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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Civilization Of China, by Herbert A. Giles
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Civilization Of China
+
+Author: Herbert A. Giles
+
+Release Date: March 25, 2006 [EBook #2076]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CIVILIZATION OF CHINA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers and Dagny
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CIVILIZATION OF CHINA
+
+by Herbert A. Giles
+
+
+Professor of Chinese in the University of Cambridge,
+
+And sometime H.B.M. Consul at Ningpo
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+The aim of this work is to suggest a rough outline of Chinese
+civilization from the earliest times down to the present period of rapid
+and startling transition.
+
+It has been written, primarily, for readers who know little or nothing
+of China, in the hope that it may succeed in alluring them to a wider
+and more methodical survey.
+
+H.A.G.
+
+Cambridge, May 12, 1911.
+
+
+
+
+THE CIVILIZATION OF CHINA
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I--THE FEUDAL AGE
+
+It is a very common thing now-a-days to meet people who are going to
+"China," which can be reached by the Siberian railway in fourteen or
+fifteen days. This brings us at once to the question--What is meant by
+the term China?
+
+Taken in its widest sense, the term includes Mongolia, Manchuria,
+Eastern Turkestan, Tibet, and the Eighteen Provinces, the whole being
+equivalent to an area of some five million square miles, that is,
+considerably more than twice the size of the United States of America.
+But for a study of manners and customs and modes of thought of the
+Chinese people, we must confine ourselves to that portion of the whole
+which is known to the Chinese as the "Eighteen Provinces," and to us as
+China Proper. This portion of the empire occupies not quite two-fifths
+of the whole, covering an area of somewhat more than a million and a
+half square miles. Its chief landmarks may be roughly stated as Peking,
+the capital, in the north; Canton, the great commercial centre, in the
+south; Shanghai, on the east; and the Tibetan frontier on the west.
+
+Any one who will take the trouble to look up these four points on a
+map, representing as they do central points on the four sides of a rough
+square, will soon realize the absurdity of asking a returning traveller
+the very much asked question, How do you like China? Fancy asking a
+Chinaman, who had spent a year or two in England, how he liked Europe!
+Peking, for instance, stands on the same parallel of latitude as Madrid;
+whereas Canton coincides similarly with Calcutta. Within the square
+indicated by the four points enumerated above will be found variations
+of climate, flowers, fruit, vegetables and animals--not to mention human
+beings--distributed in very much the same way as in Europe. The climate
+of Peking is exceedingly dry and bracing; no rain, and hardly any snow,
+falling between October and April. The really hot weather lasts only for
+six or eight weeks, about July and August--and even then the nights are
+always cool; while for six or eight weeks between December and February
+there may be a couple of feet of ice on the river. Canton, on the other
+hand, has a tropical climate, with a long damp enervating summer and a
+short bleak winter. The old story runs that snow has only been seen
+once in Canton, and then it was thought by the people to be falling
+cotton-wool.
+
+The northern provinces are remarkable for vast level plains, dotted
+with villages, the houses of which are built of mud. In the southern
+provinces will be found long stretches of mountain scenery, vying in
+loveliness with anything to be seen elsewhere. Monasteries are built
+high up on the hills, often on almost inaccessible crags; and there
+the well-to-do Chinaman is wont to escape from the fierce heat of the
+southern summer. On one particular mountain near Canton, there are
+said to be no fewer than one hundred of such monasteries, all of which
+reserve apartments for guests, and are glad to be able to add to their
+funds by so doing.
+
+In the north of China, Mongolian ponies, splendid mules, and donkeys are
+seen in large quantities; also the two-humped camel, which carries heavy
+loads across the plains of Mongolia. In the south, until the advent of
+the railway, travellers had to choose between the sedan-chair carried
+on the shoulders of stalwart coolies, or the slower but more comfortable
+house-boat. Before steamers began to ply on the coast, a candidate for
+the doctor's degree at the great triennial examination would take three
+months to travel from Canton to Peking. Urgent dispatches, however, were
+often forwarded by relays of riders at the rate of two hundred miles a
+day.
+
+The market in Peking is supplied, among other things, with excellent
+mutton from a fat-tailed breed of sheep, chiefly for the largely
+Mohammedan population; but the sheep will not live in southern China,
+where the goat takes its place. The pig is found everywhere, and
+represents beef in our market, the latter being extremely unpalatable to
+the ordinary Chinaman, partly perhaps because Confucius forbade men to
+slaughter the animal which draws the plough and contributes so much to
+the welfare of mankind. The staple food, the "bread" of the people in
+the Chinese Empire, is nominally rice; but this is too costly for the
+peasant of northern China to import, and he falls back on millet as its
+substitute. Apples, pears, grapes, melons, and walnuts grow abundantly
+in the north; the southern fruits are the banana, the orange, the
+pineapple, the mango, the pomelo, the lichee, and similar fruits of a
+more tropical character.
+
+Cold storage has been practised by the Chinese for centuries. Blocks of
+ice are cut from the river for that purpose; and on a hot summer's day a
+Peking coolie can obtain an iced drink at an almost infinitesimal cost.
+Grapes are preserved from autumn until the following May and June by
+the simple process of sticking the stalk of the bunch into a large hard
+pear, and putting it away carefully in the ice-house. Even at Ningpo,
+close to our central point on the eastern coast of China, thin layers
+of ice are collected from pools and ditches, and successfully stored for
+use in the following summer.
+
+The inhabitants of the coast provinces are distinguished from the
+dwellers in the north and in the far interior by a marked alertness of
+mind and general temperament. The Chinese themselves declare that virtue
+is associated with mountains, wisdom with water, cynically implying that
+no one is both virtuous and wise. Between the inhabitants of the
+various provinces there is little love lost. Northerners fear and
+hate southerners, and the latter hold the former in infinite scorn and
+contempt. Thus, when in 1860 the Franco-British force made for Peking,
+it was easy enough to secure the services of any number of Cantonese,
+who remained as faithful as though the attack had been directed against
+some third nationality.
+
+The population of China has never been exactly ascertained. It has been
+variously estimated by foreign travellers, Sacharoff, in 1842, placing
+the figure at over four hundred millions. The latest census, taken in
+1902, is said to yield a total of four hundred and ten millions. Perhaps
+three hundred millions would be a juster estimate; even that would
+absorb no less than one-fifth of the human race. From this total it is
+easy to calculate that if the Chinese people were to walk past a given
+point in single file, the procession would never end; long before the
+last of the three hundred millions had passed by, a new generation would
+have sprung up to continue the neverending line. The census, however, is
+a very old institution with the Chinese; and we learn that in A.D. 156
+the total population of the China of those days was returned as a little
+over fifty millions. In more modern times, the process of taking the
+census consists in serving out house-tickets to the head of every
+household, who is responsible for a proper return of all the inmates;
+but as there is no fixed day for which these tickets are returnable, the
+results are approximate rather than exact.
+
+Again, it is not uncommon to hear people talking of the Chinese language
+as if it were a single tongue spoken all over China after a more or less
+uniform standard. But the fact is that the colloquial is broken up into
+at least eight dialects, each so strongly marked as to constitute eight
+languages as different to the ear, one from another, as English, Dutch
+and German, or French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. A Shanghai man,
+for instance, is unintelligible to a Cantonese, and so on. All officials
+are obliged, and all of the better educated merchants and others
+endeavour, if only for business purposes, to learn something of the
+dialect spoken at the court of Peking; and this is what is popularly
+known as "Mandarin." The written language remains the same for the whole
+empire; which merely means that ideas set down on paper after a uniform
+system are spoken with different sounds, just as the Arabic numerals are
+written uniformly in England, France and Germany, but are pronounced in
+a totally different manner.
+
+The only difficulty of the spoken language, of no matter what dialect,
+lies in the "tones," which simply means the different intonations which
+may be given to one and the same sound, thus producing so many entirely
+different meanings. But for these tones, the colloquial of China would
+be absurdly easy, inasmuch as there is no such thing as grammar, in the
+sense of gender, number, case, mood, tense, or any of the variations we
+understand by that term. Many amusing examples are current of blunders
+committed by faulty speakers, such as that of the student who told his
+servant to bring him a goose, when what he really wanted was some salt,
+both goose and salt having the same sound, _yen_, but quite different
+intonations. The following specimen has the advantage of being true.
+A British official reported to the Foreign Office that the people of
+Tientsin were in the habit of shouting after foreigners, "Mao-tsu,
+mao-tsu" (pronounced _mowdza_, _ow_ as in _how_), from which he gathered
+that they were much struck by the head-gear of the barbarian. Now, it is
+a fact that _mao-tsu_, uttered with a certain intonation, means a hat;
+but with another intonation, it means "hairy one," and the latter,
+referring to the big beards of foreigners, was the meaning intended to
+be conveyed. This epithet is still to be heard, and is often preceded by
+the adjective "red."
+
+The written characters, known to have been in use for the past three
+thousand years, were originally rude pictures, as of men, birds, horses,
+dogs, houses, the numerals (one, two, three, four), etc., etc., and
+it is still possible to trace in the modified modern forms of these
+characters more or less striking resemblances to the objects intended.
+The next step was to put two or more characters together, to express by
+their combination an abstract idea, as, for instance, a _hand_ holding
+a _rod_ = father; but of course this simple process did not carry the
+Chinese very far, and they soon managed to hit on a joint picture and
+phonetic system, which enabled them to multiply characters indefinitely,
+new compounds being formed for use as required. It is thus that new
+characters can still be produced, if necessary, to express novel objects
+or ideas. The usual plan, however, is to combine existing terms in
+such a way as to suggest what is wanted. For instance, in preference
+to inventing a separate character for the piece of ordnance known as
+a "mortar," the Chinese, with an eye to its peculiar pose, gave it the
+appropriate name of a "frog gun."
+
+Again, just as the natives and the dialects of the various parts of
+China differ one from another, although fundamentally the same people
+and the same language, so do the manners and customs differ to such an
+extent that habits of life and ceremonial regulations which prevail in
+one part of the empire do not necessarily prevail in another. Yet once
+more it will be found that the differences which appear irreconcilable
+at first, do not affect what is essential, but apply rather to matters
+of detail. Many travellers and others have described as customs of the
+Chinese customs which, as presented, refer to a part of China only, and
+not to the whole. For instance, the ornamental ceremonies connected with
+marriage vary in different provinces; but there is a certain ceremony,
+equivalent in one sense to signing the register, which is almost
+essential to every marriage contract. Bride and bridegroom must kneel
+down and call God to witness; they also pledge each other in wine from
+two cups joined together by a red string. Red is the colour for joy,
+as white is the colour for mourning. Chinese note-paper is always ruled
+with red lines or stamped with a red picture. One Chinese official who
+gave a dinner-party in foreign style, even went so far as to paste a
+piece of red paper on to each dinner-napkin, in order to counteract the
+unpropitious influence of white.
+
+Reference has been made above to journeys performed by boat. In addition
+to the Yangtsze and the Yellow River or Hoang ho (pronounced _Hwong
+haw_), two of the most important rivers in the world, China is covered
+with a network of minor streams, which in southern China form the chief
+lines of transport. The Yangtsze is nothing more than a huge navigable
+river, crossing China Proper from west to east. The Yellow River, which,
+with the exception of a great loop to the north, runs on nearly parallel
+lines of latitude, has long been known as "China's Sorrow," and has been
+responsible for enormous loss of life and property. Its current is so
+swift that ordinary navigation is impossible, and to cross it in boats
+is an undertaking of considerable difficulty and danger. It is so called
+from the yellowness of its water, caused by the vast quantity of mud
+which is swept down by its rapid current to the sea; hence, the common
+saying, "When the Yellow River runs clear," as an equivalent of the
+Greek Kalends. The huge embankments, built to confine it to a given
+course, are continually being forced by any unusual press of extra
+water, with enormous damage to property and great loss of life, and from
+time to time this river has been known to change its route altogether,
+suddenly diverging, almost at a right angle. Up to the year 1851 the
+mouth of the river was to the south of the Shantung promontory, about
+lat. 34 N.; then, with hardly any warning, it began to flow to the
+north-east, finding an outlet to the north of the Shantung promontory,
+about lat. 38 N.
+
+A certain number of connecting links have been formed between the chief
+lines of water communication, in the shape of artificial cuttings; but
+there is nothing worthy the name of canal except the rightly named Grand
+Canal, called by the Chinese the "river of locks," or alternatively the
+"transport river," because once used to convey rice from the south to
+Peking. This gigantic work, designed and executed in the thirteenth
+century by the Emperor Kublai Khan, extended to about six hundred
+and fifty miles in length, and completed an almost unbroken water
+communication between Peking and Canton. As a wonderful engineering feat
+it is indeed more than matched by the famous Great Wall, which dates
+back to a couple of hundred years before Christ, and which has been
+glorified as the last trace of man's handiwork on the globe to fade from
+the view of an imaginary person receding into space. Recent exploration
+shows that this wall is about eighteen hundred miles in length,
+stretching from a point on the seashore somewhat east of Peking, to the
+northern frontier of Tibet. Roughly speaking, it is twenty-two feet in
+height by twenty feet in breadth; at intervals of a hundred yards are
+towers forty feet high, the whole being built originally of brick, of
+which in some parts but mere traces now remain. Nor is this the only
+great wall; ruins of other walls on a considerable scale have lately
+been brought to light, the object of all being one and the same--to keep
+back the marauding Tartars.
+
+Over the length and breadth of their boundless empire, with all its
+varying climates and inhabitants, the Chinese people are free to travel,
+for business or pleasure, at their own sweet will, and to take up their
+abode at any spot without let or hindrance. No passports are required;
+neither is any ordinary citizen obliged to possess other papers of
+identification. Chinese inns are not exposed to the annoyance of
+domicilary visits with reference to their clients for the time being;
+and so long as the latter pay their way, and refrain from molesting
+others, they will usually be free from molestation themselves. The
+Chinese, however, are not fond of travelling; they love their homes too
+well, and they further dread the inconveniences and dangers attached
+to travel in many other parts of the world. Boatmen, carters, and
+innkeepers have all of them bad reputations for extortionate charges;
+and the traveller may sometimes happen upon a "black inn," which is
+another name for a den of thieves. Still there have been many who
+travelled for the sake of beautiful scenery, or in order to visit famous
+spots of historical interest; not to mention the large body of officials
+who are constantly on the move, passing from post to post.
+
+Among those who believe that every nation must have reached its present
+quarters from some other distant parts of the world, must be reckoned a
+few students of the ancient history of China. Coincidences in language
+and in manners and customs, mostly of a shadowy character, have led some
+to suggest Babylonia as the region from which the Chinese migrated to
+the land where they are now found. The Chinese possess authentic records
+of an indisputably early past, but throughout these records there is
+absolutely no mention, not even a hint, of any migration of the kind.
+
+Tradition places the Golden Age of China so far back as three thousand
+years before Christ; for a sober survey of China's early civilization,
+it is not necessary to push further back than the tenth century B.C. We
+shall find evidence of such an advanced state of civilization at that
+later date as to leave no doubt of a very remote antiquity.
+
+The China of those days, known even then as the Middle Kingdom, was
+a mere patch on the empire of to-day. It lay, almost lozenge-shaped,
+between the 34th and 40th parallels of latitude north, with the upper
+point of the lozenge resting on the modern Peking, and the lower on
+Si-an Fu in Shensi, whither the late Empress Dowager fled for safety
+during the Boxer rising in 1900. The ancient autocratic Imperial system
+had recently been disestablished, and a feudal system had taken its
+place. The country was divided up into a number of vassal states of
+varying size and importance, ruled each by its own baron, who swore
+allegiance to the sovereign of the Royal State. The relations, however,
+which came to subsist, as time went on, between these states, sovereign
+and vassal alike, as described in contemporary annals, often remind the
+reader of the relations which prevailed between the various political
+divisions of ancient Greece. The rivalries of Athens and Sparta, whose
+capitals were only one hundred and fifty miles apart--though a
+perusal of Thucydides makes one feel that at least half the world was
+involved--find their exact equivalent in the jealousies and animosities
+which stirred the feudal states of ancient China, and in the disastrous
+campaigns and bloody battles which the states fought with one another.
+We read of chariots and horsemanship; of feats of arms and deeds of
+individual heroism; of forced marches, and of night attacks in which the
+Chinese soldier was gagged with a kind of wooden bit, to prevent talking
+in the ranks; of territory annexed and reconquered, and of the violent
+deaths of rival rulers by poison or the dagger of the assassin.
+
+When the armies of these states went into battle they formed a line,
+with the bowmen on the left and the spearmen on the right flank. The
+centre was occupied by chariots, each drawn by either three or four
+horses harnessed abreast. Swords, daggers, shields, iron-headed clubs
+some five to six feet in length and weighing from twelve to fifteen
+pounds, huge iron hooks, drums, cymbals, gongs, horns, banners
+and streamers innumerable, were also among the equipment of war.
+Beacon-fires of wolves' dung were lighted to announce the approach of
+an enemy and summon the inhabitants to arms. Quarter was rarely if
+ever given, and it was customary to cut the ears from the bodies of
+the slain. Parleys were conducted and terms of peace arranged under the
+shelter of a banner of truce, upon which two words were inscribed--"Stop
+fighting."
+
+The beacon-fires above mentioned, very useful for summoning the feudal
+barons to the rescue in case of need, cost one sovereign his throne. He
+had a beautiful concubine, for the sake of whose company he neglected
+the affairs of government. The lady was of a melancholy turn, never
+being seen to smile. She said she loved the sound of rent silk, and to
+gratify her whim many fine pieces of silk were torn to shreds. The king
+offered a thousand ounces of gold to any one who would make her laugh;
+whereupon his chief minister suggested that the beacon-fires should be
+lighted to summon the feudal nobles with their armies, as though the
+royal house were in danger. The trick succeeded; for in the hurry-skurry
+that ensued the impassive girl positively laughed outright. Later on,
+when a real attack was made upon the capital by barbarian hordes, and
+the beacon-fires were again lighted, this time in stern reality, there
+was no response from the insulted nobles. The king was killed, and his
+concubine strangled herself.
+
+Meanwhile, a high state of civilization was enjoyed by these feudal
+peoples, when not engaged in cutting each other's throats. They lived
+in thatched houses constructed of rammed earth and plaster, with beaten
+floors on which dry grass was strewn as carpet. Originally accustomed
+to sit on mats, they introduced chairs and tables at an early date; they
+drank an ardent spirit with their carefully cooked food, and wore robes
+of silk. Ballads were sung, and dances were performed, on ceremonial and
+festive occasions; hunting and fishing and agriculture were occupations
+for the men, while the women employed themselves in spinning and
+weaving. There were casters of bronze vessels, and workers in gold,
+silver, and iron; jade and other stones were cut and polished for
+ornaments. The written language was already highly developed, being much
+the same as we now find it. Indeed, the chief difference lies in the
+form of the characters, just as an old English text differs in form from
+a text of the present day. What we may call the syntax of the language
+has remained very much the same; and phrases from the old ballads of
+three thousand years ago, which have passed into the colloquial, are
+still readily understood, though of course pronounced according to the
+requirements of modern speech. We can no more say how Confucius (551-479
+B.C.) pronounced Chinese, than we can say how Miltiades pronounced Greek
+when addressing his soldiers before the battle of Marathon (490 B.C.).
+The "books" which were read in ancient China consisted of thin slips
+of wood or bamboo, on which the characters were written by means of a
+pencil of wood or bamboo, slightly frayed at the end, so as to pick up
+a coloured liquid and transfer it to the tablets as required. Until
+recently, it was thought that the Chinese scratched their words on
+tablets of bamboo with a knife, but now we know that the knife was only
+used for scratching out, when a character was wrongly written.
+
+The art of healing was practised among the Chinese in their pre-historic
+times, but the earliest efforts of a methodical character, of which
+we have any written record, belong to the period with which we are now
+dealing. There is indeed a work, entitled "Plain Questions," which is
+attributed to a legendary emperor of the Golden Age, who interrogates
+one of his ministers on the cause and cure of all kinds of diseases;
+as might be expected, it is not of any real value, nor can its date be
+carried back beyond a few centuries B.C.
+
+Physicians of the feudal age classified diseases under the four seasons
+of the year: headaches and neuralgic affections under _spring_, skin
+diseases of all kinds under _summer_, fevers and agues under _autumn_,
+and bronchial and pulmonary complaints under _winter_. They treated the
+various complaints that fell under these headings by suitable doses of
+one or more ingredients taken from the five classes of drugs, derived
+from herbs, trees, living creatures, minerals, and grains, each of which
+class contained medicines of five flavours, with special properties:
+_sour_ for nourishing the bones, _acid_ for nourishing the muscles,
+_salt_ for nourishing the blood-vessels, _bitter_ for nourishing general
+vitality, and _sweet_ for nourishing the flesh. The pulse has always
+been very much to the front in the treatment of disease; there are at
+least twenty-four varieties of pulse with which every doctor is supposed
+to be familiar, and some eminent doctors have claimed to distinguish
+no fewer than seventy-two. In the "Plain Questions" there is a sentence
+which points towards the circulation of the blood,--"All the blood is
+under the jurisdiction of the heart," a point beyond which the Chinese
+never seem to have pushed their investigations; but of this curious
+feature in their civilization, later on.
+
+It was under the feudal system, perhaps a thousand years before Christ,
+that the people of China began to possess family names. Previous to that
+time there appear to have been tribal or clan names; these however were
+not in ordinary use among the individual members of each clan, who were
+known by their personal names only, bestowed upon them in childhood by
+their parents. Gradually, it became customary to prefix to the personal
+name a surname, adopted generally from the name of the place where
+the family lived, sometimes from an appellation or official title of
+a distinguished ancestor; places in China never take their names from
+individuals, as with us, and consequently there are no such names as
+Faringdon or Gislingham, the homes of the Fearings or Gislings of old.
+Thus, to use English terms, a boy who had been called "Welcome" by his
+parents might prefix the name of the place, Cambridge, where he was
+born, and call himself Cambridge Welcome, the surname always coming
+first in Chinese, as, for instance, in Li Hung-Chang. The Manchus, it
+must be remembered, have no surnames; that is to say, they do not use
+their clan or family names, but call themselves by their personal names
+only.
+
+Chinese surnames, other than place names, are derived from a variety
+of sources: from nature, as River, Stone, Cave; from animals, as Bear,
+Sheep, Dragon; from birds, as Swallow, Pheasant; from the body, as
+Long-ears, Squint-eye; from colours, as Black, White; from trees and
+flowers, as Hawthorn, Leaf, Reed, Forest; and others, such as Rich,
+East, Sharp, Hope, Duke, Stern, Tepid, Money, etc. By the fifth century
+before Christ, the use of surnames had definitely become established for
+all classes, whereas in Europe surnames were not known until about the
+twelfth century after Christ, and even then were confined to persons
+of wealth and position. There is a small Chinese book, studied by every
+schoolboy and entitled _The Hundred Surnames_, the word "hundred" being
+commonly used in a generally comprehensive sense. It actually contains
+about four hundred of the names which occur most frequently.
+
+About two hundred and twenty years before Christ, the feudal system came
+to an end. One aggressive state gradually swallowed up all the others;
+and under the rule of its sovereign, China became once more an empire,
+and such it has ever since remained. But although always an empire, the
+throne, during the past two thousand years, has passed many times from
+one house to another.
+
+The extraordinary man who led his state to victory over each rival in
+turn, and ultimately mounted the throne to rule over a united China,
+finds his best historical counterpart in Napoleon. He called himself
+the First Emperor, and began by sending an army of 300,000 men to fight
+against an old and dreaded enemy to the north, recently identified
+beyond question with the Huns. He dispatched a fleet to search for some
+mysterious islands off the coast, thought by some to be the islands
+which form Japan. He built the Great Wall, to a great extent by means
+of convict labour, malefactors being condemned to long terms of penal
+servitude on the works. His copper coinage was so uniformly good that
+the cowry disappeared altogether from commerce during his reign. Above
+all things he desired to impart a fresh stimulus to literary effort, but
+he adopted singularly unfortunate means to secure this desirable end;
+for, listening to the insidious flattery of courtiers, he determined
+that literature should begin anew with his reign. He therefore
+determined to destroy all existing books, finally deciding to spare
+those connected with three important departments of human knowledge:
+namely, (1) works which taught the people to plough, sow, reap, and
+provide food for the race; (2) works on the use of drugs and on the
+healing art; and (3) works on the various methods of foretelling the
+future which might lead men to act in accordance with, and not in
+opposition to, the eternal fitness of things as seen in the operations
+of Nature. Stringent orders were issued accordingly, and many scholars
+were put to death for concealing books in the hope that the storm would
+blow over. Numbers of valuable works perished in a vast conflagration
+of books, and the only wonder is that any were preserved, with the
+exception of the three classes specified above.
+
+In 210 B.C. the First Emperor died, and his youngest son was placed
+upon the throne with the title of Second Emperor. The latter began by
+carrying out the funeral arrangements of his father, as described about
+a century later by the first and greatest of China's historians:--
+
+"On the 9th moon the First Emperor was buried in Mount Li, which in the
+early days of his reign he had caused to be tunnelled and prepared with
+that view. Then, when he had consolidated the empire, he employed his
+soldiery, to the number of 700,000, to bore down to the Three Springs
+(that is, until water was reached), and there a firm foundation was laid
+and the sarcophagus placed thereon. Rare objects and costly jewels were
+collected from the palaces and from the various officials, and were
+carried thither and stored in huge quantities. Artificers were ordered
+to construct mechanical crossbows, which, if any one were to enter,
+would immediately discharge their arrows. With the aid of quicksilver,
+rivers were made--the Yangtsze, the Yellow River, and the great
+ocean--the metal being made to flow from one into the other by
+machinery. On the roof were delineated the constellations of the sky,
+on the floor the geographical divisions of the earth. Candles were made
+from the fat of the man-fish (walrus), calculated to last for a
+very long time. The Second Emperor said: 'It is not fitting that the
+concubines of my late father who are without children should leave him
+now;' and accordingly he ordered them to accompany the dead monarch into
+the next world, those who thus perished being many in number. When the
+internment was completed, some one suggested that the workmen who had
+made the machinery and concealed the treasure knew the great value of
+the latter, and that the secret would leak out. Therefore, so soon as
+the ceremony was over, and the path giving access to the sarcophagus had
+been blocked up at its innermost end, the outside gate at the entrance
+to this path was let fall, and the mausoleum was effectually closed, so
+that not one of the workmen escaped. Trees and grass were then planted
+around, that the spot might look like the rest of the mountain."
+
+The career of the Second Emperor finds an apt parallel in that of
+Richard Cromwell, except that the former was put to death, after a
+short and inglorious reign. Then followed a dynasty which has left an
+indelible mark upon the civilization as well as on the recorded history
+of China. A peasant, by mere force of character, succeeded after a
+three-years' struggle in establishing himself upon the throne, 206 B.C.,
+and his posterity, known as the House of Han, ruled over China for four
+hundred years, accidentally divided into two nearly equal portions
+by the Christian era, about which date there occurred a temporary
+usurpation of the throne which for some time threatened the stability
+of the dynasty in the direct line of succession. To this date, the more
+northern Chinese have no prouder title than that of a "son of Han."
+
+During the whole period of four hundred years the empire cannot be said
+to have enjoyed complete tranquillity either at home or abroad. There
+were constant wars with the Tartar tribes on the north, against whom the
+Great Wall proved to be a somewhat ineffectual barrier. Also with the
+Huns, the forbears of the Turks, who once succeeded in shutting up the
+founder of the dynasty in one of his own cities, from which he only
+escaped by a stratagem to be related in another connexion. There were
+in addition wars with Korea, the ultimate conquest of which led to the
+discovery of Japan, then at a low level of civilization and unable to
+enter into official relations with China until A.D. 57, when an embassy
+was sent for the first time. Those who are accustomed to think of the
+Chinese as an eminently unwarlike nation will perhaps be surprised to
+hear that before the end of the second century B.C. they had carried
+their victorious arms far away into Central Asia, annexing even the
+Pamirs and Kokand to the empire. The wild tribes of modern Yunnan were
+reduced to subjection, and their territory may further be considered as
+added from about this period.
+
+At home, the eunuchs gave an immense deal of trouble by their restless
+spirit of intrigue; besides which, for nearly twenty years the Imperial
+power was in the hands of a famous usurper, named Wang Mang (pronounced
+_Wahng Mahng_), who had secured it by the usual means of treachery and
+poison, to lose it on the battle-field and himself to perish shortly
+afterwards in a revolt of his own soldiery. But the most remarkable of
+all events connected with the Han dynasty was the extended revival of
+learning and authorship. Texts of the Confucian Canon were rescued from
+hiding-places in which they had been concealed at the risk of death;
+editing committees were appointed, and immense efforts were made to
+repair the mischief sustained by literature at the hands of the First
+Emperor. The scholars of the day expounded the teachings of Confucius as
+set forth in these texts; and although their explanations were set aside
+in the twelfth century, when an entirely new set of interpretations
+became (and remain) the accepted standard for all students, it is mostly
+due to those early efforts that the Confucian Canon has exercised such
+a deep and lasting influence over the minds of the Chinese people.
+Unfortunately, it soon became the fashion to discover old texts, and
+many works are now in circulation which have no claim whatever to the
+antiquity to which they pretend.
+
+During the four hundred years of Han supremacy the march of civilization
+went steadily forward. Paper and ink were invented, and also the
+camel's-hair brush, both of which gave a great impetus to the arts of
+writing and painting, the latter being still in a very elementary stage.
+The custom of burying slaves with the dead was abolished early in the
+dynasty. The twenty-seven months of mourning for parents--nominally
+three years, as is now again the rule--was reduced to a more manageable
+period of twenty-seven days. Literary degrees were first established,
+and perpetual hereditary rank was conferred upon the senior descendant
+of Confucius in the male line, which has continued in unbroken
+succession down to the present day. The head of the Confucian clan is
+now a duke, and resides in a palace, taking rank with, if not before,
+the highest provincial authorities.
