rigorous regula- tions, being compelled to confine their intercourse to their respective family circles, not being permitted to visit each other, or sleep outside the city of Peking, without the ex- press sanction of the Emperor ; the position of these princes cannot be considered very enviable. The names and fam- ilies of the Emperor's sons are enrolled in a yellow book and those of other princes in a red one. Although hereditary honours are not recognized in China, yet Confucius was so highly esteemed, and his memory is so highly honoured, that his family or descendants are universally considered noble, and the head of the family, ever since the death of the philosopher, has been distin- guished by the title of Ching-gin-ti-chi-el, or the Repre- sentative of the Wise Man ; every Emperor has recognized and conceded this distinction to the family, and the Ching- gin-ti-chi-el attends the Emperor's court once in every year. On these occasions he is treated with every mark of distinction, both by the courtiers and the people; he re- sides in Kio-fow, a city in the province Shang-tung, distin- guished by being the birthplace of his wise and learned progenitor. An additional favour and mark of distinction is conferred upon this distinguished family, by always se- HONOURARY DISTINCTIONS 227 lecting the governor of the city of Kio-fow from its mem- bers, this being the only exception or deviation from the law, which prohibits any mandarin holding office in his na- tive province. RELIGIONS IN CHINA LORD WILLIAM GASCOTNE-CECIL THE real power of a race lies in its religion ; other motives inevitably tend to egotism, disorganiza- tion and national death, and China is no excep- tion to the rule; the strength and the weakness of China lie in her religion and in its absence. There are few na- tions who set less store by the outward observance of re- ligion and yet there are few nations with a greater belief in the supernatural. On the one hand, the temples are de- serted or turned into schools, and the Chinese are believed to have no other motives than self-interest. On the other hand the whole of Chinese life turns round the relation of man to the spirit of his ancestors and to the spiritual world, and the Chinaman obviously believes that a man's soul is immortal and that its welfare has the very closest connec- tion with the welfare of his descendant. The commercial man will tell you that the Chinese are materialists people who have no faith ; and yet with glorious inconsistency he will explain that the difficulty of using Chinese labour abroad is that even the commonest coolie demands that his body shall be repatriated and shall lie in some place which will not hinder his son doing filial worship to his spirit. The whole question of what the RELIGIONS IN CHINA 229 race believes is rendered more difficult of comprehension to a Westerner by the confused nature of that belief, and is complicated by the character of the Chinese of mixing all religions together regardless of their natural incongruity. It is hoped that the reader will bear this in mind during the following explanation. The religions of China are usually classed as three. Not three well-marked religions in our sense of the word, but three elements which tend to merge into a common re- ligion. These are separate religions. A large number of Chinese, for instance, are Mohammedan, and they neither marry nor are given in marriage to the other Chinese; there is a very small Jewish community ; and there is also a native Greek Christian village still tolerated by the Chi- nese, which was transplanted from Siberia as the result of a Chinese conquest in the days of Peter the Great ; there are a quarter of a million Christians converted by non-Roman missions, besides a million belonging to the Roman Catho- lic Communion. But Christianity, Judaism, and Moham- medanism put all together, form but a small part of the Chinese community, and the greater part of China believes, according to all orthodox expositors, in three religions Buddhism, Taoism, and what is termed Confucianism. This conglomerate of three religions consists in its turn of composite faiths. Buddhism in China is not like the Buddhism of Ceylon with its agnostic teaching. Buddhism is divided into two great divisions the " greater vehicle " and the " lesser vehicle." The lesser vehicle is known to 230 CHINA the world as pure Buddhism ; the greater vehicle contains many sects, all of which claim that the revelation ex- tended to Gautama was only a partial revelation, and that the truth has been more fully revealed to those who suc- ceeded him. This is called Lamaism, and in China has in- corporated much of the idolatry which it supplanted and perhaps some of the Nestorian Christianity which suc- ceeded it ; in fact, the Buddhist temple in China is nothing more than an idol temple. Buddha, or Gautama, is always the principal idolj he is represented calm and without thought or trouble ; he sits, the embodiment of peace and rest ; but though he may be the first in the Buddhist temple, he is far from being alone j close behind him in popular estimation come two other deities, Amita and Kwannin. Amita, Amitobha, or O-mi-to, is held by some to be the father of Kwannin, and is at once a guardian of the West- ern Paradise and the personification of purity ; to this wholly mythical personage is attributed such virtue that the mere repetition of his name will secure salvation. In Japan a sect holds that every Buddhist law can be broken with immunity as long as there is faith in Amita. In China such statements are made as this : to follow the strict law of Buddhism is to climb to heaven as a fly crawls up the wall, but to attain salvation by repeating the name O-mi-to is like sailing heavenwards in a boat with wind and tide behind, at the pace of a hundred li an hour. If the origin of this deity can be attributed to the per- sonification of a spirit of purity, the origin of the next, RELIGIONS IN CHINA 231 Kwannin, is probably from some source outside Buddhism. She is the goddess of mercy, but whatever her origin, she at present represents the remnants of either the Nestorian or the mediaeval Roman teaching. In Peking they have a curious image of her which any one might mistake for a Madonna, the truth being that there was at one time an intimate contact between Christianity and Buddhism, when many of the externals of the Christian religion and some of its doctrines were transplanted. The Buddhist temple with its altar in the centre looks strangely like a Christian church, and the Buddhist monks and nuns, with their rosaries and their regular hours for chanting and service, re- call the Roman Catholic services ; the picture of the Bud- dhist hell which stands in the great Mongol temple at Peking reminds one of a scene from Dante's Inferno, and among the many things the Buddhists borrow from Chris- tian sources are these two ideas, embodied in two idols, the goddess of mercy who intercedes for mankind, and the god of faith in whom the worshipper should put all trust and confidence. Besides these gods there are the god of war and the god of good fellowship, probably taken from old heathen sources. Again, there are hundreds of Buddhas, or as we should call them " saints," whose position is some- where between human and divine, much the same position that the saints occupy in the mind of a Neapolitan peasant. After Buddhism comes Taoism. Taoism is again a conglomerate faith. Technically it is the faith of Laotze, who was an opponent and a contemporary of Confucius. 232 CHINA He taught a dualism which reminds the Westerner of the doctrine of the Manichees. Again, Western and Eastern thought have been confused ; Manichees are known to have existed in China, and whether Manichaeism originally came from the East, or whether subsequently Chinese thought has been affected by Manichasism is hard to decide. At any rate, Laotze did not claim that his teaching was original ; he was merely the prophet of an established school of thought. The greater part of China follows his rival and despises Laotze's teaching, yet the dualism that he taught is part of the essential faith of China, and a part which is most opposed to all that is good. He taught that good and evil were essentially divided, were halves, as it were, of one whole. He called them the " Yang " and the " Yin " terms which are in no way confined to the few disciples who now follow him. This division between good and evil makes up the mystery of the world light and darkness, heaven and earth, male and female, each couple makes up one whole divided between good and evil; and so the world beyond is peopled with good and evil spirits, the " Yang " and the " Yin." Obviously such a faith has all the evil which we recognize in Manichzism, and its prac- tical disadvantages are very great. For instance the in- ferior position of women is defended as inevitable ; they are " Yin." No mine must be sunk or cutting made for fear of angering the earth spirits, for as man is as essentially a part of the world as the earth, those earth spirits will avenge themselves upon him. Taoism has now but few RELIGIONS IN CHINA 233 adherents, and yet there are many Taoist priests, since these priests are regarded as particularly efficient in dealing with the evil spirits in whom Taoism believes so fully. The third religion is generally called Confucianism, and this may easily lead to a great misunderstanding, for under the term Confucianism two very different things are in- cluded. First, a belief in the philosophy of Confucius. This for the most part is outside what we are accustomed to call religion. Secondly, and more commonly, the spir- itual beliefs of those who call themselves Confucians, and who, owing to his silence on religion, have to find other authorities for their faith. Sometimes they claim that their faith was the same as the faith of Confucius, that the back- ground of his philosophy was the religion that they believe, but more commonly they accept it without any question. This religion is commonly mixed up both with Buddhism and with Taoism, but its essential doctrine is very distinct and has great weight in China, namely that the spirits of men who are dead live and have influence over the lives of their descendants. I was told by a Chinese Christian that a religious Chinaman of the lower class never goes out with- out burning a stick of incense to the tablet of his father, and no one can go through Chinese towns without being impressed by the number of people who in that poor coun- try are kept hard at work manufacturing mock money to be burnt for the use of parents and ancestors. The missionaries find that this doctrine is the hardest doctrine for Christianity to assail ; and there are not a few 234 CHINA who, despairing of