+
+The extended military campaigns in Central Asia during this period
+brought China into touch with Bactria, then an outlying province of
+ancient Greece. From this last source, the Chinese learnt many things
+which are now often regarded as of purely native growth. They imported
+the grape, and made from it a wine which was in use for many centuries,
+disappearing only about two or three hundred years ago. Formerly
+dependent on the sun-dial alone, the Chinese now found themselves in
+possession of the water-clock, specimens of which are still to be seen
+in full working order, whereby the division of the day into twelve
+two-hour periods was accurately determined. The calendar was regulated
+anew, and the science of music was reconstructed; in fact, modern
+Chinese music may be said to approximate closely to the music of ancient
+Greece. Because of the difference of scale, Chinese music does not make
+any appeal to Western ears; at any rate, not in the sense in which it
+appealed to Confucius, who has left it on record that after listening to
+a certain melody he was so affected as not to be able to taste meat for
+three months.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--LAW AND GOVERNMENT
+
+In the earliest ages of which history professes to take cognizance,
+persons who wished to dispose of their goods were obliged to have
+recourse to barter. By and by shells were adopted as a medium of
+exchange, and then pieces of stamped silk, linen, and deerskin. These
+were followed by circular discs of copper, pierced with a round hole,
+the forerunners of the ordinary copper coins of a century or two later,
+which had square holes, and bore inscriptions, as they still do in
+the present day. Money was also cast in the shape of "knives" and of
+"trouser," by which names specimens of this early coinage (mostly fakes)
+are known to connoisseurs. Some of these were beautifully finished, and
+even inlaid with gold. Early in the ninth century, bills of exchange
+came into use; and from the middle of the twelve century paper money
+became quite common, and is still in general use all over China, notes
+being issued in some places for amounts less even than a shilling.
+
+Measures of length and capacity were fixed by the Chinese after an
+exceedingly simple process. The grain of millet, which is fairly uniform
+in size, was taken as the unit of both. Ten of these grains, laid
+end-ways, formed the inch, ten of which made a foot, and ten feet a
+_chang_. The decimal system has always prevailed in China, with one
+curious exception: sixteen ounces make a pound. How this came to be so
+does not appear to be known; but in this case it is the pound which is
+the unit of weight, and not the lower denomination. The word which
+for more than twenty centuries signified "pound" to the Chinese, was
+originally the rude picture of an axe-head; and there is no doubt
+that axe-heads, being all of the same size, were used in weighing
+commodities, and were subsequently split, for convenience's sake, into
+sixteen equal parts, each about one-third heavier than the English
+ounce. For measures of capacity, we must revert to the millet-grain, a
+fixed number of which set the standard for Chinese pints and quarts.
+The result of this rule-of-thumb calculation has been that weights and
+measures vary all over the empire, although there actually exist an
+official foot, pound and pint, as recognized by the Chinese government.
+In one and the same city a tailor's foot will differ from a carpenter's
+foot, an oilman's pint from a spirit-merchant's pint, and so on. The
+final appeal is to local custom.
+
+With the definitive establishment of the monarchy, two hundred years
+before the Christian era, a system of government was inaugurated which
+has proceeded, so far as essentials are concerned, upon almost uniform
+lines down to the present day.
+
+It is an ancient and well-recognized principle in China, that every
+inch of soil belongs to the sovereign; consequently, all land is held on
+consideration of a land-tax payable to the emperor, and so long as this
+tax is forthcoming, the land in question is practically freehold, and
+can be passed by sale from hand to hand for a small conveyancing fee to
+the local authorities who stamp the deeds. Thus, the foreign concessions
+or settlements in China were not sold or parted with in any way by the
+Chinese; they were "leased in perpetuity" so long as the ground-rent
+is paid, and remain for all municipal and such purposes under the
+uncontrolled administration of the nation which leased them. The
+land-tax may be regarded as the backbone of Chinese finance; but
+although nominally collected at a fixed rate, it is subject to
+fluctuations due to bad harvests and like visitations, in which cases
+the tax is accepted at a lower rate, in fact at any rate the people can
+afford to pay.
+
+The salt and other monopolies, together with the customs, also
+contribute an important part of China's revenue. There is the old native
+customs service, with its stations and barriers all over the empire, and
+the foreign customs service, as established at the treaty ports only, in
+order to deal with shipments on foreign vessels trading with China. The
+traditional and well-marked lines of taxation are freely accepted by the
+people; any attempt, however, to increase the amounts to be levied,
+or to introduce new charges of any kind, unless duly authorized by the
+people themselves, would be at once sternly resisted. As a matter of
+fact, the authorities never run any such risks. It is customary, when
+absolutely necessary, and possibly desirable, to increase old or to
+introduce new levies, for the local authorities to invite the leading
+merchants and others concerned to a private conference; and only when
+there is a general consent of all parties do the officials venture
+to put forth proclamations saying that such and such a tax will be
+increased or imposed, as the case may be. Any other method may lead to
+disastrous results. The people refuse to pay; and coercion is met at
+once by a general closing of shops and stoppage of trade, or, in more
+serious cases, by an attack on the official residence of the offending
+mandarin, who soon sees his house looted and levelled with the ground.
+In other words, the Chinese people tax themselves.
+
+The nominal form of government, speaking without reference to the new
+constitution which will be dealt with later on, is an irresponsible
+autocracy; its institutions are likewise autocratic in form, but
+democratic in operation. The philosopher, Mencius (372-289 B.C.), placed
+the people first, the gods second, and the sovereign third, in the scale
+of national importance; and this classification has sunk deep into the
+minds of the Chinese during more than two thousand years past. What the
+people in China will not stand is injustice; at the same time they will
+live contentedly under harsh laws which they have at one time or another
+imposed upon themselves.
+
+Each of the great dynasties has always begun with a Penal Code of its
+own, based upon that of the outgoing dynasty, but tending to be more and
+more humane in character as time goes on. The punishments in old days
+were atrocious in their severity; the Penal Code of the present dynasty,
+which came into force some two hundred and fifty years ago, has been
+pronounced by competent judges to take a very high rank indeed. It was
+introduced to replace a much harsher code which had been in operation
+under the Ming dynasty, and contains the nominally immutable laws of the
+empire, with such modifications and restrictions as have been authorized
+from time to time by Imperial edict. Still farther back in Chinese
+history, we come upon punishments of ruthless cruelty, such as might
+be expected to prevail in times of lesser culture and refinement. Two
+thousand years ago, the Five Punishments were--branding on the forehead,
+cutting off the nose, cutting off the feet, mutilation, and death; for
+the past two hundred and fifty years, these have been--beating with
+the light bamboo, beating with the heavy bamboo, transportation for a
+certain period, banishment to a certain distance, and death, the last
+being subdivided into strangling and decapitation, according to the
+gravity of the offence.
+
+Two actual instruments of torture are mentioned, one for compressing
+the ankle-bones, and the other for squeezing the fingers, to be used
+if necessary to extort a confession in charges of robbery and homicide,
+confession being regarded as essential to the completion of the record.
+The application, however, of these tortures is fenced round in such a
+way as to impose great responsibility upon the presiding magistrate;
+and in addition to the risk of official impeachment, there is the more
+dreaded certainty of loss of influence and of popular esteem. Mention is
+made in the code of the so-called "lingering death," according to which
+first one arm is chopped off, then the other; the two legs follow in the
+same way; two slits are made on the breast, and the heart is torn
+out; decapitation finishes the proceedings. It is worthy of note that,
+although many foreigners have been present from time to time at public
+executions, occasionally when the "lingering death" has been announced,
+not one has established it as a fact beyond a doubt that such a process
+has ever been carried out. Not only that; it is also well known that
+condemned criminals are allowed to purchase of themselves, or through
+their friends, if they have any, spirits or opium with which to fortify
+their courage at the last moment. There is indeed a tradition that
+stupefying drinks are served out by the officials to the batches of
+malefactors as they pass to the execution ground at Peking. It would
+still remain to find executioners capable of performing in cold blood
+such a disgusting operation as the "lingering death" is supposed to be.
+The ordinary Chinaman is not a fiend; he does not gloat in his peaceful
+moments, when not under the influence of extreme excitement, over
+bloodshed and cruelty.
+
+The generally lenient spirit in which the Penal Code of China was
+conceived is either widely unknown, or very often ignored. For instance,
+during the excessive summer heats certain punishments are mitigated, and
+others remitted altogether. Prompt surrender and acknowledgment of an
+offence, before it is otherwise discovered, entitles the offender, with
+some exceptions, to a full and free pardon; as also does restitution
+of stolen property to its owner by a repentant thief; while a criminal
+guilty of two or more offences can be punished only to the extent of the
+principal charge. Neither are the near relatives, nor even the servants,
+of a guilty man, punishable for concealing his crime and assisting him
+to escape. Immense allowances are made for the weakness of human nature,
+in all of which may be detected the tempering doctrines of the great
+Sage. A feudal baron was boasting to Confucius that in his part of
+the country the people were so upright that a son would give evidence
+against a father who had stolen a sheep. "With us," replied Confucius,
+"the father screens the son, and the son screens the father; that is
+real uprightness." To another questioner, a man in high authority, who
+complained of the number of thieves, the Master explained that this was
+due to the greed of the upper classes. "But for this greed," he added,
+"even if you paid people to steal, they would not do so." To the same
+man, who inquired his views on capital punishment, Confucius replied:
+"What need is there for capital punishment at all? If your aims are
+worthy, the people also will be worthy."
+
+There are many other striking features of the Penal Code. No marriage,
+for instance, may be contracted during the period of mourning for
+parents, which in theory extends to three full years, but in practice
+is reckoned at twenty-seven months; neither may musical instruments
+be played by near relatives of the dead. During the same period, no
+mandarin may hold office, but must retire into private life; though
+the observance of this rule is often dispensed with in the case of
+high officials whose presence at their posts may be of considerable
+importance. In such cases, by special grace of the emperor, the period
+of retirement is cut down to three months, or even to one.
+
+The death of an emperor is followed by a long spell of national
+tribulation. For one hundred days no man may have his head shaved, and
+no woman may wear head ornaments. For twelve months there may be no
+marrying or giving in marriage among the official classes, a term which
+is reduced to one hundred days for the public at large. The theatres are
+supposed to remain closed for a year, but in practice they shut only
+for one hundred days. Even thus great hardships are entailed upon many
+classes of the community, especially upon actors and barbers, who might
+be in danger of actual starvation but for the common-sense of their
+rulers coupled with the common rice-pot at home.
+
+The law forbidding marriage between persons of the same surname is
+widely, but not universally, in operation. No Smith may marry a Smith;
+no Jones may marry a Jones; the reason of course being that all of the
+same surname are regarded as members of the same family. However, there
+are large districts in certain parts of China where the people are one
+and all of the surname, and where it would be a great hardship--not to
+mention the impossibility of enforcing the law--if intermarriages of the
+kind were prohibited. Consequently, they are allowed, but only if the
+contracting parties are so distantly related that, according to the
+legal table of affinity, they would not wear mourning for one another in
+case of death--in other words, not related at all. The line of descent
+is now traced through the males, but there is reason to believe that in
+early days, as is found to be often the case among uncivilized tribes,
+the important, because more easily recognizable, parent was the mother.
+Thus it is illegal for first cousins of the same surname to marry,
+and legal if the surnames are different; in the latter case, however,
+centuries of experience have taught the Chinese to frown upon such
+unions as undesirable in the extreme.
+
+The Penal Code forbids water burial, and also cremation; but it is
+permitted to the children of a man dying at a great distance to consume
+their father's corpse with fire if positively unable to bring it back
+for ordinary burial in his native district. The idea is that with the
+aid of fire immediate communication is set up with the spirit-world,
+and that the spirit of the deceased is thus enabled to reach his native
+place, which would be impossible were the corpse to remain intact. Hence
+the horror of dying abroad, common to all Chinese, and only faced if
+there is a reasonable probability that their remains will be carried
+back to the ancestral home.
+
+In spite of the above law, the cremation of Buddhist priests is
+universal, and the practice is tolerated without protest. Priests who
+are getting on in years, or who are stricken with a mortal disease, are
+compelled by rule to move into a certain part of their monastery, known
+as the Abode of a Long Old Age, in which they are required--not to die,
+for death does not come to a good priest, but--to enter into Nirvana,
+which is a sublime state of conscious freedom from all mental and
+physical disturbance, not to be adequately described in words. At death,
+the priest is placed in a chair, his chin supported by a crutch, and
+then put into a wooden box, which on the appointed day is carried in
+procession, with streaming banners, through the monastery, and out into
+the cremation-ground attached, his brother priests chanting all the
+while that portion of the Buddhist liturgies set apart as the service
+for the dead, but which being in Pali, not a single one of them can
+understand. There have, of course, been many highly educated priests at
+one time and another during the long reign of Buddhism in China; but
+it is safe to say that they are no longer to be met with in the present
+day. The Buddhist liturgies have been written out in Chinese characters
+which reproduce the sounds of the original Indian language, and these
+the priests learn by heart without understanding a word of their
+meaning. The box with the dead man in it is now hoisted to the top of a
+funeral pyre, which has been well drenched with oil, and set alight;
+and when the fire has burnt out, the ashes are reverently collected and
+placed in an urn, which is finally deposited in a mausoleum kept for
+that purpose.
+
+Life is remarkably safe in China. No man can be executed until his
+name has been submitted to the emperor, which of course means to his
+ministers at the capital. The Chinese, however, being, as has been so
+often stated, an eminently practical people, understand that certain
+cases admit of no delay; and to prevent the inevitable lynching of such
+criminals as kidnappers, rebels, and others, caught red-handed, high
+officials are entrusted with the power of life and death, which they
+can put into immediate operation, always taking upon themselves full
+responsibility for their acts. The essential is to allay any excitement
+of the populace, and to preserve the public peace.
+
+In the general administration of the law great latitude is allowed, and
+injustice is rarely inflicted by a too literal interpretation of the
+Code. Stealing is of course a crime, yet no Chinese magistrate would
+dream of punishing a hungry man for simple theft of food, even if such
+a case were ever brought into court. Cake-sellers keep a sharp eye on
+their wares; farmers and market-gardeners form associates for mutual
+protection, and woe to the thief who gets caught--his punishment is
+short and sharp. Litigation is not encouraged, even by such facilities
+as ought to be given to persons suffering wrongs; there is no bar, or
+legal profession, and persons who assist plaintiffs or defendants in
+the conduct of cases, are treated with scant courtesy by the presiding
+magistrate and are lucky if they get off with nothing worse. The
+majority of commercial cases come before the guilds, and are settled
+without reference to the authorities. The ordinary Chinese dread a court
+of justice, as a place in which both parties manage to lose something.
+"It is not the big devil," according to the current saying, "but the
+little devils" who frighten the suitor away. This is because official
+servants receive no salary, but depend for their livelihood on
+perquisites and tips; and the Chinese suitor, who is a party to the
+system, readily admits that it is necessary "to sprinkle a little
+water."
+
+Neither do any officials in China, high or low, receive salaries,
+although absurdly inadequate sums are allocated by the Government for
+that purpose, for which it is considered prudent not to apply. The
+Chinese system is to some extent the reverse of our own. Our officials
+collect money and pay it into the Treasury, from which source fixed sums
+are returned to them as salaries. In China, the occupants of petty posts
+collect revenue in various ways, as taxes or fees, pay themselves as
+much as they dare, and hand up the balance to a superior officer, who in
+turn pays himself in the same sense, and again hands up the balance to
+his superior officer. When the viceroy of a province is reached, he too
+keeps what he dares, sending up to the Imperial exchequer in Peking just
+enough to satisfy the powers above him. There is thus a continual check
+by the higher grade upon the lower, but no check on such extortion
+as might be practised upon the tax-payer. The tax-payer sees to that
+himself. Speaking generally, it may be said that this system, in spite
+of its unsatisfactory character, works fairly well. Few officials
+overstep the limits which custom has assigned to their posts, and those
+who do generally come to grief. So that when the dishonesty of the
+Chinese officials is held up to reprobation, it should always be
+remembered that the financial side of their public service is not
+surrounded with such formalities and safeguards as to make robbery of
+public money difficult, if not almost impossible. It is, therefore, all
+the more cheering when we find, as is frequently the case, retiring or
+transferred mandarins followed by the good wishes and affection of the
+people over whom they have been set to rule.
+
+Until quite recently, there has been no such thing in China as municipal
+administration and rating, and even now such methods are only being
+tentatively introduced in large cities where there are a number of
+foreign residents. Occupants of houses are popularly supposed to "sweep
+the snow from their own doorsteps," but the repair of roads, bridges,
+drains, etc., has always been left to the casual philanthropy of wealthy
+individuals, who take these opportunities of satisfying public opinion
+in regard to the obligations of the rich towards the poor. Consequently,
+Chinese cities are left without efficient lighting, draining, or
+scavengering; and it is astonishing how good the health of the people
+living under these conditions can be. There is no organized police
+force; but cities are divided into wards, and at certain points barriers
+are drawn across the streets at night, with perhaps one watchman to
+each. It is not considered respectable to be out late at night, and it
+is not safe to move about without a lantern, which is carried, for those
+who can afford the luxury, by a servant preceding them.
+
+One difference between life in China and life in this country may
+be illustrated to a certain extent in the following way. Supposing a
+traveller, passing through an English village, to be hit on the head by
+a stone. Unless he can point out his assailant, the matter is at an
+end. In China, all the injured party has to do is to point out the
+village--or, if a town, the ward--in which he was assaulted. Then the
+headman of such town or ward is summoned before the authorities and
+fined, proportionately to the offence, for allowing rowdy behaviour in
+his district. The headman takes good care that he does not pay the fine
+himself. In the same way, parents are held responsible for the acts of
+their children, and householders for those of their servants.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III--RELIGION AND SUPERSTITION
+
+The Chinese are emphatically not a religious people, though they are
+very superstitious. Belief in a God has come down from the remotest
+ages, but the old simple creed has been so overlaid by Buddhism as
+not to be discernible at the present day. Buddhism is now the dominant
+religion of China. It is closely bound up with the lives of the people,
+and is a never-failing refuge in sickness or worldly trouble. It is no
+longer the subtle doctrine which was originally presented to the people
+of India, but something much more clearly defined and appreciable by
+the plainest intellect. Buddha is the saviour of the people through
+righteousness alone, and Buddhist saints are popularly supposed to
+possess intercessory powers. Yet reverence is always wanting; and crowds
+will laugh and talk, and buy and sell sweetmeats, in a Buddhist temple,
+before the very eyes of the most sacred images. So long as divine
+intervention is not required, an ordinary Chinaman is content to neglect
+his divinities; but no sooner does sickness or financial trouble come
+upon the family, than he will hurry off to propitiate the gods.
+
+He accomplishes this through the aid of the priests, who receive his
+offerings of money, and light candles or incense at the shrine of the
+deity to be invoked. Buddhist priests are not popular with the Chinese,
+who make fun of their shaven heads, and doubt the sincerity of their
+convictions as well as the purity of their lives. "No meat nor wine may
+enter here" is a legend inscribed at the gate of most Buddhist temples,
+the ordinary diet as served in the refectory being strictly vegetarian.
+A tipsy priest, however, is not an altogether unheard-of combination,
+and has provided more than one eminent artist with a subject of an
+interesting picture.
+
+Yet the ordeal through which a novice must pass before being admitted to
+holy orders is a severe tax upon nerve and endurance. In the process of
+a long ritual, at least three, or even so many as nine, pastilles are
+placed upon the bald scalp of the head. These are then lighted, and
+allowed to burn down into the skin until permanent scars have been
+formed, the unfortunate novice being supported on both sides by priests
+who encourage him all the time to bear what must be excruciating pain.
+The fully qualified priest receives a diploma, on the strength of which
+he may demand a day and a night's board and lodging from the priests of
+any temple all over the empire.
+
+At a very early date Buddhism had already taken a firm hold on the
+imagination of Chinese poets and painters, the latter of whom loved to
+portray the World-honoured One in a dazzling hue of gold. A poet of the
+eighth century A.D., who realized for the first time the inward meaning
+of the Law, as it is called, ended a panegyric on Buddhism with the
+following lines:--
+
+     O thou pure Faith, had I but known thy scope,
+     The Golden God had long since been my hope!
+
+Taoism is a term often met with in books about China. We are told
+that the three religions of the people are Confucianism, Buddhism, and
+Taoism, this being the order of precedence assigned to them in A.D. 568.
+Confucianism is of course not a religion at all, dealing as it does with
+duty towards one's neighbour and the affairs of this life only; and it
+will be seen that Taoism, in its true sense, has scarcely a stronger
+claim. At a very remote day, some say a thousand, and others six
+hundred, years before the Christian era, there flourished a wise man
+named Lao Tzu, which may be approximately pronounced as _Loudza_ (_ou_
+as in _loud_), and understood to mean the Old Philosopher. He was a very
+original thinker, and a number of his sayings have been preserved to us
+by ancient authors, whom they had reached by tradition; that is to say,
+the Old Philosopher never put his doctrines into book form. There is
+indeed in existence a work which passes under his name, but it is now
+known to be a forgery, and is generally discarded by scholars.
+
+The great flaw in the teaching of the Old Philosopher was its extremely
+impractical character, its unsuitability to the needs of men and women
+engaged in the ordinary avocations of life. In one sense he was an
+Anarchist, for he held that the empire would fare better if there were
+no government at all, the fact being that violence and disorder had
+always been conspicuous even under the best rulers. Similarly, he argued
+that we should get along more profitably with less learning, because
+then there would be fewer thieves, successful thieving being the result
+of mental training. It is not necessary to follow him to his most famous
+doctrine, namely, that of doing nothing, by which means, he declared,
+everything could be done, the solution of which puzzle of left everybody
+to find out for himself. Among his quaint sayings will be found several
+maxims of a very different class, as witness his injunction, "Requite
+evil with kindness," and "Mighty is he who conquers himself." Of the
+latter, the following illustration is given by a commentator. Two men
+meeting in the street, one said to the other, "How fat you have grown!"
+"Yes," replied his friend, "I have lately won a battle." "What do you
+mean?" inquired the former. "Why, you see," said the latter, "so long
+as I was at home, reading about ancient kings, I admired nothing but
+virtue; then, when I went out of doors, I was attracted by the charms
+of wealth and power. These two feelings fought inside me, and I began to
+lose flesh; but now love of virtue has conquered, and I am fat."
+
+The teachings of the Old Philosopher were summed up in the word _Tao_,
+pronounced as _tou(t)_, which originally meant a road, a way; and
+as applied to doctrines means simply the right way or path of moral
+conduct, in which mankind should tread so as to lead correct and
+virtuous lives. Later on, when Buddhism was introduced, this Taoism,
+with all its paradoxes and subtleties, to which alchemy and the
+concoction of an elixir of life had been added, gradually began to lose
+its hold upon the people; and in order to stem the tide of opposition,
+temples and monasteries were built, a priesthood was established in
+imitation of the Buddhists, and all kinds of ceremonies and observances
+were taken from Buddhism, until, at the present day, only those who know
+can tell one from the other.
+
+Although alchemy, which was introduced from Greece, via Bactria, in the
+second century B.C., has long ceased to interest the Chinese public, who
+have found out that gold is more easily made from the sweat of the
+brow than from copper or lead; and although only a few silly people now
+believe that any mixture of drugs will produce an elixir of life, able
+to confer immortality upon those who drink it; nevertheless, Taoism
+still professes to teach the art of extending life, if not indefinitely,
+at any rate to a considerable length. This art would probably go some
+way towards extending life under any circumstances, for it consists
+chiefly in deep and regular breathing, preferably of morning air,
+in swallowing the saliva three times in every two hours, in adopting
+certain positions for the body and limbs, which are also strengthened
+by gymnastic exercises, and finally, as borrowed from the Buddhists, in
+remaining motionless for some hours a day, the eyes shut, and the mind
+abstracted as much as possible from all surrounding influences. The
+upshot of these and other practices is the development of "the pure
+man," on which Chuang Tzu (_Chwongdza_), a Taoist philosopher of the
+third and fourth centuries B.C., to be mentioned again, writes as
+follows: "But what is a pure man? The pure men of old acted without
+calculation, not seeking to secure results. They laid no plans.
+Therefore, failing, they had no cause for regret; succeeding, no cause
+for congratulation. And thus they could scale heights without fear;
+enter water without becoming wet, and fire without feeling hot. The pure
+men of old slept without dreams, and waked without anxiety. They ate
+without discrimination, breathing deep breaths. For pure men draw breath
+from their heels; the vulgar only from their throats."
+
+Coupled with what may be called intellectual Taoism, as opposed to the
+grosser form under which this faith appeals to the people at large, is
+a curious theory that human life reaches the earth from some
+extraordinarily dazzling centre away in the depths of space, "beyond
+the range of conceptions." This centre appears to be the home of eternal
+principles, the abode of a First Cause, where perfectly spotless and
+pure beings "drink of the spiritual and feed on force," and where
+likeness exists without form. To get back to that state should be the
+object of all men, and this is only to be attained by a process of
+mental and physical purification prolonged through all conditions of
+existence. Then, when body and soul are fitted for the change, there
+comes what ordinary mortals call death; and the pure being closes his
+eyes, to awake forthwith in his original glory from the sleep which
+mortals call life.
+
+For many centuries Buddhism and Taoism were in bitter antagonism.
+Sometimes the court was Buddhist, sometimes Taoist; first one faith was
+suppressed altogether, then the other; in A.D. 574 both were abolished
+in deference to Confucianism, which, however, no emperor has ever dared
+to interfere with seriously. At present, all the "three religions"
+flourish happily side by side.
+
+The Chinese believe firmly in the existence of spirits, which they
+classify simply as good and evil. They do not trouble their heads much
+about the former, but they are terribly afraid of the latter. Hideous
+devils infest dark corners, and lie in wait to injure unfortunate
+passers-by, often for no cause whatever. The spirits of persons who have
+been wronged are especially dreaded by those who have done the wrong.
+A man who has been defrauded of money will commit suicide, usually by
+poison, at the door of the wrongdoer, who will thereby first fall into
+the hands of the authorities, and if he escapes in that quarter,
+will still have to count with the injured ghost of his victim. A
+daughter-in-law will drown or hang herself to get free from, and also to
+avenge, the tyranny or cruelty of her husband's mother. These acts lead
+at once to family feuds, which sometimes end in bloodshed; more often in
+money compensation; and the known risk of such contingencies operates as
+a wholesome check upon aggressive treatment of the weak by the strong.
+
+Divination and fortune-telling have always played a conspicuous part in
+ordinary Chinese life. Wise men, of the magician type, sit at stalls
+in street and market-place, ready for a small fee to advise those
+who consult them on any enterprise to be undertaken, even of the most
+trivial kind. The omens can be taken in various ways, as by calculation
+based upon books, of which there is quite a literature, or by
+drawing lots inscribed with mystic signs, to be interpreted by the
+fortune-teller. Even at Buddhist temples may be found two kidney-shaped
+pieces of wood, flat on one side and round on the other, which are
+thrown into the air before an altar, the results--two flats, two rounds,
+or one of each--being interpreted as unfavourable, medium, and very
+favourable, respectively.
+
+Of all Chinese superstitions, the one that has been most persistent,
+and has exerted the greatest influence upon national life, is the
+famous Wind-and-Water system (_feng shui_) of geomancy. According to
+the principles which govern this system, and of which quite a special
+literature exists, the good or evil fortunes of individuals and
+the communities are determined by the various physical aspects and
+conditions which surround their everyday life. The shapes of hills,
+the presence or absence of water, the position of trees, the height of
+buildings, and so forth, are all matters of deep consideration to
+the professors of the geomantic art, who thrive on the ignorance of
+superstitious clients. They are called in to select propitious sites for
+houses and graves; and it often happens that if the fortunes of a family
+are failing, a geomancer will be invited to modify in some way the
+arrangement of the ancestral graveyard. Houses in a Chinese street are
+never built up so as to form a line of uniform height; every now and
+again one house must be a little higher or a little lower than its
+neighbour, or calamity will certainly ensue. It is impossible to walk
+straight into an ordinary middle-class dwelling-house. Just inside the
+front door there will be a fixed screen, which forces the visitor to
+turn to the right or to the left; the avowed object being to exclude
+evil spirits, which can only move in straight lines.
+
+Mention of the ancestral graveyard brings to mind the universal worship
+of ancestors, which has been from time immemorial such a marked feature
+of Chinese religious life. At death, the spirit of a man or woman is
+believed to remain watching over the material interests of the family to
+which the deceased had belonged. Offerings of various kinds, including
+meat and drink, are from time to time made to such a spirit, supposed to
+be particularly resident in an ancestral hall--or cupboard, as the case
+may be. These offerings are made for the special purpose of conciliating
+the spirit, and of obtaining in return a liberal share of the blessings
+and good things of this life. This is the essential feature of the rite,
+and this it is which makes the rite an act of worship pure and simple;
+so that only superficial observers could make the mistake of classifying
+ancestral worship, as practised in China, with such acts as laying
+wreaths upon the tombs of deceased friends and relatives.
+
+With reference to the spirit or soul, the Chinese have held for
+centuries past that the soul of every man is twofold; in a popular
+acceptation it is sometimes regarded as threefold. One portion is that
+which expresses the visible personality, and is permanently attached to
+the body; the other has the power of leaving the body, carrying with it
+an appearance of physical form, which accounts for a person being
+seen in two different places at once. Cases of catalepsy or trance are
+explained by the Chinese as the absence from the body of this portion
+of the soul, which is also believed to be expelled from the body by any
+violent shock or fright. There is a story of a man who was so terrified
+at the prospect of immediate execution that his separable soul left his
+body, and he found himself sitting on the eaves of a house, from which
+point he could see a man bound, and waiting for the executioner's sword.
+Just then, a reprieve arrived, and in a moment he was back again in his
+body. Mr. Edmund Gosse, who can hardly have been acquainted with the
+Chinese view, told a similar story in his _Father and Son_: "During
+morning and evening prayers, which were extremely lengthy and fatiguing,
+I fancied that one of my two selves could flit up, and sit clinging to
+the cornice, and look down on my other self and the rest of us."
+
+In some parts of China, planchette is frequently resorted to as a means
+of reading the future, and adapting one's actions accordingly. It is a
+purely professional performance, being carried through publicly before
+some altar in a temple, and payment made for the response. The question
+is written down on a piece of paper, which is burnt at the altar
+apparently before any one could gather knowledge of its contents; and
+the answer from the god is forthwith traced on a tray of sand, word by
+word, each word being obliterated to make room for the next, by two men,
+supposed to be ignorant of the question, who hold the ends of a V-shaped
+instrument from the point of which a little wooden pencil projects at
+right angles.