success, suggest that the position must be turned and ancestor-worship must be Christianized and accepted as an essential part of a man's belief. The logical Western mind immediately wants to know what is behind the ancestor ; if an ancestor is to have power he can only have it, says the logical Westerner, by being in contact with some higher power. One of the greatest missionaries that China possesses answers this difficulty by saying that the Chinese mind is not the Western mind ; that he does not concern himself very much with remote speculation ; he has not that itching longing to use the word " why," which is at once the glory and the difficulty of the Western mind, and therefore he looks at the spiritual world much as he looks at the earthly world ; the man immediately over him in the town is the magistrate, and, to use the Chinese phrase, " is the father and mother of his people," and so over him in spiritual things is his father and grandfather. Behind the magistrate there is his distant thought, the pre- fect the head of the prefecture or Fu town a being who only comes into his village life when there is trouble and difficulty ; he comes to punish, rarely to reward, and so be- hind his father and grandfather in the spiritual world are the great clan leaders whom he worships at regular intervals with the rest of his clan. In civil government there are in a distant background a Viceroy with awful powers and aw- ful majesty, and an Emperor whose very name is so divine that he scarcely likes to use it ; and behind the clan leaders are many beings borrowed from Buddhism, relics of old RELIGIONS IN CHINA 235 idolatry, muddled up with Taoism ; and in the dim and dis- tant background is the Supreme Being the Supreme Being Who rewards the just and punishes the unjust, Who can in no way be deceived, Who refuses the rain to the sinner and makes the land desolate, Who has power to dethrone the earthly Emperor and to place China under a foreign domination. This great and awful power is, however, so far distant that the average Chinaman thinks but little about Him. The Temple of Heaven at Peking is the beautiful shrine of this Supreme Being. Here once a year, after spending a night fasting, the Emperor, as the father of his nation, worships the great God who made heaven and earth. The chief feature of this worship is that it is performed in the open air on a beautiful marble dais. No place in China is quite so lovely ; it is the fitting shrine of the beautiful faith of China's most glorious days, a faith which though dor- mant is not dead. The traveller who stands there should remember that the worship which is here performed is as old as the date of the patriarchs and not un-akin to their religious ideals; and if there are some things which are not sympathetic to the Christian idea, they are subordinate. In the main it is the worship of the One True Being. This faith has no right to be called Confucian. There is great doubt about the faith of Confucius. He is silent about religion, or he refers to it only indirectly ; it is no part of his teaching ; but his indirect references to it ap- parently express a belief in a Supreme Being whom he calls 236 CHINA 41 Heaven," a Supreme Being who has an influence on human affairs. He also recognizes ancestor-worship, but with such a dubious phrase that many Chinese and Eng- lish scholars have doubted his meaning. Neither is this the leading faith of all the leading Confucianists in China, many of whom are professedly agnostics in matters of religion, and follow the teaching of Chu ; but it is the faith, the ill-understood faith, of the great multitude of thinking and non-thinking Chinamen, and it is looked upon as the State religion of China. Its power over China is universal and yet insecure. Many ages ago it was partly defeated by the more logical and more sympathetic faith of Buddhism. The fight was bitter, the persecutions cruel, but Buddhism con- quered. Now Buddhism fails. With its failure a vast mass of superstition, kept alive by the sacrifice to the an- cestor, once more rises up and stands right in the path of progress right in the way of civilization. It was super- stition that moved the Boxer, and this it was that lost credit when Boxerdom failed. Story after story is told of the influence of this incoherent but vital mass of religion. The junk will dart across the bows of your steamer j there will be much whistling, reversing of engines, peremptory commands in English, abuse in Chinese ; and when you inquire why the lowdah ' of the junk risked his cargo, per- haps his life, and put the steamer and its passengers in a state of excitement, if not in jeopardy, the answer is that Captain. RELIGIONS IN CHINA 237 every junk lowdah is afraid of the evil spirit that is follow- ing him, and if he crosses the steamer's bow he expects that the evil spirit, seeing a more worthy quarry, will neg- lect him and follow the steamer. The head of the Shang- hai Telephone Company tells how he is not uncommonly met by some sleek well-to-do Chinaman who is most dis- tressed because the shadow of a telephone pole falls over his door, so that as he goes out he passes beneath it, and that will bring bad luck. The houses in China stand un- conformably with the road, because a certain aspect is lucky; a cracker is exploded to frighten the evil spirits away, and so on through tales innumerable. The world