+
+Another method of extracting information from the spirits of the unseen
+world is nothing more or less than hypnotism, which has long been known
+to the Chinese, and is mentioned in literature so far back as the
+middle of the seventeenth century. With all the paraphernalia of altar,
+candles, incense, etc., a medium is thrown into a hypnotic condition,
+during which his body is supposed to be possessed by a spirit, and
+every word he may utter to be divinely inspired. An amusing instance
+is recorded of a medium who, while under hypnotic influence, not only
+blurted out the pecuniary defalcations of certain men who had been
+collecting in aid of temple restoration, but went so far as to admit
+that he had had some of the money himself.
+
+This same influence is also used in cases of serious illness, but
+always secretly, for such practices, as well as dark _seances_ for
+communicating with spirits, are strictly forbidden by the Chinese
+authorities, who regard the employment of occult means as more likely to
+be subversive of morality than to do any good whatever to a sick person,
+or to any one else. All secret societies of any sort or kind are equally
+under the ban of the law, the assumption--a very justifiable one--being
+that the aim of these societies is to upset the existing order of
+political and social life. The Heaven-and-Earth Society is among the
+most famous, and the most dreaded, partly perhaps because it has never
+been entirely suppressed. The lodges of this fraternity, the oath
+of fidelity, and the ceremonial of admission, remind one forcibly of
+Masonry in the West; but the points of conduct are merely coincidences,
+and there does not appear to be any real connexion.
+
+Among the most curious of all these institutions is the Golden Orchid
+Society, the girl-members of which swear never to marry, and not only
+threaten, but positively commit suicide upon any attempt at coercion. At
+one time this society became such a serious menace that the authorities
+were compelled to adopt severe measures of repression.
+
+Another old-established society is that of the Vegetarians, who eat no
+meat and neither smoke nor drink. From their seemingly harmless ranks it
+is said that the Boxers of 1900 were largely recruited.
+
+For nearly twenty-five centuries the Chinese have looked to Confucius
+for their morals. Various religions have appealed to the spiritual side
+of the Chinese mind, and Buddhism has obtained an ascendancy which will
+not be easily displaced; but through all this long lapse of time the
+morality of China has been under the guidance of their great teacher,
+Confucius (551-479 B.C.), affectionately known to them as the "uncrowned
+king," and recently raised to the rank of a god.
+
+His doctrines, in the form sometimes of maxims, sometimes of answers to
+eager inquirers, were brought together after his death--we do not
+know exactly how soon--and have influenced first and last an enormous
+proportion of the human race. Confucius taught man's duty to his
+neighbour; he taught virtue for virtue's sake, and not for the hope of
+reward or fear of punishment; he taught loyalty to the sovereign as the
+foundation stone of national prosperity, and filial piety as the basis
+of all happiness in the life of the people. As a simple human moralist
+he saw clearly the limitations of humanity, and refused to teach his
+disciples to return good for evil, as suggested by the Old Philosopher,
+declaring without hesitation that evil should be met by justice. The
+first systematic writer of Chinese history, who died about 80 B.C.,
+expressed himself on the position and influence of Confucius in
+terms which have been accepted as accurate for twenty centuries past:
+"Countless are the princes and prophets that the world has seen in its
+time--glorious in life, forgotten in death. But Confucius, though only
+a humble member of the cotton-clothed masses, remains with us after
+numerous generations. He is the model for such as would be wise. By all,
+from the Son of Heaven down to the meanest student, the supremacy of his
+principles is freely and fully admitted. He may indeed be pronounced the
+divinest of men."
+
+The Son of Heaven is of course the Emperor, who is supposed to be God's
+chosen representative on earth, and responsible for the right conduct
+and well-being of all committed to his care. Once every year he
+proceeds in state to the Temple of Heaven at Peking; and after the due
+performance of sacrificial worship he enters alone the central raised
+building with circular blue-tiled roof, and there places himself
+in communication with the Supreme Being, submitting for approval or
+otherwise his stewardship during the preceding twelve months. Chinese
+records go so far as to mention letters received from God. There is a
+legend of the sixth century A.D., which claims that God revealed Himself
+to a hermit in a retired valley, and bestowed on him a tablet of jade
+with a mysterious inscription. But there is a much more circumstantial
+account of a written communication which in A.D. 1008 descended from
+heaven upon mount T'ai, the famous mountain in Shantung, where a temple
+has been built to mark the very spot. The emperor and his courtiers
+regarded this letter with profound reverence and awe, which roused
+the ire of a learned statesman of the day. The latter pointed out
+that Confucius, when asked to speak, so that his disciples might have
+something to record, had bluntly replied: "Does God speak? The four
+seasons pursue their courses and all things are produced; but does God
+say anything?" Therefore, he argued, if God does not speak to us, still
+less will He write a letter.
+
+The fact that the receipt of such a letter is mentioned in the dynastic
+history of the period must not be allowed to discredit in any way
+the general truth and accuracy of Chinese annals, which, as research
+progresses, are daily found to be far more trustworthy than was ever
+expected to be the case. We ourselves do not wholly reject the old
+contemporary chronicles of Hoveden and Roger of Wendover because they
+mention a letter from Christ on the neglect of the Sabbath.
+
+In Chinese life, social and political alike, filial piety may
+be regarded as the keystone of the arch. Take that away, and the
+superstructure of centuries crumbles to the ground. When Confucius was
+asked by one of his disciples to explain what constituted filial piety,
+he replied that it was a difficult obligation to define; while to
+another disciple he was able to say without hesitation that the mere
+support of parents would be insufficient, inasmuch as food is what
+is supplied even to horses and dogs. According to the story-books for
+children, the obligation has been interpreted by the people at large
+in many different ways. The twenty-four standard examples of filial
+children include a son who allowed mosquitoes to feed upon him, and did
+not drive them away lest they should go and annoy his parents; another
+son who wept so passionately because he could procure no bamboo shoots
+for his mother that the gods were touched, and up out of the ground
+came some shoots which he gathered and carried home; another who when
+carrying buckets of water would slip and fall on purpose, in order to
+make his parents laugh; and so on. No wonder that Confucius found filial
+piety beyond his powers of definition.
+
+Now for a genuine example. There is a very wonderful novel in which a
+very affecting love-story is worked out to a terribly tragic conclusion.
+The heroine, a beautiful and fascinating girl, finally dies of
+consumption, and the hero, a wayward but none the less fascinating
+youth, enters the Buddhist priesthood. A lady, the mother of a clever
+young official, was so distressed by the pathos of the tale that she
+became quite ill, and doctors prescribed medicines in vain. At length,
+when things were becoming serious, the son set to work and composed a
+sequel to this novel, in which he resuscitated the heroine and made
+the lovers happy by marriage; and in a short time he had the intense
+satisfaction of seeing his mother restored to health.
+
+Other forms of filial piety, which bear no relation whatever to the
+fanciful fables given above, are commonly practised by all classes. In
+consequence of the serious or prolonged illness of parents, it is very
+usual for sons and daughters to repair to the municipal temple and pray
+that a certain number of years may be cut off their own span of life and
+added to that of the sick parents in question.
+
+Let us now pause to take stock of some of the results which have accrued
+from the operation and influence of Confucianism during such a long
+period, and over such swarming myriads of the human race. It is
+a commonplace in the present day to assert that the Chinese are
+hardworking, thrifty, and sober--the last-mentioned, by the way, in a
+land where drunkenness is not regarded as a crime. Shallow observers
+of the globe-trotter type, who have had their pockets picked by
+professional thieves in Hong-Kong, and even resident observers who have
+not much cultivated their powers of observation and comparison, will
+assert that honesty is a virtue denied to the Chinese; but those who
+have lived long in China and have more seriously devoted themselves to
+discover the truth, may one and all be said to be arrayed upon the other
+side. The amount of solid honesty to be met with in every class, except
+the professionally criminal class, is simply astonishing. That the word
+of the Chinese merchant is as good as his bond has long since become a
+household word, and so it is in other walks of life. With servants from
+respectable families, the householder need have no fear for his goods.
+"Be loyal," says the native maxim, "to the master whose rice you eat;"
+and this maxim is usually fulfilled to the letter. Hence, it is that
+many foreigners who have been successful in their business careers, take
+care to see, on their final departure from the East, that the old and
+faithful servant, often of twenty to thirty years' standing, shall have
+some provision for himself and his family. In large establishments,
+especially banks, in which great interests are at stake, it is customary
+for the Chinese staff to be guaranteed by some wealthy man (or firm),
+who deposits securities for a considerable amount, thus placing the
+employer in a very favourable position. The properly chosen Chinese
+servant who enters the household of a foreigner, is a being to whom, as
+suggested above, his master often becomes deeply attached, and whom
+he parts with, often after many years of service, to his everlasting
+regret. Such a servant has many virtues. He is noiseless over his work,
+which he performs efficiently. He can stay up late, and yet rise early.
+He lives on the establishment, but in an out-building. He provides his
+own food. He rarely wants to absent himself, and even then will always
+provide a reliable _locum tenens_. He studies his master's ways, and
+learns to anticipate his slightest wishes. In return for these and other
+services he expects to get his wages punctually paid, and to be allowed
+to charge, without any notice being taken of the same, a commission on
+all purchases. This is the Chinese system, and even a servant absolutely
+honest in any other way cannot emancipate himself from its grip. But if
+treated fairly, he will not abuse his chance. One curious feature of
+the system is that if one master is in a relatively higher position than
+another, the former will be charged by his servants slightly more than
+the latter by his servants for precisely the same article. Many attempts
+have been made by foreigners to break through this "old custom,"
+especially by offering higher wages; but signal failure has always been
+the result, and those masters have invariably succeeded best who have
+fallen in with the existing institution, and have tried to make the best
+of it.
+
+There is one more, and in many ways the most important, side of a
+Chinese servant's character. He will recognize frankly, and without a
+pang, the superior position and the rights of his master; but at the
+same time, if worth keeping, he will exact from his master the proper
+respect due from man to man. It is wholly beside the mark to say that
+he will not put up for a moment with the cuffs and kicks so freely
+administered to his Indian colleague. A respectable Chinese servant
+will often refuse to remain with a master who uses abusive or violent
+language, or shows signs of uncontrollable temper. A lucrative place is
+as nothing compared with the "loss of face" which he would suffer in the
+eyes of his friends; in other words, with his loss of dignity as a man.
+If a servant will put up with a blow, the best course is to dismiss
+him at once, as worthless and unreliable, if not actually dangerous.
+Confucius said: "If you mistrust a man, do not employ him; if you employ
+a man, do not mistrust him;" and this will still be found to be an
+excellent working rule in dealings with Chinese servants.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV--A.D. 220-1200
+
+The long-lived and glorious House of Han was brought to a close by the
+usual causes. There were palace intrigues and a temporary usurpation of
+the throne, eunuchs of course being in the thick of the mischief;
+added to which a very serious rebellion broke out, almost as a natural
+consequence. First and last there arose three aspirants to the Imperial
+yellow, which takes the place of purple in ancient Rome; the result
+being that, after some years of hard fighting, China was divided into
+three parts, each ruled by one of the three rivals. The period is known
+in history as that of the Three Kingdoms, and lasted from A.D. 220 to
+A.D. 265. This short space of time was filled, especially the early
+years, with stirring deeds of heroism and marvellous strategical
+operations, fortune favouring first one of the three commanders and then
+another. The whole story of these civil wars is most graphically told in
+a famous historical romance composed about a thousand years afterwards.
+As in the case of the Waverley novels, a considerable amount of fiction
+has been interwoven with truth to make the narrative more palatable
+to the general reader; but its basis is history, and the work is
+universally regarded among the Chinese themselves as one of the most
+valuable productions in the lighter branches of their literature.
+
+The three to four centuries which follow on the above period were a
+time of political and social disorganisation, unfavourable, according
+to Chinese writers, to the development of both literature and art. The
+House of Chin, which at first held sway over a once more united empire,
+was severely harassed by the Tartars on the north, who were in turn
+overwhelmed by the House of Toba. The latter ruled for some two hundred
+years over northern China, while the southern portions were governed
+by several short-lived native dynasties. A few points in connexion with
+these times deserve perhaps brief mention.
+
+The old rule of twenty-seven months of mourning for parents was
+re-established, and has continued in force down to the present day. The
+Japanese sent occasional missions, with tribute; and the Chinese, who
+had already in A.D. 240 dispatched an envoy to Japan, repeated the
+compliment in 608. An attempt was made to conquer Korea, and envoys
+were sent to countries as far off as Siam. Buddhism, which had been
+introduced many centuries previously--no one can exactly say when--began
+to spread far and wide, and appeared to be firmly established. In A.D.
+399 a Buddhist priest, named Fa Hsien, started from Central China and
+travelled to India across the great desert and over the Hindu Kush,
+subsequently visiting Patna, Benares, Buddha-Gaya, and other well-known
+spots, which he accurately described in the record of his journey
+published on his return and still in existence. His object was to obtain
+copies of the sacred books, relics and images, illustrative of the
+faith; and these he safely conveyed to China by sea from India, via
+Ceylon (where he spent three years), and Sumatra, arriving after an
+absence of fifteen years.
+
+In the year A.D. 618 the House of T'ang entered upon its glorious course
+of three centuries in duration. Under a strong but dissolute ruler
+immediately preceding, China had once more become a united empire,
+undivided against itself; and although wars and rebellions were not
+wanting to disturb the even tenor of its way, the general picture
+presented to us under the new dynasty of the T'angs is one of national
+peace, prosperity, and progress. The name of this House has endured,
+like that of Han, to the present day in the popular language of the
+people; for just as the northerners still delight to style themselves
+"good sons of Han," so are the southerners still proud to speak of
+themselves as "men of T'ang."
+
+One of the chief political events of this period was the usurpation
+of power by the Empress Wu--at first, as nominal regent on behalf of a
+step-child, the son and heir of her late husband by his first wife, and
+afterwards, when she had set aside the step-child, on her own account.
+There had been one previous instance of a woman wielding the Imperial
+sceptre, namely, the Empress Lu of the Han dynasty, to whom the Chinese
+have accorded the title of legitimate ruler, which has not been allowed
+to the Empress Wu. The latter, however, was possessed of much actual
+ability, mixed with a kind of midsummer madness; and so long as her
+great intellectual faculties remained unimpaired, she ruled, like her
+successor of some twelve centuries afterwards, with a rod of iron. In
+her old age she was deposed and dismissed to private life, the rightful
+heir being replaced upon his father's throne.
+
+Among the more extravagant acts of her reign are some which are still
+familiar to the people of to-day. Always, even while her husband was
+alive, she was present, behind a curtain, at councils and audiences;
+after his death she was accustomed to take her place openly among the
+ministers of state, wearing a false beard. In 694 she gave herself the
+title of Divine Empress, and in 696 she even went so far as to style
+herself God Almighty. In her later years she became hopelessly arrogant
+and overbearing. No one was allowed to say that the Empress was fair
+as a lily or lovely as a rose, but that the lily was fair or the rose
+lovely as Her Majesty. She tried to spread the belief that she was
+really the Supreme Being by forcing flowers artificially and then in the
+presence of her courtiers ordering them to bloom. On one occasion she
+commanded some peonies to bloom; and because they did not instantly
+obey, she caused every peony in the capital to be pulled up and burnt,
+and prohibited the cultivation of peonies ever afterwards. She further
+decided to place her sex once and for all on an equality with man. For
+that purpose women were admitted to the public examinations, official
+posts being conferred upon those who were successful; and among other
+things they were excused from kneeling while giving evidence in courts
+of justice. This innovation, however, did not fulfil its promise;
+and with the disappearance of its vigorous foundress, the system also
+disappeared. It was not actually the first time in Chinese history that
+the experiment had been tried. An emperor of the third century A.D. had
+already opened public life to women, and it is said that many of them
+rose to high office; but here too the system was of short duration, and
+the old order was soon restored.
+
+Another striking picture of the T'ang dynasty is presented by the career
+of an emperor who is usually spoken of as Ming Huang, and who, after
+distinguishing himself at several critical junctures, mounted the throne
+in 712, in succession to his father, who had abdicated in his favour. He
+began with economy, closing the silk factories and forbidding the palace
+ladies to wear jewels or embroideries, considerable quantities of which
+were actually burnt. He was a warm patron of literature, and schools
+were established in every village. Fond of music, he founded a college
+for training youth of both sexes in this art. His love of war and
+his growing extravagance led to increased taxation, with the usual
+consequences in China--discontent and rebellion. He surrounded himself
+by a brilliant court, welcoming men of genius in literature and art;
+at first for their talents alone, but finally for their readiness
+to participate in scenes of revelry and dissipation provided for the
+amusement of a favourite concubine, the ever-famous Yang Kuei-fei
+(pronounced _Kway-fay_). Eunuchs were appointed to official posts, and
+the grossest forms of religious superstition were encouraged. Women
+ceased to veil themselves, as of old. At length, in 755, a serious
+rebellion broke out, and a year later the emperor, now an old man of
+seventy-one, fled before the storm. He had not proceeded far before his
+soldiery revolted and demanded vengeance upon the whole family of the
+favourite, several unworthy members of which had been raised to high
+positions and loaded with honours. The wretched emperor was forced to
+order the head eunuch to strangle his idolized concubine, while the
+rest of her family perished at the hands of the troops. He subsequently
+abdicated in favour of his son, and spent the last six years of his life
+in seclusion.
+
+This tragic story has been exquisitely told in verse by one of China's
+foremost poets, who was born only a few years later. He divides his
+poem into eight parts, dealing with the _ennui_ of the monarch until he
+discovers _beauty_, the _revelry_ of the pair together, followed by the
+horrors of _flight_, to end in the misery of _exile_ without her, the
+_return_ when the emperor passes again by the fatal spot, _home_ where
+everything reminds him of her, and finally _spirit-land_. This last is a
+figment of the poet's imagination. He pictures the disconsolate emperor
+sending a magician to discover Yang Kuei-fei's whereabouts in the next
+world, and to bear to her a message of uninterrupted love. The magician,
+after a long search, finds her in one of the Isles of the Blest, and
+fulfils his commission accordingly.
+
+     Her features are fixed and calm, though myriad tears fall,
+     Wetting a spray of pear-bloom, as it were with the raindrops of
+     spring.
+     Subduing her emotions, restraining her grief, she tenders thanks
+     to His Majesty.
+     Saying how since their parting she had missed his form and voice;
+     And how, although their love on earth had so soon come to an end,
+     The days and months among the Blest were still of long duration.
+     And now she turns and gazes towards the above of mortals,
+     But cannot discern the Imperial city, lost in the dust and haze.
+     Then she takes out the old keepsake, tokens of undying love,
+     A gold hairpin, an enamel brooch, and bids the magician carry
+     these back.
+     One half of the hairpin she keeps, and one half of the enamel
+     brooch,
+     Breaking with her hands the yellow gold, and dividing the enamel
+     in two.
+     "Tell him," she said, "to be firm of heart, as this gold and
+     enamel,
+     And then in heaven or on earth below we two may meet once more."
+
+The magnificent House of T'ang was succeeded by five insignificant
+dynasties, the duration of all of which was crowded into about half
+a century. Then, in A.D. 960, began the rule of the Sungs (pronounced
+_Soongs_), to last for three hundred years and rival in national peace
+and prosperity any other period in the history of China. The nation
+had already in a great measure settled down to that state of material
+civilization and mental culture in which it has remained to the present
+time. To the appliances of ordinary Chinese life it is probable that but
+few additions have been made since a very early date. The dress of the
+people has indeed undergone several variations, but the ploughs and
+hoes, the water-wheels and well-sweeps, the tools of the artisans, mud
+huts, carts, junks, chairs, tables, chopsticks, etc., which we still
+see in China, are probably very much those of two thousand years ago.
+Mencius, of the third century B.C., observed that written characters had
+the same form, and axle-trees the same breadth, all over the empire; and
+to this day an unaltering uniformity is one of the chief characteristics
+of the Chinese people in every department of life.
+
+In spite, however, of the peaceful aspirations of the House of Sung,
+the Kitan Tartars were for ever encroaching upon Chinese territory, and
+finally overran and occupied a large part of northern China, with
+their capital where Peking now stands. This resulted in an amicable
+arrangement to divide the empire, the Kitans retaining their conquests
+in the north, from which, after about two hundred years, they were in
+turn expelled by the Golden Tartars, who had previously been subject to
+them.
+
+Many volumes, rather than pages, would be required to do justice to the
+statesmen, soldiers, philosophers, poets, historians, art critics, and
+other famous men of this dynasty. It has already been stated that the
+interpretation of the Confucian Canon, accepted at the present day,
+dates from this period; and it may now be of interest to give a brief
+account of another remarkable movement connected with the dynasty,
+though in quite a different line.
+
+Wang An-shih (as _shi_ in _shirk_), popularly known as the Reformer, was
+born in 1021. In his youth a keen student, his pen seemed to fly over
+the paper. He rose to high office; and by the time he was forty-eight he
+found himself installed as confidential adviser to the emperor. He then
+entered upon a series of startling political reforms, said to be based
+upon new and more correct interpretations of portions of the Confucian
+Canon, which still remained, so far as explanation was concerned, just
+as it had been left by the scholars of the Han dynasty. This appeal to
+authority was, of course, a mere blind, cleverly introduced to satisfy
+the bulk of the population, who were always unwilling to move in any
+direction where no precedent is forthcoming. One of his schemes, the
+express object of which was to decrease taxation and at the same time
+to increase the revenue, was to secure a sure and certain market for all
+products, as follows. From the produce of a given district, enough was
+to be set aside (1) for the payment of taxes, and (2) to supply the
+wants of the district; (3) the balance was then to be taken over by the
+state at a low rate, and held for a rise or forwarded to some centre
+where there happened to be a demand. There would be thus a certainty
+of market for the farmer, and an equal certainty for the state to
+make profits as a middleman. Another part of this scheme consisted in
+obligatory advances by the state to cultivators of land, whether these
+farmers required the money or not, the security for the loans being in
+each case the growing crops.
+
+There was also a system of tithing for military purposes, under which
+every family having more than two males was bound to supply one to serve
+as a soldier; and in order to keep up a breed of cavalry horses, every
+family was compelled to take charge of one, which was provided, together
+with its food, by the government. There was a system under which money
+payments were substituted for the old-fashioned and vexatious method
+of carrying on public works by drafts of forced labourers; and again
+another under which warehouses for bartering and hypothecating goods
+were established all over the empire.
+
+Of all his innovations the most interesting was that all land was to be
+remeasured and an attempt made to secure a more equitable incidence of
+taxation. The plan was to divide up the land into equal squares, and to
+levy taxes in proportion to the fertility of each. This scheme proved
+for various reasons to be unworkable; and the bitter opposition with
+which, like all his other measures of reform, it was received by
+his opponents, did not conduce to success. Finally, he abolished all
+restrictions upon the export of copper, the result being that even the
+current copper "cash" were melted down and made into articles for sale
+and exportation. A panic ensued, which Wang met by the simple expedient
+of doubling the value of each cash. He attempted to reform the
+examination system, requiring from the candidate not so much graces of
+style as a wide acquaintance with practical subjects. "Accordingly,"
+says one Chinese author, "even the pupils at the village schools
+threw away their text-books of rhetoric, and began to study primers of
+history, geography, and political economy"--a striking anticipation of
+the movement in vogue to-day. "I have myself been," he tells us, "an
+omnivorous reader of books of all kinds, even, for example, of ancient
+medical and botanical works. I have, moreover, dipped into treatises on
+agriculture and on needlework, all of which I have found very profitable
+in aiding me to seize the great scheme of the Canon itself." But
+like many other great men, he was in advance of his age. He fell into
+disfavour at court, and was dismissed to a provincial post; and although
+he was soon recalled, he retired into private life, shortly afterwards
+to die, but not before he had seen the whole of his policy reversed.
+
+His career stands out in marked contrast with that of the great
+statesman and philosopher, Chu Hsi (pronounced _Choo Shee_), who
+flourished A.D. 1130-1200. His literary output was enormous and his
+official career successful; but his chief title to fame rests upon his
+merits as a commentator on the Confucian Canon. As has been already
+stated, he introduced interpretations either wholly or partly at
+variance with those which had been put forth by the scholars of the
+Han dynasty, and hitherto received as infallible, thus modifying to a
+certain extent the prevailing standard of political and social morality.
+His guiding principle was merely one of consistency. He refused to
+interpret words in a given passage in one sense, and the same words
+occurring elsewhere in another sense. The effect of this apparently
+obvious method was magical; and from that date the teachings of
+Confucius have been universally understood in the way in which Chu Hsi
+said they ought to be understood.
+
+To his influence also must be traced the spirit of materialism which
+is so widely spread among educated Chinese. The God in whom Confucius
+believed, but whom, as will be seen later on, he can scarcely be said
+to have "taught," was a passive rather than an active God, and may be
+compared with the God of the Psalms. He was a personal God, as we know
+from the ancient character by which He was designated in the written
+language of early ages, that character being a rude picture of a
+man. This view was entirely set aside by Chu Hsi, who declared in the
+plainest terms that the Chinese word for God meant nothing more than
+"abstract right;" in other words, God was a principle. It is impossible
+to admit such a proposition, which was based on sentiment and not
+on sound reasoning. Chu Hsi was emphatically not a man of religious
+temperament, and belief in the supernatural was distasteful to him;
+he was for a short time under the spell of Buddhism, but threw that
+religion over for the orthodoxy of Confucianism. He was, therefore,
+anxious to exclude the supernatural altogether from the revised scheme
+of moral conduct which he was deducing from the Confucian Canon, and his
+interpretation of the word "God" has been blindly accepted ever since.
+
+When Chu Hsi died, his coffin is said to have taken up a position,
+suspended in the air, about three feet from the ground. Whereupon his
+son-in-law, falling on his knees beside the bier, reminded the departed
+spirit of the great principles of which he had been such a brilliant
+exponent in life--and the coffin descended gently to the ground.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V--WOMEN AND CHILDREN
+
+The Chinese are very fond of animals, and especially of birds; and on
+the whole they may be said to be kind to their animals, though cases of
+ill-treatment occur. At the same time it must be carefully remembered
+that such quantum of humanity as they may exhibit is entirely of their
+own making; there is no law to act persuasively on brutal natures, and
+there is no Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to see that
+any such law is enforced. A very large number of beautiful birds, mostly
+songless, are found in various parts of China, and a great variety of
+fishes in the rivers and on the coast. Wild animals are represented by
+the tiger (in both north and south), the panther and the bear, and even
+the elephant and the rhinoceros may be found in the extreme south-west.
+The wolf and the fox, the latter dreaded as an uncanny beast, are very
+widely distributed.
+
+Still less would there be any ground for establishing a Society for the
+Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the very name of which would make
+an ordinary, unsophisticated Chinaman stare. Chinese parents are, if
+anything, over-indulgent to their children. The father is, indeed,
+popularly known as the "Severe One," and it is a Confucian tradition
+that he should not spare the rod and so spoil the child, but he draws
+the line at a poker; and although as a father he possesses the power of
+life and death over his offspring, such punishments as are inflicted are
+usually of the mildest description. The mother, the "Gentle One," is,
+speaking broadly, a soft-hearted, sweet-natured specimen of humanity;
+one of those women to whom hundreds of Europeans owe deep debts of
+gratitude for the care and affection lavished upon their alien children.
+In the absence of the Severe One, it falls to her to chastise when
+necessary; and we even read of a son who wept, not because his mother
+hurt him, but because, owing to her advanced age, she was no longer able
+to hit him hard enough!
+
+Among other atrocious libels which have fastened upon the fair fame
+of the Chinese people, first and foremost stands the charge of
+female infanticide, now happily, though still slowly, fading from
+the calculations of those who seek the truth. Fifty years ago it was
+generally believed that the Chinese hated their female children, and got
+rid of them in early infancy by wholesale murder. It may be admitted
+at once that boys are preferred to girls, inasmuch as they carry on
+the family line, and see that the worship of ancestors is regularly
+performed in due season. Also, because girls require dowries, which they
+take away with them for the benefit of other families than their own;
+hence the saying, "There is no thief like a family of five daughters,"
+and the term "lose-money goods," as jestingly applied to girls, against
+which may be set another term, "a thousand ounces of gold," which is
+commonly used of a daughter. Of course it is the boy who is specially
+wanted in a family; and little boys are often dressed as little girls,
+in order to deceive the angels of disease and death, who, it is hoped,
+may thus pass them over as of less account.
+
+To return to the belief formerly held that female infanticide was
+rampant all over China. The next step was for the honest observer to
+admit that it was not known in his own particular district, but to
+declare that it was largely practised elsewhere. This view, however,
+lost its validity when residents "elsewhere" had to allow that no
+traces of infanticide could be found in their neighbourhood; and so
+on. Luckily, still greater comfort is to be found in the following
+argument,--a rare example of proving a negative--from which it will
+be readily seen that female infanticide on any abnormal scale is
+quite beyond the bounds of the possible. Those who have even a bowing
+acquaintance with Chinese social life will grant that every boy, at
+about the age of eighteen, is provided by his parents with a wife. They
+must also concede the notorious fact that many well-to-do Chinese take
+one or more concubines. The Emperor, indeed, is allowed seventy; but
+this number exists only on paper as a regulation maximum. Now, if every
+Chinaman has one wife, and many have two, over and above the host of
+girls said to be annually sacrificed as worthless babies, it must follow
+that the proportion of girls born in China enormously outnumbers the
+proportion of boys, whereas in the rest of the world boys are well known
+to be always in the majority. After this, it is perhaps superfluous to
+state that, apart from the natural love of the parent, a girl is really,
+even at a very early age, a marketable commodity. Girls are sometimes
+sold into other families to be brought up as wives for the sons;
+more often, to be used as servants, under what is of course a form of
+slavery, qualified by the important condition, which can be enforced by
+law, that when of a marriageable age, the girl's master shall find her
+a husband. Illegitimate children, the source of so much baby-farming and
+infanticide elsewhere, are practically unknown in China; and the same
+may be said of divorce. A woman cannot legally divorce her husband. In
+rare cases she will leave him, and return to her family, in spite of the
+fact that he can legally insist upon her return; for she knows well that
+if her case is good, the husband will not dare to risk the scandal of an
+exposure, not to mention the almost certain vengeance of her
+affronted kinsmen. It is also the fear of such vengeance that prevents
+mothers-in-law from ill-treating the girls who pass into their new homes
+rather as servants than daughters to the husband's mother. Every
+woman, as indeed every man, has one final appeal by which to punish an
+oppressor. She may commit suicide, there being no canon, legal or moral,
+against self-slaughter; and in China, where, contrary to widespread
+notions on the subject, human life is held in the highest degree sacred,
+this course is sure to entail trouble and expense, and possibly severe
+punishment, if the aggrieved parties are not promptly conciliated by a
+heavy money payment.
+
+A man may divorce his wife for one of the seven following reasons:--Want
+of children, adultery, neglect of his parents, nagging, thieving (i.e.
+supplying her own family with his goods, popularly known as "leakage"),
+jealous temper and leprosy. To the above, the humanity of the lawgiver
+has affixed three qualifying conditions. He may not put her away on
+any of the above grounds if she has duly passed through the period of
+mourning for his parents; if he has grown rich since their marriage; if
+she has no longer any home to which she can return.
+
+Altogether, the Chinese woman has by no means such a bad time as is
+generally supposed to be the case. Even in the eye of the law, she has
+this advantage over a man, that she cannot be imprisoned except for high
+treason and adultery, and is to all intents and purposes exempt from the
+punishment of the bamboo. Included in this exemption are the aged and
+the young, the sick, the hungry and naked, and those who have already
+suffered violence, as in a brawl. Further, in a well-known handbook,
+magistrates are advised to postpone, in certain circumstances, the
+infliction of corporal punishment; as for instance, when either the
+prisoner or they themselves may be under the influence of excitement,
+anger or drink.
+
+The bamboo is the only instrument with which physical punishment may
+legally be inflicted; and its infliction on a prisoner or recalcitrant
+witness, in order to extort evidence, constitutes what has long been
+dignified as "torture;" but even that is now, under a changing system,
+about to disappear. This must not be taken to mean that torture, in our
+sense of the term, has never been applied in China. The real facts
+of the case are these. Torture, except as already described, being
+constitutionally illegal, no magistrate would venture to resort to it
+if there were any chance of his successful impeachment before the higher
+authorities, upon which he would be cashiered and his official career
+brought abruptly to an end. Torture, therefore, would have no
+terrors for the ordinary citizen of good repute and with a backing of
+substantial friends; but for the outcast, the rebel, the highway robber
+(against whom every man's hand would be), the disreputable native of a
+distant province, and also for the outer barbarian (e.g. the captives at
+the Summer Palace in 1860), another tale must be told. No consequences,
+except perhaps promotion, would follow from too rigorous treatment in
+such cases as these.
+
+Resort to the bamboo as a means of extorting the confession of a
+prisoner is regarded by the people rather as the magistrate's confession
+of his own incapacity. The education of the official, too easily and
+too freely turned into ridicule, gives him an insight into human
+nature which, coupled with a little experience, renders him extremely
+formidable to the shifty criminal or the crafty litigant. As a rule,
+he finds no need for the application of pain. There is a quaint story
+illustrative of such judicial methods as would be sure to meet with
+full approbation in China. A magistrate, who after several hearings had
+failed to discover, among a gang accused of murder, what was essential
+to the completion of the case, namely, the actual hand which struck
+the fatal blow, notified the prisoners that he was about to invoke the
+assistance of the spirits, with a view to elicit the truth. Accordingly,
+he caused the accused men, dressed in the black clothes of criminals,
+to be led into a large barn, and arranged around it, face to the wall.
+Having then told them that an accusing angel would shortly come among
+them, and mark the back of the guilty man, he went outside and had the
+door shut, and the place darkened. After a short interval, when the door
+was thrown open, and the men were summoned to come forth, it was seen
+directly that one of the number had a white mark on his back. This
+man, in order to make all secure, had turned his back to the wall, not
+knowing, what the magistrate well knew, that the wall had been newly
+white-washed.
+
+As to the punishment of crime by flogging, a sentence of one or two
+hundred--even more--blows would seem to be cruel and disgusting;
+happily, it may be taken for granted that such ferocious sentences
+are executed only in such cases as have been mentioned above. An acute
+observer, for many years a member of the municipal police force in
+Shanghai, whose duty it was to see that floggings were administered to
+Chinese criminals, stated plainly in a public report that the bamboo is
+not necessarily a severe ordeal, and that one hundred blows are at times
+inflicted so lightly as to leave scarcely a mark behind, though the
+recipient howls loudly all the time. Those criminals who have money
+can always manage to square the gaoler; and the gaoler has acquired a
+certain knack in laying on, the upshot being great cry and little wool,
+very satisfactory to the culprit. Even were we to accept the cruellest
+estimate in regard to punishment by the bamboo, it would only go to show
+that humanitarian feelings in China are lagging somewhat behind our
+own. In _The Times_ of March 1, 1811, we read that, for allowing French
+prisoners to escape from Dartmoor, three men of the Nottingham militia
+were sentenced to receive 900 lashes each, and that one of them actually
+received 450 lashes in the presence of pickets from every regiment in
+the garrison. On New Year's Day, 1911, a eunuch attempted to assassinate
+one of the Imperial Princes. For this he was sentenced to be beaten to
+death, some such ferocious punishment being necessary, in Chinese eyes,
+to vindicate the majesty of the law. That end having been attained, the
+sentence was commuted to eighty blows with the bamboo and deportation to
+northern Manchuria.
+
+The Chinese woman often, in mature life, wields enormous influence over
+the family, males included, and is a kind of private Empress Dowager.
+A man knows, says the proverb, but a woman knows better. As a widow
+in early life, her lot is not quite so pleasant. It is not thought
+desirable for widows to remarry; but if she remains single, she becomes
+"a rudderless boat;" round which gathers much calumny. Many young women
+brave public opinion, and enter into second nuptials. If they are bent
+upon remarrying, runs the saying, they can no more be prevented than the
+sky can be prevented from raining.
+
+The days of "golden lilies," as the artificially small feet of Chinese
+women are called, are generally believed to date from the tenth century
+A.D., though some writers have endeavoured to place the custom many
+centuries earlier. It must always be carefully remembered that Manchu
+women--the women of the dynasty which has ruled since 1644--do not
+compress their feet. Consequently, the empresses of modern times have
+feet of the natural size; neither is the practice in force among the
+Hakkas, a race said to have migrated from the north of China to the
+south in the thirteenth century; nor among the hill tribes; nor among
+the boating population of Canton and elsewhere. Small feet are thus in
+no way associated with aristocracy or gentleness of birth; neither is
+there any foundation for the generally received opinion that the
+Chinese lame their women in this way to keep them from gadding about.
+Small-footed women may be seen carrying quite heavy burdens, and even
+working in the fields; not to mention that many are employed as nurses
+for small children. Another explanation is that women with bound feet
+bear finer children and stronger; but the real reason lies in another
+direction, quite beyond the scope of this book. The question of charm
+may be taken into consideration, for any Chinaman will bear witness to
+the seductive effect of a gaily-dressed girl picking her way on tiny
+feet some three inches in length, her swaying movements and delightful
+appearance of instability conveying a general sense of delicate grace
+quite beyond expression in words.
+
+The lady of the tenth century, to whom the origin of small feet is
+ascribed, wished to make her own feet like two new moons; but whether
+she actually bound them, as at the present day, is purely a matter of
+conjecture. The modern style of binding inflicts great pain for a long
+time upon the little girls who have to endure it. They become very shy
+on the subject, and will on no account show their bare feet, though
+Manchu women and others with full-sized feet frequently walk about
+unshod, and the boat-girls at Canton and elsewhere never seem to wear
+shoes or stockings at all.
+
+The "pigtail," or long plait of hair worn by all Chinamen, for the
+abolition of which many advanced reformers are now earnestly pleading,
+is an institution of comparatively modern date. It was imposed by the
+victorious Manchu-Tartars when they finally established their dynasty in
+1644, not so much as a badge of conquest, still less of servitude,
+but as a means of obliterating, so far as possible, the most patent
+distinction between the two races, and of unifying the appearance,
+if not the aspirations, of the subjects of the Son of Heaven. This
+obligation was for some time strenuously resisted by the natives of
+Amoy, Swatow, and elsewhere in that neighbourhood. At length, when
+compelled to yield, it is said that they sullenly wound their queues
+round their heads and covered them with turbans, which are still worn by
+natives of those parts.
+
+The peculiar custom of shaving the head in front, and allowing the hair
+to grow long behind, is said to have been adopted by the Manchus out
+of affectionate gratitude to the horse, an animal which has played an
+all-important part in the history and achievements of the race. This
+view is greatly reinforced by the cut of the modern official sleeves,
+which hang down, concealing the hands, and are shaped exactly like a
+pair of horse's hoofs.
+
+In many respects the Manchu conquerors left the Chinese to follow their
+own customs. No attempt was made to coerce Chinese women, who dress
+their hair in styles totally different from that of the Manchu women;
+there are, too, some tolerated differences between the dress of the
+Manchu and Chinese men, but these are such as readily escape notice.
+Neither was any attempt made in the opening years of the conquest to
+interfere with foot-binding by Chinese women; but in 1664 an edict was
+issued forbidding the practice. Readers may draw their own conclusions,
+when it is added that four years after the edict was withdrawn. Hopes
+are now widely and earnestly entertained that with the dawn of the new
+era, this cruel custom will become a thing of the past; it is, however,
+to be feared that those who have been urging on this desirable reform
+may be, like all reformers, a little too sanguine of immediate success,
+and that a comparatively long period will have to go by before the last
+traces of foot-binding disappear altogether. Meanwhile, it seems that
+the Government has taken the important step of refusing admission to the
+public schools of all girls whose feet are bound.
+
+The disappearance of the queue is another thing altogether. It is not a
+native Chinese institution; there would be no violation of any cherished
+tradition of antiquity if it were once and for ever discarded. On the
+contrary, if the Chinese do not intend to follow the Japanese and take
+to foreign clothes, there might be a return to the old style of doing
+the hair. The former dress of the Japanese was one of the numerous items
+borrowed by them from China; it was indeed the national dress of the
+Chinese for some three hundred years, between A.D. 600-900. One little
+difficulty will vanish with the queue. A Chinese coolie will tie his
+tail round his head when engaged on work in which he requires to keep it
+out of the way, and the habit has become of real importance with the use
+of modern machinery; but on the arrival of his master, he should at once
+drop it, out of respect, a piece of politeness not always exhibited in
+the presence of a foreign employer. The agitation, now in progress,
+for the final abolition of the queue may be due to one or all of the
+following reasons. Intelligent Chinese may have come to realize that the
+fashion is cumbrous and out of date. Sensitive Chinese may fear that it
+makes them ridiculous in the eyes of foreigners. Political Chinese, who
+would gladly see the re-establishment of a native dynasty, may look
+to its disappearance as the first step towards throwing off the Manchu
+yoke.
+
+On the whole, the ruling Manchus have shown themselves very careful
+not to wound the susceptibilities of their Chinese subjects. Besides
+allowing the women to retain their own costume, and the dead, men and
+women alike, to be buried in the costume of the previous dynasty, it was
+agreed from the very first that no Chinese concubines should be taken
+into the Palace. This last condition seems to be a concession pure and
+simple to the conquered; there is little doubt, however, that the wily
+Manchus were only too ready to exclude a very dangerous possibility of
+political intrigue.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI--LITERATURE AND EDUCATION
+
+The Chinese people reverence above all things literature and learning;
+they hate war, bearing in mind the saying of Mencius, "There is no such
+thing as a _righteous_ war; we can only assert that some wars are better
+than others;" and they love trade and the finesse of the market-place.
+China can boast many great soldiers, in modern as well as in ancient
+days; but anything like a proper appreciation of the military arm is of
+quite recent growth. "Good iron is not used for nails, nor good men for
+soldiers," says the proverb; and again, "One stroke of the civilian's
+pen reduces the military official to abject submission." On the other
+hand, it is admitted that "Civilians give the empire peace, and soldiers
+give it security."
+
+Chinese parents have never, until recent days, willingly trained their
+sons for the army. They have always wished their boys to follow the
+stereotyped literary curriculum, and then, after passing successfully
+through the great competitive examinations, to rise to high civil office
+in the state. A good deal of ridicule has been heaped of late on the
+Chinese competitive examination, the subjects of which were drawn
+exclusively from the Confucian Canon, and included a knowledge of
+ancient history, of a comprehensive scheme of morality, initiated by
+Confucius, and further elaborated by Mencius (372-289 B.C.), of the
+ballads and ceremonial rites of three thousand years ago, and of an
+aptitude for essay-writing and the composition of verse. The whole
+curriculum may be fitly compared with such an education as was given
+to William Pitt and others among our own great statesmen, in which an
+ability to read the Greek and Roman classics, coupled with an intimate
+knowledge of the Peloponnesian War, carried the student about as far as
+it was considered necessary for him to go. The Chinese course, too, has
+certainly brought to the front in its time a great many eminent men, who
+have held their own in diplomacy, if not in warfare, with the subtlest
+intellects of the West.
+
+Their system of competitive examinations has indeed served the Chinese
+well. It is the brightest spot in the whole administration, being
+absolutely above suspicion, such as attaches to other departments of the
+state. Attempts have been made from time to time to gain admission by
+improper means to the list of successful candidates, and it would be
+absurd to say that not one has ever succeeded; the risk, however, is too
+great, for the penalty on detection may be death.
+
+The ordeal itself is exceedingly severe, as well for the examiners as
+for the candidates. At the provincial examinations, held once in every
+third year, an Imperial Commissioner, popularly known as the Grand
+Examiner, is sent down from Peking. On arrival, his residence is
+formally sealed up, and extraordinary precautions are taken to prevent
+friends of intending candidates from approaching him in any way. There
+is no age limit, and men of quite mature years are to be found
+competing against youths hardly out of their teens; indeed, there is
+an authenticated case of a man who successfully graduated at the age of
+seventy-two. Many compete year after year, until at length they decide
+to give it up as a bad job.
+
+At an early hour on the appointed day the candidates begin to assemble,
+and by and by the great gates of the examination hall are thrown open,
+and heralds shriek out the names of those who are to enter. Each one
+answers in turn as his name is called, and receives from the attendants
+a roll of paper marked with the number of the open cell he is to occupy
+in one of the long alleys into which the examination hall is divided.
+Other writing materials, as well as food, he carries with him in a
+basket, which is always carefully searched at the door, and in which
+"sleeve" editions of the classics have sometimes been found. When all
+have taken their seats, the Grand Examiner burns incense, and closes the
+entrance gates, through which no one will be allowed to pass, either in
+or out, dead or alive, until the end of the third day, when the first of
+the three sessions is at an end, and the candidates are released for
+the night. In case of death, not unusual where ten or twelve thousand
+persons are cooped up day and night in a confined space, the corpse is
+hoisted over the wall; and this would be done even if it were that of
+the Grand Examiner himself, whose place would then be taken by the
+chief Assistant Examiner, who is also appointed by the Emperor, and
+accompanies the Grand Examiner from Peking.
+
+The long strain of three bouts of three days each has often been
+found sufficient to unhinge the reason, with a variety of distressing
+consequences, the least perhaps of which may be seen in a regular
+percentage of blank papers handed in. On one occasion, a man handed in a
+copy of his last will and testament; on another, not very long ago,
+the mental balance of the Grand Examiner gave way, and a painful scene
+ensued. He tore up a number of the papers already handed in, and bit
+and kicked every one who came near him, until he was finally secured
+and bound hand and foot in his chair. A candidate once presented himself
+dressed in woman's clothes, with his face highly rouged and powdered,
+as is the custom. He was arrested at the entrance gate, and quietly sent
+home to his friends.
+
+Overwork, in the feverish desire to get into the Government service, is
+certainly responsible for the mental break-down of a large proportion
+of the comparatively few lunatics found in China. There being no lunatic
+asylums in the empire, it is difficult to form anything like an exact
+estimate of their number; it can only be said, what is equally true of
+cripples or deformed persons, that it is very rare to meet them in the
+streets or even to hear of their existence.
+
+As a further measure of precaution against corrupt practices at
+examinations, the papers handed in by the candidates are all copied out
+in red ink, and only these copies are submitted to the examiners. The
+difficulty therefore of obtaining favourable treatment, on the score of
+either bribery or friendship, is very much increased. The Chinese, who
+make no attempt to conceal or excuse, in fact rather exaggerate any
+corruption in their public service generally, do not hesitate to declare
+with striking unanimity that the conduct of their examination system is
+above suspicion, and there appears to be no valid reason why we should
+not accept this conclusion.
+
+The whole system is now undergoing certain modifications, which,
+if wisely introduced, should serve only to strengthen the national
+character. The Confucian teachings, which are of the very highest order
+of morality, and which have moulded the Chinese people for so many
+centuries, helping perhaps to give them a cohesion and stability
+remarkable among the nations of the world, should not be lightly cast
+aside. A scientific training, enabling us to annihilate time and space,
+to extend indefinitely the uses and advantages of matter in all its
+forms, and to mitigate the burden of suffering which is laid upon the
+greater portion of the human race, still requires to be effectively
+supplemented by a moral training, to teach man his duty towards his
+neighbour. From the point of view of science, the Chinese are, of
+course, wholly out of date, though it is only within the past hundred
+and fifty years that the West has so decisively outstripped the East. If
+we go back to the fifteenth century, we shall find that the standard of
+civilization, as the term is usually understood, was still much higher
+in China than in Europe; while Marco Polo, the famous Venetian traveller
+of the thirteenth century, who actually lived twenty-four years in
+China, and served as an official under Kublai Khan, has left it on
+record that the magnificence of Chinese cities, and the splendour of the
+Chinese court, outrivalled anything he had ever seen or heard of.
+
+Pushing farther back into antiquity, we easily reach a time when the
+inhabitants of the Middle Kingdom "held learning in high esteem, while
+our own painted forefathers were running naked and houseless in the
+woods, and living on berries and raw meat." In inventive, mechanical and
+engineering aptitudes the Chinese have always excelled; as witness--only
+to mention a few--the art of printing (_see below_); their water-wheels
+and other clever appliances for irrigation; their wonderful bridges (not
+to mention the Great Wall); the "taxicab," or carriage fitted with a
+machine for recording the distance traversed, the earliest notice
+of which takes us back to the fourth century A.D.; the system of
+fingerprints for personal identification, recorded in the seventh
+century A.D.; the carved ivory balls which contain even so many as nine
+or ten other balls, of diminishing size, one within another; a chariot
+carrying a figure which always pointed south, recorded as in existence
+at a very early date, though unfortunately the specifications which have
+came down to us from later dates will not work out, as in the case of
+the "taxicab." The story goes that this chariot was invented about 1100
+B.C., by a wonderful hero of the day, in order to enable an ambassador,
+who had come to the court of China from a far distant country in the
+south, to find his way expeditiously home. The compass proper the
+Chinese cannot claim; it was probably introduced into China by the
+Arabs at a comparatively late date, and has been confused with the
+south-pointing chariot of earlier ages. As to gunpowder, something
+of that nature appears to have been used for fireworks in the seventh
+century; and something of the nature of a gun is first heard of during
+the Mongol campaigns of the thirteenth century; but firearms were not
+systematically employed until the fifteenth century. Add to the above
+the art of casting bronze, brought to a high pitch of excellence
+seven or eight centuries before the Christian era, if not earlier; the
+production of silk, mentioned by Mencius (372-289 B.C.) as necessary
+for the comfort of old age; the cultivation of the tea-plant from time
+immemorial; also the discovery and manufacture of porcelain some sixteen
+centuries ago, subsequently brought to a perfection which leaves all
+European attempts hopelessly out-classed.
+
+In many instances the Chinese seem to have been so near and yet so far.
+There is a distinct tradition of flying cars at a very remote date; and
+rough woodcuts have been handed down for many centuries, showing a car
+containing two passengers, flying through the clouds and apparently
+propelled by wheels of a screw pattern, set at right angles to the
+direction in which the travellers are proceeding. But there is not a
+scrap of evidence to show what was the motive power which turned the
+wheels. Similarly, iron ships are mentioned in Chinese literature so
+far back as the tenth century, only, however, to be ridiculed as an
+impossibility; the circulation of the blood is hinted at; added to which
+is the marvellous anticipation of anaesthetics as applied to surgery, to
+be mentioned later on, an idea which also remained barren of results for
+something like sixteen centuries, until Western science stepped in and
+secured the prize. Here it may be fairly argued that, considering the
+national repugnance to mutilation of the body in any form, it could
+hardly be expected that the Chinese would seek to facilitate a process
+to which they so strongly object.
+
+In the domain of painting, we are only just beginning to awake to the
+fact that in this direction the Chinese have reached heights denied to
+all save artists of supreme power, and that their art was already on
+a lofty level many centuries before our own great representatives had
+begun to put brush to canvas. Without going so far back as the famous
+picture in the British Museum, by an artist of the fourth and fifth
+centuries A.D., the point may perhaps be emphasized by quotation from
+the words of a leading art-critic, referring to painters of the tenth
+and eleventh centuries:--"To the Sung artists and poets, mountains
+were a passion, as to Wordsworth. The landscape art thus founded, and
+continued by the Japanese in the fifteenth century, must rank as
+the greatest school of landscape which the world has seen. It is the
+imaginative picturing of what is most elemental and most august in
+Nature--liberating visions of storm or peace among abrupt peaks,
+plunging torrents, trembling reed-beds--and though having a fantastic
+side for its weakness, can never have the reproach of pretty tameness
+and mere fidelity which form too often the only ideal of Western
+landscape."
+
+Great Chinese artists unite in dismissing fidelity to outline as of
+little importance compared with reproduction of the spirit of the object
+painted. To paint a tree successfully, it is necessary to produce not
+merely shape and colour but the vitality and "soul" of the original.
+Until with the last two or three centuries, nature itself was always
+appealed to as the one source of true inspiration; then came the artist
+of the studio, since which time Chinese art has languished, while
+Japanese art, learned at the feet of Chinese artists from the fourteenth
+century onwards, has come into prominent notice, and is now, with
+extraordinary versatility, attempting to assimilate the ideals of the
+West.
+
+The following words were written by a Chinese painter of the fifth
+century:--
+
+"To gaze upon the clouds of autumn, a soaring exaltation in the soul; to
+feel the spring breeze stirring wild exultant thoughts;--what is there
+in the possession of gold and gems to compare with delights like these?
+And then, to unroll the portfolio and spread the silk, and to transfer
+to it the glories of flood and fell, the green forest, the blowing
+winds, the white water of the rushing cascade, as with a turn of the
+hand a divine influence descends upon the scene. . . . These are the
+joys of painting."
+
+Just as in poetry, so in pictorial art, the artist avoids giving full
+expression to his theme, and leaving nothing for the spectator to supply
+by his own imaginative powers. "Suggestion" is the key-note to both the
+above arts; and in both, "Impressionism" has been also at the command
+of the gifted, centuries before the term had passed into the English
+language.
+
+Literature and art are indeed very closely associated in China. Every
+literary man is supposed to be more or less a painter, or a musician of
+sorts; failing personal skill, it would go without saying that he was a
+critic, or at the lowest a lover, of one or the other art, or of both.
+All Chinese men, women and children seem to love flowers; and the poetry
+which has gathered around the blossoms of plum and almond alone would
+form a not inconsiderable library of itself. Yet a European bouquet
+would appear to a man of culture as little short of a monstrosity; for
+to enjoy flowers, a Chinaman must see only a single spray at a time. The
+poorly paid clerk will bring with him to his office in the morning some
+trifling bud, which he will stick into a tiny vase of water, and place
+beside him on his desk. The owner of what may be a whole gallery of
+pictures will invite you to tea, followed by an inspection of his
+treasures; but on the same afternoon he will only produce perhaps a
+single specimen, and scout the idea that any one could call for more.
+If a long landscape, it will be gradually unwound from its roller, and
+a portion at a time will be submitted for the enjoyment and criticism
+of his visitors; if a religious or historical picture, or a picture
+of birds or flowers, of which the whole effort must be viewed in its
+completeness, it will be studied in various senses, during the intervals
+between a chat and a cup of tea. Such concentration is absolutely
+essential, in the eyes of the Chinese critic, to a true interpretation
+of the artist's meaning, and to a just appreciation of his success.
+
+The marvellous old stories of grapes painted by Zeuxis of ancient
+Greece, so naturally that birds came to peck at them; and of the curtain
+painted by Parrhasius which Zeuxis himself tried to pull aside; and
+of the horse by Apelles at which another horse neighed--all these find
+their counterparts in the literature of Chinese art. One painter, in
+quite early days, painted a perch and hung it over a river bank, when
+there was immediately a rush of otters to secure it. Another painted the
+creases on cotton clothes so exactly that the clothes looked as if they
+had just come from the wash. Another produced pictures of cats which
+would keep a place free from rats. All these efforts were capped by
+those of another artist, whose picture of the North Wind made people
+feel cold, while his picture of the South Wind made people feel hot.
+Such exaggerations are not altogether without their value; they suggest
+that Chinese art must have reached a high level, and this has recently
+been shown to be nothing more than the truth, by the splendid exhibition
+of Chinese pictures recently on view in the British Museum.
+
+The literary activities of the Chinese, and their output of literature,
+have always been on a colossal scale; and of course it is entirely due
+to the early invention of printing that, although a very large number of
+works have disappeared, still an enormous bulk has survived the ravages
+of war, rebellion and fire.
+
+This art was rather developed than invented. There is no date, within
+a margin even of half a century either way, at which we can say that
+printing was invented. The germ is perhaps to be found in the engraving
+of seals, which have been used by the Chinese as far back as we can go
+with anything like historical certainty, and also of stone tablets
+from which rubbings were taken, the most important of these being the
+forty-six tablets on which five of the sacred books of Confucianism were
+engraved about A.D. 170, and of which portions still remain. However
+this may be, it was during the sixth century A.D. that the idea of
+taking impressions on paper from wooden blocks seems to have arisen,
+chiefly in connexion with religious pictures and tracts. It was not
+widely applied to the production of books in general until A.D. 932,
+when the Confucian Canon was so printed for the first time; from which
+point onwards the extension of the art moved with rapid strides.
+
+It is very noticeable that the Chinese, who are extraordinarily averse
+to novelties, and can hardly be induced to consider any innovations,
+when once convinced of their real utility, waste no further time in
+securing to themselves all the advantages which may accrue. This was
+forcibly illustrated in regard to the introduction of the telegraph,
+against which the Chinese had set their faces, partly because of the
+disturbance of geomantic influences caused by the tall telegraph poles,
+and partly because they sincerely doubted that the wires could achieve
+the results claimed. But when it was discovered that some wily Cantonese
+had learnt over the telegraph the names of the three highest graduates
+at the Peking triennial examination, weeks before the names could be
+known in Canton by the usual route, and had enriched himself by buying
+up the tickets bearing those names in the great lotteries which are
+always held in connexion with this event, Chinese opposition went down
+like a house of cards; and the only question with many of the literati
+was whether, at some remote date, the Chinese had not invented
+telegraphy themselves.
+
+Moveable types of baked clay were invented about A.D. 1043, and some
+centuries later they were made of wood and of copper or lead; but they
+have never gained the favour accorded to block-printing, by which most
+of the great literary works have been produced. The newspapers of modern
+days are all printed from moveable types, and also many translations
+of foreign books, prepared to meet the increasing demand for Western
+learning. The Chinese have always been a great reading people,
+systematic education culminating in competitive examinations for
+students going back to the second century A.D. This is perhaps a
+suitable place for explaining that the famous _Peking Gazette_, often
+said to be the oldest newspaper in the world, is not really a newspaper
+at all, in that it contains no news in our sense of the term. It is a
+record only of court movements, list of promoted officials, with a
+few selected memorials and edicts. It is published daily, but was not
+printed until the fifteenth century.
+
+Every Chinese boy may be said to have his chance. The slightest sign
+of a capacity for book-learning is watched for, even among the poorest.
+Besides the opportunity of free schools, a clever boy will soon find a
+patron; and in many cases, the funds for carrying on a curriculum, and
+for entering the first of the great competitions, will be subscribed in
+the district, on which the candidate will confer a lasting honour by his
+success. A promising young graduate, who has won his first degree with
+honours, is at once an object of importance to wealthy fathers who
+desire to secure him as a son-in-law, and who will see that money is not
+wanting to carry him triumphantly up the official ladder. Boys without
+any gifts of the kind required, remain to fill the humbler positions;
+those who advance to a certain point are drafted into trade; while hosts
+of others who just fall short of the highest, become tutors in private
+families, schoolmasters, doctors, fortune-tellers, geomancers, and
+booksellers' hacks.
+
+Of high-class Chinese literature, it is not possible to give even the
+faintest idea in the space at disposal. It must suffice to say that all
+branches are adequately represented, histories, biographies, philosophy,
+poetry and essays on all manner of subjects, offering a wide field even
+to the most insatiate reader.
+
+And here a remark may be interjected, which is very necessary for the
+information of those who wish to form a true estimate of the Chinese
+people. Throughout the Confucian Canon, a collection of ancient works on
+which the moral code of the Chinese is based, there is not a single word
+which could give offence, even to the most sensitive, on questions of
+delicacy and decency. That is surely saying a good deal, but it is not
+all; precisely the same may be affirmed of what is mentioned above as
+high-class Chinese literature, which is pure enough to satisfy the most
+strait-laced. Chinese poetry, of which there is in existence a huge
+mass, will be searched in vain for suggestions of impropriety, for sly
+innuendo, and for the other tricks of the unclean. This extraordinary
+purity of language is all the more remarkable from the fact that, until
+recent years, the education of women has not been at all general, though
+many particular instances are recorded of women who have themselves
+achieved success in literary pursuits. It is only when we come to the
+novel, to the short story, or to the anecdote, which are not usually
+written in high-class style, and are therefore not recognized as
+literature proper, that this exalted standard is no longer always
+maintained.
+
+There are, indeed, a great number of novels, chiefly historical and
+religious, in which the aims of the writers are on a sufficiently high
+level to keep them clear of what is popularly known as pornography or
+pig-writing; still, when all is said and done, there remains a balance
+of writing curiously in contrast with the great bulk of Chinese
+literature proper. As to the novel, the long story with a worked-out
+plot, this is not really a local product. It seems to have come along
+with the Mongols from Central Asia, when they conquered China in the
+thirteenth century, and established their short-lived dynasty. Some
+novels, in spite of their low moral tone, are exceedingly well written
+and clever, graphic in description, and dramatic in episode; but it is
+curious that no writer of the first rank has ever attached his name to
+a novel, and that the authorship of all the cleverest is a matter of
+entire uncertainty.
+
+The low-class novel is purposely pitched in a style that will be
+easily understood; but even so, there is a great deal of word- and
+phrase-skipping to be done by many illiterate readers, who are quite
+satisfied if they can extract the general sense as they go along.