around is full of evil spirits to the Chinaman. Every village has the witch doctor who is learned in the ways of these evil spirits. Diabolical possession is as pres- ent with them as ever it was in Bible times. Your hard- headed commercial man smiles when he relates these stories, incredulous that there can be any foundation for them ; but those who have dwelt among the Chinese take much the same line about these stories as we do about spiritualism. Much is folly, more is fraud ; but behind both the folly and the fraud there is a mysterious reality. The faith of the masses of China in the spiritual world has never been en- couraged by its philosophers. It owes its vitality to the fact that, as with us, so with them, manifestations of powers beyond this world are real if ill-comprehended, and con- nected too often with man's evil side. ANCESTOR WORSHIP R. S. GUNDRT WHETHER because mere oppositeness of thought and custom seem necessarily quaint, or whether, as Dr. Edkins * has suggested, because Sir John Mandeville and Marco Polo told such wonderful things that their readers did not feel sure whether they were dealing in fact or fiction, Europeans have always been prone to see only a ludicrous side of Chinese life. And in no respect is this more true than in regard to religion. We hear a great deal about Buddhism and Taoism and temples and idols and superstition : we note with amusement that a certain god has been dragged forth from his cool sanctuary in order that he may be brought to realize in the blazing sunshine the crying need of rain j but we hear very little about the one cult which has deep root in the national life. It is not his affection for Buddhism which offers the chief obstacle to a Chinaman's acceptance of Christianity. It is when he is asked to abandon the Worship of Ancestors that what may be called the great religious instinct of his soul is wounded and scandalized ; yet this has, for two hundred years, been a cardinal requirement of the Christian propa- ganda. 1 Religion in China. ANCESTOR WORSHIP 239 One is struck, at the outset, by the resemblance in many respects between the Chinese practice and the correspond- ing observances in the days of ancient Rome. Substituting tablets for images we seem, in fact, to find ourselves in the presence of the rites in the Lararium which have been taken to be the precursors of our own family prayer. Every Chi- nese household has somewhere within its doors an ancestral hall, a shrine in which are deposited the tablets of deceased ancestors; it may be a separate building or it may be a mere shelf; that is a detail of circumstance and pecuniary resource. Every clan also has its ancestral temple, which forms a rallying point for its members, who come often from great distances to join in the spring or autumn cere- monies ; and there, as in the household shrines, representa- tive tablets are set up. These tablets are slips of wood of varying size in different provinces, but approximately about one foot high and three inches wide, placed upright on a pedestal and having inscribed on either side the name, rank, age, dates of birth and death and other particulars of the person it is intended to commemorate. They may remind us, so far, of a tombstone kept at home instead of being placed on the grave. But that is not all. Besides the record, each tablet has also inscribed on it four characters : sben chu, meaning " spirit lord," and sben wei, meaning " spirit throne," and it is now that we enter the arena of theological controversy. The characters chu and zf', when first written, are left in- complete in a peculiar respect : they lack each a dot ; and 240 CHINA the imposition of these dots involves an elaborate cere- monial. The rite occurs during the funeral obsequies, of which it forms an important feature. A mandarin of the highest rank available, or a simple literate according to the social status of the family is asked to officiate ; the idea being, apparently, that he comes as a representative of the Emperor who stands at the head of the national cult. " Along with this chief personage, four others of lesser grade are also invited to be present and assist in the ceremony. The time having arrived for dotting the tablet, the five take their places, one at the head, two on either side of the table on which the tablet is lying. The master of the ceremonies cries out : ' Hand up the vermilion pencil ; ' whereupon one of the subordinate [celebrants] hands up the pencil to his chief. The master of the ceremonies next says, 'May it please our distinguished guest to turn towards the East and receive the breath of life ; ' whereupon the chief cele- brant turns towards the East and emits a slight breath upon the tip of the pencil. The master of the ceremonies next cries, ' Impose the red dot ; ' whereupon the chief mandarin, first bowing to his four coadjutors as though unworthy to perform the act, imposes the missing dots, first on the character c hu and then on the character tvei. These dots are then covered with black ink by the same per- son and with the same ceremonies and the consecration is com- plete." Blodget. " There is," we are told, in all this, " a kind of incor- poration of the spirit in the tablet as its visible home, where it receives offerings and prayers and manifests its good will or disapprobation." And now begins the homage which, although it is not image-worship, is