+The book-language, as cultivated by the best writers, is to be freely
+understood only by those who have stocked their minds well with the
+extensive phraseology which has been gradually created by eminent
+men during the past twenty-five centuries, and with historical and
+biographical allusions and references of all sorts and things. A word or
+two, suggesting some apposite allusion, will often greatly enhance the
+beauty of a composition for the connoisseur, but will fall flat on
+the ears of those to whom the quotation is unknown. Simple objects in
+everyday life often receive quaint names, as handed down in literature,
+with which it is necessary to be familiar. For instance, a "fairy
+umbrella" means a mushroom; a "gentleman of the beam" is a burglar,
+because a burglar was once caught sitting on one of the open beams
+inside a Chinese roof; a "slender waist" is a wasp; the "throat olive"
+is the "Adam's apple"--which, by the way, is an excellent illustration
+from the opposite point of view; "eyebrow notes" means notes at the
+top of a page; "cap words" is sometimes used for "preface;" the
+"sweeper-away of care" is wine; "golden balls" are oranges; the "golden
+tray" is the moon; a "two-haired man" is a grey-beard; the "hundred
+holes" is a beehive; "instead of the moon" is a lantern; "instead of
+steps" is a horse; "the man with the wooden skirt" is a shopman;
+to "scatter sleep" means to give hush-money; and so on, almost _ad
+infinitum_.
+
+Chinese medical literature is on a very voluminous scale, medicine
+having always occupied a high place in the estimation of the people, in
+spite of the fact that its practice has always been left to any one who
+might choose to take it up. Surgery, even of an elementary kind, has
+never had a chance; for the Chinese are extremely loath to suffer any
+interference with their bodies, believing, in accordance with Confucian
+dogma, that as they received them from their parents, so they should
+carry them into the presence of their ancestors in the next world.
+Medicine, as still practised in China, may be compared with the European
+art of a couple of centuries ago, and its exceedingly doubtful results
+are fully appreciated by patients at large. "No medicine," says one
+proverb, "is better than a middling doctor;" while another points out
+that "Many sons of clever doctors die of disease."
+
+Legend, however, tells us of an extraordinary physician of the fifth
+century B.C. who was able to see into the viscera of his patients--an
+apparent anticipation of the X-rays--and who, by his intimate knowledge
+of the human pulse, effected many astounding cures. We also read of an
+eminent physician of the second and third centuries A.D. who did add
+surgery to this other qualifications. He was skilled in the use of
+acupuncture and cautery; but if these failed he would render his patient
+unconscious by a dose of hashish, and then operate surgically. He is
+said to have diagnosed a case of diseased bowels by the pulse alone, and
+then to have cured it by operation. He offered to cure the headaches
+of a famous military commander of the day by opening his skull under
+hashish; but the offer was rudely declined. This story serves to show,
+in spite of its marvellous setting, that the idea of administering an
+anaesthetic to carry out a surgical operation must be credited, so far
+as priority goes, to the Chinese, since the book in which the above
+account is given cannot have been composed later than the twelfth
+century A.D.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII--PHILOSOPHY AND SPORT
+
+Chinese philosophy covers altogether too large a field to be dealt with,
+even in outline, on a scale suitable to this volume; only a few of its
+chief features can possibly be exhibited in the space at disposal.
+
+Beginning with moral philosophy, we are confronted at once with what was
+in early days an extremely vexed question; not perhaps entirely set
+at rest even now, but allowed to remain in suspense amid the universal
+acceptance of Confucian teachings. Confucius himself taught in no
+indistinct terms that man is born good, and that he becomes evil only by
+contact with evil surroundings. He does not enlarge upon this dogma,
+but states it baldly as a natural law, little anticipating that within
+a couple of centuries it was to be called seriously in question. It
+remained for his great follower, Mencius, born a hundred years later, to
+defend the proposition against all comers, and especially against one
+of no mean standing, the philosopher Kao (_Cow_). Kao declared that
+righteousness is only to be got out of man's nature in the same way that
+good cups and bowls are to be got out of a block of willow wood, namely,
+by care in fashioning them. Improper workmanship would produce bad
+results; good workmanship, on the other hand, would produce good
+results. In plain words, the nature of man at birth is neither good
+nor bad; and what it becomes afterwards depends entirely upon what
+influences have been brought to bear and in what surroundings it has
+come to maturity. Mencius met this argument by showing that in the
+process of extracting cups and bowls from a block of wood, the wood as
+a block is destroyed, and he pointed out that, according to such
+reasoning, man's nature would also be destroyed in the process of
+getting righteousness out of it.
+
+Again, Kao maintained that man's nature has as little concern with
+good or evil as water has with east or west; for water will flow
+indifferently either one way or the other, according to the conditions
+in each case. If there is freedom on the east, it will flow east; if
+there is freedom on the west, it will flow west; and so with human
+nature, which will move similarly in the direction of either good or
+evil. In reply, Mencius freely admitted that water would flow either
+east or west; but he asked if it would flow indifferently up or down.
+He then declared that the bent of human nature towards good is precisely
+like the tendency of water to flow down and not up. You can force water
+to jump up, he said, by striking it, and by mechanical appliances you
+can make it flow to the top of a hill; but what you do in such cases is
+entirely contrary to the nature of water, and is merely the result of
+violence, such violence, in fact, as is brought into play when man's
+nature is bent towards evil.
+
+"That which men get at birth," said Kao, "is their nature," implying
+that all natures were the same, just as the whiteness of a white feather
+is the same as the whiteness of white snow; whereupon Mencius showed
+that on this principle the nature of a dog would be the same as that
+of a an ox, or the nature of an ox the same as that of a man. Finally,
+Mencius declared that for whatever evil men may commit, their natures
+can in nowise be blamed. In prosperous times, he argued, men are mostly
+good, whereas in times of scarcity the opposite is the case; these two
+conditions, however, are not to be charged against the natures with
+which God sent them into the world, but against the circumstances in
+which the individuals in question have been situated.
+
+The question, however, of man's original nature was not set permanently
+at rest by the arguments of Mencius. A philosopher, named Hsun Tzu
+(_Sheundza_), who flourished not very much later than Mencius, came
+forward with the theory that so far from being good according to
+Confucius, or even neutral according to Kao, the nature of man at birth
+is positively evil. He supports this view by the following arguments.
+From his earliest years, man is actuated by a love of gain for his own
+personal enjoyment. His conduct is distinguished by selfishness and
+combativeness. He becomes a slave to envy, hatred, and other passions.
+The restraint of law, and the influence and guidance of teachers, are
+absolutely necessary to good government and the well-being of social
+life. Just as wood must be subjected to pressure in order to make it
+straight, and metal must be subjected to the grindstone in order to
+make it sharp, so must the nature of man be subjected to training
+and education in order to obtain from it the virtues of justice and
+self-sacrifice which characterize the best of the human race. It is
+impossible to maintain that man's nature is good in the same sense
+that his eyes see and his ears hear; for in the latter there is no
+alternative. An eye which does not see, is not an eye; an ear which does
+not hear, is not an ear. This proves that whereas seeing and hearing are
+natural to man, goodness is artificial and acquired. Just as a potter
+produces a dish or a carpenter a bench, working on some material before
+them, so do the sages and teachers of mankind produce righteousness by
+working upon the nature of man, which they transform in the same way
+that the potter transforms the clay or the carpenter the wood. We cannot
+believe that God has favourites, and deals unkindly with others. How,
+then, is it that some men are evil while others are good? The answer
+is, that the former follow their natural disposition, while the latter
+submit to restraints and follow the guidance of their teachers. It
+is indeed true that any one may become a hero, but all men do not
+necessarily become heroes, nor is there any method by which they can be
+forced to do so. If a man is endowed with a capacity for improvement,
+and is placed in the hands of good teachers, associating at the same
+time with friends whose actions display such virtues as self-sacrifice,
+truth, kindness, and so forth, he will naturally imbibe principles which
+will raise him to the same standard; whereas, if he consorts with evil
+livers, he will be a daily witness of deceit, corruption, and general
+impurity of conduct, and will gradually lapse into the same course
+of life. If you do not know your son, says the proverb, look at his
+friends.
+
+The next step was taken by the philosopher Yang Hsiung (_Sheeyoong_),
+53 B.C. to A.D. 18. He started a theory which occupies a middle place
+between the last two theories discussed above, teaching that the nature
+of man at birth is neither wholly good nor wholly evil, but a mixture
+of both, and that development in either direction depends altogether
+on environment. A compromise in matters of faith is not nearly so
+picturesque as an extreme, and Yang's attempted solution has attracted
+but scant attention, though always mentioned with respect. The same may
+also be said of another attempt to smooth obvious difficulties in
+the way of accepting either of the two extremes or the middle course
+proposed by Yang Hsiung. The famous Han Yu, to be mentioned again
+shortly, was a pillar and prop of Confucianism. He flourished between
+A.D. 768 and 824, and performed such lasting services in what was to
+him the cause of truth, that his tablet has been placed in the Confucian
+temple, an honour reserved only for those whose orthodoxy is beyond
+suspicion. Yet he ventured upon an attempt to modify this important
+dogma, taking care all the time to appear as if he were criticizing
+Mencius rather than Confucius, on whom, of course, the real
+responsibility rests. He declared, solely upon his own authority, that
+the nature of man is not uniform but divided into three grades--namely,
+highest, middle, and lowest. Thus, natures of the highest grade are
+good, wholly good, and nothing but good; natures of the lowest grade
+are evil, wholly evil, and nothing but evil; while natures of the middle
+grade may, under right direction, rise to the highest grade, or, under
+wrong direction, sink to the lowest.
+
+Another question, much debated in the age of Mencius, arose out of the
+rival statements of two almost contemporary philosophers, Mo Ti (_Maw
+Tee_) and Yang Chu. The former taught a system of mutual and consequently
+universal love as a cure for all the ills arising from misgovernment
+and want of social harmony. He pointed out, with much truth, that if the
+feudal states would leave one another alone, families cease to quarrel,
+and thieves cease to steal, while sovereign and subject lived on terms
+of benevolence and loyalty, and fathers and sons on terms of kindness
+and filial piety--then indeed the empire would be well governed. But
+beyond suggesting the influence of teachers in the prohibition of hatred
+and the encouragement of mutual love, our philosopher does little or
+nothing to aid us in reaching such a desirable consummation.
+
+The doctrine of Yang Chu is summed up as "every man for himself," and is
+therefore diametrically opposed to that of Mo Ti. A questioner one day
+asked him if he would consent to part with a single hair in order to
+benefit the whole world. Yang Chu replied that a single hair could be
+of no possible benefit to the world; and on being further pressed to
+say what he would do if a hair were really of such benefit, it is stated
+that he gave no answer. On the strength of this story, Mencius said:
+"Yang's principle was, every man for himself. Though by plucking out a
+single hair he might have benefited the whole world, he would not have
+done so. Mo's system was universal love. If by taking off every hair
+from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot he could have
+benefited the empire, he would have done so. Neither of these two
+doctrines is sound; a middle course is the right one."
+
+The origin of the visible universe is a question on which Chinese
+philosophers have very naturally been led to speculate. Legend provides
+us with a weird being named P'an Ku, who came into existence, no one can
+quite say how, endowed with perfect knowledge, his function being to
+set the gradually developing universe in order. He is often represented
+pictorially with a huge adze in his hand, and engaged in constructing
+the world out of the matter which has just begun to take shape. With
+his death the detailed part of creation appeared. His breath became the
+wind; his voice, the thunder; his left eye, the sun; his right eye, the
+moon; his blood yielded rivers; his hair grew into trees and plants; his
+flesh became the soil; his sweat descended as rain; and the parasites
+which infested his body were the forerunners of the human race. This
+sort of stuff, however, could only appeal to the illiterate; for
+intellectual and educated persons something more was required. And so
+it came about that a system, based originally upon the quite
+incomprehensible Book of Changes, generally regarded as the oldest
+portion of the Confucian Canon, was gradually elaborated and brought
+to a finite state during the eleventh and twelfth centuries of our era.
+According to this system, there was a time, almost beyond the reach of
+expression in figures, when nothing at all existed. In the period which
+followed, there came into existence, spontaneously, a principle, which
+after another lapse of time resolved itself into two principles with
+entirely opposite characteristics. One of these principles represented
+light, heat, masculinity, and similar phenomena classed as positive;
+the other represented darkness, cold, femininity, and other phenomena
+classed as negative. The interaction of these two principles in duly
+adjusted proportions produced the five elements, earth, fire, water,
+wood, and metal; and with their assistance all Nature as we see it
+around us was easily and rapidly developed. Such is the Confucian
+theory, at any rate so called, for it cannot be shown that Confucius
+ever entertained these notions, and his alleged connexion with the Canon
+of Changes is itself of doubtful authenticity.
+
+Chuang Tzu (_Chwongdza_), a philosopher of the third and fourth
+centuries B.C., who was not only a mystic but also a moralist and a
+social reformer, has something to say on the subject: "If there is
+existence, there must have been non-existence. And if there was a time
+when nothing existed, then there must have been a time before that, when
+even nothing did not exist. Then when nothing came into existence, could
+one really say whether it belonged to existence or non-existence?"
+
+"Nothing" was rather a favourite term with Chuang Tzu for the exercise
+of his wit. Light asked Nothing, saying: "Do you, sir, exist, or do you
+not exist?" But getting no answer to his question, Light set to work to
+watch for the appearance of Nothing. Hidden, vacuous--all day long he
+looked but could not see it, listened but could not hear it, grasped at
+but could not seize it. "Bravo!" cried Light; "who can equal this? I
+can get to be nothing [meaning darkness], but I can't get to be not
+nothing."
+
+Confucius would have nothing to say on the subject of death and a future
+state; his theme was consistently this life and its obligations, and he
+regarded speculation on the unknown as sheer waste of time. When one
+of three friends died and Confucius sent a disciple to condole with the
+other two, the disciple found them sitting by the side of the corpse,
+merrily singing and playing on the lute. They professed the then
+comparatively new faith which taught that life was a dream and death the
+awakening. They believed that at death the pure man "mounts to heaven,
+and roaming through the clouds, passes beyond the limits of space,
+oblivious of existence, for ever and ever without end." When the shocked
+disciple reported what he had seen, Confucius said, "These men travel
+beyond the rule of life; I travel within it. Consequently, our paths do
+not meet; and I was wrong in sending you to mourn. They look on life as
+a huge tumour from which death sets them free. All the same they know
+not where they were before birth, nor where they will be after death.
+They ignore their passions. They take no account of their ears and
+eyes. Backwards and forwards through all eternity, they do not admit a
+beginning or an end. They stroll beyond the dust and dirt of mortality,
+to wander in the realms of inaction. How should such men trouble
+themselves with the conventionalities of this world, or care what people
+may think of them?"
+
+Life comes, says Chuang Tzu, and cannot be declined; it goes, and cannot
+be stopped. But alas, the world thinks that to nourish the physical
+frame is enough to preserve life. Although not enough, it must still be
+done; this cannot be neglected. For if one is to neglect the physical
+frame, better far to retire at once from the world, since by renouncing
+the world one gets rid of the cares of the world. There is, however,
+the vitality which informs the physical frame; that must be equally an
+object of incessant care. Then he whose physical frame is perfect and
+whose vitality remains in its original purity--he is one with God. Man
+passes through this sublunary life as a sunbeam passes through a crack;
+here one moment, and gone the next. Neither are there any not equally
+subject to the ingress and egress of mortality. One modification brings
+life; then comes another, and there is death. Living creatures cry out;
+human beings feel sorrow. The bow-case is slipped off; the clothes'-bag
+is dropped; and in the confusion the soul wings its flight, and the body
+follows, on the great journey home.
+
+Attention has already been drawn to this necessary cultivation of the
+physical frame, and Chuan Tzu gives an instance of the extent to which
+it was carried. There was a certain man whose nose was covered with a
+very hard scab, which was at the same time no thicker than a fly's wing.
+He sent for a stonemason to chip it off; and the latter plied his adze
+with great dexterity while the patient sat absolutely rigid, without
+moving a muscle, and let him chip. When the scab was all off, the nose
+was found to be quite uninjured. Such skill was of course soon noised
+abroad, and a feudal prince, who also had a scab on his nose, sent for
+the mason to take it off. The mason, however, declined to try, alleging
+that the success did not depend so much upon the skill of the operator
+as upon the mental control of the patient by which the physical frame
+became as it were a perfectly inanimate object.
+
+Contemporary with Chuang Tzu, but of a very different school of thought,
+was the philosopher Hui Tzu (_Hooeydza_). He was particularly fond of
+the quibbles which so delighted the sophists or unsound reasoners of
+ancient Greece. Chuang Tzu admits that he was a man of many ideas,
+and that his works would fill five carts--this, it must be remembered,
+because they were written on slips of wood tied together by a string run
+through eyelets. But he adds that Hui Tzu's doctrines are paradoxical,
+and his terms used ambiguously. Hui Tzu argued, for instance, that such
+abstractions as hardness and whiteness were separate existences, of
+which the mind could only be conscious separately, one at a time.
+He declared that there are feathers in a new-laid egg, because they
+ultimately appear on the chick. He maintained that fire is not hot; it
+is the man who feels hot. That the eye does not see; it is the man who
+sees. That compasses will not make a circle; it is the man. That a bay
+horse and a dun cow are three; because taken separately they are
+two, and taken together they are one: two and one make three. That a
+motherless colt never had a mother; when it had a mother, it was not
+motherless. That if you take a stick a foot long and every day cut it in
+half, you will never come to the end of it.
+
+Of what use, asked his great rival, is Hui Tzu to the world? His efforts
+can only be compared with those of a gadfly or a mosquito. He makes a
+noise to drown an echo. He is like a man running a race with his own
+shadow.
+
+When Chuang Tzu was about to die, his disciples expressed a wish to give
+him a splendid funeral. But Chuang Tzu said: "With heaven and earth
+for my coffin and my shell; with the sun, moon and stars as my burial
+regalia; and with all creation to escort me to my grave,--are not my
+funeral paraphernalia ready to hand?" "We fear," argued the disciples,
+"lest the carrion kite should eat the body of our Master;" to which
+Chuang Tzu replied: "Above ground I shall be food for kites; below
+ground for mole-crickets and ants. Why rob one to feed the other?"
+
+Life in China is not wholly made up of book-learning and commerce. The
+earliest Chinese records exhibit the people as following the chase
+in the wake of the great nobles, more as a sport than as the serious
+business it must have been in still more remote ages; and the first
+emperors of the present dynasty were also notable sportsmen, who
+organized periodical hunting-tours on a scale of considerable
+magnificence.
+
+Hawking was practised at least so far back as a century before Christ;
+for we have a note on a man of that period who "loved to gallop after
+wily animals with horse and dog, or follow up with falcon the pheasant
+and the hare." The sport may be seen in northern China at the present
+day. A hare is put up, and a couple of native greyhounds are dispatched
+after it; these animals, however, would soon be distanced by the hare,
+which can run straight away from them without doubling, but for the
+sudden descent of the falcon, and a blow from its claw, often stunning
+the hare at the first attempt, and enabling the dogs to come up.
+
+Sportsmen who have to make their living by the business frequently
+descend to methods which are sometimes very ingenious, and more
+remunerative than the gun, but can hardly be classified as sport. Thus,
+a man in search of wild duck will mark down a flock settled on some
+shallow sheet of water. He will then put a crate over his head and
+shoulders, and gradually approach the flock as though the crate were
+drifting on the surface. Once among them, he puts out a hand under
+water, seizes hold of a duck's legs, and rapidly pulls the bird down.
+The sudden disappearance of a colleague does not seem to trouble
+its companions, and in a short time a very considerable bag has been
+obtained. Tradition says that Confucius was fond of sport, but would
+never let fly at birds sitting; which, considering that his weapon was a
+bow-and-arrow, must be set down as a marvel of self-restraint.
+
+Scores of Chinese poets have dwelt upon the joys of angling, and fishing
+is widely carried on over the inland waters; but the rod, except as
+a matter of pure sport, has given place to the businesslike net. The
+account of the use of fishing cormorants was formerly regarded as a
+traveller's tale. It is quite true, however, that small rafts carrying
+several of these birds, with a fisherman gently sculling at the stern,
+may be seen on the rivers of southern China. The cormorant seizes a
+passing fish, and the fisherman takes the fish from its beak. The bird
+is trained with a ring round its neck, which prevents it from swallowing
+the prey; while for each capture it is rewarded with a small piece
+of fish. Well-trained cormorants can be trusted to fish without the
+restraint of the ring. Confucius, again, is said to have been fond
+of fishing, but he would not use a net; and there was another sage of
+antiquity who would not even use a hook, but fished with a straight
+piece of iron, apparently thinking that the advantage would be an unfair
+one as against the resources of the fish; and declaring openly that
+he would only take such fish as wished to be caught. By such simple
+narratives do the Chinese strive to convey great truths to childish
+ears.
+
+Many sports were once common in China which have long since passed out
+of the national life, and exist only in the record of books. Among these
+may be mentioned "butting," a very ancient pastime, mentioned in history
+two centuries before the Christian era. The sport consisted in putting
+an ox-skin, horns and all, over the head, and then trying to knock one's
+adversary out of time by butting at him after the fashion of bulls,
+the result being, as the history of a thousand years later tells us,
+"smashed heads, broken arms, and blood running in the Palace yard."
+
+The art of boxing, which included wrestling, had been practised by
+the Chinese several centuries before butting was introduced. Its most
+accomplished exponents were subsequently found among the priests of a
+Buddhist monastery, built about A.D. 500; and it was undoubtedly from
+their successors that the Japanese acquired a knowledge of the modern
+_jiu-jitsu_, which is simply the equivalent of the old Chinese term
+meaning "gentle art." A few words from a chapter on "boxing" in a
+military work of the sixteenth century will give some idea of the scope
+of the Chinese sport.
+
+"The body must be quick to move, the hands quick to take advantage,
+and the legs lightly planted but firm, so as to advance or retire with
+effect. In the flying leap of the leg lies the skill of the art; in
+turning the adversary upside down lies its ferocity; in planting a
+straight blow with the fist lies its rapidity; and in deftly holding the
+adversary face upwards lies its gentleness."
+
+Football was played in China at a very early date; originally, with a
+ball stuffed full of hair; from the fifth century A.D., with an inflated
+bladder covered with leather. A picture of the goal, which is something
+like a triumphal arch, has come down to us, and also the technical names
+and positions of the players; even more than seventy kinds of kicks
+are enumerated, but the actual rules of the game are not known. It is
+recorded by one writer that "the winners were rewarded with flowers,
+fruit and wine, and even with silver bowls and brocades, while the
+captain of the losing team was flogged, and suffered other indignities."
+The game, which had disappeared for some centuries, is now being revived
+in Chinese schools and colleges under the control of foreigners, and
+finds great favour with the rising generation.
+
+Polo is first mentioned in Chinese literature under the year A.D. 710,
+the reference being to a game played before the Emperor and his court.
+The game was very much in vogue for a long period, and even women were
+taught to play--on donkey-back. The Kitan Tartars were the most skilful
+players; it is doubtful if the game originated with them, or if it was
+introduced from Persia, with which country China had relations at a very
+early date. A statesman of the tenth century, disgusted at the way in
+which the Emperor played polo to excess, presented a long memorial,
+urging his Majesty to discontinue the practice. The reasons given for
+this advice were three in number. "(1) When sovereign and subject play
+together, there must be contention. If the sovereign wins, the subject
+is ashamed; if the former loses, the latter exults. (2) To jump on a
+horse and swing a mallet, galloping here and there, with no distinctions
+of rank, but only eager to be first and win, is destructive of all
+ceremony between sovereign and subject. (3) To make light of the
+responsibilities of empire, and run even the remotest risk of an
+accident, is to disregard obligations to the state and to her Imperial
+Majesty the Empress."
+
+It has always been recognized that the chief duty of a statesman is
+to advise his master without fear or favour, and to protest loudly and
+openly against any course which is likely to be disadvantageous to
+the commonwealth, or to bring discredit on the court. It has also been
+always understood that such protests are made entirely at the risk of
+the statesman in question, who must be prepared to pay with his head for
+counsels which may be stigmatized as unpatriotic, though in reality they
+may be nothing more than unpalatable at the moment.
+
+In the year A.D. 814 the Emperor, who had become a devout Buddhist, made
+arrangements for receiving with extravagant honours a bone of Buddha,
+which had been forwarded from India to be preserved as a relic. This was
+too much for Han Yu (already mentioned), the leading statesman of the
+day, who was a man of the people, raised by his own genius, and who, to
+make things worse, had already been banished eleven years previously for
+presenting an offensive Memorial on the subject of tax-collection,
+for which he had been forgiven and recalled. He promptly sent in a
+respectful but bitter denunciation of Buddha and all his works, and
+entreated his Majesty not to stain the Confucian purity of thought by
+tolerating such a degrading exhibition as that proposed. But for the
+intercession of friends, the answer to this bold memorial would have
+been death; as it was he was banished to the neighbourhood of the modern
+Swatow, then a wild and barbarous region, hardly incorporated into the
+Empire. There he set himself to civilize the rude inhabitants, until
+soon recalled and once more reinstated in office; and to this day
+there is a shrine dedicated to his memory, containing the following
+inscription: "Wherever he passed, he purified."
+
+Another great statesman, who flourished over two hundred years later,
+and also several times suffered banishment, in an inscription to the
+honour and glory of his predecessor, put down the following words:
+"Truth began to be obscured and literature to fade; supernatural
+religions sprang up on all sides, and many eminent scholars failed
+to oppose their advance, until Han Yu, the cotton-clothed, arose and
+blasted them with his derisive sneer."
+
+Since the fourteenth century there has existed a definite organization,
+known as the Censorate, the members of which, who are called the "ears
+and eyes" of the sovereign, make it their business to report adversely
+upon any course adopted by the Government in the name of the Emperor,
+or by any individual statesman, which seems to call for disapproval.
+The reproving Censor is nominally entitled to complete immunity from
+punishment; but in practice he knows that he cannot count too much
+upon either justice or mercy. If he concludes that his words will be
+unforgivable, he hands in his memorial, and draws public attention
+forthwith by committing suicide on the spot.
+
+To be allowed to commit suicide, and not to suffer the indignity of a
+public execution, is a privilege sometimes extended to a high official
+whose life has become forfeit under circumstances which do not call for
+special degradation. A silken cord is forwarded from the Emperor to the
+official in question, who at once puts an end to his life, though not
+necessarily by strangulation. He may take poison, as is usually the
+case, and this is called "swallowing gold." For a long time it was
+believed that Chinese high officials really did swallow gold, which in
+view of its non-poisonous character gave rise to an idea that gold-leaf
+was employed, the leaf being inhaled and so causing suffocation. Some
+simple folk, Chinese as well as foreigners, believe this now, although
+native authorities have pointed out that workmen employed in the
+extraction of gold often steal pieces and swallow them, without any
+serious consequences whatever. Another explanation, which has also the
+advantage of being the true one, is that "swallowing gold" is one of the
+roundabout phrases in which the Chinese delight to express painful
+or repulsive subjects. No emperor ever "dies," he becomes "a guest on
+high." No son will say that his parents are "dead;" but merely that
+"they are not." The death of an official is expressed by "he is drawing
+no salary;" of an ordinary man it may be said that "he has become an
+ancient," very much in the same way that we say "he has joined the
+majority." A corpse in a coffin is in its "long home;" when buried,
+it is in "the city of old age," or on "the terrace of night." To say
+grossly, then, that a man took poison would be an offence to ears
+polite.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII--RECREATION
+
+To return, after a long digression. The age of manly sport, as above
+described, has long passed away; and the only hope is for a revival
+under the changing conditions of modern China. Some few athletic
+exercises have survived; and until recently, archery, in which the
+Tartars have always excelled, was regarded almost as a semi-divine
+accomplishment. Kite-flying has reached a high level of skill. Clever
+little "messengers" have been devised, which run up the string, carrying
+fire-crackers which explode at a great height. There is a game of
+shuttlecock, without the battledore, for which the feet are used as
+a substitute; and "diavolo," recently introduced into Europe, is an
+ancient Chinese pastime. A few Manchus, too, may be seen skating during
+the long northern winter, but the modern inhabitant of the Flowery Land,
+be he Manchu or Chinese, much prefers an indoor game to anything
+else, especially when, as is universally the case, a stake of money is
+involved.
+
+Gambling is indeed a very marked feature of Chinese life. A child buying
+a cake will often go double or quits with the stall-keeper, to see if he
+is to have two cakes or nothing, the question being settled by a throw
+of dice in a bowl. Of the interval allowed for meals, a gang of coolies
+will devote a portion to a game of cards. The cards used are smaller
+than the European pack, and of course differently marked; they were the
+invention of a lady of the Palace in the tenth century, who substituted
+imitation leaves of gilt paper for real leaves, which had previously
+been adopted for playing some kind of game. There are also various games
+played with chequers, some of great antiquity; and there is chess, that
+is to say, a game so little differing from our chess as to leave no
+doubt as to the common origin of both. In all of these the money element
+comes in; and it is not too much to say that more homes are broken
+up, and more misery caused by this truly national vice than can be
+attributed to any other cause.
+
+For pleasure pure and simple, independent of gains and losses, the
+theatre occupies the warmest place in every Chinaman's heart. If
+gambling is a national vice in China, the drama must be set off as the
+national recreation. Life would be unthinkable to the vast majority
+if its monotony were not broken by the periodical performance of
+stage-plays. It is from this source that a certain familiarity with the
+great historical episodes of the past may be pleasantly picked up over
+a pipe and a cup of tea; while the farce, occasionally perhaps erring on
+the side of breadth, affords plenty of merriment to the laughter-loving
+crowd.
+
+Ability to make Chinamen laugh is a great asset; and a foreigner who
+carries this about with him will find it stand him in much better stead
+than a revolver. When, many years ago, a vessel was wrecked on the coast
+of Formosa, the crew and passengers were at once seized, and confined
+for some time in a building, where traces of their inscriptions could be
+seen up to quite a recent date. At length, they were all taken out for
+execution; but before the ghastly order was carried out, one of the
+number so amused everybody by cutting capers and turning head over
+heels, that the presiding mandarin said he was a funny fellow, and
+positively allowed him to escape.
+
+With regard to the farce itself, it is not so much the actual wit of
+the dialogue which carries away the audience as the refined skill of the
+actor, who has to pass through many trials before he is considered to be
+fit for the stage. Beginning as quite a boy, in addition to committing
+to memory a large number of plays--not merely his own part, but the
+whole play--he has to undergo a severe physical training, part of which
+consists in standing for an hour every day with his mouth wide open, to
+inhale the morning air. He is taught to sing, to walk, to strut, and to
+perform a variety of gymnastic exercises, such as standing on his head,
+or turning somersaults. His first classification is as male or female
+actor, no women having been allowed to perform since the days of the
+Emperor Ch'ien Lung (A.D. 1736-1796), whose mother was an actress, just
+as in Shakespeare's time the parts for women were always taken by young
+men or boys. When once this is settled, it only remains to enrol him as
+tragedian, comedian, low-comedy actor, walking gentleman or lady, and
+similar parts, according to his capabilities.
+
+It is not too much to say that women are very little missed on the
+Chinese stage. The make-up of the actor is so perfect, and his imitation
+of the feminine voice and manner, down to the smallest detail, even to
+the small feet, is so exact in every point, that he would be a clever
+observer who could positively detect impersonation by a man.
+
+Generally speaking, a Chinese actor has many more difficulties to face
+than his colleague in the West. In addition to the expression of all
+shades of feeling, from mirth to melancholy, the former has to keep up
+a perpetual make-believe in another sense, which is further great
+strain upon his nerves. There being no scenery, no furniture, and no
+appointments of any except the slenderest kind upon the stage, he has
+to create in the minds of his audience a belief that all these missing
+accessories are nevertheless before their eyes. A general comes upon the
+scene, with a whip in his hand, and a studied movement not only suggests
+that he is dismounting from a horse, but outlines the animal itself. In
+the same manner, he remounts and rides off again; while some other actor
+speaks from the top of a small table, which is forthwith transfigured,
+and becomes to all intents and purposes a castle.
+
+Many of those who might be apt to smile at the simple Chinese mind which
+can tolerate such absurdities in the way of make-believe, require to
+be reminded that the stage in the days of Queen Elizabeth was worked on
+very much the same lines. Sir Philip Sidney tells us that the scene of
+an imagined garden with imagined flowers had to do duty at one time for
+an imagined shipwreck, and at another for an imagined battlefield, the
+spectator in the latter case being helped out by two opposing soldiers
+armed with swords and bucklers. Even Shakespeare, in the Prologue to
+his play of _Henry V_, speaks of imagining one man to be an army of a
+thousand, and says:--
+
+     Think, when we talk of horses that you see them
+     Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth;
+     For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings.
+
+Here, then, is good authority for the quaint system that still prevails
+in China.
+
+Hundreds of Chinese pilgrims annually went their weary way to the top of
+Mount Omi in the province of Ssuch'uan, and gaze downward from a sheer
+and lofty precipice to view a huge circular belt of light, which is
+called the Glory of Buddha. Some see it, some do not; the Chinese say
+that the whole thing is a question of faith. In a somewhat similar
+sense, the dramatic enthusiast sees before him such beings of the mind
+as the genuine actor is able to call up. The Philistine cannot reach
+this pitch; but he is sharp enough to see other things which to the eye
+of the sympathetic spectator are absolutely non-existent. Some of the
+latter will be enumerated below.
+
+The Chinese stage has no curtain; and the orchestra is on the stage
+itself, behind the actors. There is no prompter and no call-boy. Stage
+footmen wait at the sides to carry in screens, small tables, and an odd
+chair or two, to represent houses, city walls, and so on, or hand cups
+of tea to the actors when their throats become dry from vociferous
+singing, which is always in falsetto. All this in the face of the
+audience. Dead people get up and walk off the stage; or while lying
+dead, contrive to alter their facial expression, and then get up and
+carry themselves off. There is no interval between one play and the
+next following, which probably gives rise to the erroneous belief
+that Chinese plays are long, the fact being that they are very short.
+According to the Penal Code, there may be no impersonation of emperors
+and empresses of past ages, but this clause is now held to refer solely
+to the present dynasty.
+
+For the man in the street and his children, there are to be seen
+everywhere in China where a sufficient number of people gather together,
+Punch-and-Judy shows of quite a high class in point of skill and general
+attractiveness. These shows are variously traced back to the eighth and
+second centuries B.C., and to the seventh century A.D., even the
+latest of which periods would considerably antedate the appearance of
+performing marionettes in this country or on the Continent. Associated
+with the second century B.C., the story runs that the Emperor of the day
+was closely besieged by a terrible Hun chieftain, who was accompanied
+by his wife. It occurred to one of his Majesty's staff to exhibit on
+the walls of the town, in full view of the enemy, a number of manikins,
+dressed up to a deceptive resemblance to beautiful girls. The wife of
+the Hun chieftain then persuaded her husband to draw off his forces, and
+the Emperor escaped.
+
+By the Chinese marionettes, little plays on familiar subjects are
+performed; many are of a more serious turn than the loves of Mr. Punch,
+while others again are of the knock-about style so dear to the ordinary
+boy and girl. Besides such entertainments as these, the streets of a
+Chinese city offer other shows to those who desire to be amused. An
+acrobat, a rope-dancer or a conjurer will take up a pitch right in the
+middle of the roadway, and the traffic has to get on as best it can.
+A theatrical stage will sometimes completely block a street, and even
+foot-passengers will have to find their way round. There is also the
+public story-reader, who for his own sake will choose a convenient spot
+near to some busy thoroughfare; and there, to an assembled crowd, he
+will read out, not in the difficult book-language, but in the colloquial
+dialect of the place, stories of war and heroism, soldiers led to
+night-attacks with wooden bits in their mouths to prevent them from
+talking in the ranks, the victory of the loyal and the rout and
+slaughter of the rebel. Or it may be a tale of giants, goblins and
+wizards; the bewitching of promising young men by lovely maidens who
+turn out to be really foxes in disguise, ending as usual in the triumph
+of virtue and the discomfiture of vice. The fixed eyes and open mouths
+of the crowd, listening with rapt attention, is a sight which, once
+seen, is not easily forgotten.
+
+For the ordinary man, China is simply peopled with bogies and devils,
+the spirits of the wicked or of those unfortunate enough not to secure
+decent burial with all its accompanying worship and rites. These
+creatures, whose bodies cast no shadow, lurk in dark corners, ready to
+pounce on some unwary passer-by and possibly tear out his heart. Many a
+Confucianist, sturdy in his faith that "devils only exist for those who
+believe in them," will hesitate to visit by night a lonely spot, or even
+to enter a disused tumbledown building by day. Some of the stories
+told are certainly well fitted to make a deep impression upon young
+and highly-strung nerves. For instance, one man who was too fond of
+the bottle placed some liquor alongside his bed, to be drunk during the
+night. On stretching out his hand to reach the flask, he was seized by a
+demon, and dragged gradually into the earth. In response to his shrieks,
+his relatives and neighbours only arrived in time to see the ground
+close over his head, just as though he had fallen into water.
+
+From this story it will be rightly gathered that the Chinese mostly
+sleep on the ground floor. In Peking, houses of more than one storey
+are absolutely barred; the reason being that each house is built round a
+courtyard, which usually has trees in it, and in which the ladies of
+the establishment delight to sit and sew, and take the air and all the
+exercise they can manage to get.
+
+Another blood-curdling story is that of four travellers who arrived by
+night at an inn, but could obtain no other accommodation than a room in
+which was lying the corpse of the landlord's daughter-in-law. Three of
+the four were soon snoring; the fourth, however, remained awake, and
+very soon heard a creaking of the trestles on which was the dead body
+dressed out in paper robes, ready for burial. To his horror he saw the
+girl get up, and go and breathe on his companions; so by the time she
+came to him he had his head tucked well under the bedclothes. After a
+little while he kicked one of the others; but finding that his friend
+did not move, he suddenly grabbed his own trousers and made a bolt for
+the door. In a moment the corpse was up and after him, following him
+down the street, and gaining gradually on him, no one coming to the
+rescue in spite of his loud shrieks as he ran. So he slipped behind
+a tree, and dodged right and left, the infuriated corpse also dodging
+right and left, and making violent efforts to get him. At length, the
+girl made a rush forward with one arm on each side, in the hope of thus
+grabbing her victim. The traveller, however, fell backwards and escaped
+her clutch, while she remained rigidly embracing the tree. By and by he
+was found senseless on the ground; and the corpse was removed from the
+tree, but with great difficulty, as the fingers were buried in the bark
+so deep that the nails were not even visible. The other three travellers
+were found dead in their beds.
+
+Periodical feasting may be regarded as another form of amusement by
+which the Chinese seek to relieve the monotony of life. They have
+never reserved one day in seven for absolute rest, though of late years
+Chinese merchants connected with foreign trade have to some extent
+fallen in with the observance of Sunday. Quite a number of days during
+the year are set apart as public holidays, but no one is obliged to
+keep them as such, unless he likes, with one important exception. The
+festival of the New Year cannot be ignored by any one. For about ten
+days before this date, and twenty days after it, the public offices
+are closed and no business is transacted, the seal of each official is
+handed over for safe keeping to the official's wife, a fact which
+helps to dispose of the libel that women in China are the down-trodden
+creatures they are often represented to be. All debts have to be paid
+and accounts squared by midnight on the last day of the old year. A few
+nights previously, offerings of an excessively sticky sweetmeat are
+made to the Spirit of the Hearth, one of whose functions is that of
+an accusing angel. The Spirit is then on the point of starting for his
+annual visit to heaven, and lest any of the disclosures he might make
+should entail unpleasant consequences, it is adjudged best that he shall
+be rendered incapable of making any disclosures at all. The unwary god
+finds his lips tightly glued together, and is unable to utter a single
+word. Meanwhile, fire-crackers are being everywhere let off on a
+colossal scale, the object being to frighten away the evil spirits which
+have collected during the past twelve months, and to begin the year
+afresh. The day itself is devoted to calling, in one's best clothes,
+on relatives, friends and official superiors, for all of whom it is
+customary to leave a present. The relatives and friends receive "wet"
+gifts, such as fruit or cakes; officials also receive wet gifts, but
+underneath the top layer will be found something "dry," in the shape of
+silver or bank-notes. Everybody salutes everybody with the conventional
+saying, "New joy, new joy; get rich, get rich!" Yet here again, as in
+all things Chinese, we find a striking exception to this good-natured
+rule. No one says "Get rich, get rich!" to the undertaker.
+
+A high authority (on other matters) has recently stated that the Chinese
+calendar "begins just when the Emperor chooses to say it shall. He is
+like the captain of a ship, who says of the hour, 'Make it so,' and
+it is so." The truth is that New Year's Day is determined by the
+Astronomical Board, according to fixed rules, just as Easter is
+determined; and it may fall on any day between the 21st of January and
+the 20th of February, but neither before the former date nor after
+the latter date, in spite even of the most threatening orders from the
+Palace. This book will indeed have been written in vain if the reader
+lays it down without having realized that no such wanton interference on
+the part of their rulers would be tolerated by the Chinese people. But
+we are wandering away from merry-making and festivity.
+
+In their daily life the Chinese are extremely moderate eaters and mostly
+tea-drinkers, even the wealthy confining themselves to few and simple
+dishes of pork, fowl, or fish, with the ever-present accompaniment of
+rice. The puppy-dog, on which the people are popularly believed to live,
+as the French on frogs, is a stall-fed animal, and has always been, and
+still is, an article of food; but the consumption of dog-flesh is really
+very restricted, and many thousands of Chinamen have never tasted dog in
+their lives. According to the popular classification of foods, those
+who live on vegetables get strong, those who live on meat become brave,
+those who live on grain acquire wisdom, and those who live on air become
+divine.
+
+At banquets the scene changes, and course after course of curiously
+compounded and highly spiced dishes, cooked as only Chinese cooks know
+how, are placed before the guests. The wine, too, goes merrily round;
+bumpers are drunk at short intervals, and the wine-cups are held upside
+down, to show that there are no heel-taps. Forfeits are exacted over the
+game of "guess-fingers," for failure to cap a verse, or for any other
+equally sufficient (or insufficient) reason; and the penalty is an extra
+bumper for the loser.
+
+This lively picture requires, perhaps, a little further explanation.
+Chinese "wine" is an ardent spirit distilled from rice, and is modified
+in various ways so as to produce certain brands, some of which are of
+quite moderate strength, and really may be classed as wine. It is always
+drunk hot, the heat being supplied by vessels of boiling water, in which
+the pewter wine-flasks are kept standing. The wine-cups are small, and
+it is possible to drink a good many of them without feeling in the least
+overcome. Even so, many diners now refuse to touch wine at all, the
+excuse always being that it flushes the face uncomfortably. Perhaps
+they fear an undeserved imputation of drunkenness, remembering their own
+cynical saying: "A bottle-nosed man may be a tee-totaller, but no one
+will believe it." To judge from their histories and their poetry, the
+Chinese seem once upon a time to have been a fairly tipsy nation:
+now-a-days, the truth lies the other way. An official who died A.D.
+639, and was the originator of epitaphs in China, wrote his own, as
+follows:--
+
+     Fu I loved the green hills and white clouds . . .
+     Alas! he died of drink!
+
+There are exceptions, no doubt, as to every rule in every country;
+but such sights as drunken men tumbling about the streets, or lying
+senseless by the roadside, are not to be seen in China. "It is not
+wine," says the proverb, "which makes a man drunk; it is the man
+himself."
+
+Even at banquets, which are often very rich and costly, unnecessary
+expense is by no means encouraged. Dishes of fruit, of a kind which no
+one would wish to eat, and which are placed on the table for show or
+ornament, are simply clever imitations in painted wood, and pass from
+banquet to banquet as part of the ordinary paraphernalia of a feast; no
+one is deceived. The same form of open and above-board deception appears
+in many other ways. There are societies organized for visiting in
+a comfortable style of pilgrimage some famous mountain of historic
+interest. Names are put down, and money is collected; and then the party
+starts off by boat or in sedan-chairs, as the case may be. On arriving
+at the mountain, there is a grand feast, and after the picnic, for such
+it is, every one goes home again. That is the real thing; now for the
+imitation. Names are put down, and money is collected, as before; but
+the funds are spent over a feast at home, alongside of a paper mountain.
+
+Another of these deceptions, which deceive nobody, is one which might be
+usefully adapted to life in other countries. A Chinaman meeting in the
+street a friend, and having no leisure to stop and talk, or perhaps
+meeting some one with whom he may be unwilling to talk, will promptly
+put up his open fan to screen his face, and pass on. The suggestion
+is that, wishing to pass without notice, he fails to see the person in
+question, and it would be a serious breach of decorum on the part of the
+latter to ignore the hint thus conveyed.
+
+Japan, who may be said to have borrowed the civilization of China,
+lock, stock and barrel--her literature, her moral code, her arts, her
+sciences, her manners and customs, her ceremonial, and even her
+national dress--invented the folding fan, which in the early part of the
+fifteenth century formed part of the tribute sent from Korea to Peking,
+and even later was looked upon by the Chinese as quite a curiosity. In
+the early ages, fans were made of feathers, as still at the present day;
+but the more modern fan of native origin is a light frame of bamboo,
+wood or ivory, round or otherwise, over which silk is stretched,
+offering a convenient medium for the inscription of poems, or for
+paintings, as exchanged between friend and friend.
+
+The same innocent form of deception, which deceives nobody, is carried
+out when two officials, seated in sedan-chairs, have to pass one
+another. If they are of about equal rank, etiquette demands that they
+should alight from their chairs, and perform mutual salutations. To
+obviate the extreme inconvenience of this rule, large wooden fans are
+carried in all processions of the kind, and these are hastily thrust
+between the passing officials, so that neither becomes aware of the
+other's existence on the scene. The case is different when one of the
+two is of higher rank. The official of inferior grade is bound to stop
+and get out of his chair while his superior passes by, though even now
+he has a chance of escape; he hears the gong beaten to clear the way
+for the great man, whose rank he can tell from the number of consecutive
+blows given; and hurriedly turns off down a side street.
+
+An historical instance of substituting the shadow for the reality is
+that of the great general Ts'ao Ts'ao, third century A.D., who for some
+breach of the law sentenced himself to death, but satisfied his sense
+of justice by cutting off his hair. An emperor of the sixth century,
+who was a devout Buddhist, and therefore unable to countenance any
+destruction of life, had all the sacrificial animals made of dough.
+
+The opium question, which will claim a few words later on, has been
+exhaustively threshed out; and in view of the contradictory statements
+for and against the habit of opium smoking, it is recognized that any
+conclusion, satisfactory to both parties, is a very remote possibility.
+The Chinese themselves, who are chiefly interested in the argument, have
+lately come to a very definite conclusion, which is that opium has
+to go; and it seems that in spite of almost invincible obstacles, the
+sincerity and patriotism which are being infused into the movement will
+certainly, sooner or later, achieve the desired end. It is perhaps worth
+noting that in the Decree of 1906, which ordered the abolition of opium
+smoking, the old Empress Dowager, who was herself over sixty and a
+moderate smoker, inserted a clause excusing from the operation of the
+new law all persons already more than sixty years of age.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX--THE MONGOLS, 1260-1368
+
+Lack of patriotism is often hurled by foreigners as a reproach to the
+Chinese. The charge cannot be substantiated, any more than it could be
+if directed against some nation in Europe. If willingness to sacrifice
+everything, including life itself, may be taken as a fair test of
+genuine patriotism, then it will be found, if historical records be not
+ignored, that China has furnished numberless brilliant examples of true
+patriots who chose to die rather than suffer dishonour to themselves or
+to their country. A single instance must suffice.
+
+The time is the close of the thirteenth century, when the Mongols under
+Kublai Khan were steadily dispossessing the once glorious and powerful
+House of Sung, and placing the empire of China under alien rule.
+Disaster followed disaster, until almost the last army of the Sungs
+was cut to pieces, and the famous statesman and general in command, Wen
+(pronounced _One_) T'ien-hsian, fell into the hands of the Mongols. He
+was ordered, but refused, to write and advise capitulation, and every
+effort was subsequently made to induce him to own allegiance to the
+conquerors. He was kept in prison for three years. "My dungeon," he
+wrote, "is lighted by the will-o'-the-wisp alone; no breath of spring
+cheers the murky solitude in which I dwell. Exposed to mist and dew,
+I had many times thought to die; and yet, through the seasons of two
+revolving years, disease hovered around me in vain. The dank, unhealthy
+soil to me became Paradise itself. For there was that within me which
+misfortune could not steal away; and so I remained firm, gazing at the
+white clouds floating over my head, and bearing in my heart a sorrow
+boundless as the sky."
+
+At length he was summoned into the presence of Kublai Khan, who said
+to him, "What is it you want?" "By the grace of the Sung Emperor," he
+replied, "I became His Majesty's Minister. I cannot serve two masters.
+I only ask to die." Accordingly, he was executed, meeting his death with
+composure, and making an obeisance in the direction of the old capital.
+His last words were, "My work is finished." Compare this with the quiet
+death-bed of another statesman, who flourished in the previous century.
+He had advised an enormous cession of territory to the Tartars, and had
+brought about the execution of a patriot soldier, who wished to recover
+it at all costs. He was loaded with honours, and on the very night he
+died he was raised to the rank of Prince. He was even canonized, after
+the usual custom, as Loyalty Manifested, on a mistaken estimate of his
+career; but fifty years later his title was changed to False and Foul
+and his honours were cancelled, while the people at large took his
+degraded name for use as an alternative to spittoon.
+
+Two names of quite recent patriots deserve to be recorded here as
+a tribute to their earnest devotion to the real interests of their
+country, and incidentally for the far-reaching consequences of their
+heroic act, which probably saved the lives of many foreigners in various
+parts of China. It was during the Boxer troubles in Peking, at the
+beginning of the siege of the legations, that Yuan Ch'ang and Hsu
+Ching-ch'eng, two high Chinese officials, ventured to memorialize the
+Empress Dowager upon the fatal policy, and even criminality, of the
+whole proceedings, imploring her Majesty at a meeting of the Grand
+Council to reconsider her intention of issuing orders for the
+extermination of all foreigners. In spite of their remonstrances, a
+decree was issued to that effect and forwarded to the high authorities
+of the various provinces; but it failed to accomplish what had been
+intended, for these two heroes, taking their lives in their hands, had
+altered the words "slay all foreigners" into "protect all foreigners."
+Some five to six weeks later, when the siege was drawing to a close,
+the alteration was discovered; and next day those two men were hurriedly
+beheaded, meeting death with such firmness and fortitude as only true
+patriotism could inspire.
+
+The Mongols found it no easy task to dispossess the House of Sung, which
+had many warm adherents to its cause. It was in 1206 that Genghis Khan
+began to make arrangements for a projected invasion of China, and by
+1214 he was master of all the enemy's territory north of the Yellow
+River, except Peking. He then made peace with the Golden Tartar emperor
+of northern China; but his suspicions were soon aroused, and hostilities
+were renewed. In 1227 he died, while conducting a campaign in Central
+Asia; and it remained for his vigorous grandson, Kublai Khan, to
+complete the conquest of China more than half a century afterwards. So
+early as 1260, Kublai was able to proclaim himself emperor at Xanadu,
+which means Imperial Capital, and lay about one hundred and eighty miles
+north of modern Peking, where, in those days known as Khan-baligh (Marco
+Polo's Cambaluc), he established himself four years later; but twenty
+years of severe fighting had still to pass away before the empire was
+finally subdued. The Sung troops were gradually driven south, contesting
+every inch of ground with a dogged resistance born of patriotic
+endeavour. In 1278 Canton was taken, and the heroic Wen T'ien-hsiang
+was captured through the treachery of a subordinate. In 1279 the last
+stronghold of the Sungs was beleaguered by land and sea. Shut up in
+their ships which they formed into a compact mass and fortified with
+towers and breastworks, the patriots, deprived of fresh water, harassed
+by attacks during the day and by fire-ships at night, maintained the
+unequal struggle for a month. But when, after a hard day's fighting, the
+Sung commander found himself left with only sixteen vessels, he fled up
+a creek. His retreat was cut off; and then at length despairing of his
+country, he bade his wife and children throw themselves overboard. He
+himself, taking the young emperor on his back, followed their example,
+and thus brought the great Sung dynasty to an end.
+
+The grandeur of Kublai Khan's reign may be gathered from the pages
+of Marco Polo, in which, too, allusion is made to Bayan, the skilful
+general to whom so much of the military success of the Mongols was due.
+Korea, Burma, and Annam became dependencies of China, and continued to
+send tribute as such even up to quite modern times. Hardly so successful
+was Kublai Khan's huge naval expedition against Japan, which, in
+point of number of ships and men, the insular character of the enemy's
+country, the chastisement intended, and the total loss of the fleet in
+a storm, aided by the stubborn resistance offered by the Japanese
+themselves--suggests a very obvious comparison with the object and fate
+of the Spanish Armada.
+
+Among the more peaceful developments of Mongol rule at this epoch may
+be mentioned the introduction of a written character for the Mongol
+language. It was the work of a Tibetan priest, named Baschpa, and was
+based upon the written language of a nation known as the Ouigours (akin
+to the Turks), which had in turn been based upon Syraic, and is written
+in vertical lines connected by ligatures. Similarly, until 1599 there
+was no written Manchu language; a script, based upon the Mongol, was
+then devised, also in vertical lines or columns like Chinese, but read
+from left to right.
+
+Under Kublai Khan the calendar was revised, and the Imperial Academy was
+opened; the Yellow River was explored to its source, and bank-notes were
+made current. The Emperor himself was an ardent Buddhist, but he took
+care that proper honours were paid to Confucius; on the other hand, he
+issued orders that all Taoist literature of the baser kind was to be
+destroyed. Behind all this there was extortionate taxation, a form of
+oppression the Chinese have never learned to tolerate, and discontent
+led to disorder. Kublai's grandson was for a time an honest ruler and
+tried to stem the tide, but by 1368 the mandate of the Mongols was
+exhausted. They were an alien race, and the Chinese were glad to get rid
+of them.
+
+Chinese soldiers are often stigmatized as arrant cowards, who run away
+at the slightest provocation, their first thought being for the safety
+of their own skins. No doubt Chinese soldiers do run away--sometimes; at
+other times they fight to the death, as has been amply proved over and
+over again. It is the old story of marking the hits and not the misses.
+A great deal depends upon sufficiency and regularity of pay. Soldiers
+with pay in arrear, half clad, hungry, and ill armed, as has frequently
+been the case in Chinese campaigns, cannot be expected to do much for
+the flag. Given the reverse of these conditions, things would be likely
+to go badly with the enemy, whosoever he might be.
+
+Underneath a mask of complete facial stolidity, the Chinese conceal one
+of the most exciteable temperaments to be found in any race, as will
+soon be discovered by watching an ordinary street row between a couple
+of men, or still better, women. A Chinese crowd of men--women keep
+away--is a good-tempered and orderly mob, partly because not inflamed
+by drink, when out to enjoy the Feast of the Lanterns, or to watch the
+twinkling lamps float down a river to light the wandering ghosts of the
+drowned on the night of their All Souls' Day, sacred to the memory of
+the dead; but a rumour, a mere whisper, the more baseless often the more
+potent, will transform these law-abiding people into a crowd of fiends.
+In times when popular feeling runs high, as when large numbers of men
+were said to be deprived suddenly and mysteriously of their queues, or
+when the word went round, as it has done on more occasions than one,
+that foreigners were kidnapping children in order to use their eyes for
+medicine,--in such times the masses, incited by those who ought to know
+better, get completely out of hand.
+
+A curious and tragic instance of this excitability occurred some years
+ago. The viceroy of a province had succeeded in organizing a contingent
+of foreign-drilled troops, under the guidance and leadership of two
+qualified foreign instructors. After some time had elapsed, and it was
+thought that the troops were sufficiently trained to make a good show,
+it was arranged that a sham fight should be held in the presence of
+the viceroy himself. The men were divided into two bodies under the
+two foreign commanders, and in the course of operations one body had to
+defend a village, while the other had to attack it. When the time came
+to capture the village at the point of the bayonet, both sides lost
+their heads; there was a fierce hand-to-hand fight in stern reality,
+and before this could be effectively stopped four men had been killed
+outright and sixteen badly wounded.
+
+Considering how squalid many Chinese homes are, it is all the more
+astonishing to find such deep attachment to them. There exists in the
+language a definite word for _home_, in its fullest English sense. As a
+written character, it is supposed to picture the idea of a family, the
+component parts being a "roof" with "three persons" underneath. There
+is, indeed, another and more fanciful explanation of this character,
+namely, that it is composed of a "roof" with a "pig" underneath, the
+forms for "three men" and "pig" being sufficiently alike at any rate
+to justify the suggestion. This analysis would not be altogether out
+of place in China any more than in Ireland; but as a matter of fact the
+balance of evidence is in favour of the "three men," which number, it
+may be remarked, is that which technically constitutes a crowd.
+
+Whatever may be the literary view of the word "home," it is quite
+certain that to the ordinary Chinaman there is no place like it. "One
+mile away from home is not so good as being in it," says a proverb with
+a punning turn which cannot be brought out in English. Another says,
+"Every day is happy at home, every moment miserable abroad." It may
+therefore be profitable to look inside a Chinese home, if only to
+discover wherein its attractiveness lies.
+
+All such homes are arranged more or less on the patriarchal system; that
+is to say, at the head of the establishment are a father and mother, who
+rank equally so far as their juniors are concerned; the mother receiving
+precisely the same share of deference in life, and of ancestral worship
+after death, as the father. The children grow up; wives are sought for
+the boys, and husbands for the girls, at about the ages of eighteen and
+sixteen, respectively. The former bring their wives into the paternal
+home; the latter belong, from the day of their marriage, to the paternal
+homes of their husbands. Bachelors and old maids have no place in the
+Chinese scheme of life. Theoretically, bride and bridegroom are not
+supposed to see each other until the wedding-day, when the girl's veil
+is lifted on her arrival at her father-in-law's house; in practice, the
+young people usually manage to get at least a glimpse of one another,
+usually with the connivance of their elders. Thus the family expands,
+and one of the greatest happinesses which can befall a Chinaman is to
+have "five generations in the hall." Owing to early marriage, this
+is not nearly so uncommon as it is in Western countries. There is an
+authentic record of an old statesman who had so many descendants that
+when they came to congratulate him on his birthdays, he was quite unable
+to remember all their names, and could only bow as they passed in line
+before him.
+
+As to income and expenditure, the earnings of the various members go
+into a common purse, out of which expenses are paid. Every one has a
+right to food and shelter; and so it is that if some are out of work,
+the strain is not individually felt; they take their rations as usual.
+On the death of the father, it is not at all uncommon for the mother to
+take up the reins, though it is more usual for the eldest son to take
+his place. Sometimes, after the death of the mother--and then it is
+accounted a bad day for the family fortunes--the brothers cannot agree;
+the property is divided, and each son sets up for himself, a proceeding
+which is forbidden by the Penal Code during the parents' lifetime.
+Meanwhile, any member of the family who should disgrace himself in any
+way, as by becoming an inveterate gambler and permanently neglecting his
+work, or by developing the opium vice to great excess, would be formally
+cast out, his name being struck off the ancestral register. Men of this
+stamp generally sink lower and lower, until they swell the ranks of
+professional beggars, to die perhaps in a ditch; but such cases are
+happily of rare occurrence.
+
+In the ordinary peaceful family, regulated according to Confucian
+principles of filial piety, fraternal love, and loyalty to the
+sovereign, we find love of home exalted to a passion; and bitter is the
+day of leave-taking for a long absence, as when a successful son starts
+to take up his official appointment at a distant post. The latter, not
+being able to hold office in his native province, may have a long and
+sometimes dangerous journey to make, possibly to the other end of
+the empire. In any case, years must elapse before he can revisit "the
+mulberry and the elm"--the garden he leaves behind. He may take his
+"old woman" and family with him, or they may follow later on; as another
+alternative, the "old woman" with the children may remain permanently
+in the ancestral home, while the husband carries on his official career
+alone. Under such circumstances as the last-mentioned, no one, including
+his own wife, is shocked if he consoles himself with a "small old
+woman," whom he picks up at his new place of abode. The "small old
+woman" is indeed often introduced into families where the "principal old
+woman" fails to contribute the first of "the three blessings of which
+every one desires to have plenty," namely, sons, money, and life.
+Instances are not uncommon of the wife herself urging this course upon
+her husband; and but for this system the family line would often come to
+an end, failing recourse to another system, namely, adoption, which
+is also brought into play when all hope of a lineal descendant is
+abandoned.