condemned by its critics as idolatrous. ANCESTOR WORSHIP 241 " The chief mourner (properly the eldest son), after this, takes the tablet from one of the attendant magistrates and sets it upright on a small table in front of the coffin. The magistrate who has imposed the dots then comes forward with his four associates, and, all kneeling on a mat before the tablet, pours out three chalices of wine as a libation, after which the five prostrate themselves three times before the tablet. Then all retire, their duty being accom- plished. " The tablet thus consecrated is carried out the next day to the cemetery upon a pavilion adorned with hangings of silk, its place in the funeral procession being some distance in front of the cata- falque. At evening it is returned to the house of the eldest son, where incense is burned before it morning and evening, and offer- ings are made during the three years of mourning. When these are finished it is transferred to the ancestral hall to be worshipped with the other tablets of the clan [on certain prescribed dates and festivals, among which one called ' Ching-ming ' in April and an- other in August are the most important]." Blodget. The ritual seems to involve three essentials : the posture, the invocation and the offerings. The posture is that of kneeling alternating with prostrations. But that is pre- cisely what a child does before its parents, an inferior be- fore a great official, the official himself before the Emperor ; and so the question at once suggests itself whether a China- man thinks that he " worships " his living parents. Dishes containing food are spread out before the tablets ; but the underlying idea is unquestionably that of a banquet. The definition of Confucius is " serving the dead as they would have been served when alive ; " and clothing and money are usually added in pursuance of this idea. When the Emperor offers a similar sacrifice to the Supreme Spirit of 242 CHINA Heaven, he invites his ancestors to be present at the ban- quet by placing their tablets on the altar. Births and be- trothals are notified to ancestors very much as they are notified to living kindred. The Emperor notifies his an- cestors of his own accession. In the marriage ceremony the bridegroom presents his wife to his ancestors, as a new member of the family, to invoke their paternal blessing. That words of supplication are often used in the course of popular ritual is an admitted fact, though they are al- leged to be of secondary importance and are even omitted altogether from some breviaries. There are such, for in- stance, in the following, which is said to be a common form : "I . . . presume to come before the grave of my ances- tors. Revolving years have brought again the season of spring. Cherishing sentiments of veneration I look up and sweep your tomb. Prostrate I pray that you will come and be present, and that you will grant to your posterity that they may be prosperous and illustrious. At this season of genial showers and genial breezes I desire to recompense the root of my existence, and exert myself sincerely. Always grant your safe protection. My trust is in your divine spirit. Reverently I present the five-fold sacrifice of a pig, a fowl, a duck, a goose, and a fish ; also an offering of five plates of fruit with libations of spirituous liquors, earnestly entreat- ing that you will come and view them. With the most attentive respect this annunciation is presented on high." This prayer it will be noted is offered at the tomb. For, besides the ceremonies in the Ancestral Hall, periodical rites are performed also at the grave. In spring and ANCESTOR WORSHIP 243 autumn, families are wont to choose a day for visiting the resting-places of their dead, carrying food and wine for offerings and libations, imitation clothes and money, candles and incense. First clearing away the grass and covering the tombs with a layer of fresh earth, they present their offerings, and perform various ceremonies much as before the tablet. A table is spread, a paper imitating the tablet is put thereon, candles are lighted, incense is burned, dishes of various kinds are set in order, and the chief mourner presents the whole, for his ancestor's acceptance, in the terms and with the ceremonial that have been described. " Est honor et tumults. Animas placate paternas, Parvaque in extinctas munera ferte pyras." Do we not almost seem in the presence of the Feralia of Rome ? This is the reason why the Chinese are so anxious for male children. It is a son who officiates the eldest son of the family in the household, the eldest son of the senior family in the case of the Ancestral Hall. At an important function which the Rev. Justus Doolittle describes at Foochow, the chief person " was a lad some six or eight years old, he being the eldest son of the eldest son, etc., of the remote male ancestors from whom all the Chinese bearing his ancestral name living in the city claim to have descended. He was the chief of the clan." The presumption that the happiness of the living de- pends on sacrifices from their living descendants, with its 244 CHINA corollary that neglected souls turn into hungry ghosts, is akin to that expressed by Palinurus in begging ./Eneas to accord his body funeral rites, and is one of the grounds alleged for condemning the cult. There is at Hangchow, for instance, a large temple erected for the benefit