+
+Whether she has children or not, the principal wife--the only wife, in
+fact--never loses her supremacy as the head of the household. The late
+Empress Dowager was originally a concubine; by virtue of motherhood she
+was raised to the rank of Western Empress, but never legitimately took
+precedence of the wife, whose superiority was indicated by her title
+of Eastern Empress, the east being more honourable than the west. The
+emperor always sits with his face towards the south.
+
+The story of Sung Hung, a statesman who flourished about the time of the
+Christian era, pleasantly illustrates a chivalrous side of the Chinese
+character. This man raised himself from a humble station in life to be a
+minister of state, and was subsequently ennobled as marquis. The emperor
+then wished him to put away his wife, who was a woman of the people, and
+marry a princess; to which he nobly replied: "Sire, the partner of my
+porridge days shall never go down from my hall."
+
+Of the miseries of exile from the ancestral home, lurid pictures have
+been drawn by many poets and others. One man, ordered from some soft
+southern climate to a post in the colder north, will complain that the
+spring with its flowers is too late in arriving; another "cannot stand
+the water and earth," by which is meant that the climate does not agree
+with him; a third is satisfied with his surroundings, but is still a
+constant sufferer from home-sickness. Such a one was the poet who wrote
+the following lines:--
+
+     Away to the east lie fair forests of trees,
+     From the flowers on the west comes a scent-laden breeze,
+     Yet my eyes daily turn to my far-away home,
+     Beyond the broad river, its waves and its foam.
+
+And such, too, is the note of innumerable songs in exile, written for
+the most part by officials stationed in distant parts of the empire;
+sometimes by exiles in a harsher sense, namely, those persons who have
+been banished to the frontier for disaffection, maladministration
+of government, and like offences. A bright particular gem in Chinese
+literature, referring to love of home, was the work of a young poet who
+received an appointment as magistrate, but threw it up after a tenure of
+only eighty-three days, declaring that he could not "crook the hinges of
+his back for five pecks of rice a day," that being the regulation pay
+of his office. It was written to celebrate his own return, and runs as
+follows:--
+
+"Homewards I bend my steps. My fields, my gardens, are choked with
+weeds: should I not go? My soul has led a bondsman's life: why should I
+remain to pine? But I will waste no grief upon the past: I will devote
+my energies to the future. I have not wandered far astray. I feel that I
+am on the right track once again.
+
+"Lightly, lightly, speeds my boat along, my garments fluttering to the
+gentle breeze. I inquire my route as I go. I grudge the slowness of the
+dawning day. From afar I descry by old home, and joyfully press onwards
+in my haste. The servants rush forth to meet me: my children cluster at
+the gate. The place is a wilderness; but there is the old pine-tree and
+my chrysanthemums. I take the little ones by the hand, and pass in. Wine
+is brought in full bottles, and I pour out in brimming cups. I gaze
+out at my favourite branches. I loll against the window in my new-found
+freedom. I look at the sweet children on my knee.
+
+"And now I take my pleasure in my garden. There is a gate, but it is
+rarely opened. I lean on my staff as I wander about or sit down to
+rest. I raise my head and contemplate the lovely scene. Clouds rise,
+unwilling, from the bottom of the hills: the weary bird seeks its nest
+again. Shadows vanish, but still I linger round my lonely pine. Home
+once more! I'll have no friendships to distract me hence. The times
+are out of joint for me; and what have I to seek from men? In the pure
+enjoyment of the family circle I will pass my days, cheering my idle
+hours with lute and book. My husbandmen will tell me when spring-time
+is nigh, and when there will be work in the furrowed fields. Thither I
+shall repair by cart or by boat, through the deep gorge, over the dizzy
+cliff, trees bursting merrily into leaf, the streamlet swelling from its
+tiny source. Glad is this renewal of life in due season: but for me, I
+rejoice that my journey is over. Ah, how short a time it is that we are
+here! Why, then, not set our hearts at rest, ceasing to trouble whether
+we remain or go? What boots it to wear out the soul with anxious
+thoughts? I want not wealth: I want not power: heaven is beyond my
+hopes. Then let me stroll through the bright hours, as they pass, in my
+garden among my flowers; or I will mount the hill and sing my song, or
+weave my verse beside the limpid brook. Thus will I work out my allotted
+span, content with the appointments of Fate, my spirit free from care."
+
+Besides contributing a large amount of beautiful poetry, this author
+provided his own funeral oration, the earliest which has come down to
+us, written just before his death in A.D. 427. Funeral orations are not
+only pronounced by some friend at the grave, but are further solemnly
+consumed by fire, in the belief that they will thus reach the world of
+spirits, and be a joy and an honour to the deceased, in the same sense
+that paper houses, horses, sedan-chairs, and similar articles, are burnt
+for the use of the dead.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X--MINGS AND CH'INGS, 1368-1911
+
+The first half of the fourteenth century, which witnessed the gradual
+decline of Mongol influence and power, was further marked by the birth
+of a humble individual destined to achieve a new departure in the
+history of the empire. At the age of seventeen, Chu Yuan-chang lost both
+his parents and an elder brother. It was a year of famine, and they died
+from want of food. He had no money to buy coffins, and was forced to
+bury them in straw. He then, as a last resource, decided to enter the
+Buddhist priesthood, and accordingly enrolled himself as a novice; but
+together with the other novices, he was soon dismissed, the priests
+being unable to provide even for their own wants. After this he wandered
+about, and finally joined a party of rebels commanded by one of his own
+uncles. Rapidly rising to the highest military rank, he gradually found
+himself at the head of a huge army, and by 1368 was master of so many
+provinces that he proclaimed himself first emperor of the Great Ming
+dynasty, under the title of Hung (_Hoong_) Wu, and fixed his capital
+at Nanking. In addition to his military genius, he showed almost equal
+skill in the administration of the empire, and also became a liberal
+patron of literature and education. He organized the present system of
+examinations, now in a transition state; restored the native Chinese
+style of dress as worn under the T'ang dynasty, which is still the
+costume seen on the stage; published a Penal Code of mitigated severity;
+drew up a kind of Domesday Book under which taxation was regulated;
+and fixed the coinage upon a proper basis, government notes and copper
+_cash_ being equally current. Eunuchs were prohibited from holding
+official posts, and Buddhism and Taoism were both made state religions.
+
+This truly great monarch died in 1398, and was succeeded by a grandson,
+whose very receding forehead had been a source of much annoyance to his
+grandfather, though the boy grew up clever and could make good verses.
+The first act of this new emperor was to dispossess his uncles of
+various important posts held by them; but this was not tolerated by one
+of them, who had already made himself conspicuous by his talents, and
+he promptly threw off his allegiance. In the war which ensued, victory
+attended his arms throughout, and at length he entered Nanking, the
+capital, in triumph. And now begins one of those romantic episodes which
+from time to time lend an unusual interest to the dry bones of Chinese
+history. In the confusion which followed upon the entry of troops into
+his palace, the young and defeated emperor vanished, and was never seen
+again; although in after years pretenders started up on more than one
+occasion, and obtained the support of many in their efforts to recover
+the throne. It is supposed that the fugitive made his way to the distant
+province of Yunnan in the garb of a Buddhist priest, left to him, so the
+story runs, by his grandfather. After nearly forty years of wandering,
+he is said to have gone to Peking and to have lived in seclusion in the
+palace there until his death. He was recognized by a eunuch from a mole
+on his left foot, but the eunuch was afraid to reveal his identity.
+
+The victorious uncle mounted the throne in the year 1403, under the now
+famous title of Yung Lo (_Yoong Law_), and soon showed that he could
+govern as well as he could fight. He brought immigrants from populous
+provinces to repeople the districts which had been laid waste by war.
+Peking was built, and in 1421 the seat of government was transferred
+thither, where it has remained ever since. A new Penal Code was drawn
+up. Various military expeditions were despatched against the Tartars,
+and missions under the charge of eunuchs were sent to Java, Sumatra,
+Siam, and even reached Ceylon and the Red Sea. The day of doubt in
+regard to the general accuracy of Chinese annals has gone by; were it
+otherwise, a recent (1911) discovery in Ceylon would tend to dispel
+suspicion on one point. A tablet has just been unearthed at Galle,
+bearing an inscription in Arabic, Chinese and Tamil. The Arabic is
+beyond decipherment, but enough is left of the Chinese to show that the
+tablet was erected in 1409 to commemorate a visit by the eunuch Cheng
+Ho, who passed several times backwards and forwards over that route. In
+1411 the same eunuch was sent as envoy to Japan, and narrowly escaped
+with his life.
+
+The emperor was a warm patron of literature, and succeeded in bringing
+about the achievement of the most gigantic literary task that the
+world has ever seen. He employed a huge staff of scholars to compile an
+encyclopaedia which should contain within the compass of a single
+work all that had ever been written in the four departments of (1)
+the Confucian Canon, (2) history, (3) philosophy, and (4) general
+literature, including astronomy, geography, cosmogony, medicine,
+divination, Buddhism, Taoism, handicrafts and arts. The completed work,
+over which a small army of scholars--more than two thousand in all--had
+spent five years, ran to no fewer than 22,877 sections, to which must
+be added an index occupying 60 sections. The whole was bound up (Chinese
+style) in 11,000 volumes, averaging over half-an-inch in thickness, and
+measuring one foot eight inches in length by one foot in breadth. Thus,
+if all these were laid flat one upon another, the column so formed would
+rise considerably higher than the very top of St. Paul's. Further, each
+section contains about twenty leaves, making a total of 917,480 pages
+for the whole work, with a grand total of 366,000,000 words. Taking
+100 Chinese words as the equivalent of 130 English, due to the greater
+condensation of Chinese literary style, it will be found that even the
+mighty river of the _Encyclopedia Britannica_ "shrinks to a rill" when
+compared with this overwhelming specimen of Chinese industry.
+
+It was never printed; even a Chinese emperor, and enthusiastic patron of
+literature to boot, recoiled before the enormous cost of cutting such
+a work on blocks. It was however transcribed for printing, and there
+appear to have been at one time three copies in existence. Two of these
+perished at Nanking with the downfall of the dynasty in 1644, and the
+third was in great part destroyed in Peking during the siege of the
+Legations in 1900. Odd volumes have been preserved, and bear ample
+witness to the extraordinary character of the achievement.
+
+This emperor was an ardent Buddhist, and the priests of that religion
+were raised to high positions and exerted considerable influence at
+court. In times of famine there were loud complaints that some ten
+thousand priests were living comfortably at Peking, while the people of
+several provinces were reduced to eating bark and grass.
+
+The porcelain of the Ming dynasty is famous all over the world. Early in
+the sixteenth century a great impetus was given to the art, owing to
+the extravagant patronage of the court, which was not allowed to pass
+without openly expressed remonstrance. The practice of the pictorial
+art was very widely extended, and the list of Ming painters is endless,
+containing as it does over twelve hundred names, some few of which stand
+for a high level of success.
+
+Towards the close of the sixteenth century the Portuguese appeared upon
+the scene, and settled themselves at Macao, the ownership of which has
+been a bone of contention between China and Portugal ever since. It is
+a delightful spot, with an excellent climate, not very far from Canton,
+and was for some time the residence of the renowned poet Camoens. Not
+far from Macao lies the island of Sancian, where St. Francois Xavier
+died. He was the first Roman Catholic missionary of more modern times
+to China, but he never set foot on the mainland. Native maps mark the
+existence of "Saint's Grave" upon the island, though he was actually
+buried at Goa. There had previously been a Roman Catholic bishop in
+Peking so far back as the thirteenth century, from which date it seems
+likely that Catholic converts have had a continuous footing in the
+empire.
+
+In 1583, Matteo Ricci, the most famous of all missionaries who have
+ever reached China, came upon the scene at Canton, and finally, in
+1601, after years of strenuous effort succeeded in installing himself
+at Peking, with the warm support of the emperor himself, dying there in
+1610. Besides reforming the calendar and teaching geography and science
+in general, he made a fierce attack upon Buddhism, at the same time
+wisely leaving Confucianism alone. He was the first to become aware
+of the presence in China of a Jewish colony, which had been founded
+in 1163. It was from his writings that truer notions of Chinese
+civilization than had hitherto prevailed, began to spread in the West.
+"Mat. Riccius the Jesuite," says Burton in his _Anatomy of Melancholy_
+(1651), "and some others, relate of the industry of the Chinaes most
+populous countreys, not a beggar, or an idle person to be seen, and how
+by that means they prosper and flourish."
+
+In 1625 an important find was made. A large tablet, with a long
+inscription in Chinese and a shorter one in Syraic, was discovered in
+central China. The inscription, in an excellent state of preservation,
+showed that the tablet had been set up in A.D. 781 by Nestorian
+missionaries, and gave a general idea of the object and scope of the
+Christian religion. The genuineness of this tablet was for many years in
+dispute--Voltaire, Renan, and others of lesser fame, regarding it as
+a pious fraud--but has now been established beyond any possibility
+of doubt; its value indeed is so great that an attempt was made quite
+recently to carry it off to America. Nestorian Christianity is mentioned
+by Marco Polo, but disappears altogether after the thirteenth century,
+without leaving any trace in Chinese literature of its once flourishing
+condition.
+
+The last emperor of the Ming dynasty meant well, but succumbed to the
+stress of circumstances. Eunuchs and over-taxation brought about the
+stereotyped consequence--rebellion; rebellion, too, headed by an able
+commander, whose successive victories soon enabled him to assume the
+Imperial title. In the capital all was confusion. The treasury was
+empty; the garrison were too few to man the walls; and the ministers
+were anxious to secure each his own safety. On April 9, 1644, Peking
+fell. During the previous night the emperor, who had refused to flee,
+slew the eldest princess, commanded the empress to commit suicide, and
+sent his three sons into hiding. At dawn the bell was struck for the
+court to assemble; but no one came. His Majesty then ascended the Coal
+Hill in the palace grounds, and wrote a last decree on the lapel of his
+robe: "WE, poor in virtue and of contemptible personality, have incurred
+the wrath of God on high. My ministers have deceived me. I am ashamed to
+meet my ancestors; and therefore I myself take off my crown, and with my
+hair covering my face await dismemberment at the hands of the rebels. Do
+not hurt a single one of my people." He then hanged himself, as also did
+one faithful eunuch; and his body, together with that of the empress,
+was reverently encoffined by the rebels.
+
+So ended the Ming dynasty, of glorious memory, but not in favour of the
+rebel commander, who was driven out of Peking by the Manchus and was
+ultimately slain by local militia in a distant province.
+
+The subjugation of the empire by the victors, who had the disadvantage
+of being an alien race, was effected with comparative ease and rapidity.
+It was carried out by a military occupation of the country, which has
+survived the original necessity, and is part of the system of government
+at the present day. Garrisons of Tartar troops were stationed at various
+important centres of population, each under the command of an officer of
+the highest military grade, whose duty it was to co-operate with, and
+at the same time watch and act as a check upon, the high authorities
+employed in the civil administration. Those Tartar garrisons still
+occupy the same positions; and the descendants of the first battalions,
+with occasional reinforcements from Peking, live side by side and in
+perfect harmony with the strictly Chinese populations, though the two
+races do not intermarry except in very rare cases. These Bannermen, as
+they are called, in reference to eight banners or corps under which they
+are marshalled, may be known by their square heavy faces, which contrast
+strongly with the sharper and more astute-looking physiognomies of the
+Chinese. They speak the dialect of Peking, now regarded as the official
+or "mandarin" language, just as the dialect of Nanking was, so long as
+that city remained the capital of the empire.
+
+In many respects the conquering Tartars have been themselves conquered
+by the people over whom they set themselves to rule. They have adopted
+the language, written and colloquial, of China; and they are fully as
+proud as the purest-blooded Chinese of the vast literature and glorious
+traditions of those past dynasties of which they have made themselves
+joint heirs. Manchu, the language of the conquerors, is still kept
+alive at Peking. By a fiction, it is supposed to be the language of the
+sovereign; but the emperors of China have now in their youth to make a
+study of Manchu, and so do the official interpreters and others whose
+duty it is to translate from Chinese into Manchu all documents submitted
+to what is called the "sacred glance" of His Majesty. In a similar
+sense, until quite a recent date, skill in archery was required of every
+Bannerman; and it was undoubtedly a great wrench when the once fatally
+effective weapon was consigned to an unmerited oblivion. But though
+Bannermen can no longer shoot with the bow and arrow, they still
+continue to draw monthly allowances from state funds, as an hereditary
+right obtained by conquest.
+
+Of the nine emperors of the Manchu, or Great Ch'ing dynasty, who have
+already occupied the dragon throne and have become "guests on high," two
+are deserving of special mention as fit to be ranked among the wisest
+and best rulers the world has ever known. The Emperor K'ang Hsi (_Khahng
+Shee_) began his reign in 1662 and continued it for sixty-one years,
+a division of time which has been in vogue for many centuries past. He
+treated the Jesuit Fathers with kindness and distinction, and
+availed himself in many ways of their scientific knowledge. He was an
+extraordinarily generous and successful patron of literature. His name
+is inseparably connected with the standard dictionary of the Chinese
+language, which was produced under his immediate supervision. It
+contains over forty thousand words, not a great number as compared with
+European languages which have coined innumerable scientific terms,
+but even so, far more than are necessary either for daily life or
+for literary purposes. These words are accompanied in each case by
+appropriate quotations from the works of every age and of every
+style, arranged chronologically, thus anticipating to some extent the
+"historical principles" in the still more wonderful English dictionary
+by Sir James Murray and others, now going through the press. But the
+greatest of all the literary achievements planned by this emperor was a
+general encyclopaedia, not indeed on quite such a colossal scale as that
+one produced under the Ming dynasty and already described, though still
+of respectable dimensions, running as it does in a small-sized
+edition to 1,628 octavo volumes of about 200 pages to each. The term
+encyclopaedia must not be understood in precisely the same sense as in
+Western countries. A Chinese encyclopaedia deals with a given subject
+not by providing an up-to-date article written by some living
+authority, but by exhibiting extracts from authors of all ages, arranged
+chronologically, in which the subject in question is discussed. The
+range of topics, however, is such that the above does not always
+apply--as, for instance, in the biographical section, which consists
+merely of lives of eminent men taken from various sources. In the great
+encyclopaedia under consideration, in addition to an enormous number of
+lives of men, covering a period of three thousand years, there are also
+lives of over twenty-four thousand eminent women, or nearly as many as
+all the lives in our own _National Dictionary of Biography_. An
+original copy of this marvellous production, which by the way is fully
+illustrated, may be seen at the British Museum; a small-sized edition,
+more suitable for practical purposes and printed from movable type, was
+issued about twenty years ago.
+
+Skipping an emperor under whose reign was initiated that violent
+persecution of Roman Catholics which has continued more or less openly
+down to the present day, we come to the second of the two monarchs
+before mentioned, whose long and beneficent reigns are among the real
+glories of the present dynasty.
+
+The Emperor Ch'ien Lung (_Loong_) ascended the throne in 1735, when
+twenty-five years of age; and though less than two hundred years ago,
+legend has been busy with his person. According to some native accounts,
+his hands are said to have reached below his knees; his ears touched his
+shoulders; and his eyes could see round behind his head. This sort of
+stuff, is should be understood, is not taken from reliable authorities.
+It cannot be taken from the dynastic history for the simple reason that
+the official history of a dynasty is not published until the dynasty
+has come to an end. There is, indeed, a faithful record kept of all the
+actions of each reigning emperor in turn; good and evil are set down
+alike, without fear or favour, for no emperor is ever allowed to get a
+glimpse of the document by which posterity will judge him. Ch'ien Lung
+had no cause for anxiety on this score; whatever record might leap
+to light, he never could be shamed. An able ruler, with an insatiable
+thirst for knowledge, and an indefatigable administrator, he rivals
+his grandfather's fame as a sovereign and a patron of letters. His one
+amiable weakness was a fondness for poetry; unfortunately, for his own.
+His output was enormous so far as number of pieces go; these were always
+short, and proportionately trivial. No one ever better illustrated one
+half of the cynical Chinese saying: "We love our own compositions,
+but other men's wives." He disliked missionaries, and forbade the
+propagation of the Christian religion.
+
+After ten years of internal reorganization, his reign became a
+succession of wars, almost all of which were brought to a successful
+conclusion. His generals led a large army into Nepaul and conquered the
+Goorkhas, reaching a point only some sixty miles distant from British
+territory. Burma was forced to pay tribute; Chinese supremacy was
+established in Tibet; Kuldja and Kashgaria were added to the empire; and
+rebellions in Formosa and elsewhere were suppressed. In fifty years the
+population was nearly doubled, and the empire on the whole enjoyed peace
+and prosperity. In 1750 a Portuguese embassy reached Peking; and was
+followed by Lord Macartney's famous mission and a Dutch mission in 1793.
+Two years after the venerable emperor had completed a reign of sixty
+years, the full Chinese cycle; whereupon he abdicated in favour of his
+son, and died in 1799.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI--CHINESE AND FOREIGNERS
+
+A virtue which the Chinese possess in an eminent degree is the rather
+rare one of gratitude. A Chinaman never forgets a kind act; and what
+is still more important, he never loses the sense of obligation to his
+benefactor. Witness to this striking fact has been borne times without
+number by European writers, and especially by doctors, who have
+naturally enjoyed the best opportunities for conferring favours likely
+to make a deep impression. It is unusual for a native to benefit by a
+cure at the hands of a foreign doctor, and then to go away and make no
+effort to express his gratitude, either by a subscription to a hospital,
+a present of silk or tea, or perhaps an elaborate banner with a golden
+inscription, in which his benefactor's skill is likened to that of the
+great Chinese doctors of antiquity. With all this, the patient
+will still think of the doctor, and even speak of him, not always
+irreverently, as a foreign devil. A Chinaman once appeared at a British
+Consulate, with a present of some kind, which he had brought from his
+home a hundred miles away, in obedience to the command of his dying
+father, who had formerly been cured of ophthalmia by a foreign doctor,
+and who had told him, on his deathbed, "never to forget the English."
+Yet this present was addressed in Chinese: "To His Excellency the Great
+English Devil, Consul X."
+
+The Chinaman may love you, but you are a devil all the same. It is most
+natural that he should think so. For generation upon generation China
+was almost completely isolated from the rest of the world. The people of
+her vast empire grew up under influences unchanged by contact with other
+peoples. Their ideals became stereotyped from want of other ideals to
+compare with, and possibly modify, their own. Dignity of deportment
+and impassivity of demeanour were especially cultivated by the ruling
+classes. Then the foreign devil burst upon the scene--a being as
+antagonistic to themselves in every way as it is possible to conceive.
+We can easily see, from pictures, not intended to be caricatures, what
+were the chief features of the foreigner as viewed by the Chinaman. Red
+hair and blue eyes, almost without exception; short and extremely tight
+clothes; a quick walk and a mobility of body, involving ungraceful
+positions either sitting or standing; and with an additional feature
+which the artist could not portray--an unintelligible language
+resembling the twittering of birds. Small wonder that little children
+are terrified at these strange beings, and rush shrieking into their
+cottages as the foreigner passes by. It is perhaps not quite so easy to
+understand why the Mongolian pony has such a dread of the foreigner and
+usually takes time to get accustomed to the presence of a barbarian;
+some ponies, indeed, will never allow themselves to be mounted unless
+blindfolded. Then there are the dogs, who rush out and bark, apparently
+without rhyme or reason, at every passing foreigner. The Chinese have a
+saying that one dog barks at nothing and the rest bark at him; but that
+will hardly explain the unfailing attack so familiar to every one who
+has rambled through country villages. The solution of this puzzle was
+extracted with difficulty from an amiable Chinaman who explained that
+what the animals, and indeed his fellow-countrymen as well, could
+not help noticing, was the frowzy and very objectionable smell of
+all foreigners, which, strangely enough, is the very accusation which
+foreigners unanimously bring against the Chinese themselves.
+
+Compare these characteristics with the universal black hair and black
+eyes of men and women throughout China, exclusive of a rare occasional
+albino; with the long, flowing, loose robes of officials and of the
+well-to-do; with their slow and stately walk and their rigid formality
+of position, either sitting or standing. To the Chinese, their own
+language seems to be the language of the gods; they know they have
+possessed it for several thousand years, and they know nothing at all
+of the barbarian. Where does he come from? Where can he come from except
+from the small islands which fringe the Middle Kingdom, the world, in
+fact, bounded by the Four Seas? The books tell us that "Heaven is round,
+Earth is square;" and it is impossible to believe that those books,
+upon the wisdom of which the Middle Kingdom was founded, can possibly be
+wrong. Such was a very natural view for the Chinaman to take when first
+brought really face to face with the West; and such is the view that
+in spite of modern educational progress is still very widely held. The
+people of a country do not unlearn in a day the long lessons of the
+past. He was quite a friendly mandarin, taking a practical view of
+national dress, who said in conversation: "I can't think why you
+foreigners wear your clothes so tight; it must be very difficult to
+catch the fleas."
+
+As an offset against the virtue of gratitude must be placed the
+deep-seated spirit of revenge which animates all classes. Though not
+enumerated among their own list of the Seven passions--joy, anger,
+sorrow, fear, love, hatred and desire--it is perhaps the most
+over-mastering passion to which the Chinese mind is subject. It is
+revenge which prompts the unhappy daughter-in-law to throw herself down
+a well, consoled by the thought of the trouble, if not ruin, she is
+bringing on her persecutors. Revenge, too, leads a man to commit suicide
+on the doorstep of some one who has done him an injury, for he well
+knows what it means to be entangled in the net which the law throws over
+any one on whose premises a dead body may thus be found. There was once
+an absurd case of a Chinese woman, who deliberately walked into a pond
+until the water reached up to her knees, and remained there, alternately
+putting her lips below the surface, and threatening in a loud voice
+to drown herself on the spot, as life had been made unbearable by the
+presence of foreign barbarians. In this instance, had the suicide
+been carried out, vengeance would have been wreaked in some way on the
+foreigner by the injured ghost of the dead woman.
+
+The germ of this spirit of revenge, this desire to get on level terms
+with an enemy, as when a life is extracted for a life, can be traced,
+strangely enough, to the practice of filial piety and fraternal love,
+the very cornerstone of good government and national prosperity. In the
+Book of Rites, which forms a part of the Confucian Canon, and contains
+rules not only for the performance of ceremonies but also for the
+guidance of individual conduct, the following passage occurs: "With the
+slayer of his father, a man may not live under the same sky; against
+the slayer of his brother, a man must never have to go home to fetch a
+weapon; with the slayer of his friend, a man may not live in the same
+state." Being now duly admitted among the works which constitute the
+Confucian Canon, the above-mentioned Book of Rites enjoys an authority
+to which it can hardly lay claim on the ground of antiquity. It is a
+compilation made during the first century B.C., and is based, no doubt,
+on older existing documents; but as it never passed under the editorship
+of either Confucius or Mencius, it would be unfair to jump to the
+conclusion that either of these two sages is in any way responsible
+for, or would even acquiesce in, a system of revenge, the only result of
+which would be an endless chain of bloodshed and murder. The Chinese are
+certainly as constant in their hates as in their friendships. To use a
+phrase from their own language, if they love a man, they love him to the
+life; if they hate a man they hate him to the death. As we have already
+noted, the Old Philosopher urged men to requite evil with good; but
+Confucius, who was only a mortal himself, and knew the limitations
+of mortality, substituted for an ideal doctrine the more practical
+injunction to requite evil with justice. It is to be feared that the
+Chinese people fall short in practice even of this lower standard. "Be
+just to your enemy" is a common enough maxim; but one for which only a
+moderate application can be claimed.
+
+It has often been urged against the Chinese that they have very little
+idea of time. A friendly Chinaman will call, and stay on so persistently
+that he often outstays his welcome. This infliction is recognized and
+felt by the Chinese themselves, who have certain set forms of words by
+which they politely escape from a tiresome visitor; among their vast
+stores of proverbs they have also provided one which is much to the
+point: "Long visits bring short compliments." Also, in contradiction of
+the view that time is no value to the Chinaman, there are many familiar
+maxims which say, "Make every inch of time your own!" "Half-an-hour is
+worth a thousand ounces of silver," etc. An "inch of time" refers to the
+sundial, which was known to the Chinese in the earliest ages, and
+was the only means they had for measuring time until the invention
+or introduction--it is not certain which--of the more serviceable
+_clepsydra_, or water-clock, already mentioned.
+
+This consists of several large jars of water, with a tube at the bottom
+of each, placed one above another on steps, so that the tube of an upper
+jar overhangs the top of a lower jar. The water from the top jar is made
+to drip through its tube into the second jar, and so into a vessel at
+the bottom, which contains either the floating figure of a man, or some
+other kind of index to mark the rise of the water on a scale divided
+into periods of two hours each. The day and night were originally
+divided by the Chinese into twelve such periods; but now-a-days
+watches and clocks are in universal use, and the European division into
+twenty-four hours prevails everywhere. Formerly, too, sticks of incense,
+to burn for a certain number of hours, as well as graduated candles,
+made with the assistance of the water-clock, were in great demand; these
+have now quite disappeared as time-recorders.
+
+The Chinese year is a lunar year. When the moon has travelled twelve
+times round the earth, the year is completed. This makes it about ten
+days short of our solar year; and to bring things right again, an extra
+month, that is a thirteenth month, is inserted in every three years.
+When foreigners first began to employ servants extensively, the latter
+objected to being paid their wages according to the European system, for
+they complained that they were thus cheated out of a month's wages in
+every third year. An elaborate official almanack is published annually
+in Peking, and circulated all over the empire; and in addition to such
+information as would naturally be looked for in a work of the kind, the
+public are informed what days are lucky, and what days are unlucky, the
+right and the wrong days for doing or abstaining from doing this, that,
+or the other. The anniversaries of the death-days of the sovereigns
+of the ruling dynasty are carefully noted; for on such days all the
+government offices are supposed to be shut. Any foreign official who
+wishes to see a mandarin for urgent business will find it possible to do
+so, but the visitor can only be admitted through a side-door; the
+large entrance-gate cannot possibly be opened under any circumstances
+whatever.
+
+No notice of the Chinese people, however slight or general in character,
+could very well attain its object unless accompanied by some more
+detailed account of their etiquette than is to be gathered from the
+few references scattered over the preceding pages. Correct behaviour,
+whether at court, in the market-place, or in the seclusion of private
+life, is regarded as of such extreme importance--and breaches of
+propriety in this sense are always so severely frowned upon--that it
+behoves the foreigner who would live comfortably and at peace with
+his Chinese neighbours, to pick up at least a casual knowledge of an
+etiquette which in outward form is so different from his own, and yet in
+spirit is so identically the same. A little judicious attention to these
+matters will prevent much unnecessary friction, leading often to a
+row, and sometimes to a catastrophe. Chinese philosophers have fully
+recognized in their writings that ceremonies and salutations and bowings
+and scrapings and rules of precedence and rules of the road are not of
+any real value when considered apart from the conditions with which they
+are usually associated; at the same time they argue that without
+such conventional restraints, nothing but confusion would result.