of " ancestors " whose descendants have all died. Here their tablets are collected and here the necessary offerings are made and the usual ceremonies gone through, by a proper attendant, at the spring and autumn festivals. Such, in bare outline, is the Chinese worship of ancestors ; and surely the churches which have refined the Feralia up to a pilgrimage to Pere Lachaise, the Lemuralia up to a general Mass for the Dead and have whittled the observ- ances of Hallowe'en down to an occasional bonfire and a collect for All Saints, might trust themselves to deal ten- derly with a cult which lies at the root of Chinese polity and which even those who condemn it admit to have been a powerful agent for good, from the earliest ages to which its existence and operation can be traced. Laymen may, indeed, find it difficult to perceive how ceremonies which they will probably regard as the expression of a touching and beautiful sentiment can have incurred such sweeping condemnation. ETIQUETTE AND CEREMONY CHESTER HOLCOMBE AMONG the Chinese, etiquette may almost be said to take precedence of morality in importance. So far as rigid adherence to outward forms may go, as a nation they excel all others in the art of politeness. It is true that much of it has degenerated into mere man- nerism. Still, the form survives, and makes up by the minuteness of detail and the rigidity of exaction what it lacks in spirit. The observance of these forms is practi- cally universal. Cart-drivers on the streets, ragged and foul beggars by the roadside, country rustics and city fops all alike practice and exact compliance with them. One may call a Chinese a liar, and, under many circumstances, he will accept the epithet as a well-deserved compliment ; but either accuse him of a breach of etiquette or neglect any of the proper forms of speech due to him, and a quarrel will be the immediate result. As might be expected in such an ancient country as China, the system of etiquette is not only thoroughly crystallized and fixed, it is also very complicated and tedi- ous in its forms. It enters into the most minute detail of action and speech. To a large extent it deprives conver- sation of all freshness and originality by dictating a set form 246 CHINA through which it may flow, and so covers simple questions between friends with a varnish or lacquer of extravagant adjectives and bombastic nouns, with fulsome compliment and intense but meaningless self-depreciation, as to render it absurd and silly. Take, for example, the following short dialogue, which is an exact translation of the invariable conversation which occurs between two gentlemen, or beggars for that matter, who meet for the first time : " What is your honourable cognomen ? " " The trifling name of your little brother is Wang." u What is your exalted longevity ? " " Very small. Only a miserable seventy years." u Where is your noble mansion ? " " The mud hovel in which I hide is in such or such a place." " How many precious parcels [sons] have you ? " " Only so many stupid little pigs." Of course in such a dialogue the various facts sought, all very simple, are given correctly ; but the formula of each question must be carefully preserved in this stilted fashion, and to omit a single flattering or depreciatory word would be noted as a breach of politeness, and hence as offensive. It is true that the spirit underlying such a conversation that of deference is good. It is that which leads each to prefer the other to himself; but there is reason to believe that the spirit is gone from it, and that it is a mere shell of language, a form of words. Were this not the case, by such gross exaggeration it is made ridiculous and inane. ETIQUETTE AND CEREMONY 247 Among equals in China it is a gross breach of politeness to call a person by his given name. There are no ex- ceptions to this rule. Between the closest friends or the nearest relatives the rule holds good. A Chinese would be angry if his twin brother addressed him in that manner. It must either be " Venerable elder brother " or " Vener- able younger brother," as the facts warrant, and sons of the same mother have more than once been known to fall instantly to blows for no other reason than violation of this rule. They have a curious way of distinguishing the various sons in a family by numbers. Thus the eldest son of Mr. Jones would be called " Big Jones ; " the second, " Jones number 2 ; " the third, " Jones number 3." Persons of equal rank or station, outside the family, may either address them by the titles mentioned above, or as " Venerable Big Jones " or " Venerable Jones number 2," as the case may be. This is esteemed quite the correct thing ; but to address either of them by the family and given name would certainly give offense. On the other hand, their superiors are expected, or at least are at liberty to use the given name, and are esteemed ignorant or boorish if they use the same form of address that their equals would employ ; and this fact furnishes the explanation to the peculiar etiquette mentioned above. The use of the given name is an offensive assumption of superiority. These minute discriminations, endless in number, often cause foreign residents to make absurd blunders in addressing their Chinese servants. One gen- 248 CHINA tleman brought upon himself the ridicule of all the natives about him by invariably calling his porter by the title