+Consequently, a regular code of etiquette has been produced; but as this
+deals largely with court and official ceremonial, and a great part of
+the remainder has long since been quietly ignored, it is more to the
+point to turn to the unwritten code which governs the masses in their
+everyday life.
+
+For the foreigner who would mix easily with the Chinese people, it is
+above all necessary to understand not only that the street regulations
+of Europe do not apply in China; but also that he will there find a set
+of regulations which are tacitly agreed upon by the natives, and which,
+if examined without prejudice, can only be regarded as based on common
+sense. An ordinary foot-passenger, meeting perhaps a coolie with two
+buckets of water suspended one at each end of a bamboo pole, or carrying
+a bag of rice, weighing one, two, or even three hundredweight, is
+bound to move out of the burden-carrier's path, leaving to him whatever
+advantages the road may offer. This same coolie, meeting a sedan chair
+borne by two or more coolies like himself, must at once make a similar
+concession, which is in turn repeated by the chair-bearers in favour of
+any one riding a horse. On similar grounds, an empty sedan-chair must
+give way to one in which there is a passenger; and though not exactly
+on such rational grounds, it is understood that horse, chair, coolie and
+foot-passenger all clear the road for a wedding or other procession, as
+well as for the retinue of a mandarin. A servant, too, should stand
+at the side of the road to let his master pass. As an exception to the
+general rule of common sense which is so very noticeable in all Chinese
+institutions, if only one takes the trouble to look for it, it seems to
+be an understood thing that a man may not only stand still wherever
+he pleases in a Chinese thoroughfare, but may even place his burden or
+barrow, as the fancy seizes him, sometimes right in the fairway, from
+which point he will coolly look on at the streams of foot-passengers
+coming and going, who have to make the best of their way round such
+obstructions. It is partly perhaps on this account that friends who
+go for a stroll together never walk abreast but always in single file,
+shouting out their conversation for all the world to hear; this, too,
+even in the country, where a more convenient formation would often, but
+not always, be possible. Shopkeepers may occupy the path with tables
+exposing their wares, and itinerant stall-keepers do not hesitate to
+appropriate a "pitch" wherever trade seems likely to be brisk. The
+famous saying that to have freedom we must have order has not entered
+deeply into Chinese calculations. Freedom is indeed a marked feature of
+Chinese social life; some small sacrifices in the cause of order would
+probably enhance rather than diminish the great privileges now enjoyed.
+
+A few points are of importance in the social etiquette of indoor life,
+and should not be lightly ignored by the foreigner, who, on the other
+hand, would be wise not to attempt to substitute altogether Chinese
+forms and ceremonies for his own. Thus, no Chinaman, and, it may be
+added, no European who knows how to behave, fails to rise from his chair
+on the entrance of a visitor; and it is further the duty of a host to
+see that his visitor is actually seated before he sits down himself.
+It is extremely impolite to precede a visitor, as in passing through a
+door; and on parting, it is usual to escort him to the front entrance.
+He must be placed on the left of the host, this having been the post of
+honour for several centuries, previous to which it was the seat to the
+right of the host, as with us, to which the visitor was assigned. At
+such interviews it would not be correct to allude to wives, who are no
+more to be mentioned than were the queen of Spain's legs.
+
+One singular custom in connection with visits, official and otherwise,
+ignorance of which has led on many occasions to an awkward moment, is
+the service of what is called "guest-tea." At his reception by the host
+every visitor is at once supplied with a cup of tea. The servant brings
+two cups, one in each hand, and so manages that the cup in his left hand
+is set down before the guest, who faces him on his right hand, while
+that for his master is carried across and set down in an exactly
+opposite sense. The tea-cups are so handed, as it were with crossed
+hands, even when the host, as an extra mark of politeness, receives that
+intended for his visitor, and himself places it on the table, in this
+case being careful to use _both_ hands, it being considered extremely
+impolite to offer anything with one hand only employed. Now comes the
+point of the "guest-tea," which, as will be seen, it is quite worth
+while to remember. Shortly after the beginning of the interview, an
+unwary foreigner, as indeed has often been the case, perhaps because
+he is thirsty, or because he may think it polite to take a sip of the
+fragrant drink which has been so kindly provided for him, will raise
+the cup to his lips. Almost instantaneously he will hear a loud shout
+outside, and become aware that the scene is changing rapidly for no very
+evident reason--only too evident, however, to the surrounding Chinese
+servants, who know it to be their own custom that so soon as a visitor
+tastes his "guest-tea," it is a signal that he wishes to leave, and that
+the interview is at an end. The noise is simply a bawling summons to get
+ready his sedan-chair, and the scurrying of his coolies to be in their
+places when wanted. There is another side to this quaint custom, which
+is often of inestimable advantage to a busy man. A host, who feels that
+everything necessary has been said, and wishes to free himself from
+further attendance, may grasp his own cup and invite his guest to drink.
+The same results follow, and the guest has no alternative but to rise
+and take his leave. In ancient days visitors left their shoes outside
+the front door, a custom which is still practised by the Japanese, the
+whole of whose civilization--this cannot be too strongly emphasized--was
+borrowed originally from China.
+
+It is considered polite to remove spectacles during an interview, or
+even when meeting in the street; though as this rather unreasonable
+rule has been steadily ignored by foreigners, chiefly, no doubt, from
+unacquaintance with it, the Chinese themselves make no attempt to
+observe it so far as foreigners are concerned. In like manner, it is
+most unbecoming for any "read-book man," no matter how miserably poor he
+is, to receive a stranger, or be seen himself abroad, in short clothes;
+but this rule, too, is often relaxed in the presence of foreigners, who
+wear short clothes themselves. Honest poverty is no crime in China,
+nor is it in any way regarded as cause for shame; it is even more amply
+redeemed by scholarship than is the case in Western countries. A man
+who has gained a degree moves on a different level from the crowd around
+him, so profound is the respect shown to learning. If a foreigner can
+speak Chinese intelligibly, his character as a barbarian begins to be
+perceptibly modified; and if to the knack of speech he adds a tolerable
+acquaintance with the sacred characters which form the written language,
+he becomes transfigured, as one in whom the influence of the holy men of
+old is beginning to prevail over savagery and ignorance.
+
+It is not without reason that the term "sacred" is applied above to the
+written words or characters. The Chinese, recognizing the extraordinary
+results which have been brought about, silently and invisibly, by
+the operation of written symbols, have gradually come to invest these
+symbols with a spirituality arousing a feeling somewhat akin to worship.
+A piece of paper on which a single word has once been written or
+printed, becomes something other than paper with a black mark on it.
+It may not be lightly tossed about, still less trampled underfoot; it
+should be reverently destroyed by fire, here again used as a medium of
+transmission to the great Beyond; and thus its spiritual essence will
+return to those from whom it originally came. In the streets of a
+Chinese city, and occasionally along a frequented highroad, may be seen
+small ornamental structures into which odd bits of paper may be thrown
+and burnt, thus preventing a desecration so painful to the Chinese mind;
+and it has often been urged against foreigners that because they are
+so careless as to what becomes of their written and printed paper, the
+matter contained in foreign documents and books must obviously be of no
+great value. It is even considered criminal to use printed matter for
+stiffening the covers or strengthening the folded leaves of books; still
+more so, to employ it in the manufacture of soles for boots and shoes,
+though in such cases as these the weakness of human nature usually
+carries the day. Still, from the point of view of the Taoist faith, the
+risk is too serious to be overlooked. In the sixth of the ten Courts of
+Purgatory, through one or more of which sinners must pass after death in
+order to expiate their crimes on earth, provision is made for those who
+"scrape the gilding from the outside of images, take holy names in vain,
+show no respect for written paper, throw down dirt and rubbish near
+pagodas and temples, have in their possession blasphemous or obscene
+books and do not destroy them, obliterate or tear books which teach man
+to be good," etc., etc.
+
+In this, the sixth Court, presided over, like all the others, by a
+judge, and furnished with all the necessary means and appliances for
+carrying out the sentences, there are sixteen different wards where
+different punishments are applied according to the gravity of the
+offence. The wicked shade may be sentenced to kneel for long periods on
+iron shot, or to be placed up to the neck in filth, or pounded till the
+blood runs out, or to have the mouth forced open with iron pincers and
+filled with needles, or to be bitten by rats, or nipped by locusts while
+in a net of thorns, or have the heart scratched, or be chopped in two
+at the waist, or have the skin of the body torn off and rolled up into
+spills for lighting pipes, etc. Similar punishments are awarded for
+other crimes; and these are to be seen depicted on the walls of the
+municipal temple, to be found in every large city, and appropriately
+named the Chamber of Horrors. It is doubtful if such ghastly
+representations of what is to be expected in the next world have really
+any deterrent effect upon even the most illiterate of the masses;
+certainly not so long as health is present and things are generally
+going well. "The devil a monk" will any Chinaman be when the conditions
+of life are satisfactory to him.
+
+As has already been stated, his temperament is not a religious one; and
+even the seductions and threats of Buddhism leave him to a great extent
+unmoved. He is perhaps chiefly influenced by the Buddhist menace of
+rebirth, possibly as a woman, or worse still as an animal. Belief
+in such a contingency may act as a mild deterrent under a variety of
+circumstances; it certainly tends to soften his treatment of domestic
+animals. Not only because he may some day become one himself, but also
+because among the mules or donkeys which he has to coerce through long
+spells of exhausting toil, he may be unwittingly belabouring some friend
+or acquaintance, or even a member of his own particular family. This
+belief in rebirth is greatly strengthened by a large number of recorded
+instances of persons who could recall events which had happened in their
+own previous state of existence, and whose statements were capable of
+verification. Occasionally, people would accurately describe places and
+buildings which they could not have visited, while many would entertain
+a dim consciousness of scenes, sights and sounds, which seemed to belong
+to some other than the present life. There is a record of one man who
+could remember having been a horse, and who vividly recalled the pain he
+had suffered when riders dug their knees hard into his sides. This, too,
+in spite of the administration in Purgatory of a cup of forgetfulness,
+specially designed to prevent in those about to reborn any remembrance
+of life during a previous birth.
+
+After all, the most awful punishment inflicted in Purgatory upon sinners
+is one which, being purely mental, may not appeal so powerfully to the
+masses as the coarse tortures mentioned above. In the fifth Court, the
+souls of the wicked are taken to a terrace from which they can hear and
+see what goes on in their old homes after their own deaths. "They see
+their last wishes disregarded, and their instructions disobeyed. The
+property they scraped together with so much trouble is dissipated and
+gone. The husband thinks of taking another wife; the widow meditates
+second nuptials. Strangers are in possession of the old estate; there
+is nothing to divide amongst the children. Debts long since paid are
+brought again for settlement, and the survivors are called upon to
+acknowledge false claims upon the departed. Debts owed are lost for want
+of evidence, with endless recriminations, abuse, and general confusion,
+all of which falls upon the three families--father's, mother's, and
+wife's--connected with the deceased. These in their anger speak ill of
+him that is gone. He sees his children become corrupt, and friends
+fall away. Some, perhaps, may stroke the coffin and let fall a tear,
+departing quickly with a cold smile. Worse than that, the wife sees her
+husband tortured in gaol; the husband sees his wife a victim to some
+horrible disease, lands gone, houses destroyed by flood or fire, and
+everything in an unutterable plight--the reward of former sins."
+
+Confucius declined absolutely to discuss the supernatural in any form
+or shape, his one object being to improve human conduct in this life,
+without attempting to probe that state from which man is divided by
+death. At the same time, he was no scoffer; for although he declared
+that "the study of the supernatural is injurious indeed," and somewhat
+cynically bade his followers "show respect to spiritual beings, but keep
+them at a distance," yet in another passage we read: "He who offends
+against God has no one to whom he can pray." Again, when he was
+seriously ill, a disciple asked if he might offer up prayer. Confucius
+demurred to this, pointing out that he himself had been praying for a
+considerable period; meaning thereby that his life had been one long
+prayer.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII--THE OUTLOOK
+
+There is a very common statement made by persons who have lived in
+China--among the people, but not of them--and the more superficial the
+acquaintance, the more emphatically is the statement made, that the
+ordinary Chinaman, be he prince or peasant, offers to the Western
+observer an insoluble puzzle in every department of his life. He is, in
+fact, a standing enigma; a human being, it may be granted, but one who
+can no more be classed than his unique monosyllabic language, which
+still stands isolated and alone.
+
+This estimate is largely based upon some exceedingly false inferences.
+It seems to be argued that because, in a great many matters, the
+Chinaman takes a diametrically opposite view to our own, he must
+necessarily be a very eccentric fellow; but as these are mostly matters
+of convention, the argument is just as valid against us as against him.
+"Strange people, those foreigners," he may say, and actually does say;
+"they make their compass point north instead of south. They take off
+their hats in company instead of keeping them on. They mount a horse
+on its left instead of on its right side. They begin dinner with soup
+instead of dessert, and end it with dessert instead of soup. They drink
+their wine cold instead of hot. Their books all open at the wrong end,
+and the lines in a page are horizontal instead of vertical. They put
+their guests on the right instead of on the left, though it is true that
+we did that until several hundred years ago. Their music, too, is so
+funny, it is more like noise; and as for their singing, it is only
+very loud talking. Then their women are so immodest; striding about in
+ball-rooms with very little on, and embracing strange men in a whirligig
+which they call dancing, but very unlike the dignified movements which
+our male dancers exhibit in the Confucian temple. Their men and women
+shake hands, though know from our sacred Book of Rites that men and
+women should not even pass things from one to another, for fear their
+hands should touch. Then, again, all foreigners, sometimes the women
+also, carry sticks, which can only be for beating innocent people; and
+their so-called mandarins and others ride races and row boats, instead
+of having coolies to do these things for them. They are strange people
+indeed; very clever at cunning, mechanical devices, such as fire-ships,
+fire-carriages, and air-cars; but extremely ferocious and almost
+entirely uncivilized."
+
+Such would be a not exaggerated picture of the mental attitude of
+the Chinaman towards his enigma, the foreigner. From the Chinaman's
+imperturbable countenance the foreigner seeks in vain for some
+indications of a common humanity within; and simply because he has not
+the wit to see it, argues that it is not there. But there it is all the
+time. The principles of general morality, and especially of duty towards
+one's neighbour, the restrictions of law, and even the conventionalities
+of social life, upon all of which the Chinaman is more or less nourished
+from his youth upwards, remain, when accidental differences have been
+brushed away, upon a bed-rock of ground common to both East and West;
+and it is difficult to see how such teachings could possibly turn out a
+race of men so utterly in contrast with the foreigner as the Chinese
+are usually supposed to be. It is certain that anything like a full
+and sincere observance of the Chinese rules of life would result in a
+community of human beings far ahead of the "pure men" dreamt of in the
+philosophy of the Taoists.
+
+As has already been either stated or suggested, the Chinese seem to be
+actuated by precisely the same motives which actuate other peoples. They
+delight in the possession of wealth and fame, while fully alive to the
+transitory nature of both. They long even more for posterity, that
+the ancestral line may be carried on unbroken. They find their chief
+pleasures in family life, and in the society of friends, of books, of
+mountains, of flowers, of pictures, and of objects dear to the collector
+and the connoisseur. Though a nation of what the Scotch would call
+"sober eaters," they love the banquet hour, and to a certain extent
+verify their own saying that "Man's heart is next door to his stomach."
+In centuries past a drunken nation, some two to three hundred years
+ago they began to come under the influence of opium, and the abuse of
+alcohol dropped to a minimum. Opium smoking, less harmful a great deal
+than opium eating, took the place of drink, and became the national
+vice; but the extent of its injury to the people has been much
+exaggerated, and is not to be compared with that of alcohol in the West.
+It is now, in consequence of recent legislation, likely to disappear, on
+which result there could be nothing but the warmest congratulations to
+offer, but for the fact that something else, more insidious and deadly
+still, is rapidly taking its place. For a time, it was thought that
+alcohol might recover its sway, and it is still quite probable that
+human cravings for stimulant of some kind will find a partial relief in
+that direction. The present enemy, however, and one that demands serious
+and immediate attention, is morphia, which is being largely imported
+into China in the shape of a variety of preparations suitable to the
+public demand. A passage from opium to morphia would be worse, if
+possible, than from the frying-pan into the fire.
+
+The question has often been asked, but has never found a satisfactory
+answer, why and how it is that Chinese civilization has persisted
+through so many centuries, while other civilizations, with equal if not
+superior claims to permanency, have been broken up and have disappeared
+from the sites on which they formerly flourished. Egypt may be able to
+boast of a high level of culture at a remoter date than we can reach
+through the medium of Chinese records, for all we can honestly claim
+is that the Chinese were a remarkably civilized nation a thousand years
+before Christ. That was some time before Greek civilization can be said
+to have begun; yet the Chinese nation is with us still, and but for
+contact with the Western barbarian, would be leading very much the same
+life that it led so many centuries ago.
+
+Some would have us believe that the bond which has held the people
+together is the written language, which is common to the whole Empire,
+and which all can read in the same sense, though the pronunciation of
+words varies in different provinces as much as that of words in English,
+French, or German. Others have suggested that to the teachings of
+Confucius, which have outlived the competition of Taoism, Buddhism and
+other faiths, China is indebted for the tie which has knitted men's
+hearts together, and enabled them to defy any process of disintegration.
+There is possibly some truth in all such theories; but these are
+incomplete unless a considerable share of the credit is allowed to the
+spirit of personal freedom which seems to breathe through all Chinese
+institutions, and to unite the people in resistance to every form of
+oppression. The Chinese have always believed in the divine right of
+kings; on the other hand, their kings must bear themselves as kings, and
+live up to their responsibilities as well as to the rights they claim.
+Otherwise, the obligation is at an end, and their subjects will have
+none of them. Good government exists in Chinese eyes only when
+the country is prosperous, free from war, pestilence and famine.
+Misgovernment is a sure sign that God has withdrawn His mandate from the
+emperor, who is no longer fit to rule. It then remains to replace the
+emperor by one who is more worthy of Divine favour, and this usually
+means the final overthrow of the dynasty.
+
+The Chinese assert their right to put an evil ruler to death, and it is
+not high treason, or criminal in any way, to proclaim this principle in
+public. It is plainly stated by the philosopher Mencius, whose writings
+form a portion of the Confucian Canon, and are taught in the ordinary
+course to every Chinese youth. One of the feudal rulers was speaking to
+Mencius about a wicked emperor of eight hundred years back, who had been
+attacked by a patriot hero, and who had perished in the flames of his
+palace. "May then a subject," he asked, "put his sovereign to death?"
+To which Mencius replied that any one who did violence to man's
+natural charity of heart, or failed altogether in his duty towards
+his neighbour, was nothing more than an unprincipled ruffian; and he
+insinuated that it had been such a ruffian, in fact, not an emperor
+in the true sense of the term, who had perished in the case they were
+discussing. Another and most important point to be remembered in any
+attempt to discover the real secret of China's prolonged existence as
+a nation, also points in the direction of democracy and freedom. The
+highest positions in the state have always been open, through the medium
+of competitive examinations, to the humblest peasant in the empire. It
+is solely a question of natural ability coupled with an intellectual
+training; and of the latter, it has already been shown that there is no
+lack at the disposal of even the poorest. China, then, according to a
+high authority, has always been at the highest rung of the democratic
+ladder; for it was no less a person than Napoleon who said: "Reasonable
+democracy will never aspire to anything more than obtaining an equal
+power of elevation for all."
+
+In order to enforce their rights by the simplest and most bloodless
+means, the Chinese have steadily cultivated the art of combining
+together, and have thus armed themselves with an immaterial, invisible
+weapon which simply paralyses the aggressor, and ultimately leaves them
+masters of the field. The extraordinary part of a Chinese boycott or
+strike is the absolute fidelity by which it is observed. If the boatmen
+or chair-coolies at any place strike, they all strike; there are no
+blacklegs. If the butchers refuse to sell, they all refuse, entirely
+confident in each other's loyalty. Foreign merchants who have offended
+the Chinese guilds by some course of action not approved by those
+powerful bodies, have often found to their cost that such conduct
+will not be tolerated for a moment, and that their only course is to
+withdraw, sometimes at considerable loss, from the untenable position
+they had taken up. The other side of the medal is equally instructive.
+Some years ago, the foreign tea-merchants at a large port, in order to
+curb excessive charges, decided to hoist the Chinese tea-men, or sellers
+of tea, with their own petard. They organized a strict combination
+against the tea-men, whose tea no colleague was to buy until, by what
+seemed to be a natural order of events, the tea-men had been brought
+to their knees. The tea-men, however, remained firm, their countenances
+impassive as ever. Before long, the tea-merchants discovered that some
+of their number had broken faith, and were doing a roaring business for
+their own account, on the terms originally insisted on by the tea-men.
+
+There is no longer any doubt that China is now in the early stages
+of serious and important changes. Her old systems of education and
+examination are to be greatly modified, if not entirely remodelled.
+The distinctive Chinese dress is to be shorn of two of its most
+distinguishing features--the _queue_ of the man and the small feet of
+the woman. The coinage is to be brought more into line with commercial
+requirements. The administration of the law is to be so improved that
+an honest demand may be made--as Japan made it some years back--for the
+abolition of extra-territoriality, a treaty obligation under which China
+gives up all jurisdiction over resident foreigners, and agrees that
+they shall be subject, civilly and criminally alike, only to their own
+authorities. The old patriarchal form of government, autocratic in name
+but democratic in reality, which has stood the Chinese people in such
+good stead for an unbroken period of nearly twenty-two centuries, is
+also to change with the changes of the hour, in the hope that a new era
+will be inaugurated, worthy to rank with the best days of a glorious
+past.
+
+And here perhaps it may be convenient if a slight outline is given of
+the course marked out for the future. China is to have a "constitution"
+after the fashion of most foreign nations; and her people, whose sole
+weapon of defence and resistance, albeit one of deadly efficiency, has
+hitherto been combination of the masses against the officials set over
+them, are soon to enjoy the rights of representative government. By an
+Imperial decree, issued late in 1907, this principle was established;
+and by a further decree, issued in 1908, it was ordered that at the
+end of a year provincial assemblies, to deliberate on matters of local
+government, were to be convened in all the provinces and certain
+other portions of the empire, as a first step towards the end in view.
+Membership of these assemblies was to be gained by election, coupled
+with a small property qualification; and the number of members in each
+assembly was to be in proportion to the number of electors in each
+area, which works out roughly at about one thousand electors to
+each representative. In the following year a census was to be taken,
+provincial budgets were to be drawn up, and a new criminal code was to
+be promulgated, on the strength of which new courts of justice were
+to be opened by the end of the third year. By 1917, there was to be a
+National Assembly or Parliament, consisting of an Upper and Lower House,
+and a prime minister was to be appointed.
+
+On the 14th of October 1909 these provincial assemblies met for the
+first time. The National Assembly was actually opened on the 3rd of
+October 1910; and in response to public feeling, an edict was issued a
+month later ordering the full constitution to be granted within three
+years from date. It is really a single chamber, which contains the
+elements of two. It is composed of about one hundred members, appointed
+by the Throne and drawn from certain privileged classes, including
+thirty-two high officials and ten distinguished scholars, together with
+the same number of delegates from the provinces. Those who obtain seats
+are to serve for three years, and to have their expenses defrayed by the
+state. It is a consultative and not an executive body; its function is
+to discuss such subjects as taxation, the issue of an annual budget, the
+amendment of the law, etc., all of which subjects are to be approved by
+the emperor before being submitted to this assembly, and also to deal
+with questions sent up for decision from the provincial assemblies.
+Similarly, any resolution to be proposed must be backed by at least
+thirty members, and on being duly passed by a majority, must then
+be embodied in a memorial to the Throne. For passing and submitting
+resolutions which may be classed under various headings as
+objectionable, the assembly can at once be dissolved by Imperial edict.
+
+There are, so far, no distinct parties in the National Assembly, that
+is, as regards the places occupied in the House. Men of various shades
+of opinion, Radicals, Liberals and Conservatives, are all mixed up
+together. The first two benches are set aside for representatives of the
+nobility, with precedence from the left of the president round to his
+right. Then come officials, scholars and leading merchants on the
+next two benches. Behind them, again, on four rows of benches, are the
+delegates from the provincial assemblies. There is thus a kind of House
+of Lords in front, with a House of Commons, the representatives of
+the nation, at the back. The leanings of the former class, as might be
+supposed, are mostly of a conservative tendency, while the sympathies
+of the latter are rather with progressive ideas; at the same time, there
+will be found among the Lords a certain sprinkling of Radicals, and
+among the Commons not a few whose views are of an antiquated, not to say
+reactionary, type.
+
+With the above scheme the Chinese people are given to understand quite
+clearly that while their advice in matters concerning the administration
+of government will be warmly welcomed, all legislative power will
+remain, as heretofore, confined to the emperor alone. At the first
+blush, this seems like giving with one hand and taking away with the
+other; and so perhaps it would work out in more than one nation of the
+West. But those who know the Chinese at home know that when they offer
+political advice they mean it to be taken. The great democracy of China,
+living in the greatest republic the world has ever seen, would never
+tolerate any paltering with national liberties in the present or in the
+future, any more than has been the case in the past. Those who sit in
+the seats of authority at the capital are far too well acquainted with
+the temper of their countrymen to believe for a moment that, where such
+vital interests are concerned, there can be anything contemplated save
+steady and satisfactory progress towards the goal proposed. If the
+ruling Manchus seize the opportunity now offered them, then, in spite of
+simmering sedition here and there over the empire, they may succeed
+in continuing a line which in its early days had a glorious record of
+achievement, to the great advantage of the Chinese nation. If, on the
+other hand, they neglect this chance, there may result one of those
+frightful upheavals from which the empire has so often suffered. China
+will pass again through the melting-pot, to emerge once more, as on all
+previous occasions, purified and strengthened by the process.
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+1. _The Chinese Classics_, by James Legge, D.D., late Professor of
+Chinese at Oxford.
+
+A translation of the whole of the Confucian Canon, comprising the Four
+Books in which are given the discourses of Confucius and Mencius, the
+Book of History, the Odes, the Annals of Confucius' native State, the
+Book of Rites, and the Book of Changes.
+
+2. _The Ancient History of China_, by F. Hirth, Ph.D., Professor of
+Chinese at Columbia University, New York.
+
+A sketch of Chinese history from fabulous ages down to 221 B.C.,
+containing a good deal of information of an antiquarian character, and
+altogether placing in its most attractive light what must necessarily be
+rather a dull period for the general reader.
+
+3. _China_, by E. H. Parker, Professor of Chinese at Victoria
+University, Manchester.
+
+A general account of China, chiefly valuable for commercial and
+statistical information, sketch-maps of ancient trade-routes, etc.
+
+4. _A Chinese Biographical Dictionary_, by H. A. Giles, LL.D., Professor
+of Chinese at the University of Cambridge.
+
+This work contains 2579 short lives of Chinese Emperors, statesmen,
+generals, scholars, priests, and other classes, including some
+women, from the earliest times down to the present day, arranged
+alphabetically.
+
+5. _A Comprehensive Geography of the Chinese Empire_, by L. Richard.
+
+This work is rightly named "comprehensive," for it contains a great deal
+of information which cannot be strictly classed as geographical, all of
+which, however, is of considerable value to the student.
+
+6. _Descriptive Sociology (Chinese)_, by E. T. C. Werner, H.B.M. Consul
+at Foochow.
+
+A volume of the series initiated by Herbert Spenger. It consists of a
+large number of sociological facts grouped and arranged in chronological
+order, and is of course purely a work of reference.
+
+7. _A History of Chinese Literature_, by H. A. Giles.
+
+Notes on two or three hundred writers of history, philosophy, biography,
+travel, poetry, plays, fiction, etc., with a large number of translated
+extracts grouped under the above headings and arranged in chronological
+order.
+
+8. _Chinese Poetry in English Verse_, by H. A. Giles.
+
+Rhymed translations of nearly two hundred short poems from the earliest
+ages down to the present times.
+
+9. _An Introduction to the History of Chinese Pictorial Art_, by H. A.
+Giles.
+
+Notes on the lives and works of over three hundred painters of all
+ages, chiefly translated from the writings of Chinese art-critics, with
+sixteen reproductions of famous Chinese pictures.
+
+10. _Scraps from a Collector's Note-book_, by F. Hirth.
+
+Chiefly devoted to notes on painters of the present dynasty, 1644-
+1905, with twenty-one reproductions of famous pictures, forming a
+complementary supplement to No. 9.
+
+11. _Religions of Ancient China_, by H. A. Giles.
+
+A short account of the early worship of one God, followed by brief
+notices of Taoism, Buddhism, Nestorian Christianity, Mahommedanism, and
+other less well-known faiths which have been introduced at various dates
+into China.
+
+12. _Chinese Characteristics_, by the Rev. Arthur Smith, D.D.
+
+A humorous but at the same time serious examination into the modes of
+thought and springs of action which peculiarly distinguish the Chinese
+people.
+
+13. _Village Life in China_, by the Rev. Arthur Smith.
+
+The scope of this work is sufficiently indicated by its title.
+
+14. _China under the Empress Dowager_, by J. O. Bland, and E. Backhouse.
+
+An interesting account of Chinese Court Life between 1860 and 1908,
+with important sidelights on the Boxer troubles and the Siege of the
+Legations in 1900.
+
+15. _The Imperial History of China_, by Rev. J. Macgowan.
+
+A short and compact work on a subject which has not been successfully
+handled.
+
+16. _Indiscreet Letters from Peking_, by B. Putnam Weale.
+
+Though too outspoken to meet with general approbation, this work is
+considered by many to give the most faithful account of the Siege of the
+Legations, as seen by an independent witness.
+
+17. _Buddhism as a Religion_, by H. Hackmann, Lic. Theol.
+
+A very useful volume, translated from the German, showing the various
+developments of Buddhism in different parts of the world.
+
+18. _Chuang Tzu_, by H. A. Giles.
+
+A complete translation of the writings of the leading Taoist
+philosopher, who flourished in the fourth and third centuries B.C.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Civilization Of China, by Herbert A. Giles
+
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